Hey everyone.

So last week, I bought my red '97 Honda Prelude Type SH. She’s not the prettiest thing on the road, but she’s mine and I have to say I’m already in love with this car.

I haven’t been able to do much of any work. First of all, financial constraints. I haven’t been paid since basically spending all my cash on hand to get the car in the first place. But I’ve done a few free things to it.

One thing I did was to take it to my local dealership to have it more fully inspected. It went about like one would expect.

Apparently, it needs all of the things.

So to keep it cheap, I tried to get the trim piece in the center console cleaned up. It’s damaged, but I have all the pieces. I tried at first to super glue it back together before realizing my super glue is super old. It didn’t do anything.

And so I still have a busted trim piece. I’m half considering buying another and selling the one I have. Broken, these things go for about $40. They cost $100 for one that isn’t busted. It’s almost worth it to me…almost.

I believe I said in the last post that the radio install was kinda jank. Turns out, it doesn’t really work at all since the speakers in front are blown out. In fact, only the left speaker in front was putting out at all. I tried fiddling with it, but got nowhere. I did flip the connectors on the back of the radio, and the right speaker was putting out sound. So I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the jacks on the back of the radio isn’t good anymore.

Instead of trying to fix it, I’m planning to take this to Best Buy to be recycled and get a new one. Which is kind of a shame because it’s got most of the features I want. I do want a CD player, though. Silver lining.

When I got the car, the radio wasn’t very secure at all. It flopped around. And I found out why. The thing is tiny.

And where there would be two screws on each side to secure it in, there was only one on each side. I guess the idea was that you would tighten the shit out of them and that would keep it in place. It’s kind of funny how much space a CD player does take up, though. Once you remove that, you really don’t need much for a functioning car stereo…

My biggest order of business was to address the power steering pump. It leaks. It whines. It pulls in a lot of air. But as it is, I don’t have the money to do anything about it. So I peeked under the hood and followed the belt.

Did you know that in a 5th gen Lude that the power steering pump belt runs only to the power steering pump? I’ve heard of other cars where the pump is driven by the serpentine belt, but not this one. There is a second, smaller pulley coming off the crankshaft pulley that runs only to the power steering pump.

And so…

I have more or less performed a power steering delete.

It wasn’t easy. There was a bolt that was really holding on. The adjusting bolt came free easily but the lower bolt holding it onto the engine was on so tightly that the pump wouldn’t budge a millimeter. It took some WD-40 to break it free and slide the belt off. I considered cutting the belt like an absolute barbarian, but then I considered the thing was under tension, and I’m not a fan of hospital visits for being dumb.

I’m probably not going to reuse the belt because they’re super cheap. But I will keep it around so that I can compare it to the next one. It’s actually still in pretty good shape.

So yeah, now I’ve got no steering assist. It’s actually not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It’s pretty heavy maneuvering in parking lots and backing into my garage, but I hardly notice it’s gone once I’m up to speed. I mean, it’s not preferable, but it’s preferable to having my pump grenade itself right now. It could actually look pretty good inside once I crack it open. So I’m going to run without it until I can address it. The bearing feels absolutely fine. No resistance or grinding or crunching to speak of. I’m pretty happy with that. So I think all it needs is to have new seals put on.

And so that’s what I have.

So aside from all that, all I’ve really been doing is getting to know my car. I’ve put about 60 miles on it since I got it.

No surprises. I’m getting pretty smooth with my shifts. The car can absolutely pull pretty hard. It’s not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s much nicer than my 10th gen Accord, where you have to wait for the turbo to spool to get the power. In this thing? It’s there as soon as you ask.

God, I love NA power.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope to post more in the not so distant future. But also, don’t be surprised to not hear about this car for a while. I’m probably just going to be driving it around for fun when I have the time. I’ll have that oil leak fixed soon…but it’s a 90s Honda. It’s a lean mean oil leaking machine. Until the next time I post here, peace.

  • Brkdncr
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    71 year ago

    That dealer checklist is overpriced. The steering alignment and valve adjustment are the only items that seem remotely reasonable.

    You can ignore the boots. Because anything they were protecting are probably shot and need to be replaced.

    A local mechanic could probably look at this inspection list and charge you half

    You really should get that pump rebuilt or replaced though. It might not cost a lot from a parts store and looks pretty easy to access.

  • @phamanhvu01
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    61 year ago

    Also I just noticed something…that dealer quoted ~$150 USD each for a coolant/brake flush. I’m not American, but that screams ridiculous AF and straight up scam.

    • 𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆OP
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      1 year ago

      Deffo. Dealership pricing on service is outrageous. They’ve quoted me $60 to replace my Civic’s cabin air filter. That’s a job that takes 5 minutes and the part costs $10 on Amazon.

      I’ve got a brother who is a mechanic for a dealership and he says that flag time for that job is a half hour. Even if the job actually only takes five minutes, they charge you for thirty. Baloney.

      The only fairly priced service is at dealerships is oil changes. This place usually charges forty bucks for it. Inspections at this place are free because they can upsell you on a lot of junk you don’t actually need.

      Yeah, I’m not dropping four grand at this place, and I never was. I just wanted an idea of what the car might need. And the place is only about a kilometer from my house, which was about as far as I was comfortable driving the car with the power steering pump in the condition it was in.

  • @[email protected]
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    41 year ago

    Sort of surprised I caught your intro post and now this update, but happy I did. Hope to hear more of your car journey soon, and glad you’re making it work!

  • @JigglySackles
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    41 year ago

    That’s awesome man. I love the look of those older Preludes. The body style on them is some of my favorite. You’ve definitely got your work cut out for you but good luck! I hope we see more updates from you. This is really fuckin cool.

  • @iamlyth
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    31 year ago

    Congrats dude it’s an excellent car and yours looks pretty amazing!

  • @phamanhvu01
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    21 year ago

    Great article, we need more like this here!

  • @SonicDiarrhea
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    21 year ago

    A ball joint separator and an afternoon of work could have saved you $900

    • 𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆OP
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      11 year ago

      My father-in-law has a shop. He was a mechanic in the Army for several years and served in Vietnam. So he’s got just about any tool you could ask for.

      One of these days, I’m going to get the parts I need and do a lot of this work myself.