How long can a Civic last?

And yet no one wants to buy your F-150.

Imagine that.

 

Why would you think that? I wasn't planning to sell the F150, but
finally a local guy looking for a truck made me an offer I couldn't
refuse. The guy uses it in his job reading water meters. It was / is a
terrific vehicle. It cost only a little more than the Civic when new,
needed fewer repairs while I owned it and held up much better. Except
for the difference in fuel economy, there was no doubt which was the
superior vehcile. Although the F150 was 5 years older, it was in far
better condition despite having lived a much harsher life (it was a
farm truck). Heck it even rode better. But I seriously doubt anyone
looking for a Civic would want an F150 or vis-a-versa.

Ed

 

Don't be so sure. Decent pickups sell pretty well. I have a 93 Ranger
that people knock on the door asking if I want to sell, just seeing it
parked in the driveway.

 

I got to that point on my old 1987 Accord, started nibbling away at
the stuff, decided the old girl was underpowered for the modern world
and traded it in on the new model.

Might get to that point on fewer miles with more years, all the rubber
goods in the suspension, hoses and seals tend to age by time as well
as miles.

Actually, the dark grey paint was still doing fine!

J.

 

Probably because it wasn't up for sale...

Imagine that!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DaveD

 

Ed,
There are several in this group, as you well know, who can't get their
little minds around the fact that there exist vehicles that are just as good
as a Honda and they never pass up a chance to make snide, mundane comments
just to see themselves in print. Sigh!!!! I have an 82 F250 with a 300 I6
that has well over 200k miles (not kilometers) and has had routine upkeep
maintenance done to it and it still runs great. My 86 Honda Civic also has
over 200k miles with only the routine upkeep maintenance and runs great.
Does that give anyone a clue???? Upkeep maintenance is the key here... That
is the point of commonality. You do the maintenance and the vehicle lasts,
and lasts, and lasts.

DaveD

 

actually, if you strip a frod down, their componentry is all about as
cheap as the industry gets. if yours lasted 200k, it's because it's
been lightly loaded, not because it's made of good materials or well
designed. cast cranks, sintered connecting rods, nowhere near as good
as the forgings in a honda.

 

When was the last time you wore an engine out? Taxi cabs routine put
well over 200,000 miles on the Ford engines with cast cranks and
sintered metal connecting rods. In my opinion you are confusing good
engineering with buzz word engineering. I like Honda's, they are
decent well made cars, but using a forging where it has no practical
value is buzz word engineering. The Japanese are very dedicated to
this.

My Sister has owned two Hondas. She was happy with both of them. Both
suffered cosmetically (rust, fading paint, crummy plastic) but neither
quit running or required excessive repairs while she owned them. She
is very easy on cars (and I mean very easy) from an operational
standpoint. Over the same time periods she owned Hondas, other members
of my family owned Fords. In general the Fords were treated much
rougher, particualrly the trucks (we have a farm). The Fords didn't
need any more repairs than the Hondas, held up much bettter
cosmetically and cost less. Of course they didn't have near the
credibility with "cool" people that the Hondas have, but no one in my
family really cares what "cool" people like. If you like a lot of buzz
words, and don't mind paying extra so you can throw them out to
impress your friends, then I suppose Honda's are a great choice. But I
don't believe you are getting a better vehicle just becasue the ad
copy sounds cool. If a Honda suits you needs, by all means buy one.
They are decent cars and generally get good gas mielage. But you are
fooling yourself if you think Hondas are made of especially good
materials - I've seen the rust holes, oil leaks, faded paint, and
crumbling plastic that says it ain't so.

Ed

 

That's a problem.

See, with the cars I owned in the past,
I always "ran the car into the ground"--kept driving it till it fell
apart, and then bought a new one.

But these Honda Civics just refuse to fall apart at the right time
(barring a major accident or something).

