Ok, my name is Jim and I just bought my first honda. Actually, I bought a couple others a while back, but that was for my daughter and later another one for my son. I think I drove them once each.
I get the feeling that I'm probably a little older than most posters on this forum from some of the posts that are here. Looking at the "How tos", I am very impressed with the detail and the ones with pics are great.
Back to "my" Honda. It's an 89 LXI 2 dr, 5 spd and the body is in remarkable shape considering how many of the mid/late 80 Hondas I see which are pretty bad. It is also pretty damn fast for a little car.
My reason for buying it was because it was cheap and I needed a temporary car to get back and forth to work. My main ride is an Audi, but a bit of a valve problem has it laid up until I can get the heads off and the job taken care of. Shortly after Christmas, I plan to get back to the head work on my Audi and hopefully have it back on the road early in January
In the meantime, I have done a few things to the Honda just to take care of nuisance items. The first job was to replace the upper control arm/ball joints because the wheels were wobbly real bad. I was amazed at how easy it was to do this job, compared to similar tasks on the Audi.
A spring is broken, which I hear is pretty common and I'm trying to buy a set of stock springs from a guy who has them listed on here. When I do the sping, I'll also replace the boots on the CV. Hopefull, I can just clean the joints and regrease before they get too bad. One of the rear upper balls is also bad and that looks pretty easy too. Will pick up the arm this weekend.
I think the alternator might be going south too. It works and charges the battery fine, but it whistles, which could be the bearings in the alt. It looks like a fun job to change, especially for my big hands.
The guy who sold me the Honda was prety glad to get rid of it. He was shell shocked by a quote to fix the upper front balls, springs, and replace both CV shafts. This was just after having it towed in when the timing belt broke. He paid a high end shop to replace it. (Good thing it's not an interference engine like my Audi). Following that repair, an upper rear ball fell apart sna he had to be towed in again for another dip into his wallet.
After all that, he was willing to get rid of it real cheap. I'm sure he thought I was buying a junker. By far and away, I don't think it's a junker and since my garage (the one attached to my house) doesn't charge very much, I'll only have a few hundred into it when i'm done, including a new set of rubber.
My plan is to sell the Honda and I'm sure it looking so good and having this stuff done will make it attractive to someone younger than myself. In the meantime, I plan on keeping it completly stock. (No lowering springs, fart cans or spoilers) I've seen some cars like this on Ebay and wonder what kind of dollars it will bring. Anyone out there want to hazzard a guess? Oh, it has about 150K on the clock.
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*Weber 32/36*Pacesetter Header*2.25 in. Cat Back exhaust*SE-i rear disk brakes
Originally Posted by 3gn86lxi
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