About my '87 Accord A20A3. Maybe some advice?

[Jfalu12]

Hi everyone. I just made a post in introductions and am going to spill a bit about my car in hopes to get some advice or some instruction on keeping my car going. Let me tell you about the history of my car;

Living most of it's life on the beach, this car is now in my possession after having it's head gasket blown and "fixed" with a bottle of stop leak. The car sat in a backyard not being started for four years until my first car was totaled and this car became mine. I drove the car for about 100 miles before it got extremely hot and actually cracked the engine head.

That's when the trouble needed to be fixed...

So I began tearing apart the engine, I replaced the following things....

• Water Pump
  Fuel Pump
  Head Gasket
  Various O-rings
  Intake/Exhaust Gasket
  Alternator
  Distributor (Used still had problems)
  "Reconditioned" Clutch cable
  Brake Master Cylinder
  ROUTINE MAINTENANCE (Cables / Fluids etc) - The most important one

The head gasket was a huge project. I removed the Intake and exhaust manifolds to get the head off only to realize the head was cracked so I got a "new" head and put it on after making sure the valves were okay and it wouldn't leak.

Got the car back together and it still didn't run that great (Crappy idle problems where it would surge / Very bad gas mileage / Constant check engine light / Oil leak STILL)

Drove the car for 1000 miles or so before something really crappy happened to me.....

While driving in 4th gear at about 2k rpms the car slipped out of gear and the tranny was stuck in a weird 3rd/4th gear and I had to get it towed home. Come to find out the car had no oil in the transmission and I had damaged a synchronizer ring to where I have to be very delicate with 5th gear as it will make a.... grinding? noise when sliding in 5th even after letting the rpms going all the way down to idle before shifting into it...


All in all it's a great little car I love it to death as I've spent many many hours learning with it but here's my current list of problems.....

• Exhaust leak
  No power steering (Both racks blew when I first got the car checking CV)
  No A/C (I couldn't care less about that)
  Not as much power as there should be
  Very bad idle (Doesn't surge anymore but since the transmission thing i've not driven it as much and it will idle high)
  Check engine light
  Probably 1000 vacuum leaks

In conclusion this car has had many many problems, most of which aren't listed, but with a lot of hard work and learning I have made this car go and go. I am considering an engine swap with an engine that isn't as rigged as mine is and maybe less vacuum on it...

What do you think I should do forum members? The car has 190k on it but I love the car's body style and engine for the most part, just needs to run right!!!

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/cam00047.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/692/cam00031.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/833/cam00022.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/204/cam00029j.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/99/cam00024.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/443/cam00037.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/826/cam00027m.jpg/

P.S. I have a video of it running on facebook if you wanna hear / see it.

[Oldblueaccord]

Rust is an important factor. it is very hard to fix.

EDIT looking at your pictures is looks like a great car. The mechanical stuff is pretty easy to work on for a young person.


wp

[Jfalu12]

I have rust on the corners of the trim on top of the car in four places, one of which is causing a small leak to get inside the car and cause it to smell like wet dog after a rain..

[POS carb]

go buy a few feet of vacuum hose and replace all your vacuum hoses
make sure your fans come on
sort out your transmission rebuild/replacement before putting a bunch of $ into the car
get a new thermostat oe temp

[Oldblueaccord]

I have rust on the corners of the trim on top of the car in four places, one of which is causing a small leak to get inside the car and cause it to smell like wet dog after a rain..

Also if your down on power the timing belt is very easy to get a tooth or two off. I would double check that.


wp

[rc00netzero]

And fix the exaust leak before you get CO poisoning

[Jfalu12]

I have fixed the rust on the corners causing the leaks. It seems that I have a massive oil leak behind my crankshaft pulley. Does anybody know how to replace the seal there?

P.S. it has a brand new timing belt as of 4k miles ago.

It has an exhaust leak just before the Cat. Probably won't bother me, but everyone behind me.. ;]