'99 Accord - Oil Consumption and Other Issues

Good evening,

I have a '99 Accord LX (5 speed) with 115k miles that consumes 1 qt
every 1,000 miles or so. Has been doing so for the past 18 months. No
leaks that I can see (I park in the same part of driveway every day,
and had the oil seals replaced at 90k with the timing belt). Passed
smog (in CA) with flying colors in December; no blue smoke or
oil/coolant contamination. I did replace the Catalytic converter
(under warranty) at 78k miles, right after it passed smog with flying
colors.

I'd put up with the oil usage, but the car needs/will soon need the
following fixes:

1) Wipers - on slow speed they get hung up at the top and bottom of the
stroke, on high speed they go too far and seem to hit the edge of the
windshield. If you wiggle the blade there's a decent amount of up/down
play (my '04 Civic and '06 Odyssey have no play whatsoever).

2) Bad A/C temperature control (I have to jiggle it to get cold air)

3) Foggy headlight lens (polishing didn't help)

4) Brakes front and maybe rear (original) and probably rotors (they've
already been turned twice)

5) The clutch (original) is getting rough; my mechanic says it's close
to needing replacement.

6) The regular 30k mile tune-up.

I estimate at least $1,000 to fix these smaller issues, and don't want
to do that then turn around and spend $2,000 to rebuild an engine (the
quote I've gotten) that won't smog or outright fails.

I'm hoping someone can share some insight as to whether the engine will
hold out (or if another, simpler problem is causing the oil usage), so
I can decide if now is the right time to get rid of this car. Some
recommendations/costs to fix the other issues would be welcome as well.

TIA

 

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Change the brake fluid and the clutch fluid (might fix your clutch
problem) and you need to change the PCV if it's sucking oil out of the
engine. That may be the cause of your cat's death. Dealer should have
caught that, since they might be replacing it again if not remedied.

'Curly'

 

be very cautious about re-builts - they're famously short-lived. it's
often much more economic to buy a used jdm low mileage import because
they'll last much longer.

regarding oil consumption, apart from checking/replacing the pcv valve,
what brand/grade oil are you using? my 89 civic burns a little, and i
find that some oils get consumed a lot, others hardly at all. this is
related to the quality of the oil base and the evaporation point of
different base fractions. experiment [e.g. in my car, castrol 5-w30
needs nearly two quarts during a 5k interval, castrol 5-w20 maybe 3/4 of
a quart] before committing to spending a lot on the motor - yours is
still relatively young.