Japanese cars

["Paul Irvine" <pi@domain.elided>]

Since all of this Miata stuff has been going on I might as well throw in my
own pile of "off topic" drivel.

I needed a car to commute to work - 100 miles round trip per day. So I
looked in the paper and of course there were lots and lots of Honda Accords
for sale and I knew what was common knowledge - they are bullet proof, run
forever, dependable as a block of wood etc, etc. So I bought one. It was a
1981 Accord with 80k on the clock. Well, the '81 Accord turned out to be a
unique example of the breed. I'll have to give it to Honda because I think
that it was the absolute last car in California to ever use a carburetor and
those Honda engineers went to extreme lengths to make it work. There were
half a dozen dashpots and at least 40 friggin vacuum hoses connected to the
darn thing. There was this box that they all went to that did - who knows
what - to somehow control it. God help the person that pulled a few of those
lines off because you would never get that thing to run right again - ever.

Anyway, the car was trouble from day one. The brake disks warped but hey, no
problem - new ones were only 14 bucks, plus the cost of the bent ratchet
wrench because I had to stand on the end of a ten foot cheater bar and jump
up and down to get the stupid axle nut off. And of course the new 14 dollar
disks were warped again within a month. Then the waterpump outlet tube
sprung a leak. You need to have this long output tube because the dumbass
engine is put in there sideways and, well let's just skip that part because
this is where the real trouble started.

The head gasket blew.

Now when the head gasket on a Honda blows, well it's not like with an Alfa
where you drive the thing around for 23 months with oil in your radiator. No
it's more like broke down and stranded on the side of the road looking for a
ride to a phone and later a way to tow the POS back home. I replaced the
head gasket, had the head milled and all and it seemed to work okay - for
about 90 days then it went again. So I replaced it again and it seemed to be
fine but one night as we were leaving the parking lot after work - 50 miles
from home - I saw the tell tale white vapor from the exhaust.

So what did I do? I got on the freeway, floored it and made 49 of those 50
miles before the thing finally seized and was finally expunged from my life
forever.

It was a few weeks later that I bought an old '79 Alfetta for $400. I drove
that thing daily for over 5 years until one night the water pump went out
and the head gasket blew.

So I drove it for another 23 months with oil in the radiator.

Paul Irvine - Antioch CA
Project Alfa - http://home.pcmagic.net/pi
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided