Hello... Let me tell you a tale of POS woe....
Jim Morriss
Band Wagon
Hello everyone,
I just sorta stumbled onto this site by way of a Duck search for Honda parts cross over lists. I am VERY glad I found it. I know that Hondas are cars and share the common traits of
I have an 88' wagon. DX I guess, I don't know. It it the box stock version I think. It has AC but not much else. No power anything and automatic Transmission. I am the second owner. The first paid cash for it, $12k+. There are 293kmiles on the odometer and it looks like it. The first thing I did was buy factory manuals for it I found a set of four on Ebay. The "1988 Service Manual, Civic Wagon", "1988 Civic Wagon Preliminary ETM", The "Electrical Troubleshooting Manual, Civic Wagon" and my favorite, "Honda Noise Control Repair Manual, 1988 Civic Model Series". 84 pages dedicated to stopping squeaks and rattles. You gotta love it.
It is a plain wagon with 1.5 liter engine, auto tranny, power steering, power brakes and A/C. Everything else is manual. The odd thing is is that the rear seat is divided 2/3-1/3. I found somewhere on line that that was only available in the wagovan, but it is not a wagovan. The windshield is cracked, there is minor fender damage, seats are in shambles, the carpeting is shot, there is a rust through in the spare tire well from the INSIDE where the last owner's husband used it to haul wood and left the hatch open for months at a time. The worst thing is the radio doesn't work, but that is the cantacts in the ignition switch too. I can live without it until I swap the switch.Some people have VAST mechanical knowledge, while others are only half-vast. There are soooooo many half-vast repairs done to this car it will take me a long time to find them all let alone fix them, but I will fix them. It will be my car until it dies. Which it might have, but more on that later.
I have replace the front right caliper, rebuilt the rear brakes with everything new but the drums and hoses. The front right hose has developed a leak so all hoses are on the to do list. I have the hoses just need to complete the "do" part. I have replace most of the light bulbs.
The heater blower was on a cigarette lighter plug when I got it and the thing would not swirl smoke in front of the vents. When I got around to fixing that I found to small reasons for the lack of air flow. First, the wires on the lighter plug that the guy used were 22ga., 18ga. at the most. The wires that it was connected to were 10ga. No wonder it got hot the time I had to use it for more than 5 minutes. Second thing I found was the polarity was backward so I guess you could say the repair job literally sucked. The reason the for the bypass was there was no power from the ignition switch. I traced the problem to the contacts in the ignition switch being worn, or the switch assembly itself. Whatever, a dab of grease on a cardboard shim fixed the problem until a replacement can be had. I still need to reroute the power through the controls because the guy cut them out too.
The really fur thing that the car does is suddenly jump to 3K rpms. That makes stop lights much more exciting It will be idling at about 900 and suddenly accelerate to 3000 rpms for anywhere 30 seconds to a few minutes. Then the check engine lights comes on and it returns to normal idle speed. Mostly, sometimes tit will idle at about 1200rpms, but the fuel mileage suck. When the CEL is off it get 30+MPG, when on 20, sometimes 25MPG. The problem was worse but I hard wired What ever it was that was pulling the throttle open out of the loop just so the car was drivable until I can figure the thing out. I think it is the temp sensor telling the computer that the temp is cold. IDK (Help and advice appreciated.)
Now about the possible death of the car. The other day was driving and let off the throttle to slow for a turn. When I did I heard a clang then a thump that thump. The engine went almost dead then dead in rapid succession. I think my timing belt broke. I don't know if the 1.5 is an "interference' engine or not. I can say that if I have to do much to change the belt it will be expensive because I will do as much refit as I can afford; sadly that isn't too much.
This car was given to me by my best friend. It was his mother's car and his father ruined it after she became unable to drive it. He gave it to me after my 89' Subaru was totaled by a, let us just say inexperienced, driver hitting me head on in my lane. 2 lane road, 4 way intersection on the top of a blind hill. She is making a left turn and pulls into my lane to make it. Thank God nobody was seriously damaged, well physically damaged. any way. I was given the car and all the parts to put it on the road. All and all it cost $250 to put it on the road, taxes and paperwork included. That is a real friend.
Well now you know my tale of constant tinkering and fixes. The car of a thousand repairs. I keep repairing things as I can afford them. The rubber band will have to wait a bit for me to heal from a minor surgery and to clean out a space for it in the out building. I want an actual roof and floor this repair. Gravel sucks. I will drive this car until something happens to it I can't fix. Like the body splits in half or the wheels fall off. I will post some pictures later.
