Whats up? I'm Chris from Clarksville, TN and new to the forum and honda. Previously owned/leased a 2007 Nissan Altima and when the lease was up I turned it in, decided to save my money and a monthly car payments and bought this honda. Bought a 96 Accord EX 4 door 5 speed last September from a friend of mine for $2900. My first honda and probably won't be my last one. I bought with 164K miles on it, it was a one owner, never wrecked and the previous owner had all the work done at the local Honda dealer where I was able to get all the service records. I've put close to a $1K in the car since I've bought it replacing a wheel bearing, changed out the spark plugs and plug wires, etc; rt ft axle boot kit and new axle for the lt side and I also changed out the air filter and did a fuel system service flush as well. I do know from the service records that the previous owner did the timing belt change at 90K and now with 174K, its getting close to having being changed again. A few questions I have is,

1)is it true you have to have the water pump replaced as well while replacing the timing belt and 2)what other things should I have checked?
3) is it a common issue that I get a high idle when I turn the AC on? The car runs fine without the AC on but once I push the AC button it starts idling and the car runs a little "rough."

Any help would be appreciated. I am pretty knowledgeable with parts as I've worked in Nissan parts for almost 4 years and have worked in parts for a total of 10 years so I do have an idea on things. Just not real knowledgeable on Honda's.....yet

Thanks for reading

 

Hello there, answer to question 1 is no. It is highly recommended because in order to access the water pump the timing belt has to be removed. The saying "kill two birds with one stone" comes to mind.
Replacing what is a cheap waterpump is costly because of the labour involved, by replacing the waterpump with the timing belt you are saving around 1hr 30 mins future labour cost if the pump goes.

Also the AC idle going up is normal, it is because of the power needed to run the AC, the engine compensates by increasing revs.
Mine will go from an idle speed of around 750 to near 950rpm when ac is turned on.

Off topic but $2900 for a 15 year old car thats done 164k, thats almost £2000 Is the car modified? For that kind of money I could get a 2003 model with 2 thirds of the mileage.

My car was £350 ($580) in 2007 when it was 11 years old and had done 58,000 miles.

 

Is there anything I can do with the AC idle? Does the a/c need to be charged? Compressor going out? Or is there nothing you can do about it?

 

You may want to clean the IACV with throttle body cleaner. The IACV allows more air into the engine to help compensate for the extra load by the a/c compressor. Just search this site for IACV cleaning or even google it.

 

I'll give it a try. Thanks