Bought a Cheap Accord

[researcher]

Took the car for an alignment this morning. Considering that the entire steering system was out of the car, I’m actually kind of proud of how close I had it just by eyeballing and counting threads, less than one degree out.
View attachment 332618
The rear camber is still out a bit on the drivers side, but it’s technically not adjustable per Honda so I’ll just have to live with it. It’s not out by a lot, and at least it’s out in the negative direction. Supposedly you can move the upper rear control arms a bit, but it’s not meant to be an alignment adjustment. For as little as it’s off, I’m not concerned.

ok you're probably going to hate me because I might be making you spend money! The rear upper control arms on the 96 Civic have the same setup as yours and you CAN get adjustable rear upper control arms for the 97 Accord. To adjust the camber.

I had them on the Civic and the company I went with was SPC, here's a link to the arm for yours..

https://www.spcalignment.com/product/67065

EDIT: oh wow, nevermind.. we're talking about $126 a piece! Whoa.. I never paid that much but then again inflation lately. I think I paid like $60 but that was about 10 years ago. at least you know they're out there.

 

[JoeDirt41]

ok you're probably going to hate me because I might be making you spend money! The rear upper control arms on the 96 Civic have the same setup as yours and you CAN get adjustable rear upper control arms for the 97 Accord. To adjust the camber.

I had them on the Civic and the company I went with was SPC, here's a link to the arm for yours..

https://www.spcalignment.com/product/67065

EDIT: oh wow, nevermind.. we're talking about $126 a piece! Whoa.. I never paid that much but then again inflation lately. I think I paid like $60 but that was about 10 years ago. at least you know they're out there.

You can get SPC upper adjustable rears from
RockAuto in a Mevotech box for a bit less, but then you’ve got to find an alignment shop that is competent and patient enough to adjust them correctly. Maybe somewhere down the line I’ll look into them, but for 3/10s of a degree, I’m not too worried.

 

[researcher]

You can get SPC upper adjustable rears from
RockAuto in a Mevotech box for a bit less, but then you’ve got to find an alignment shop that is competent and patient enough to adjust them correctly. Maybe somewhere down the line I’ll look into them, but for 3/10s of a degree, I’m not too worried.

no problem, didn't know you knew about them, so posting that up. Yep you're right, never thought about getting someone competent enough, I was lucky back then, had a great alignment guy.

 

[JoeDirt41]

no problem, didn't know you knew about them, so posting that up. Yep you're right, never thought about getting someone competent enough, I was lucky back then, had a great alignment guy.

It can be tough getting a proper alignment. You basically have to trust that the person doing it knows how to use the machine, and trust that the machine is calibrated properly. I don’t have anyone around here that I truly trust to do it right. I’ve been using Firestone for my last few, and the cars have tracked straight and the steering wheel has been straight, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s aligned correctly. I kind of just have to assume it’s good.

 

[JoeDirt41]

Just a couple small updates. The faded center caps on the wheels have bugged me as long as I’ve had them. I did brakes on my sister’s beater CR-V yesterday and out of curiosity decided to see if the center caps were similar in size. Turns out they are exactly the same dimensions. Her car is an ugly beater and she doesn’t care about the cosmetics so I swapped center caps with her. The color is close enough of a match that I’m good with it. Definitely makes these old bottle cap wheels look a bit nicer.

I’ve also noticed the idle was a bit rough with the AC running. Perfectly fine when the AC is off, but the car didn’t seem to be compensating for the extra load, so I decided to pull the IAC valve and inspect it. The little screen was almost totally plugged up. I just cleaned it with some carb cleaner and a toothbrush. Now it seems to be idling much smoother with the air on.

 

[JoeDirt41]

Few more small items I’ve worked on in the past couple weeks. The brake light switch failed, I lost my brake lights and I couldn’t shift out of park without using the interlock override mechanism. Got a new switch from AutoZone and swapped it out. Easy fix.

Also found an NOS wood center console trim panel on Facebook marketplace for $20. It had a couple broken tabs and a small crack, just from being fragile 30 year old plastic, but it was new in the box. Very rare part. I did some glue repairs with JB Weld and superglue and swapped it in. There’s one spot that is cracked by the corner of the radio but it’s not too noticeable. I think it’s a pretty cool piece.

