Stumbled across this board looking for data on the 86-89 Accords. Anyways...my very first car was an 86 Accord LX 4dr 5MT.
I didn't have a car in high school, but I got a football scholarship to a junior college so my parents were able to buy me a car the week before my 20th birthday, since they had money saved up for my school that wasn't spent. This was in late October of 1990. My mom had an 88 Accord that we had purchased new in January of 88 and I knew I wanted one like it. We looked at Civics first though and didn't find anything of much interest. Plus they were too small for me, I am 6'7".
As luck would have it we stopped off at the Acura dealer on a whim. We told them we were looking at cars in the $2000-$3000 range and they lead us back to the 86 Accord. It was a bit more worn than my mom's still pristine 88, and had 116,384 miles on it (never gonna forget that part!). But we test drove it and I was hooked. They asked 5500 for it. My dad wouldn't budge. We walked out the door for $4000 plus TT&L for a 4 year old Accord. I was estatic.
I soon found out that it was owned by an oil field services company and that it had been driven to oil wells and most definitely offroad. It had also had marginal maintenance, as evidenced by the brown coolant, rough idle, hot running and other malaises. A tune up, a coolant flush and a new theromstat resolved the running problems. A set of shocks all around firmed up the ride, and a CV boot was replaced. This turned out to be a pretty good car for me. A fuel pump failure did leave me stranded once, and I fought overheating problems most of the time that I owned the car, which included even one radiator replaceement, but no bother, I still took it cross country a few times.
I kept this car for 7 years, finally selling it in 1997 with 258,000 miles. Even afterwards I continued to see the car around town. The new owner smoked the (by then marginal) clutch but after fixing that I kept seeing it all over the place. Good times.
I have many fond memories of the places that this car took me.
For a brief time after my divorce in 2000 I also took possession of my mom's 88, which at that time had about 210K on it. I ended up giving it to my cousin who was then enrolled in college. That one ended up making about 240K before electrical and transmission problems did it in. It probably would have lasted longer in my care; she did NOT take care of it or do any maintenance.
So anyways I find this site to be of great interest. I did a lot of major work on the Accords so maybe I can be of assistance to the 3G members here in the future!
regards,
Brons2
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