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Which To Buy?
Honda/Acura Vehicles Discussion group for Honda/Acura vehicles. (alt.autos.honda)
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#31
 
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Re: Which To Buy? -
03-04-2007
, 04:20 AM
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Good for you. I think it is completely safe to say the vast majority of car owners do whatever maintenance is specified by the owners manual or less, not more. If it is all that important, the manufacturer would have specified something. |
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I'm talking about maintenance religiously conducted according to manufacturer's recommendations, no more, no less. If you follow the books to the letter, Honda requires more upkeep than Nissan does. |
Nissan within a week of me purchasing my Honda. He does less than 70% of the
preventative maintenance that I do and he's had more problems than I have
experienced with my last three Honda vehicles. On top of that, three years
into our purchases his Nissan has a fair amount of rust on his gas tank and
the floor of the car, as well as a number of mechanical failures.My Honda
had none of these problems. Preventative maintenance is the key.
#32
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but for stuff like that, i don't think you should be paying - you should have one of the allison design team down there resolving your problem. from a manufacturer perspective, they need as much field service feedback as possible to make sure your stuff works properly. if nobody bothers to let the design team know [not the service tech] that their filters clog outside of the lab, they'll never deal with it. here in san francisco, a number of the taxi companies run fleets sponsored by auto makers so we have all the latest and greatest of their vehicles in taxi livery charging up and down the badly pot-holed streets, hills, etc. they do this so they can install "black box" data recorders in them and find out how their vehicles perform in "real world" for a hilly city. they do it in las vegas too for heat. if they have the data, they can design accordingly. no data, inadequate design. |
seem to draw their attention. I would think that one truck having problems
with their product would garner attention, but not yet.
#33
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it's also possible, depending on their business model, that they don't want to resolve the issue - either a local or corporate decision. when i was a pup at university, one of my professors did some consulting work with one of the big auto manufacturers to help them limit the life of their transmissions via metal fatigue. [it's a very hard technical problem because things tend to either break right away, or last forever.] but the point is, life limitation is very much on the agenda in certain situations. i'm not sure it would be for commercial applications, at least from a corporate standpoint, but you may have been up against local sales quotas, and failures are a sales opportunity. |
#34
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E Meyer wrote: I'm talking about maintenance religiously conducted according to manufacturer's recommendations, no more, no less. If you follow the books to the letter, Honda requires more upkeep than Nissan does. And the end result is that Hondas experience less non-routine problems than Nissans do. |
Given my limited experiences (6 Hondas and 6 Nissans over about 18 years), I
have to say the vote goes in the other direction.
The only non-routine problems I've treated on Nissans have been the
occasional engine compartment electrical connector that needed
cleaning/reseating (plagues the '02 Pathfinder) and periodic throttle body
cleaning ('91 240sx and '96 I30).
With the Hondas, we've had ABS systems fail on two out of two mid 90's cars
('95 Integra & '96 Odyssey) and one transmission failure ('00 TL). These
cars were well maintained with brake fluid changes and transmission fluid
changes according to the published schedules. Clearly design flaws. Honda
made good on the transmission, but they never owned up to the ABS problems
on those cars.
#35
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The only non-routine problems I've treated on Nissans have been the occasional engine compartment electrical connector that needed cleaning/reseating (plagues the '02 Pathfinder) and periodic throttle body cleaning ('91 240sx and '96 I30). |
A friend of mine put over 200,000 miles on a '90 NX with little trouble.
#36
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On Feb 26, 5:17 pm, "DodgeDriver" <wing... (AT) invalid (DOT) net> wrote: We are in the USA. Granddaughter is looking to buy her first car. She is talking Honda Civic. Don't know why, but she believes that is what she wants. She will have about $5,000 (US) to spend. I lean toward something not more than 5 years old. Haven't started looking but thought I would ask this group for opinions re: a Civic. Are all Civics created equal or are there certain models/years to stay away from? Thanks for any help. $5k will buy you a 10 or so year old Civic here in NJ... I like them a lot but was looking at Accords for my son (I wanted a little larger car to compete with the SUV's). We ended up with a '99 Subaru Legacy with AWD that he likes a lot. Paid well under $5k for it, too... In addition to what the others have said, stay away from any car that has been 'upgraded' with aftermarket air intakes, wheels, headlight/ taillights, etc. As you'll see, Civics are very popular with the tuner crowd, but many of them have stuff added with no thought of how it will work, just how it will look (or sound). Also look for one with mechanical records, and preferably with the timing belt replaced. Dan D '07 Ody EX Central NJ USA |
#37
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E Meyer wrote: The only non-routine problems I've treated on Nissans have been the occasional engine compartment electrical connector that needed cleaning/reseating (plagues the '02 Pathfinder) and periodic throttle body cleaning ('91 240sx and '96 I30). It's the newer Nissans that are crap. Older Nissans were much more solid. A friend of mine put over 200,000 miles on a '90 NX with little trouble. |
problems related to poor maintenance, especially the use of straight water
in the cooling system (I violated my rules for used car standards because I
lusted after the car). But the real killer was in the electrical system. At
17 years and 150K miles it was developing new intermittents faster than I
could track them down. A few years before, an intermittent connector on the
ignition coil caused it to die half a dozen times a day for two months. The
first month it didn't even stay dead a minute at a time... very frustrating.
Mike
#38
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E Meyer wrote: The only non-routine problems I've treated on Nissans have been the occasional engine compartment electrical connector that needed cleaning/reseating (plagues the '02 Pathfinder) and periodic throttle body cleaning ('91 240sx and '96 I30). It's the newer Nissans that are crap. Older Nissans were much more solid. A friend of mine put over 200,000 miles on a '90 NX with little trouble. |
this 16 YO car so far have only been a starter, a window motor and one fuel
injector, basically next to nothing.
The electrical ghosts in the '02 Pathfinder are irritating. If not for the
fact that I do my own car maintenance this sort of thing could get very
expensive and frustrating very easily. I don't think I'm ready to move it
all the way to the category of crap, but I have to agree with you that it
does seem to be a step down in apparent quality from the older ones.
Compared to the transmission defect in my similar vintage '00 Acura TL
though, it still comes out ahead.
#39
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isq... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote: On Feb 26, 2:17 pm, "DodgeDriver" <wing... (AT) invalid (DOT) net> wrote: We are in the USA. Granddaughter is looking to buy her first car. She is talking Honda Civic. Don't know why, but she believes that is what she wants. She will have about $5,000 (US) to spend. I lean toward something not more than 5 years old. Haven't started looking but thought I would ask this group for opinions re: a Civic. Are all Civics created equal or are there certain models/years to stay away from? Thanks for any help. For $5k I'd buy an american over a jap car anyday. Your bias is evident in your use of an ethnic slur in your reply, making your opinion even more worthless than most. |
cars and one american. I like my japanese cars. But I have
to give it to the americans that the car was
1. rattle free
2. did not need any major repairs
3. pulled like a locomotive
All three of my jap cars rattle. All three came with wimpy engines and
one out of three was a total disaster maintenance
wise. So you opinion be as it may I should say that
there is a lot of things to like japanese econoboxes
for, but reliability is not one of them for sure.
#40
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