1987 Honda Accord

So the Accord is gone.  Well, it’s not gone, I’m just getting rid of it.  I stumbled upon a good deal on a better car, so I grabbed it up this week.  I’m getting rid of the Accord.  And the new car isn’t really blog worthy since it shouldn’t require much work like the Accord did.  I’ll post a final update in a week or two, I thought I’d try and compile some stats, like total mileage, maintenance costs, fuel costs, and average mileage, stuff like that.  I’m sorry to be parting ways with it, because it’s a great car.  The engine is solid as a rock, the styling is stunning IMHO, the interior is nice, and overall it’s just a good car, but little things kept breaking and even though the costs were small, it was adding up.  But the real determining factor is the rot.  The suspension was just shot.  The shocks were soft, the bushings were all rotted and squeaking, the front beam for the steering rack and lower control arms was literally so rusted, that of the four bolts attaching it to the car, only three were actually serving their purpose, I had a sticking brake caliper, clicking axles, and worn upper ball joints.  And the oil pan looked like it was about to rust straight through.  I had it almost five years, and it was a good run, and a valuable learning experience, but it was time to move on.

Friday my car started making an awful racket as I got off the highway going to work. It sounded like one of those noisemakers that people have on New Years Eve. It turned out to be coming from the alternator, you could see the pulley was cocked, so I thought the bearings were shot. I used a rental car for the weekend since I didn’t really have time to fix it, and it didn’t seem wise to drive it in that condition. I replaced the alternator today, although it seems that perhaps the pulley just worked itself loose. The alternator had a warranty, so I won’t have to pay for it anyhow. I also replaced the left side driveshaft. The old one was making a lot of noise, and you have to take the axle out to replace the alternator anyhow, so I figured I’d just do it. I’m getting fed up with my car, I’d like to find a good condition mid 90s civic hatchback. I want a car that gets 40mpg, and there isn’t a new car on the market that can do that, but there are some cars from the 90s that can.

Okay, let’s make this quick.

A couple weeks ago…actually more like a month ago I think, I put new front brake pads on my car and changed the oil and filter. I didn’t resurface the rotors, just ground some of the rust off the edges. The right front caliper is messed up, the dust boot was torn, which I knew about but ignored, so the piston was pretty well rusted. The pads on the right side had about 2mm more material left than on the left side, obviously the piston wasn’t moving freely. It was very difficult to push it back into the bore, and it probably damaged the seal at least somewhat. After I finished I took it out for a drive, and realized the caliper was dragging and the brakes were overheating, so I pressed the piston a little further back into the bore, and then everything seemed hunky-dory. It’s been probably 1500 miles now and it doesn’t seem to be leaking, or seizing, so I’m going to keep driving on it.

The new pads are crap and have way too much clearance between the caliper slides and the pads, so they make clicking noises constantly. I almost think it would have been worth it to spent the extra $30 to get some OEM pads, but then again, my radio still works and it can obscure the sound. OEM parts really truly are far superior to what is available on the aftermarket.

My power steering fluid cooler has been leaking. The whole thing seems to have just rotted out to the point where it’s porous, and the fluid was seeping out. So yesterday I disconnected the cooler and just used some hose to route the fluid straight from the rack back into the reservoir. I doubt I’ll have any problems with the pump overheating.

The shocks seem a little worse than they were a couple weeks ago. I hate that the suspension and body are falling apart while the powertrain still has plenty of life left in it. I wish it was the other way around. The Kumho tires I put on in January aren’t anything to write home about. They are good and quiet, with respectable traction, but it feels very easy to get them to spin by letting the clutch out quick, and I’ve locked them up a couple of times while braking. They don’t skid while cornering hard though. I guess I don’t really mind the ability to chirp the tires when the light turns green, but it’s almost too easy. Then again, I have to remember that I have the tires 4psi overinflated, so maybe it’s not all their fault. I just feel that 26psi is too low for any passenger car.

That’s about that. The car has over 203K on it.

Okay, so I just read my last post, which reminded me, that today I revved my car almost up to 7000RPM, well into the red. The tach goes up to 8, maybe I should aim for that next.

A few weeks ago I did some work on my car. I put a new radiator in it. I got it exchanged under the “lifetime warranty” of the internet company I bought the thing from 4 years ago. They were absolutely impossible to deal with, I don’t recommend them at all, they’ll just try to screw you over every which way. I replaced the radiator because the fins on the bottom 4 inches or so had fallen out, just rotted off. It wasn’t leaking yet, but I didn’t really trust the thing at the rate it was falling apart. The coolant came out kind of brown again…something in my engine seems to wreck coolant pretty quickly.

I put a next axle seal in the transmission. The thing was torn, although it’s hard to tell what exactly is leaking on the transmission, because I think the speed sensor is leaking again. When I went to refill the trans, the fill bolt was completely stuck, and nothing I tried was going to free it, so I’m just going to leave that in there. I filled the transmission through the speed sensor hole, so I just approximated how much fluid to add.

I change the oil, and rotated and balanced the tires. I’m going to need brakes soon, they are pretty worn down. Hopefully I’ll get around to changing them because the backing plates hit the rotors, but if I don’t, well, they’re cheap aftermarket rotors anyhow, so I don’t really care, I’ll just throw another set on.

I think something in the air pulse injection system has come apart, because I feel like I can hear a rattle in there, and I can hear the exhaust pulses through it, louder than usual. Again, not something I feel like spending time to fix.

