After my wife rolled my 1989 Acura Integra, I needed a new car. I headed back to the Acura dealership, but they didn’t have anything. I then went to their associated Honda dealership (not the ones who insulted my 1979 Honda Accord). I would have liked a hatchback of some sort. My wife thought it would be good to get a 4 door, so that if we had guests come into town, we could drive them around. That seemed like a good idea at the time. I bought a 1990 Honda Accord for around $10,000 I think. This was probably in 1995. I was about $3000-$4000 more than I paid for the Acura Integra. In hindsight, I would have rather had a $6000-$7000 hatchback, or two-door sporty car, and I could have rented a 4 door car on the rare occasions we have guests. Whatever.
Overall, I liked the car. It was nice, and actually had an upgraded stereo. It had about 60,000 miles on the odometer when I bought it.
When the car had about 120,000 miles on it, I took it to get the timing belt replaced. I took it to a reputable local shop. They did the work which isn’t cheap as they have to remove a lot of stuff to get to the timing belt. About a month and a half later, the car overheated on my way to work. I found that the water pump had failed. When the jerks at the shop had replaced the timing belt, they never replaced the water pump. They never mentioned that this was usually done. They never said a thing about it. I learned after the fact that the water pump is usually replaced as you are only paying for the part, since they are already removing it. And that putting a worn water pump on with a new timing belt can cause the bearings in the water pump to fail due to the tighter belt. I had never dealt with these guys again.
After the water pump failed, and the car overheated, the car started to burn a little bit of oil. It had never done that before.
I drove it until it has 235,000 miles on it. The body had very little rust or damage. I had been driving on back rode when the car just died. I could get it started, but it would stall as soon as I tried to drive it. We towed it to the mechanics shop and left it parked there. I called him when they opened. He opened the engine, and found the valves had fried. It would not be cheap to fix. The cheapest option would be to drop another engine into it. I  ended up trading the car plus some cash to the mechanic for a 1989 Chevy Lumina with under 100,000 miles on it.
The mechanic ended up dropping a used engine into the car, and selling it.

Posted by Rob in My Car on June 9th, 2009 | No Comments