 

the difference is this - that frod taxi engine is utterly worn out at
200k. pretty crappy for a honking great v8 that's running at maybe 10%
of rated output on average and with very little cold start cycling. for
a honda engine, provided it's not maintained by a retard, 200k is
nowhere near end of life. when i had the head off the burned valve
motor a few weeks ago, there was zero ring lip on the cylinder wall
after 212k miles. i've never seen that on a frod. or any other
domestic come to that.

now, as to the difference between cast, sintered and forged, these are
not "buzzwords". for fatigue, i.e. if you want maximum performance from
the lightest weight, there is nothing to beat a forging. it is denser,
more homogeneous, and has the added benefit of aligning grain structure
with the loading axes.

castings and sinterings cannot do that. because they less dense, they
are less fatigue resistant weight for weight, and bearing surfaces
cannot be as smooth or hard.

bottom line, they work, and if not run hard, they can last a fair time,
but under heavy load or for longest durability, castings cannot match
forgings.

one more thing: in order to keep loading to a level where fatigue is not
an issue on castings, you have to make everything bigger. bigger is
heavier. heavier means lower fuel efficiency. again, forgings are the
way to go.

rust is chemical, not mechanical. sure, i don't like honda rust either,
but for the mechanicals, the hondas are better than a frod any way you
slice it. you can run a honda engine at 50% of rated output for
hundreds of thousands of miles. if you ran a frod at 50%, the thing
would be dead in fraction of the time. materials quality on frods are
abysmal. frod design sucks too - they are utterly relentless in cutting
every corner possible. example: they save about 5 cents per vehicle by
using taper spark plug seats instead of gasketed seats. utterly
ridiculous and frighteningly unreliable.

 

Actually, sir, I was NOT addressing you. Reason? I would expect an imbecilic
response for which you are infamous. However, being as you stuck you big
nose in .... How the hell would you know, or have the slightest inkling, how
my truck was used. For you to state that it lasted 200k for its light use is
pure, unadulterated BullCrap...Of course, you are well known for that also.
BTW - you are totally wrong on all counts....As usual!!!!!!

DaveD

 

done much strip-down and testing then "dave"? i thought not.

 

And you know this becasue? My persoanl experience is that my Sister's
Honda was using significant amounts of oil after 60k miles, my 5.4L V8
never used any oil during the 150,000 miles I owned it. At 150k miles
the fuel economy was unchanged, it ran just like it did when new. I
have no reason to believe it isn't still out there somewhere running
just fine. I belong to a Email group for Ford Expeditions. Numerous
members have over 300,000 miles on their engines. No one has reported
any sort of failure that could be attributed to poor materials.

To be honest, I hear stories like this all the time from Toyota and
Honda owners. My response is, if the engiens are so great, why do you
have the heads off? I've never had to take the head off one of my
Fords. We did have the heads off my SO's Chrysler minivan (burned
valve) and her cyclinder walls were just as perfect as you are
claiming for a Honda (it had around 150k miles). I am also curious how
this plays into your complains about Ford using cast cranks and
sintered rods...neither of these is related to cylinder bore wear.

None of this is necessarily true. Cast cranks have been around for
decades. The process is well know and there are advantages to using
cast cranks over forgings including cost. While forging may have a
theoretical advantage in terms of fatique life, this is irrelevant for
most passenger cars. When was the last time you heard of crank failing
due to fatique in a street vehicle? Ditto for rods. On the other hand
cast cranks are often lighter that forged cranks, can have superior
vibration damping, more complex geometry, etc. Engineers who design
for maximum buzz often overlook the best solution. People who buy
based on buzz words often spend too much. Oh, and Honda has used cast
cranks at times....imagine that.

None of this is necessarily true. You can have lousy forged cranks and
great cast cranks.

Again, when was the last time you actually saw an engine fail due to a
broken crank or rod. I never have, altough my Father once had a car
that threw a rod - 65 years ago.

One of the reason given for Ford using sintered rods is that they are
lighter and stronger than forged rods. I cannot prove this is true. I
doubt you could prove it isn't. There is a lot of advertising copy on
the subject...

http://www.mpif.org/designcenter/Conrod.pdf
http://www.metaldyne.com/metaldyne/sections/engine/prod_pmConnectingRod.aspx
http://www.superchevy.com/technical/engines_drivetrain/shortblock/1510sc_howards/index.html

One more thing....Honda is using sintered metal rods too....

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-87375938.html

But I suppose Honda is using super special sintered steel rods amde
from unubtanium and kissed by the gods.....

Ed

 

Or buy inferior equipment. Such as rear disc brakes on a road-going FWD
passenger vehicle.

I do believe my Honda has a cast crank.

I've seen (Honda) cast camshafts broken in half, but that was attributed to
oil starvation.

A girl I used to work with had a '70s Camaro that threw a rod. She admitted
(years later, out of earshot of her father) to heavily overrevving it.

 

I sold my 96 in 08, mostly because I wanted a Fit. ~ 90K on it, the
only major service was the timing belt, mostly because if the sucker
fails, catasrophic is the corredt word, and the "recommended" is 90K
or 7 years. That's not one of those "oh, I think it can go another
year, it doesn't look bad after 12 years".

