My Honda Headache

I took Thursday and Friday off this week from my work so that I will have some free time to do some repairs on my VW and also do some spring cleaning around the house. I was expecting to just have some peaceful time to myself working on my hobby… but it did not turned out the way I planned.

A Filipino guy named Bong called me and introduced himself as a friend of the owner of the Nissan Altima that I recently repaired. He told me that he just bought a Honda Accord 1994 model and its engine is not functioning well. When I heard the word “Honda”, I immediately felt that this will be a difficult job because the spaces around the engine is so cramp that it is hard to work on it. I hesitantly agreed to check his car hoping that the problem will be a quick fix.

While I was doing some errands last Thursday, Bong called me and told me that he is parked in front of my house waiting for me. I can’t believe this guy would just showed up at my doorstep without at least texting me in advance.

I test drove the car and discovered that on idle it is doing fine but when I accelerate, the engine struggles and skips. Oh boy, this could be anything. I told the guy that I don’t mind doing repairs on Hondas as long as the repair does not involve me working around its engine. When I saw that the ignition switch was missing, I concluded that this car must have been stolen before and was recovered with missing parts. The mechanic that tried to work on it just gave up trying to put a new ignition switch and so he just installed two flip switches to turn on the ignition power and a red button to start the engine. Some of the things around the engine does not seem to be original.

When Bong asked me to fix the radio of the Honda, I immediately told him that I will not touch the wiring of this car because it had been altered and who knows what will happen if I start messing with it.

After Bong left the car with me, I sadly looked at the car that is full of gremlins living in it. I then asked myself, “Why did I accept this job?”.

I worked on the Honda on and off during Thursday and Friday but it does not seem to be getting better. It sounds that it is getting worse even though I have not done much to alter its current state. Since the engine behaves on idle speed and only struggles whenever I accelerate on driving, I felt that there might be a problem on either the fuel pressure or there is a clog in the exhaust, possibly the catalytic converter. Since the wiring of this car had been tampered , I don’t know if I can get an error code from the computer

I am currently trying to replace the fuel filter but the nut behind the filter is as stubborn as a mule. The master cylinder and other mechanism is partly blocking my reach to the fuel filter and so I can only reach it with one arm. I had to buy a set of larger flare tools (tool used for brakes, fuel, transmission & cooling lines) to try to loosen the nut. So far the progress is slow.

This Honda is just eating up a lot of my time. While I was working on the Honda, another Filipino called me and asked me if I can replace a few things behind the dashboard controls of his van.

Though I am able to earn extra income from repairing cars, the amount of earnings I receive does not seem to compensate the amount of time I spend fixing the cars the right way. You see, almost all of my customers during my free time are people who want to spend as little as possible on their cars. They always expect to save around 70% to 80% on the repair cost. They basically want to pay a few pennies on a few dollars worth of repairs. At the end, they also expect to have a world class quality repair done on their cars!

I actually prefer working at the auto shop than working on cars in my garage because at the shop, the service charges are reasonable and you actually earn a decent income. Working on other people's cars at the garage of my house is terrible because of the mentality that customers bring with them when they drop their cars at my house is that they will only pay dirt cheap prices.

Oh boy, What did I get myself into? I sure miss the time when I was actually able to enjoy my weekends and vacations.