Last year, right around the time I graduated school and got promoted at work, I finally bought my first car.

It’s a 1997 Honda Civic LX, manual transmission, 180,000 miles. I bought it for $1200, though I’m not sure that wasn’t more than I should’ve paid for it, based on the things I’ve had to do. The biggest repair I’ve done is a front subframe replacement, which I will detail in a later post.

Here are my plans for work I’m going to do on it this year:

1. Replace front pads & rotors, rear drums, shoes, and hardware. There’s always been a slight pulsation, and the rear brakes a creaking noise when I come to a stop. I would like to also replace the calipers, but I already have a lot to spend on this year.
2. Fix rear suspension noise. I have a little clunk heard in the rear, and while everything feels tight, a fellow mechanic says that it’s probably a bad bushing, so I’ll have to figure out which one and then take care of that.
3. Fix air conditioning. I lived a whole summer without the air conditioning working, and I really don’t want to do that again. I just have to figure out if there’s a leak somewhere or the compressor’s just broken.
4. Properly wire foglights. In December I installed a set of Harbor Freight fog lights, partly because my low beams don’t do too well on country roads. Because of the cold weather, I only did a basic wiring job, and once it’s warmer I have plans for a very clean wiring installation.

As always, I’ll try to take pictures of what I do during these repairs and if there’s anything interesting or a good story I’ll write a post.

For more pictures and sneak peeks at future posts, search for Mechanical Malarkey on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

-Dan