Hello all,

I know this isn't like most posts, I wanted to just show a case of where our older cars can still go the distance when taken care of.

This is about our 99 Civic EX 5 speed manual my daughter and I just took on a 3000 mile round trip drive to Yellowstone National Park. I'll focus on the car and what was done, and also what happened, which might be useful information for others considering a long trip.

First, this car has been kept pretty decent with the maintance. Last year, the radiator was flushed and new hoses put on, new upper control arms installed, Monroe QuickStruts installed all around, manual fluid changed, new brake pads installed in the front, brake fluid changed. Inspecting the car before we left I noticed that the drivers side axle seal was starting to leak, but I figured it would be ok for a trip as it was small and new.

This was a camping trip, so we fully loaded the car with two tents, two coolers of food, sleeping bags, air mattresses, lanterns, extra blankets, cooking stove, two suitcases and tools for working o the car. The first thing I was interested to see was how much it would compress with all the weight. And it did. It came down from stock height (a hand fitting easily between tire and fender) to right where the tire and the fender were almost even. I guess that's about a 2-3 inch drop. Measuring up inside I could see I still had several inches before the car would bottom out, so I thought as long we we didn't go sailing over any big bumps ww would be ok.

Now the reason this drive is interesting is the altitude. Here in Texas where we live, we are about 100 feet above sea level. Where we would be camping was about 7800 feet above sea level, and the mountain roads could get as high as 10,000 feet in the higher passes. Plus driving around Yellowstone is between 6500-9800 feet as well.

Overall, the car behave extremely well, with a few little things. The car pulled up those steep grades most of the time with just a shift down to 4th gear. The highway speeds we maintained were between 70-80 (speed limits are high in this trip, 70 or 75 most of the time). We did about 8 hours a day driving when traveling there, about 2-3 hours per day very easily. Never had real trouble, and we average 35-36 miles to the gallon. car temps stayed decently low, even though it was close to a hundred on most travel days, in the park it was around 80 in the day and 40 at night.

So the few things that happened to the car: The "worst" that happned was once we were past Denver and staying above 6000 feet, about 100-200 miles at that level the CEL light would come on. Checking it revealed a misfire on cylinder 1. At first I thought it was a fluke as I didn't usually have errors on the car, so I reset it. 100-200 miles later, it came on again. So I started thinking. This car runs on plain low unlead, about 87 octane usually. Well, in Colorado it droppped to 85 octane. I started thinking that maybe the high altitude was causing the misfire, along with the lower than usual octane. So, I switched to 91 (all they had for hgh octane in Colorado, Wymoning, and Montana). That did the trick, the error went away.

The second funny thing that happened was we popped the cigarette lighter trying to charge two iphones at the same time. Guess that's a little too much for long periods. Switching to charging one at a time fixed that issue.

The final and minor thing was we travelled a lot on dirt and gravel while in the park. Really rough back country roads, which finally rattled loose the window visors bolts. Once one fell out, I stopped, and retighted everything and we would good to go.

I was really impressed that a 21 year old car ran so well with air con, fully loaded, great gas mileage, no leaks, handled 7% grades up and down without issue or overheating or severe strain.

Many people seem to come on here and worry there old car won't make it just because of age, but if you maintain it, it will provide many many years and trips.

The car now needs an oil change and a severe cleaning from all the bugs splattered all over it.

 

Great story! No pictures of the car making the trip? I redid a 97lx with 280k miles to take on a road trip to Michigan but sold the car for a profit before I made the trip

 

Also road tripping in a civic is cheap on gas and cheap on maintenance. New set of tires are aroind $200 installed which is 1/4 the price of tires on most newer vehicles

 

I did take a few pics, here's us around 9000 feet in the NE part of the park.


it's all covered in bugs now.

 

Love this. Thanks. I took my imported RHD 4WD Civic through hundreds of kms of ROUGH Northern Canadian remote gravel back roads over the last few weeks. It has performed flawlessly (knock on wood). I put most of it together myself so I only have myself to blame if **** goes sideways.

 

Yeah, it's older, but I kinda love it because no one bothers it, tries to break in, it's just an older looking car that seems valueless. Plus being stick it gets great gas mileage and no one wants to steal those any more either.

Got home, changed oil, ran through car wash to get off all the bugs.

Double checked everything. Other than the slightly leaking axle seal (which I will fix next month when I have time from work), nothing to worry about. People are also always shocked when they see I have hands free and reverse parking sensors . Daughter took her driving test in it yesterday, they thought it impressive a teen was driving a stick.