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Maintenance/Repairs
21

As long time members of this forum know, I have said many times that Honda’s reputation for being a long-lasting, low-maintenance automobile is vastly over-stated…

Toyota deserves the reputation they enjoy…Honda does not…They are difficult to work on (almost as bad as a Benz) and can develop little drivability quirks that are almost impossible to cure…Their automatic transmissions are among the least reliable in the industry…To their credit, they have addressed the rubber timing belt failure / your car is totaled problem. But there are just too many broken Honda threads on this board…

There. That’s my Saturday Morning Rant…!

22

Their automatic transmissions are among the least reliable in the industry

Unfortunately your data is flawed as usual. For a 3 year period…Honda had a reputation of having an unreliable transmission…That was over 10 years ago.

I’ll compare the reliability of our Honda’s to ANY VEHICLE YOU EVER OWNED…PERIOD…Besides normal maintenance…our 96 Accord had a total of $4 in repairs for it’s 240k miles we owned it. Gave it to our niece who started college…She sold when she graduated…by then it had over 300k miles and the ONLY REPAIR it had was a new radiator.

Our 87 Accord was almost as reliable. Last we knew it was still on the road approaching 400k miles…The 300k miles we owned it…had less then $1000 in repairs…Gave this one away too…

Both had timing belts…I replaced them once myself…then just didn’t have the time to do it the other times…Even accounting for the $400 we paid for each time we replaced the water pumps…I’ll bet we had far far far less cost of ownership then ANY vehicle you’ve EVER owned.

23

I have to slightly agree with caddyman, but only slightly. Our 97 accord has only required two repairs, the radiator and the distributor O-ring, but it was under the EPA required 150k mile warrantee and that cost Honda quite a bit as it regularly ate oxygen sensors for a while.

24

cont

My Nissan Truck has been slightly more reliable and may Saturn has been even more reliable than the Nissan. However, a couple of Toyota’s have been disappointing. My daughters 03 Corolla has had more problems than the Honda, including that P0420 code that no one seems to know how to get rid of on that model.

25

cont

My daughters 03 Corolla has had more problems than the Honda, including that P0420 code that no one seems to know how to get rid of on that model. Our 86 Tercel 4wd wagon also had quite a few problems too, but I loved that car anyway.

26

HondaHonda. I think you are just at a low point in the maintence schedule is all. I don’t see any reason why you won’t get this fixed and your car will be back to almost new condition. Well, maybe not almost new, but at least good condition.

The work you described is not uncommon at all for a 1996. It’s a 16 year old car with 250K miles on it after all. Perhaps it was driven a little hard in the past, that could explain the need to replace the suspension parts, which is a little unusual, but that’s done, and as long as it is still running ok with relatively minor repairs needed, why not keep it on the road? New spark plugs and a valve cover gasket, that’s routine maintenance. So is a new cat converter. You’d likely have to do that work with any car of that vintage you buy. Why trade a known set of completely workable problems for another set of unknown problems?

Are you doing this work on your car yourself? That can be frustrating, especially if you are new to working on cars. If so, do yourself a favor and buy the Honda shop manual for it. Then read it carefully, especially the first three chapters, the introduction and safety precautions, the routine maintenance, and the tune-up sections. You don’t have to do this work by guesswork when you have the manual.

Most experienced home handymen use the manufacturer’s shop manual to fix their own car. You can become an expert on your own car if you have this manual. It has the specific instructions and tools for your specific make & model and year of Honda. If Honda doesn’t have it in stock any more, look for a used copy on Ebay or Amazon. Or they might have it at your local library. Or the next town’s local library. Look around a little and eventually you’ll find a copy. Having this manual will save you a lot of time fixing your own car. Maybe Honda has it available on line? Doesn’t hurt to look for it there.

You mention you don’t want to use the jack to get access to the underside. No experienced home mechanic would do that either. You are right. It isn’t safe. Experienced home mechanics would either use ramps (like you apparently have now) or they’d jack the car up with a shop floor jack and then place jack-stands at the recommended support points (see the manual for where these points are). No experienced mechanic would crawl underneath a car only supported by a jack. That’s very dangerous. This is a good reason why you should read the safety chapter of the shop manual for your car before doing further work on it.

I had a manual xmission Honda before, and it was very reliable. The only routine maintenance I did on it was change the oil and filter and check the other fluids every 10K, and do the basic tune-up procedure (spark plugs and ignition timing) and flush the cooling system every 50K. That car never gave me much trouble. I think you’ve got a good car that just needs a little work.

One more thing. There’s a lot of experienced folks here. Almost all of them are better mechanics than I am. If most of them – like it appears to be – say your idea to use some kind of cleaning procedue to fix the cat isn’t the right approach, if it were me, I’d listen to what they say. Best of luck.

27

I’ve owned 4 Hondas, a Chevy and now a Toyota.
I took (take) good care of them because I like to get my hands on machines and do maintenance.
Guess which one left me stuck on the side of the interstate TWICE?

p.s. anyone want a factory manual for a 1981 Accord?

28

I got under my car today. Unfortunately i had to jack it up(i used jack stands safely, btw), because the ramps my dad had were so low they were hitting the bumper of the car. Can anyone recommend some ramps for Honda accord?

Ok, so good news and bad news. Bad news is the o2 sensor and cat are rusted to kingdom come and after using penetrating oil and whacking it a little bit with my mallet, the 02 sensor wouldn’t budge.

