"The Mothership" - 1998 Civic - Maintenance Log

[ctag]

The Mothership is back on the road, but between the issue with the brake lights, and adding another passenger (now myself and two other people), I caved and drove my parents' 2014 Camry to Atlanta. The trip went well, but I hurt my neck riding a roller coaster at Six Flags, so I'm waiting until I can crawl under the car to change the oil.

Tonight I bought some fresh engine oil and a filter. And it suddenly struck me that I'm not doing any record keeping of maintenance! Like, back on the very first page of this thread I had a notebook and all sorts of crap to keep organized with the car, but it just went out the window at some point during college and I never picked it back up. So I'm going to start again with this oil change.

The previous oil change was about six months ago, so it's time. Just to be sure about everything I checked the service manual, which says engine oil should be changed every 7,500 miles or 12 months (page 82, 4-12).

 

[ctag]

Washed the car today. In a last-ditch effort to postpone further loss of clearcoat and paint, I slathered the whole car in some Meguiars Paint Protectant.

 

[ctag]

Dropped the car off at the shop that did my last alignment this morning. After my last trip to Auburn a few weeks ago, the brakes pulse noticeably more.

I don't know if it's the rotors or the drums, but the guy said they'll check the alignment, rotate the wheels, and resurface the rotors anyway. I'm hoping it help

 

[ctag]

No dice

The brakes still pulse, though noticeably less. I'm not sure what to do next, can anyone help me out?

 

[ctag]

Went out and tried bedding in the brakes just to see if that helped. They seem to apply a bit smoother now, but the pulsing is still there. Additionally, I can feel the rotors pulse a bit when I use the handbrake

 

[ctag]

Did the laziest headlight polish job ever. Helped with nighttime visibility a lot though.

 

[CousinChris]

Love this thread. You have covered every issue Im having with my cousin Civic. Just havent had the tranny issue yet. Love the way you have detailed your progress in fixing these problems.

Can't wait to see the future post.

 

[ctag]

Love this thread. You have covered every issue Im having with my cousin Civic. Just havent had the tranny issue yet. Love the way you have detailed your progress in fixing these problems.

Can't wait to see the future post.

Dude, thanks! If you have time, definitely make a build thread for the Civic, I'd love to see how it's going

 

[ctag]

Now that my morning commute is longer, I'm ready to have all the speakers working. I went out with the intention of just drawing a wire from the back of the radio, out the side of the dash, across the doorjam, and into the side of the door trim. Ugly and "bad" but fast.

... Three hours later I had the fender off and was removing the pins from the door connector. Half the wires just fell out of the connector when I moved it, so I removed all of the pins and want to replace them... But can't find anything online. The connector is a square thing, does anyone know where to find it?

Edit: Found that I'm working with connector C556 from the service manual:



Edit: Found some more resources:

List of possible pin part numbers:

Connector Pins/Terminals - Honda-Tech - Honda Forum Discussion

Honda Civic / Del Sol (1992 - 2000) - Connector Pins/Terminals - I generally hang around CarolinaHondas but figured I'd seek your expertise as well since I kinda need to get this figured out as it's not for my car. Here is my post from yesterday. I had a guy suggest it looked similar to the pins...

honda-tech.com

Color coded pinout for CRV, has wire gauges, so I can infer I have 16 and 22 AWG.

97 CRV door harness wires breaking as usual - Honda-Tech - Honda Forum Discussion

Honda CR-V & Element - 97 CRV door harness wires breaking as usual - My various wires are breaking in the door hinge area. I cannot figure out how to release the connector pins from the body side of the door plug to put new wires in. I have some new connectors to put in which give me no clue as...

honda-tech.com

Edit: OK, my roommate took a look at the pin and said "Oh, that's a Denso pin" and showed me one of his from a generic car-electrical-connector kit that looks preeeety close to mine.

 

[ctag]

My roommate suggested just cleaning up the old pins and soldering new wires onto the back of them.. I could maybe salvage half of them this way, but then what about the rest?