And I’ve breached 199,000 miles, so it’s just the final push to the big 200K. I’ll probably get there next week.

I’ve always wondered if my car has a rev-limiter. This is common on a fuel injected car of course, but with a carburetor, I wasn’t sure how it would work. I didn’t want to overly abuse my car, so I usually keep it below 5K, but sometimes I get up closer to 6K. I’ve never gone over 6K. The redline is drawn at 6300RPM.

Today circumstances came together, and I revved it hard, and while I can’t say if there is a rev-limiter, it is definitely not at the redline, I was up to 6500RPM, and the car was still pulling strong when I shifted.

:-)

My car has surpassed 195K. Every day I think of getting rid of the old clunker. Every other day I think of keeping it forever.

My carburetor started leaking from the accelerator pump. You can only smell it sometimes. I won’t fix it unless it gets worse. Occasionally the idle has dropped low enough to almost stall. Actually it did stall this morning, but there were extenuating circumstances. Maybe there is a vacuum leak. I lubricated the contact spring in the steering wheel, so it doesn’t make that awful screeching, nails on a chalkboard, sound when I cut the wheel real hard. I changed the oil and filter at 194,200. Come to think of it, the idle problem started shortly after I started driving more aggressively a few weeks ago. I got run off the road by an 18-wheeler that spontaneously changed lanes, and I’ve just been more generous with the throttle ever since. That’s about how I killed my last carburetor. I’ve heard people talk of the secondary throttle sticking, but I don’t think that’s the case with my car.

I checked the voltage drop at the headlight, and the headlights are only getting about 10.5 volts, which explains why I don’t think they are bright enough. I think the wiring is very corroded. It would probably be a pain to run new copper, so I’ll just ignore that too.

I’m racking up the mileage these days with frequent out of state weekend trips. My car still averages over 30mpg.

Last Friday I noticed my car starting making a quiet whining noise. It sounded like when my timing belt was too tight. Then I thought it might be my power steering pump. I checked, and the fluid was full. The noise was definitely coming from the front of the engine, but I couldn’t say whether it was the timing belt or the alternator. I decided to ignore the noise. It was only noticeable at idle, or low speeds.

On my drive in to work on Monday I noticed my tachometer started jumping around, the needle was bouncing between 2000 and 3000 RPM. My speedometer does this sometimes, but the tach is always solid. I put the clutch in, and the tach smoothed out at low RPMs, and then I let the clutch out, and then the charging system warning light.

“I guess I know what the whining noise was,” I thought. I turned off the radio, the headlights and the blower, and continued into work. Once there, I verified that the alternator wasn’t charging, so I bought a replacement, and I got a battery too, just because my old one was old. I was later informed I could have just replaced the brushes in the alternator. I wish I had thought of that sooner. The one that was in the car wasn’t original anyhow.

I’ve decided my car is ready to die, and when that time comes, I’ll let it go. I’d rather it die a peaceful death, than to take me with it in a fireball. Hopefully I’ll make some money this summer so I can buy a new car before next winter. Winter takes a toll on my car. The thing is a dream in the summer, and a nightmare in the winter.

Last week I replaced both rear upper ball joints. The old ones were totally shot. Over the weekend I did four hours of highway driving in both light, and medium rain. Between the new ball joints and the new tires my car’s wet handling has greatly improved. My car used to move around the lane a bit, but it now it seems to be tracking very straight, with minimal steering effort needed. Most of the rear suspension noises are still present, the bushings seem to squeak a lot. There is one high pitched noise that I think is gone since the ball joints were replaced, but I usually only hear that one with the windows open and the radio off, which is something I haven’t been doing much lately.

The last several times I’ve gotten gas my car has averaged 34mpg. My car is so much cooler than most of the other cars on the road. ;-)

Last week I replaced the vacuum choke opener. I knew it wasn’t holding vacuum, but I wasn’t sure that it was getting the correct vacuum signals from the thermovalve, so I was hesitance to replace it. Anyhow, it was the best $40 I spent in a while. Now that the weather is cooler, my car was running like crap when it was cold, because the thing was choking itself to death. The choke wasn’t opening very much until the electric choke came into play which took a few minutes. So for the first couple minutes my car was running, it felt like it was running on 2 cylinders. And the car wouldn’t run at fast idle. I had also had the choke propped open a bit, so starting the car required priming the carb about 4 times, and even then starting could take a couple tries. Now with the new opener, the thing runs like a dream. It runs smooth right from the start. It starts with only priming the carb about twice, and it starts reliably. The fast idle is working correctly. It runs at about 2000rpm, and after a minute or two it runs at around 1500, then after a couple more it idles around 1100, until it settles down to about 800 when fully warm. The fast idle unloader still doesn’t work, so you have to tap the throttle to get it to come off the fast idle cam. But I usually only let my car idle a minute or less before driving, so it’s mostly a moot point. And since the car isn’t being force to run rich when it’s cold, it even warms up a bit faster. I am very pleased. The car has crossed 188K, and it’s due for it’s next oil change. I’m also still planning to replace the radiator as soon as I can find the time. The radiator still isn’t leaking, but a large amount of the fins on the bottom are all rotted out. Oh, and I just realized that I completely forgot to write an update when I put new tires on my car. I installed four Kuhmo Touring A/A 795 that I got from The Tire Rack. Basically they were the cheapest tire with a brand name I’m familiar. I think they did help improve wet handling of my car, and once it snows, I’m sure I’ll be glad to have them.