I love my Civic again

So I am finally recovering from the whole new parent thing and starting to get some things done again. One of those things was to get new tires on the car. While I was at it I figured I might as well get the rest of the maintenance I have been putting off done too. My poor Civic was new in 2002 and has over 100k miles on it. I have not done any major maintenance on it. Just oil changes, filters, brakes, and tires. The Honda Civic is an amazing bit of engineering though, even with all the neglect I was still getting 30 mpg and it ran fine. It used to get 36 mpg and there was a lot of maintenance that I have passed on, so I figured it was about time.

I had the front tires replaced and aligned, the belts replaced, the spark plugs replaced, a new battery, an oil change and a general tune up. It ended up costing about $900 with the lifetime rotation and balance package at Firestone. It took about 4 hours that Liz, Aurora and I spent wandering around Santa Ana getting errands done and having lunch. It was a pleasant day.

The belts were cracked and I new they needed to be replaced, the battery was basically dead for months (You could probably start a Civic with a AA), and the spark plugs were way over due. It cost a lot, but considering that I have not had a payment in over 3 years and it has needed very little maintenance. I can not complain.

What really makes it worth it through was driving it home. It was like a new car. I had not realized how much the performance had decreased over time. I know what you are thinking performance and Honda Civic should not be in the same post, but you can get a lot out of the manual transmission version of the Civic EX. I have driven the automatic version of the Civic and I feel bad for anyone who has one. I had to have them ship a manual from another dealer when I bought mine and they thought I was crazy, but I will never buy an automatic as long as you can still get manual transmissions. Besides far better performance in general they get way better gas mileage and its much harder to power slide in an automatic (It comes in handy sometimes).

I will probably had to replace the transmission or clutch eventually though, I have taught several people how to drive stick on it and I am not gentle on it. Maybe at 200k. Here is to the next 100k miles!