Maintenance tips for your Honda

[admin]

First things first- if you have a Honda you should have the Owners manual too. That's your Bible to help you understand your Honda well. Especially the Do's and Don'ts!

The next most important thing is the Maintenance Schedule in your Owners Manual. Do stick to it. These schedules are based on scientific evaluation and years of experience on field.

As far as tips on having your Honda smoothly running is concerned you could start with following some very basic things that are simple, may be even obvious but generally people tend to ignore. The result is expensive repair costs.

One of the best preventive maintenance measures that you should perform on your Honda is to keep its engine spick and span. A clean engine means a lot. Absence of unwanted particles sticking allows the engine to be cooler while running besides reducing chances of pre mature failures to other parts.

There are Regular maintenance tasks that you can perform on your Honda to get better driving results. You can expect better mileage (miles per gallon), lower maintenance & repair costs and lower emissions by these easy do it yourself tips. But always remember that you should get to know well your Honda's systems as also its specific requirements and then only attempt to fix anything. Do not meddle with what you don't understand.

Spark plugs are the first on the culprits list and you can make your intervention there. Besides, you can start with replacement of all

-filters,
-lubricants and
-coolant

Once again your reference for intervention should be the mileage marked in the owners manual. You have been delivered a sophisticated high performance machine, which has very tight Sensing and mechanical tolerances. Slightest change to factory settings could lead to drastic performance changes. Hence follow strictly the benchmarks in the owner's manual.

Stick to what you can do. Just by replacing normal maintenance parts you will witness improved engine performance from your Honda. Timely replacement improves performance and also saves you from major unforeseen repairs. Hence avoid being penny wise and pound-foolish.

Spark plugs are the key to diagnose engine condition. Check them up every 30,000 miles. Replace them immediately after 100,000 miles. While removing the spark plug note its condition and it tells you the condition of the cylinder it has been removed from. You can thus know if any particular cylinder has a problem. Remember to use only correct OE replacement spark plugs.

While on this matter of spark plugs do examine distributor cap and the rotor as well as Spark plug wires.

The distributor cap and the rotor being plastic will deteriorate with age and use. Cracks' developing allows moisture influx, which in turn can cause the metal contacts to corrode eventually resulting in misfiring. These should be replaced at recommended intervals or earlier if showing excessive wear. Spark plug wires are now better sized as developments of late has resulted in use of new materials that are extremely durable thus reducing failures in this area.

You can bet on your Honda performance if you have been changing filters regularly as prescribed.

Oil filters prevent unnecessary engine wear by removing solid contaminants from the oil. Good Practice is to ensure that Oil filters are replaced with engine oil every 3,000 miles.

Air filters besides holding back dirt particles from air also protect fuel injectors. Replace any filter that appears to be heavily loaded even if the prescribed time has not reached. 20,000 miles is seen as normal benchmark to replace filter.

The PCV breather filter is to be replaced every 30,000 miles but as a preventive measure it is advisable to replace every year.

Breather filter if clogged results in the PCV not siphoning out the blow by gases and moisture produced during combustion taking place in the engine resulting in oil breakdown besides sludge buildup.

The fuel filter replacement is every 30,000 miles; Experts recommend fuel filter change yearly and whenever replacing other fuel system parts.

The fuel filter is where contaminants are trapped and stopped from entering your Honda's fuel system. Contaminants can clog the injector inlet screens, then reach injector clogging or damaging the pintle valve and seat. Replacing Fuel filter at prescribed intervals ensures that fuel flow to engine never becomes restricted, thus avoiding problems such as stalling, loss of high-speed power and hard starting.

The do-it yourself could extend much more. If you attend even to these you would save a fortune in unwarranted repairs!!

DISCLAIMER: The contents of this article are not necessarily the official views of, nor endorsed by, the owner of HondaClub(com).

[97civicferio]

Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you very much for the usefull info. I will definately follow your advice.
I bought my civic from my brother and it has 110, 000 kilometers on it already and the car still runs great. I plan on doing some slight modifications to the motor but am a bit scared to damage the sensitive components. But as a long time car buff I have a need to tweek the motor a little. Know what I meen? Anyway, what safe mods can I do to give the engine a little more horse power without spending a fortune? I have a 97 Civic 4 door JSPEC d15b motor all stock. Thanks for your help.

[vesselloeh6]

if you dont know how to take care of a car then you should have one in the first place thats my thoughts. My Honda del sol is up to 175,000 miles on it and it still runs amazing. and plus it is a honda. if you here a weird noise turn up your radio and it will fix itself!

[TOXICcivic]

i just bought an 02 civic with 105000 miles on it which is almost twice what typical civic's of that year would have. should i be worried about the huge influx of mileage? should I still stick to the maintenance schedule and start replacing things?
as a side note, i took the car in to a shop (not a honda dealer) and asked if i should get the tranny fluid replaced and the guy said that if it hasnt been replaced yet and it has over 100k miles, it could damage the tranny if the fluid is replaced. does that sound right?
thanks!

[AP1fun]

You need a 100,000 mile tune up. It will change your timing belt, fluid, and check several other things. Get this done at your local Honda dealer.

[colin.sparey]

hi all, please help , where can i get a works manual for my accord 1.8 v-tec year 2000

[97lxir]

good stuff... thanx for the tips.