planegeek614's 2001 Honda Accord

planegeek614

Hi All!


Here she is in all her golden beauty. She is an EX 4 door with a 2.3 liter 4-cylinder engine hooked up to a 5-speed manual transmission. I have had her for three years and about 30,000 fun filled miles. (currently has 190,000 on the odometer) I am on a continuing quest to turn her into something truly unique, and plan to drive her until the engine blows, which could be awhile.

planegeek614

As you can see, I've dressed her up quite a bit from the day I bought her. I have bought red honda emblems for the front, back, steering wheel, wheel center caps, and even the key fob! I added the polished aluminum door handles to help her pretend that she could've been an Acura TL. The black headlight housings are custom, and done by yours truly. The most recent addition was a set of 16" multispoke wheels from a 1999 Acura 3.0CL wrapped around BFGoodrich G-Force Comp-2 A/S tires.

planegeek614

Overall, she has been an excellent car. The 150hp F23A1 engine has adequate power, decent fuel economy (25-32 mpg depending on how much freeway driving I do), and makes a great noise for a 4 cylinder. The 5 speed manual is a gem of a transmission, and while the throws are a wee bit long, it feels like a bolt-action rifle. Road noise is not great, but overall, she is comfortable, with excellent visibility, good seats, strong A/C for the summer, and nearly perfect suspension tuning.

planegeek614

Reliability has been stellar. I had some initial problems with the clutch hydraulics, and a coolant hose, but after those were fixed, I have only had to replace an airbag (Takata recall), and a front strut. Currently, she consumes or leaks oil at a rate of about a quart every 2,000 miles (find me a Honda with almost 200,000 miles that doesn't do that!). She also needs some sway bar bushings, but I'm waiting for an Eibach sway bar to arrive that should tighten up the handling even more. She has only stranded me once!

planegeek614

What do I not like? If I'm honest, the interior is not Honda's best effort. There's too much hard plastic, and build quality is not what I expect from Honda. I could do without the checker pattern in the cloth seats. Stock ride height is a bit on the tall side. Honda still doesn't have the whole road noise thing down.

planegeek614

Right now, this is the primary car of the family. I have owned this car since my junior year of college, and have done at least two up and back trips between the California Bay Area and Portland (about a 700 mile one-way trip). She has hauled string quartets to gigs, tanks of helium to special events, and many college students on late night junk food runs. My wife has an '01 CR-V with 199,000 that is currently sitting waiting for a new wheel bearing. I hope to replace that car with something a bit newer and retire the Accord from primary car duties. She deserves to retire gracefully!

kyfdx

My wife leased a 2001 Accord. EX like yours, but an automatic.

Unfortunately, she was rear-ended about 11 months into the lease. Around $15K in damage, but they fixed it. One advantage of a lease. At lease end, you can just turn it in and walk away (which she did).
She had an identical 1999 Accord EX before that (also, leased).

She put 50K miles on it, in three years. Other than the accident, not a hiccup.

I really like those Acura wheels.

planegeek614

kyfdx said:

My wife leased a 2001 Accord. EX like yours, but an automatic.

Unfortunately, she was rear-ended about 11 months into the lease. Around $15K in damage, but they fixed it. One advantage of a lease. At lease end, you can just turn it in and walk away (which she did).
She had an identical 1999 Accord EX before that (also, leased).

She put 50K miles on it, in three years. Other than the accident, not a hiccup.

I really like those Acura wheels.

Thanks! I still see so many 6th gen Accords on the road, it has me convinced that if I take care of mine, she'll last a lot longer.