Hi. Not the best first post, right, sorry. I would like to own a Honda though, give me a break and please help.

Looking at a 94 accord wagon ex with 139000 miles. I know that the car has been driven about 3000 miles within the past month. Pretty sure it was on a xcountry trip. The high miles in short time is definitely hard on a car, I know.

I took it for a test drive, and for the most part it drove great. My main concern is a rubbing feeling when applying the brake. This was at slow to moderate speeds, and I could feel the rubbing through my foot on the brake pedal. It was certainly tough to ignore. Car seemed to stop fine, though stopping distance was certainly affected I think. I'm assuming the hard miles of the trip may be a factor.

I've been told the first owners of the car were elderly and cared for it well. The interior and exterior are in great shape except for some body rust above the rear tires.

Not feeling too confident about buying this, though of course I still *want* to pull the trigger. I'm wondering if anyone has any input on the braking issue, and if this car is worth the 2200 they are asking. Thanks.

Oh yeah. The ABS light may have been on the whole test drive. This is bad, no?

 

Wagons go for a bit of a premium so the price seems reasonable, especially with only 139K. The recent 3K highway miles are easy miles; it's not an issue. Stop-and-go city driving is much harder on a car, especially brakes.

No advice on the ABS light. Use the search function if you buy the car to find the likely cause. But the "rubbing" brake problem isn't a big deal. Rotors and pads are dirt cheap although if you don't do the job yourself the labor can be pricey. Either case it wouldn't hurt to replace both wheel bearings while it's hubs are pulled to replace the rotors.

 

When the abs light comes on, that means that the system is not working correctly so the abs system isn't going to work, but this shouldn't be a deal breaker. It doesn't mean your brakes are going to fail, it just means the abs is in failsafe mode, which means it's not going to try to work til it gets fixed. This is not related to the pulsating brake feel.

The pulsating brakes usually just means the rotors are warped which means they need to be replaced, which can be costly do to the design of the 90-97 accords. I would suggest doing a rotor over hub conversion. You can get the kit from tasauto.com and have a reputable shop do it for a couple hundred. Just call around, normally the big name ones will charge a lot more, but u can get a shop to do it for around a couple hundred. Then it will be easier for you to change them in the future without having to pay a lot to have them removed which is a lot harder when the rotor is behind the hub.

 

Cool, thanks for the input.

 

Sounds like a nice price to me.