I just recently purchased a 1993 Honda Civic Sedan with the 1.5L engine that has 302,000 miles on it. It looks like a beater (rust on the rear fender and on the driver door panels but nothing terrible) But I got it for $500 and was surprised when it ran better than my old Corolla that had half the miles on it. I so far have replaced basic things like wiper blades, oil change (which it REALLY needed). I'm really growing to like it.

I've heard great things about Civics but how long could I realistically see this car lasting for if I maintain the engine?

(Currently it hasn't been leaking coolant, oil or fuel. I've put about 1,500 miles on it monitoring everything closely and I get about 25-28 mpg)

Thanks for reading this I really look forward to being a member in this forum!

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

25-28 seems a little low. But its probably just because of the mileage. Have you checked the compression? does it smoke at all? is it an automatic or manual trans? if its auto, it may help the life of the tranny to change the fluid.

all in all sounds like a good buy to me!

 

My driving tends to be more 80/20 (City/Highway, Edit: I think my gas gauge is also a bit off when it's at E I have about 2 gallons left) and I do a lot of stop and go which could be messing my guestimations up. I am running on really low tread cheap tires that came with it. (Guessing a Wal-Mart job, so I'm taking it to my tire place and getting new ones put on.)

I have yet to check the compression, that'll be on my list for this Sunday!

It used to smoke if it idled for more than 10 minutes it'd spew out for about a mile or two. It stopped after I change the oil to high milage oil I'm guessing whatever was in it wasn't correct and wasn't a high enough viscosity maybe?

Manual transmission, only issue with that I've noticed is my first gear is very noisy, after that it's quite.