The good news is that the connector for the 02 sensor up inside the body come right off without having to pull down from inside or body, it just slid right off! I snapped it back in, tried to take it off again, and now it’s snug. I’m hoping *fingers crossed" it was just slightly coming loose, disconnecting and that’s what threw the code.

Thoughts?

29

Get yourself a small cylinder of MAPP gas at a local hardware store, and using a Bernzomatic style torch, heat the O2 sensor up for a couple of minutes and it should come out much easier.

30

If that doesn’t work, you can try cleaning the O2 contacts too. My guess this isn’t the problem, but it’s worth a try since it was loose.

Try asking here how to loosen stuck bolts. Folks here smarter than I have done this many times before and they’ll give you some good advice. I’ve found a combination of penetrating oil, sometimes several doses over the course of a week, and apply some heat will allow me to budge most any rusted bolt. If it is a rusted nut, I’ve had luck in that case using a small tool available at auto-parts stores and most tool stores like Sears called a “nut-cracker” which you turn with a socket and it slowly breaks the nut in half.

Of course, try to make sure what you are removing actually has to be removed by using the appropriate diagnostics first.

Sometimes the problem is while it might be possible to remove a stuck nut or bolt if you had the thing sitting out on a work bench, it is impossible while it is on he car because of the tight working quarters. In those cases, it often saves time to remove the stuff that’s in the way, then put it back on later, rather than fighting it, if that’s an option.

And in some cases it is better to punt, for while it might be possible to get a rusted bolt or nut to break free if I spend enough time on it, I’m better off just taking it to a shop that has a cutting torch. I had this occur one time when I was trying to change some shock absorbers on a 1970’s Ford truck. I tried the penetrating oil and heat technique, but got no movement. The shop with the cutting torch had the shock absorbers off in about 10 minutes of work. And most of that 10 minutes was getting the torch equipment positioned next to the car, and putting up some shielding to avoid sparks going near the gas tank.

31

The oem Honda O2 sensors have an anti-seize plating on them so they usually do not freeze in place, however, the ere of accord had a lot of issues with the O2 sensors, that is why they came with a 14 year,150k mile warrantee, courtesy of the EPA. Chances are yous is not the original.

32

Just to give you perspective, I’m about to put in a new timing belt in our 97 Accord (180k miles) and it looks like I will need new struts as well. I just replaced the front brakes, rotors, wheel bearings, all brake hoses and rack boots. But when this round of maintenance, I expect smooth sailing for another 7 years, then I get a new one.

33

BTW, how does that heater hose under the distributor look? You never responded to that but considering your oil leak, it could be a ticking time bomb.

34

I’m not sure what the heater hose looks like, but I’ll have my mechanic check it out when I get my timing belt job done next month.

I free’d the sensor with a closed wrench. Unfortunately, I tried to use the oxygen sensor socket installer to remove it and cracked it (don’t recommend). Oh well, the o2 sensor looked far worse than my upstream one, OEM style, and there was a lot of carbon by the washer and inside the ports. It definitely needs replacing.

However now I have a gap in my converter. I have a pressure gauge that I am hoping fits to keep the pressure steady, if not the mixture rich…until my amazon one comes in the mail in a couple days.

35

FWIW, I use a 3/8" drive IR impact wrench to remove catalytic converter bolts and other exhaust bolts. I use a 3/8" drive because a 1/2" is often too large or bulky to reach in there. It may not work in all cases but so far (knock on wood) it hasn’t failed me yet. Last year I removed two bolts from a 1984 Toyota pickup converter that were rusted solid. They hadn’t been removed in the 27 year life of the truck at the time. They were so rusted the bolt heads were no longer 14mm but had corroded to 13mm. Anyway, the impact action broke them free with no drama. I didn’t even bother with any penetrating fluids. If you have access to an impact wrench, it might be worth a try. If not, I agree that sometimes it’s better to know your limitations and throw in the towel.

36

If you do get both o2s out you could always make a fitting and use a pressure before and after the cat. of course having the upstream one plugged when doing the rear. Just an idea I never hd to do this.

37

Well, I got a code as soon as I turned on my car and I got it checked. P0141 oxygen sensor bank 1 sensor 2. Since there’s a separate code for the sensors that rules out my theory the oxygen sensor was coming unplug and throwing the code, otherwise I’d have seen it by now.

This means only one thing, time to replace the cat soon. I get my new downstream 02 sensor tomorrow, so I’ll monitor the gas mileage and performance, but I don’t think it will matter, the cat is already getting clogged up/is and it’s wearing out. Even if the downstream sensor caused the cat error it’s too late to reverse any the damage.

I did stop by auto parts store today and they let me use this code reader and it diagnostic data on my car. Let me know if anybody knows what this stuff means:

Abslt TPS: 9.4 – Absolute Throttle Position
MAP 28.9 – Manifold Absolute Pressure
Coolant: 196
IAT: 127 – Intake Air Temperature(A little warm?)
St Firm 1: - 100
02 S11: .195 (Upstream sensor?)
02 S12: 1.275 (Absent downstream sensor?)

Thoughts?

38

Can anybody here recommend a good aftermarket cat converter?

39

Any “direct-fit, OEM replacement” converter should be fine. Try the parts supplier that supplies the local garages rather than the “consumer-oriented” automotive department stores.

40

P0141 says that the voltage output from the O2 sensor is not within a certain range. P0420 says that the voltage out is within the range, but is switching too quickly. In theory, that means that the cat isn’t working, but it can still be the rear O2 sensor. The bad gasket you had can also cause the P0420 code. Fix everything else first.