Honda Accord 2.0i LS
October 2007
Once the BMW was fully MOT’d with 6 months tax, it was the perfect time to sell it; I would get the maximum amount for it and the next owner would have no immediate expenses.
I’d decided that I wanted an e36 BMW 325 TDS with a manual gearbox and a black interior; it ticked all my boxes of being a nice balance of economy, performance, chassis design and affordability. However finding one of these that was up to my standards proved much harder than I thought and after a few wasted journeys I started looking for a stop-gap car.
My new criteria was something decent under £1000 that wouldn’t be hard to sell on when I was done with it; although there are plenty of cheap gas guzzlers that I’d be happy with, chances are I’d have trouble selling it afterwards.
Because I knew I wouldn’t own the car for very long, I also didn’t want something I would loose money on either. With all this in mind I give you this example:
If you see 3 cars advertised, all the same make, model and age:
car 1: 100k, fsh, 7 months mot, no tax £1000, trade
car 2: 80k, fsh, 12 months mot, a months tax £800, private
car 3: 111k, part SH, 9 months mot, a months tax £950, private
Which car do you want to go see? car 2. Of course there is the risk that it could be the worst one, but there is also the chance that it could be a bit of a bargain. It's not massively less expensive than the others, and it's a private seller so they’re probably not looking to make money on it either. You phone them, ask all the right questions and they don’t say a bad word about it. Only when you get there can you tell if it was worth it or not.
After viewing 16 other cars... I turned up to this seller’s house on a rainy day to look at the Honda Accord they had advertised. Again, all sounded fine on the phone and on first impressions it all looked fine too, better than expected actually. I had a good look around the car and then started it, where I was met by a lovely tapping sound. I was told about this on the phone but it was much louder than expected and did not go away when warmed up. Thankfully I’d done a little research before the viewing and found that those engines had adjustable rockers, a job that I’d never done before but was willing to try.
The deal was done and I was the proud owner of a slightly ropey sounding Honda Accord. As usual I took pictures as soon as I got it home:
You’ll noticed I mentioned how it was a rainy day when I bought the car and despite my best efforts I still had a surprise in store when I washed the car for the first time. The paintwork on the leading edge of the front passenger side wing was looking decidedly poor and had clearly (when dry anyway) been repaired in the past. Some of the bad luck I’d had was to be balanced out when I found an undamaged wing in the same colour at my local breakers yard. A few hidden clips and bolts later and I’d made the car look…pretty much exactly the same as before, only now up to my standards.
The next job was remove the remainders of a tow bar; the ball had been cut off but the framework was left bolted to the rear chassis legs. Again a fairly simple task and I’m sure removing at least 10kg of dead weight can’t be bad for fuel economy.
These were all distractions really while I was waiting for a repair manual to arrive for the tapping rockers. With torque settings and tolerance figures in hand I set about re-adjusting the rockers. I didn’t take any pictures of this but I did make some before and after videos. Unfortunately the sound quality of the camera doesn’t quite make the difference clear, rest assured I was a happy man when I fired the engine up afterwards and a) it didn’t explode but b) it sounded how it should have done.
After a few smaller jobs such as re-gluing the fabric on the rear door cards, the car was complete.
While I owned the Accord I was still keeping an eye out for the elusive BMW 325 TDS with a manual gearbox and a black interior but eventually came to the conclusion that finding one would take too long. Through a friend though I was tipped off about someone selling something a little more ecomonical but a lot more French.