Saw the car about 3 weeks ago. Still looks and runs great.

One mod to it that had nothing to do with any of your concerns. I put
some Tokico adjustable struts on it. But I also had some RS1s that
would go on the car twice a month.

"... never raced. Slicks also available"

--

- dillon I am not invalid

I love my country, It's my government I fear.

Hey, turnabout's fair play.

 

disks are more linear. in that respect, they work better. they may not
be as practical for a low usage environment needing non-hydraulic
actuation, but their mechanical function is better. that's why we're
now seeing the [sensible] transition to the disk/drum solution. a
combined disk/drum uses the drum element for the non-hydraulics, and
disk for the normal service use.

nope, it's forged.
http://www.team-integra.net/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=10&TopicID=6915&PageMsg=Viewing+Common+Topic

they usually break because of fatigue - if wrecked bearings were
witnessed, they're more likely to be the symptoms /of/ the breakage, not
to have /caused/ the breakage.

 

because i've worked on these things?

"significant amounts"? three thimble-fulls?

so you say. my 182k mile honda uses somewhere between 1 - 1.5 quarts
every 10k. what's your point? when i had the head gasket off, there
was no wear lip, you you can't say it's because my engine was worn.

how many hondas fail because of "poor materials"??? i can /show/ you
poor materials in a frod - simply go to a junkyard and look at the
garbage with broken cranks, thrown rods, worn cams, etc.

one came off because a prior owner had the radiator shrouds removed, and
this affects cooling airflow. consequently, i boiled the motor one day
in 110+F heading up one of those long fast grades uphill on the way to
las vegas. after that, the head started to leak, slowly, and 1 year
later, i changed it.

another i replaced because of an oil leak. and another because of a
burnt valve. none are bullshit failures like you see in frods where the
inter-cylinder lands are burned, or the heads have cracked, or the
torque-to-yield head bolts have given way.

so you've never gotten to see how bad that wear lip is!

cast cranks aren't cylinder bore wear, but they are absolutely the
layman's window on materials quality. bores wear when the material is
soft. if the bores are wearing, then you know all the other stuff is
poor quality too.

it is all absolutely true. if you don't want to take my word for it,
read stuff like this.

http://www.jobshop.com/techinfo/papers/forginggrain.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forging

for the wikipedia, you need to go to high res - then you'll see the
macro grain structure flow lines that forging imparts. casting doesn't
have and cannot create that.

for cranks, the /only/ advantage is cost. it is not material quality -
for the reasons stated.

then you need to go get some experience. go to a junk yard and look at
the disassembled motors. then you'll see broken cranks, and you'll
understand why this is an important issue from a materials perspective.
you should care about the pocketbook perspective too - cast cranks
weigh more and thus cost you more gas.

that's complete bullshit. fact: for the same fatigue strength, they
need to be heavier. castings contain their own fatigue initiation
defects - by definition. you have to "over-design" ["over-weight"] to
keep fatigue at bay.

gray irons have "superior" vibration damping, but there are many
different types of cast irons. the ones used for cranks are "s.g." or
"nodular". damping really isn't a feature.

"often overlook the best solution"??? you're trying to be humorous,
right?

who is buying based on buzz words? i bought my honda based on
experience. it came with a forged crank because that's the way the
honda engineers designed it and it was sold - it's not like it was a
dealer option!

"at times"? it's a dealer option??? you need to cite your source for
that little nugget.

it's all absolutely true. but i guess your mind is already made up to
the contrary - no chance of learning something you didn't know.

so you've driven a few cars and they haven't failed. well, so have i.
but unlike you, i've been involved with failure analysis, and also love
to surf junk yards. you'll see broken cranks on a regular basis if you
seek out this kind of experience, and then you'll understand what i'm
saying better.

lighter, yes. stronger, no - that's a fundamental impossibility.

of course - because it's not!

don't doubt - absolutely i can prove it. you can prove it to yourself
too if you want. go to a junkyard, get samples of each type, then do
fatigue testing.

so? sintering = cheap. honda have been all about cheap in recent years
- that's why they swapped to macpherson strut suspension too. that's
what happens when you have a company run by bean counters. it still
doesn't negate the material property differences.

that's it - mock what you don't know. do you have a pitchfork and burn
witches also?

 

And it is prettier than the 2 body generations that came after it, to
boot! (I'm not a fan of big butts, high beltlines, and weirdly shaped
C-pillars...)