I have owned a 1990 Accord about 5 years ago, sold it when I moved. Now I just bought a 1989 Civic Hatchback, 4speed manual with 208K miles. I am have alot of questions, but one I would like to start with is if anybody knows of any maintenance procedures, or cheap modding you can do to increase fuel efficiency? I will be putting alot of miles on this car.
Thanks - P

 

Also, paid $1400 for it, I hope that wasnt a bad deal. Body is straight and NO mechanical problems at all, the only issue with the whole car was the upholstery in the two front seats had cracks from aging in the leather. Anybody know of any good remedies for repairing the seats with out a complete re-upholstery, or just using seat covers?

 

Definitely check the FAQ sticky at the top of the page before you go further.

You bought a standard hatch, not bad. That's actually exactly what I have. Price seems fair. Does the AC still work? Does it have a glove box?

As for maintenance, really depends on your driving. I do my oil and filter every 3,000 miles. Check the air filter regularly. You can do a tune up if you like. Distributor cap and rotor, spark plugs and wires, etc. Just common wear things. I'd inspect them before you spend money on them though.

Fuel efficiency isn't really a hot topic around here, but I have some advice. Try and get some solid hub caps. Side view mirror deletes help. You can also lower the car to help. The most crucial thing is driving style. You can pick up a vacuum gauge and try to get it to read as low as possible while driving. That will help you drive more efficiently.

The seats is really preference. I'd search a junkyard for some nice seats. Si seats out of a similar civic are a great seat swap. Integra seats are pretty nice sometimes and Del Sol seats are arguably the best stock seat around. Repairing the vinyl is probably impossible. Seat covers are $20 at Walmart and will cover them up though.

 

Thanks for the response. I will check out the "FAQ's". The car doesnt have a/c, as in not installed at factory, and it doesnt have power steering. Which all of this was a bonus for me, the simpler the better. Thankfully Iam mechanically incline, and these engines look like simplistic.

 

Very simple, yet complicated. They are easy to work on but sometimes finding the cause to an issue can be complicated. The engine diagnostic system in the OBD0 cars isn't very 'smart' compared to newer cars. But they are easy to work on and maintain.

As for the AC, that kind of sucks. I know CRXguy is retrofitting AC (possibly). My standard hatch came with AC in it, but it was also Canadian. Not sure if it was just an option or if the US model is different.

The FAQs is very good. There is a lot of decent information and ideas in there. After you read through some stuff, feel free to check out the 92-00 FAQs too. They have some information that crosses over to our platform too. Anything you need help with can be found my searching this forum or Google. I personal use Google with a site preference. If I wanted to know about axles for my hatch, I would Google "89 civic axles site:Honda-Tech.com" and it would pull up pages from this entire site on that subject. Sometimes the subforum searches aren't as helpful. Also, there are plenty of write ups on other forums that are quite nice so don't be afraid to search through them also.

Best of luck with the car.