And I got a replacement Honda emblem for my decklid. The chrome was peeling off the old one and it was looking pretty bad. A used one from eBay was $10. Looks much better.

 

[researcher]

Few more small items I’ve worked on in the past couple weeks. The brake light switch failed, I lost my brake lights and I couldn’t shift out of park without using the interlock override mechanism. Got a new switch from AutoZone and swapped it out. Easy fix.
View attachment 335763
Also found an NOS wood center console trim panel on Facebook marketplace for $20. It had a couple broken tabs and a small crack, just from being fragile 30 year old plastic, but it was new in the box. Very rare part. I did some glue repairs with JB Weld and superglue and swapped it in. There’s one spot that is cracked by the corner of the radio but it’s not too noticeable. I think it’s a pretty cool piece.
View attachment 335758View attachment 335759View attachment 335760
And I got a replacement Honda emblem for my decklid. The chrome was peeling off the old one and it was looking pretty bad. A used one from eBay was $10. Looks much better.
View attachment 335761View attachment 335762

oooh fancy wood trim bezel! An actual Honda accessory, wow, reminds me of those Lexus gold emblem kits they had back then. Either way it does make it look nice! cool find!

and the brake light switch going bye bye after basically 30 years, not a bad run! thanks for the updates, been fun to follow this thread.

How are the new axles? and the steering now that you've had more time with them.

 

[JoeDirt41]

oooh fancy wood trim bezel! An actual Honda accessory, wow, reminds me of those Lexus gold emblem kits they had back then. Either way it does make it look nice! cool find!

and the brake light switch going bye bye after basically 30 years, not a bad run! thanks for the updates, been fun to follow this thread.

How are the new axles? and the steering now that you've had more time with them.

Glad you’ve enjoyed the updates! New axle feels fine, as does the steering, no major issues to report. The interior driver’s door handle broke the other day, so I ordered a new one from AutoZone online. Unfortunately I ordered the wrong color…

So I got my die grinder and ground the end of the rivet away in the factory door handle and swapped the handle part over to the old bezel. Little extra work, but it worked out!

 

[DannyM]

The interior driver’s door handle broke the other day, so I ordered a new one from AutoZone online. Unfortunately I ordered the wrong color…

On my moms 96 the HVAC button that controls if the air is either coming in through the vent or recirculating works perfectly and I can hear it engage like it always has but I can now definitely smell any pollution coming in when it is closed off in recirc mode like when I am behind a diesel etc.. .. it never did that before.... Any ideas where this issue might be located ?

 

[dwcopple]

Sad to see little stuff starting to break on you.

 

[JoeDirt41]

Sad to see little stuff starting to break on you.

Just part of owning an older car, all stuff to be expected.

 

[JoeDirt41]

Since I fixed the interior door handle, I decided I should fix the exterior door handle too. If you go back to post 270 on page 14, you’ll see I mentioned it was partially broken, and I’ve just been dealing with it since. I ordered a Dorman one and it was a complete piece of junk. It was made of fisher price plastic and fit horribly. I boxed it back up and returned it.

After that, I decided I would try to repair the original handle. I disassembled it and used some JB Weld to glue the broken part back on. As soon as I tried to reassemble it, it broke again.

With those two failures, I turned to car-part.com and found a local junk yard that had a used door handle. This was great but of course it was not the correct color, which posed a new problem- I don’t actually know the color of this car. The original color was a medium metallic green, but at some point before I got it, it was repainted a metallic black but I have no idea of any sort of color code or anything.

I know from doing some touch ups that Ford Tuxedo Black is fairly close to the color of the car, so I bought a spray can of it and painted a test piece using the old handle. It matched close enough, so I disassembled the replacement junkyard handle, scuffed and painted it and clear coated it with a 2K clear I had.

I let it dry a couple days and then reassembled it. i got it reinstalled today, with the help of the factory service manual. The color might not be a 100% match, but it’s good enough for who it’s for.