So my neighbor's selling his Accord, and I just noticed last night. When I looked at the for sale sign, I saw $900 - so I assumed it either had a blown headgasket/motor, or something maybe tranny related.

Anywho, saw him the next morning and checked the car out. Everything looked great, and the reason he's selling it cheap is cuz it's a 1990 Accord, has 220,000~ miles, and is a salvage title. All of these are fine with me, as I'm looking for a daily that I can drive to school/work so I can park my EG in my garage.

Two problems though: car has a slight idle problem. I noticed when the A/C was on, the idle was jumpy - it'd be idling fine then drop down pretty low and almost stall, but then it'd go back up to normal; I was thinking bad IACV maybe? Second, he said the A/C doesn't blow as cold as it used to, but obviously the car has R12. How expensive is it for a R12 to R134A conversion, and are there some parts of the A/C system I should replace while that's being done?

Thanks for the help!

 

Any advice?

 

I think the R12 to R134a conversion is pretty painless and not overly expensive but it'd been too long since I've done one to recall the cost. No help on the idle, but I owned a 90' and a 92 and both were of course very reliable and excellent commuter cars. To me it sounds like a pretty sound deal I'd go for it.

 

Yeah, I assumed so. I know you have to vacuum out the system and change the tips where you put the R134A in it, and maybe some other stuff? I dunno.

Yeah, no kidding. The car started up fine with no hesitation, it was just that single idle problem I noticed. No weird sounds from the engine bay; nothing like that.

I'm gonna test drive it tomorrow, just to see how it runs while being driven and coming to a stop.