EVERYTHING... worst car I ever owned.
9 days after I bought it, every hose in the whole engine compartment blew out, stranding me. Wouldn't pass DEQ.
Transmission blew out, stranding me again. Was so bad it couldn't even be towed in neutral, they had to drag it onto a flat bed truck.
Engine had bad seals, leaked oil into the AIR FILTER?!? How does that happen?
Pop-up headlights froze shut.
Power antenna would not lower.
Oil coming out the exhaust.
Oil leaking out the bottom of the car.
Talk about a money pit! And I drove this car gently, I was not abusive in my driving.
Nothing good about this car. I unloaded it at a loss, and then STILL had a $2000 loan for my new transmission to repay after the car was long gone.
I listened to the hype about Honda, ditched my Mercury after someone ran into it.. big mistake. Hondas break like any other car, and when they do, they are more expensive to fix.
I ran back to Ford, and my Mustang has treated me great in 5 years and nearly 100,000 miles.. not a problem yet!
The reason your car went wrong is due to lack of Maintenance. There is Oil inside your Air Filter box because you did not replace your PCV Valve. This is a $2 part. It removes Crankcase Fumes. That is why your Oil Seals blew out because in effect the Engine could not breathe. I myself own an Accord and have now doen 346,000 Miles on the Original Engine and Transmission. I admit I do maintain the hell out of it. Your problems are hardly the fault of the Manufacturer.
Oil leaking into the air filter housing is called "blow-by". It's usually indicative of worn piston rings, which would lead to oil consumption. This will eventually lead to an engine rebuild... time to move away from this car.
I maintain my cars properly. No $2 part would have helped me, no matter what the Chilton manual you found at Goodwill says. My Honda mechanic told me straight out, you have a bad engine, unload this car. It would have cost a fortune to fix everything. I sold it at a loss, meaning what I owed was more than the value of the car.. not uncommon with any car; that was to point out how desperate I was to unload it. So, you read through all the problems I listed, and decide "it's not the manufacturer's fault?" So all that stuff is EXPECTED to happen under 100,000 miles on a Honda? Boy, I wish people would cut domestic manufacturers that kind of slack. I maintain my Mustang exactly the same way I did that Accord, the difference being I drive my Mustang a lot harder, and not one problem from the pony car yet. It will be at 100,000 miles in a few months. Explain that.
Doesn't a PCV valve pull cool air INTO the crankcase? It's a VACUUM valve and it does...um..."suck"...when you place your finger on it. I don't think it expels fumes.
To the person who wrote the above comment: the reason you feel vacuum from the pcv valve is because it is connected to the intake manifold. It does not "pull cool air into the crankcase", it regulates the suction of crankcase oil vapors back into the intake where they can be burned, instead of just allowing them out into the atmosphere through a draft tube and increasing pollution, which cars built before 1962 did. Besides reducing pollution, the pcv is much more efficient than the old draft tube system, which only worked while the car was moving.
Ahhhh, thank you. Pardon my ignorance.
This might come as a shock to you, but hoses in the cooling system do not last forever.
They should be replaced every 5 or 6 years for peace of mind.
My 16 year old daughter just bought her very first car, 1987 4 door Honda accord Lx (with pop up lights). There is a light that won't go out on the dash, it says "brake lamp", but it isn't the emergency brake light. It is also making a click click click noise when she turns the wheel. Does anyone know what the light is for, and how to make it turn off? It seems to also be smoking a bit from the engine. Hopefully she hasn't purchased a lemon. I don't know a lot about cars, and I wasn't there when she drove it and purchased it. Can anyone give me advice as she really loves this car.
The brake lamp light is for one of the lights in the back. My brake lamp light went on so I switched the bulb and the light has not been on since.
The click click noise means the cv joints are on their way out. She needs to get those fixed before they either separate completely or lock up while she is driving, neither of which is good.
The brake lamp light means a bulb is burnt out.
Will assume that you did not get an owners manual when you bought this car, otherwise you should be looking in there. You can find one easily enough on ebay, just don't pay more than $1 for it!
Be sure to use proper bulbs for brake lights-also, there is a little black or brown electronic sensor box below each brake light that detects a bad bulb. I've found they go bad at times, also.
The "click click" is the CV Joints, and the brake light I found is common on these 80's Honda's, I owned 2 Accords (an '83 and an '89) and they both had that problem even though all the bulbs were good. Just ignore it the brake light, but get those CV Joints fixed or it could leave her stranded.
I have a 1986 Honda Accord with the same problem with the brake lamp, which I checked. The lamps are still good. I just ignored the lamp.
I have another light, which comes on all the times. The "PGIM", which has to do with the Programmed Fuel Injector system I believe. Any idea what may go wrong?