1999 Honda Accord V6 Project
Note: This was the craigslist posing I put up for my car which I just sold. I am saving it here for posterity and something to remember the car by. /sniff
For sale is a 1999 Honda Accord EX V6 that has 222k miles on it with a blown engine and radiator.
This was the top of the line Accord in 1999, complete with leather seats and a sun/moon roof. The body is in decent condition, with just one minor parallel parking incident on the rear bumper that just needs a bit of paint. This car spent its life in Northern California up until a couple months ago. (see below). The transmission is in good shape, all the glass is good (new windshield 4 months ago) and it’s never been in a wreck. All four tires are brand new as of ~5k miles ago (with receipt to prove it) and the brakes are brand new as of ~2k miles ago (again, receipt to prove it).
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Now: the story.
Picture me. I’m 23, out of school and full of adventure. I bought this car from my parents (who bought it new in 1999 – I was there) a couple years ago and planned on driving it for the rest of my life, really. I just put new tires and brakes on it, and have done regular maintenance to keep the car up. It has the 200 hp V6 engine – perfect for me, the speed demon. I have the speeding tickets to prove that one, too…
Anyway, a job pops up 1200 miles away in a little town I’d never been to called Boulder, Colorado. It’s pretty much my dream job and Boulder seems like a pretty chill place, so I give my two weeks at my dead-end job in California and become the first person in my family to move out of the state. I drive two ten hour days to drive to my new hometown. The car performs like a champ except on some of the mountain passes when it starts to heat up more than usual. No big deal, I say. I add some water and keep a vigilant eye on the radiator for the rest of the trip, checking and adding water as needed. After a few stops, the engine settles down and drives all the way to Boulder with no sweat after the initial hiccups. Awesome. I just need a new radiator, that’s only a few hundred bucks to replace.
Here, however, the story takes a radical twist.
The weekend I get to Boulder (Feb 21) I meet my new co-worker-to-be and park the car at his house while I search for a place to live. Good, I think. The car could use a rest. I leave everything I own in the back, no big deal. My co-worker reminded me to take the beer I’d brought (a case of Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale, in case you were wondering) out of the trunk because it was supposed to get cold that night. Nice to let me know – for me anything below about 35 degrees I’d consider damn cold. The next night the temperature dropped to 1 degree Fahrenheit. One. Degree. Perhaps the coldest weather I’d ever been in.
Then I put it all together. I added a bunch of _water_ to the radiator. Not _antifreeze_. #$%&
But the damage had been done. I tried driving the car from its place to my new house a couple miles away, and after about half a mile it started steaming water everywhere. I stopped the engine immediately and had it towed the rest of the way. Now I don’t know much about engines, but I’m pretty sure this one is dead. Shot. Blown. Whatever. If you didn’t put it together yet, water expands as it freezes. As I had a bunch of water in my engine block, it froze and expanded in the near-record low temperatures that night and most likely blew apart the engine at the seams. Or seals. Or whatever engines are held together with.
I’m terribly sorry to see this car go, which is probably why it’s taken me almost two months to post it, but I must move on.
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So please, make me an offer on a car that is completely fine other than the engine. I’ve seen the J30 V6 engines on here for as little as $500 if you’re mechanically inclined. Unfortunately, I’m not. A mechanic quoted me at $3-4k to swap a brand new one in, which is a bit much for me at the moment. (Moving is quite expensive, as it turns out). Or, if you have a 98-02 Accord V6 that was in a terrible wreck but the engine is good, with our cars combined, we could have a whole car again! It would be glorious!
I have AAA, too, so if you live within 4 miles of downtown Boulder, I could probably arrange to tow it to your place. After 4 miles, it’s a marginal fee per mile to tow it the rest of the way. Unless you have a trailer, that’s cool too. Or if you want, you can try driving it (it starts and runs and shifts fine), but believe me when I say you’re on your own if you choose that route.
Cheers, thanks for reading. Time to crack open one of those twenty-four ounce harvest ales…