 

[ctag]

Man, this stuff is enough to drive a body mad.

I'm putting some pieces together. Went back out to my collection of pins and found that there are three variants:



'L' 'M' and 'S' stamped on the back of the pins.

The differences are subtle, mostly around the wire-crimping wings. I think if I can buy one type it'll do for all three though.

From the "Connectors Pins/Terminals" post linked above I started searching around for "07JAZ-001330A" as it was listed as "verified" by the post author. I eventually found this page, which when translated pretty clearly spells out that as one of the three pins I'm looking for!

I also found this forum thread where someone is selling OEM pins, and the pictures from the first post go over a lot of the part numbers! I'm going to try preserving the images here, just in case.








Uhoh That second picture has 07JAZ-001330A at the top right corner, and it doesn't look the same.

Another source that shows the right pin: https://web.archive.org/web/20190319022440/http://preludecentral.com/index.php?topic=962.0

If I can hunt down whether the size variants are available at all or not, I'll go ahead and make a purchase.

 

[ctag]

"Uhhh, that's a pass for me, dawg."

 

[ctag]

OK, pins are ordered through the local Honda dealer! They should be here by the end of the week.

Now I need to find where to buy the wire I'm going to be splicing in.. Does anywhere sell assorted gauges/colors that I'd be able to make match the existing bundle?

 

[ctag]

Finished the job up today.

The scene:

Soldered on fresh automotive wiring. The original loom had what I suspect was 20/22 gauge down to 14 gauge or something. I only had 16 and 18 gauge replacement

Hour later: heatshrink applied, pins crimped on, and color coded tabs on the end of the new black wire.

Unfortunately my cellphone (since upgrayeding of course) has a bug where some images aren't saved...

Also, this is some bullshit, Honda. Two yellow+red wires?! and again for blue+black!! It defeats the purpose of color coding in the first place! Come on..

Well, for the first time since I owned this car, all of the speakers work! Hooray!

 

[ctag]

Another note: while out on a test-drive with my friend yesterday, he mentioned that the brake pulsing may be suspension related. When I apply the brakes hard there doesn't seem to be much/any pulsing, which he thinks indicates worn out suspension bits causing the trouble.

I think I'm going to start with the ball joints, but if I can find good aftermarket suspension for daily-driving I'm tempted to go for it.

 

[ctag]

Changed the oil today.

O'Reilly's high mileage 5W-30 and a Bosch ST3312 filter. Odometer 335,000.

 

[alex98]

Another note: while out on a test-drive with my friend yesterday, he mentioned that the brake pulsing may be suspension related. When I apply the brakes hard there doesn't seem to be much/any pulsing, which he thinks indicates worn out suspension bits causing the trouble.

I think I'm going to start with the ball joints, but if I can find good aftermarket suspension for daily-driving I'm tempted to go for it.

Any chance your lug nuts are over-torqued? The alignment shop I used to go to would over-torque the lugs on my integra causing a pulsation during braking. I came to that conclusion after inspecting my brakes(which were good), and having to use a breaker bar to loosen some of the nuts.

 

[ctag]

Any chance your lug nuts are over-torqued? The alignment shop I used to go to would over-torque the lugs on my integra causing a pulsation during braking. I came to that conclusion after inspecting my brakes(which were good), and having to use a breaker bar to loosen some of the nuts.

I.. don't know. There's definitely a chance they are.
If I retorque them properly, would that fix it, or have I shot the rotor/hub by overtorquing?

 

[alex98]

I.. don't know. There's definitely a chance they are.
If I retorque them properly, would that fix it, or have I shot the rotor/hub by overtorquing?

In my case, re-torquing them with a torque wrench fixed the problem. Can't say for sure it'll fix your issue, but still worth checking out. Most likely the rotor/hub are okay.

 

[ctag]

I went out and re-torqued all the wheels to 85 ft/lbs. The pulsing is maybe a little bit diminished, but it's still there.