Countdown to 300,000 miles - My 1998 Accord

[benda18]

My current car is a 1998 Honda Accord EX with 2.3L VTEC I-4 and over 293,000 miles on the odometer. The car has been in my family since it rolled off the dealer lot in 1998 (with me in the passenger seat). My name has been on the title since 2008 (220,000 miles) and I'm on pace to hit 300,000 miles later this summer or fall.


The Car by bendertj, on Flickr

I've started a blog (link) to countdown the journey to 300,000 miles. Over the coming weeks I'll post significant milestones and interesting stories about this vehicle. Also, I'll go into some detail on what motivated me to drive this car for so long and why I won't be attempting 400,000 miles.

 

[Cale]

Looks pretty clean body wise as well.

And 300K miles, that's like 1.5mil km right?

 

[Beeblebrox237]

300K miles is 480K KM.

That's a lot of driving!

 

[benda18]

Body-wise it's just ok. The paint is in ok shape - no significant sun damage (the car was garaged up until about a year ago) - but there are lots of chips on the hood from rock strikes on the highway. If you look close in the pic at the front lip of the hood above and to the left of the "H" logo in the radiator inlet there's a rust spot about 4 inches wide - This showed up in 2009 and I have no idea how. It looks like something that would result from striking a loose tire on the freeway but i would've remembered that. I suspect it was vandalized, but have no idea by whom, where or why. It looks like a car that has 300k on the clock, but has never been wrecked.

Usually when you see crazy high mileage cars on the web they're owned by couriers or sales people who drive for their job. Not the case here though - My dad put the majority of the miles on the car over a period of 10 years while he had an 80-mile RT commute. I've spent the past 4 years driving the car 80 miles RT also.

 

[Lock2Lock]

Hey it most likely will make it to 400k miles if you still treat it good... One of my buddys cars that he has had as long as i have known him is a early 1990s model Toyota camry... It has over 620k miles last time i saw it about a year ago... He has told me it still is running great a few months ago... Only major thing he has had to do to it was put a new spindle on it... I think that was a couple of years ago... Besides normal maintenance the car runs great

 

[Punknoodle]

Reminds me of an episode of Married with Children where Al's Dodge was about to roll over a million miles or something, and Dodge we're going to film it and give him a brand new Dodge Viper as payment - but as always it doesn't work out, someone clicks off the handbrake and the car rolls out of the garage, clicking over by itself.

That is a lot of Kay's. When riding in a Taxi I always look at the odometer to see the age of the vehicle, as you can hear and feel the rooted suspension, bearings, unbalanced wheels and vibrating panels etc - normally they have between 300,000 to 500,000 Kay's on them. Obviously they just get the bare minimum servicing though as hey are normally just in use 24/7.

 

[benda18]

Reminds me of an episode of Married with Children where Al's Dodge was about to roll over a million miles or something, and Dodge we're going to film it and give him a brand new Dodge Viper as payment - but as always it doesn't work out, someone clicks off the handbrake and the car rolls out of the garage, clicking over by itself.

Absolutely! That was a very memorable episode and I can perfectly relate to Al in a couple of ways:

1) Sometimes I feel like driving the car up and down the street just to add miles to the odo and get this over with
2) I'm anxious something will happen to the car before it rolls over that will either require a significant financial investment to repair or otherwise completely prevent me from achieving my goal.

My newest blog post goes into detail about the Bundy thing.

 

[benda18]

Hey it most likely will make it to 400k miles if you still treat it good... One of my buddys cars that he has had as long as i have known him is a early 1990s model Toyota camry... It has over 620k miles last time i saw it about a year ago... He has told me it still is running great a few months ago... Only major thing he has had to do to it was put a new spindle on it... I think that was a couple of years ago... Besides normal maintenance the car runs great

To be honest, this car has no place on the road right now. I'm basically limping to 300k. Among the many problems there's a fuel injector issue where the accelerator pedal is unresponsive until the car warms up - unless you're willing to pump it in traffic.

I can't wait to get rid of it.

 

[benda18]

Some drama in my life. sprung a radiator leak last night with 293,600 miles on the odo. Limped home 100 miles. Been pouring in stop leak and topping the radiator off like crazy. Hoping it mends itself because this its the kind of repair I'm not willing to fix proper.

 

[Lock2Lock]

Some drama in my life. sprung a radiator leak last night with 293,600 miles on the odo. Limped home 100 miles. Been pouring in stop leak and topping the radiator off like crazy. Hoping it mends itself because this its the kind of repair I'm not willing to fix proper.

Oh i see what you're getting at... But it looks like "you got 99 problems but a ***** ain't one" ha just had to say it

 

[eiriksmil]

Maybe if that engine bay actually had been washed sometimes you wouldn't have problems..