Thanks Jim.
I just sorta stumbled onto this site by way of a Duck search for Honda parts cross over lists. I am VERY glad I found it. I know that Hondas are cars and share the common traits of
I have an 88' wagon. DX I guess, I don't know. It it the box stock version I think. It has AC but not much else. No power anything and automatic Transmission. I am the second owner. The first paid cash for it, $12k+. There are 293kmiles on the odometer and it looks like it. The first thing I did was buy factory manuals for it I found a set of four on Ebay. The "1988 Service Manual, Civic Wagon", "1988 Civic Wagon Preliminary ETM", The "Electrical Troubleshooting Manual, Civic Wagon" and my favorite, "Honda Noise Control Repair Manual, 1988 Civic Model Series". 84 pages dedicated to stopping squeaks and rattles. You gotta love it.
It is a plain wagon with 1.5 liter engine, auto tranny, power steering, power brakes and A/C. Everything else is manual. The odd thing is is that the rear seat is divided 2/3-1/3. I found somewhere on line that that was only available in the wagovan, but it is not a wagovan. The windshield is cracked, there is minor fender damage, seats are in shambles, the carpeting is shot, there is a rust through in the spare tire well from the INSIDE where the last owner's husband used it to haul wood and left the hatch open for months at a time. The worst thing is the radio doesn't work, but that is the cantacts in the ignition switch too. I can live without it until I swap the switch.Some people have VAST mechanical knowledge, while others are only half-vast. There are soooooo many half-vast repairs done to this car it will take me a long time to find them all let alone fix them, but I will fix them. It will be my car until it dies. Which it might have, but more on that later.
I have replace the front right caliper, rebuilt the rear brakes with everything new but the drums and hoses. The front right hose has developed a leak so all hoses are on the to do list. I have the hoses just need to complete the "do" part. I have replace most of the light bulbs.
The heater blower was on a cigarette lighter plug when I got it and the thing would not swirl smoke in front of the vents. When I got around to fixing that I found to small reasons for the lack of air flow. First, the wires on the lighter plug that the guy used were 22ga., 18ga. at the most. The wires that it was connected to were 10ga. No wonder it got hot the time I had to use it for more than 5 minutes. Second thing I found was the polarity was backward so I guess you could say the repair job literally sucked. The reason the for the bypass was there was no power from the ignition switch. I traced the problem to the contacts in the ignition switch being worn, or the switch assembly itself. Whatever, a dab of grease on a cardboard shim fixed the problem until a replacement can be had. I still need to reroute the power through the controls because the guy cut them out too.
The really fur thing that the car does is suddenly jump to 3K rpms. That makes stop lights much more exciting It will be idling at about 900 and suddenly accelerate to 3000 rpms for anywhere 30 seconds to a few minutes. Then the check engine lights comes on and it returns to normal idle speed. Mostly, sometimes tit will idle at about 1200rpms, but the fuel mileage suck. When the CEL is off it get 30+MPG, when on 20, sometimes 25MPG. The problem was worse but I hard wired What ever it was that was pulling the throttle open out of the loop just so the car was drivable until I can figure the thing out. I think it is the temp sensor telling the computer that the temp is cold. IDK (Help and advice appreciated.)
Now about the possible death of the car. The other day was driving and let off the throttle to slow for a turn. When I did I heard a clang then a thump that thump. The engine went almost dead then dead in rapid succession. I think my timing belt broke. I don't know if the 1.5 is an "interference' engine or not. I can say that if I have to do much to change the belt it will be expensive because I will do as much refit as I can afford; sadly that isn't too much.
This car was given to me by my best friend. It was his mother's car and his father ruined it after she became unable to drive it. He gave it to me after my 89' Subaru was totaled by a, let us just say inexperienced, driver hitting me head on in my lane. 2 lane road, 4 way intersection on the top of a blind hill. She is making a left turn and pulls into my lane to make it. Thank God nobody was seriously damaged, well physically damaged. any way. I was given the car and all the parts to put it on the road. All and all it cost $250 to put it on the road, taxes and paperwork included. That is a real friend.
Well now you know my tale of constant tinkering and fixes. The car of a thousand repairs. I keep repairing things as I can afford them. The rubber band will have to wait a bit for me to heal from a minor surgery and to clean out a space for it in the out building. I want an actual roof and floor this repair. Gravel sucks. I will drive this car until something happens to it I can't fix. Like the body splits in half or the wheels fall off. I will post some pictures later.
Thanks Jim.
Comments