Also known as: j25a, j30a, j30a1, j30y1, j37a, j37a1, j25, j30, j37, j30ac, j37a5, j37a2, j30a4, j30a5
The other members of Honda's J-series V6 — the 2.5 J25, 3.0 J30 and 3.7 J37 — in the Accord and across Acura.
The J32 and J35 have their own pages here, and this one covers the rest. Everything below applies to all five: it is one architecture — a 60° SOHC V6 with a timing belt, not a chain.
⚑ The belt is the item that ends these engines, and it catches people out precisely because Honda's four-cylinders of the same era are chain-driven. It is an interference design. On a car with unknown history the belt, the water pump behind it and the tensioner are one job and one decision.
Variable Cylinder Management is the second thing to know, on the engines that have it. VCM shuts down banks under light load, and the well-documented consequence is oil consumption and fouled plugs in the cylinders that spend their life deactivated — plus a vibration through the cabin that owners describe as a misfire. A misfire code on one bank only, on a VCM engine, is a question about VCM before it is a question about ignition.
Motor mounts are a genuine pattern rather than wear, because the active mounts work harder on a VCM car; a shudder at idle in gear is worth checking there early.
The J30Y1 in the Acura hybrids is the same engine inside a hybrid control strategy, so start, charge and idle complaints on one are questions about the system rather than about the engine.
Cars fitted with this engine
11 generations, across 2 makes. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Acura
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Posted about this engine
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Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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