I found a 1996 Honda accord ex for sale and was thinking of buying it as my first car/daily driver. It has 150k miles on it, anything I should look out for? Is this a reliable car? Any tips? I made an account just to ask this lol. I was also wondering how much it would cost for a paint job on this vehicle. Thanks in advance!

 

Overall, these are reliable cars if taken care. The real question is how well has it been taken care of. If taken care of reasonably well, the next thing is to basically make a list of anything you don't know the maintenance on and start working on it. Because to be frank, at this point, you are probably at least the third owner, the car is no longer "valuable", it's often driven by high school and college kids at this points, left around as a third car, so it's more likely neglected, but not abused. These cars can be pretty neglected and still run, but you don't want to leave it to chance too long. Almost everything on this car is very fixable, and usually not very costly.

This means you first check for all the common leaks and fix them as you can. The common areas are:

oil pan gasket
transmission axle rubber seals
power steering leaks from anywhere, the reservoir, the hoses, the steering rack. Check underneath and above.
radiator hose leaks
valve cover gasket and spark plug holes gasket

Finally, make sure to check the radiator cap, take it off and look at it to make sure it's just coolant. If there is any brown substance, kind of like chocolate milkshake, do not get the car, the engine is shot.

if nothing is leaking, you are in superb shape, it's rare but it's possible.

With all that said, probably the MOST IMPORTANT thing to check is when the timing belt and water pump were done. This seems to be the most common error, mistake, or bad luck with this car. that belt breaks, that engine is done, it's an interference fit, so everything can get trashed. DO not skip this under any condition. If you don't know for sure when it was changed, get it changed as soon as you can. This is one area that if you have never done, my advice would be to take it to someone unless you are mechanically inclined and have done all kinds of car work before, it's a bit of work but not the end of the world tough.

The other things I would do, if it were me, is start replacing all those things above before they leak, if again you don't know when it was done. Not a rush if it's not leaking, but I would make a list and kind of a judgement call as to how it looks to you so you can determine order.

With that said, the other things I see go wrong with this car are the little abandonment things that you want to check and replace when you can. At this age, the interior lights usually have some bulbs out and should be replaced. The dash, for example, and the shifter, the air conditioning and all that. Just collect the bulbs and replace when you can.

Not uncommon to find a misbehaving lock as well. Just replace the actuators when you can.

I also like to start with some standard stuff once I have it, replacing the spark plugs, wires, cap and rotor for example. Then I change the oil, then I change the transmission fluid (3 times to get all the old stuff out).
I also found buying new shocks and springs made the car a much more enjoyable experience along with good Michelin tires.

You will find many on here with over 200,000 on there car still running if you take care of it. Mines a little newer, a 1999, definitely needed the above done over the course of a year to get it back into close to new feeling and status.

Now, your question about paint. Painting a car is expensive, no matter what. If you don't give a ****, you can Maaco it, it will look cheap, but at least it will be painted. It also won't last more than few years, so it really depends on what you want.

I would guess $3000 on average today for a whole car to be done, top to bottom, with a good paint and finish, a lot of work goes into smoothing that car out since there are a millions dings and dents to remove to get right.

I'm fairly frugal myself, so when I needed to paint the roof of my car, I simply did it myself with paint matched aerosol cans and clear afterwards. It's not perfect or great, but I wasn't interested in paying a high dollar. My car has too many dings it would be $5000 for me, I think.

You could also consider a Wrap, that might be cheaper, I don't know, a good wrap might be $2000 as well. Or you could try it yourself, I tried and sucked at it, so I don't know ...I have seen some people who are good at it. I guess it depends on the person.

 

First off thank you so much for answering, you answered everything I was wondering and then some. Surprisingly there's only been one owner this whole time and they barely drove, something like 15k miles every 3-4 years. The things you told me to look for (Water pump and timing belt) were changed by the dealership that has the car now. I will definitely look for the other things you said, that was extremely helpful aswell. Thank you for all the help!

 

Hey that's great. One owner is getting pretty rare. Seeing someone make sure the belt and pump is done is superb.

Sounds like you are getting a nicely cared for machine.

 

Yeah, only issues I have is that the Carfax doesn't show maintenance from 2008-now but it was getting serviced very regularly before that so I think the owner cared for the car. They're asking for $2500 but I think the car is worth $1000 based off research

 

I dont know, in today's market there are a lot of people looking for good reliable used cars with Covid and job problems everywhere. It's why I got rid of my "expensive" cars and just drive my 20 year old car now. If you can get them down to that price, that's great, but I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up closer to 2k for it. But that's just a guess, Most $1000 cars I see are total basket cases, needed a ton of work and very neglected, so if they will come down that far, definitely take it.