Bought '02 Honda Odyssey w/185,000 original owner mainly hiway miles. How do I find out if the 2 airbag and 2 transmission recalls were taken care of? Prev owners handed me a stack of paperwork supposedly showing all reg scheduled maint. performed, on time. Overheats when at idle, esp w/A/C on. Steering wheel is bit shakey at low speeds. Starts easily, but sounds "knocky" when firing up. Honda dealership where all service was done on it is 5 hrs away. Got any maint. advice I can get my local Honda folks to perform on it? (w/o spending thousands? I'd PAY for any solid advice, pref from Honda mechanics! Thanks

1. Honda minivan transmissions are common to do that because they just put accord transmissions in them for a vehicle that weighs over 1/3 more, thus straining the transmission making it not last long 2. i wouldn't worry about the air bags at this point 3. as for the overheating your rad fan could be dead, or your thermostat could be no good. all i would do for this is wire a new fan in to run CONSTANT when the van is running to keep the van cool all the time 4. as for the knocky sound when firing it up i couldn't tell you, sorry 5. and for the steering wheel being shakey it could be many things, from tie rod ends to ball joints. all you do to test them is put a pry bar in the gaps and make sure theres no play with the balljoints, the tie rods you will hear clicking i believe. other than that you could have bad wheel bearing but i doubt that, this would also make a clicking noise or grinding noise though. but the most likely case i think is not balanced tires or under or overpumped or unevenly pumped tires don't take my word on any of this, im no expert but this is just what i know the possibilities could be.

Thank you. This is all pretty much as I figured. The tires are new and mounted/balanced correctly. I'll go ahead and rob a bank, and let the local Honda people take care of these things. Have a great n safe turkey day, brother.