Blazinqwickly's F23A1 ,Happy wife, Happy Life Build.

I would trade peeling clear coat and rusty roofs any day of the week for what happens to salt belt cars. Awful car cancer that eats it alive from within. And we still get the peeling clear coat, just not to the same extent. I think out fogged up headlight problem is as bad or worse; all that highway sandblasting in the winter plus the sun. I wish we could just use sand and stop with all the salt and brine.....

Although Rusty is probably right; only one of my 6g cars has this problem, and the rubber on the other three is still soft and supple; even with the ridiculous mileages.

 

Granted rust is like a cancer , but when you get to the cost of either you are still looking at thousands and thousands in repairs for rust or paint.
Here if you want a good paint and body job, it starts closer to $5,000 and goes as high as the sky limit of the price for new cars, it is pretty crazy tbh.

All the rubber weather seals and engine bay hoses get ate up from the heat cycling on the cars too which sucks because you would think weather stripping was cheap, but no Honda is proud of it and want hundreds just for one window seal or door seal. Start adding in the tail light gaskets and trunk seal and so on, you get the idea, it sucks and takes a lot of commitment to follow threw either way.

Rust when caught early is not too terrible, but once it gets out of hand, well, hope you have stock in cutting and welding equipment and can fabricate a little bit.

Any how either way it takes a passionate person to follow threw with either problems that may arise from the climate they have lived in most of their lives, thankfully 6thgen has plenty of those people around who care to put in the long hours of wrench time and shovels of money in some cases.

On another note, the order for the new C.A.I. was placed last night and should be here on Friday.

 

Ideally what you want is 2 cars. One from the south with a nice clean solid body, and one from the north with nice supple rubber and plastic. In the old days we'd look for a low mileage engine to donate into the southern car, but when dealing with Hondas, it really doesn't seem to matter. The key is finding the body style you want, with the engine and trans you want. Problem is you can't get a V6 with MT, unless you swap the MT in, and do a bunch of wiring rework. This means, if you want MT, you have to go with the 4 cylinder.

Personally I've got no problem with the 4 cylinder with either AT or MT, as they both seem to move the car pretty well out of it's way. The trouble comes when you're rolling along at 80 with the cruise on and an SUV comes up from behind and wants to go by (doing 90+). You just don't have a lot of gas pedal to add. So the SUV driver gets pissed. Keep in mind you're in a 70 zone too. It's when you're in Oklahoma where everyone is doing 85+ in a 75 zone that gets weird, because even the semi's are doing 75+. Most of the other states I drive thru, semi's are reduced in speed.

But yes, rust IS cancer to a car. And the only real way to fix it is to cut it and replace it. That can get expensive. Not just in time, but materials (patch panels or pieces, paint and primer, plus labor to install it and shoot it). Don't forget there's also the down time of the car to add in (might need another car temporarily).
You mention 5K+ for good paint and body work, well that's the average most anywhere, unless you're a DIYer. Then you gotta find someone/shop half way decent too, as most places do insurance work, as they leave within a week with a nice chunk of money going to the shop (how they stay in business).
Yes, you could set up a spray booth (as long as you don't live in a HOA community), and do a pretty decent job with good quality materials (epoxy primer, 2K primer, paint, clear), but you still have a ton of labor, masking tape and paper to buy, along with different sanding discs/paper, and other tools. It really adds up quickly in the long run. And if you don't have it in stock, it adds up even quicker in the short run. I think that's why people are looking at wraps, and plasti-dipping as alternatives to paint.
Just some random thoughts to make you think.

 

I really don't know what the deal is with headlights though. I think it might be related more to the kind of plastic it is, versus what we do to it. I only say that as my son has headlight covers on his 98 Civic, and when you take them off the headlights look brand new. His covers still look pretty damn good after 6 years of use, so they might be a different kind of plastic. I had a 97 S-10 that came from Oklahoma City, and the headlights in it were toast. I swapped in some glass ones, and it made 1 hell of a difference. And those lights came out of a 95 from Texas. My 2006 full size Chevy truck has baked headlights in it too. Some day I'll put in a new set though, as they're plastic. Those lights however have not seen salt or brine (I keep it off the road in winter). They have seen 9 years of being sandblasted in Texas. It doesn't help that they don't have any kind of a slope in them like an Accord has.
On my wife's Accord, I just wet sanded them with 400 grit, and clear coated them (used the left over clear from painting the hood). They look almost brand new now. If you look on e-bay, you can find replacements (with new bulbs) for about 80 a pair. So it's not like they're rare or anything. I'll probably do the lenses on my 99 before summer is over, as 1 looks worse than the other, although both look decent.

 

I have to agree I kind of think some of it has to do with the plastic material they are using, cause I bet you money they make a plastic resin that resist U.V. rays and would work great for headlights.

I normally use the different stages of wet sanding as well with the headlights and try to apply multiple layers of hydrophobic wax afterwards to add a extra layer of protection. But if you park outside facing the sun here it will always come back and there is where I think you are right about it being the "Material" they chose to use.

 

I just did the lenses on Midnight and they look almost brand new now. They were horrible and yellow when I started. I used Meguiars Plast-X polish and went over them 3 times each. They came back crystal clear on the outside, but still have a tiny little bit of moisture on the inside.

The ones on Connie would have taken more time than they were worth; paid $115 for a pair of DECO OEM replacements.

I spent almost a whole day redoing the ones on my Merkur a few years back; sanded them from 400 to 2000, then polished for a few hours. They look brand new again, but it was a lot of work to bring them back.

Really miss glass headlights like my 4th gen had. They looked as good as new the day I got rid of that car, and I never had to do anything more difficult than washing them.

 

Wife and I were taking a nap and when we woke up the package was at the front door.

 

that's something to wake up to!!!! is it short ram or cold air?

 

I just went ahead and got her the V2 cold air, personally I have nothing against short rams, just not for us daily sitting in traffic with the A/C blowing in 100*+ days we have in Tx.

The bay already has quite the heat soak after trying to pull ambient temp air like that threw a hot condenser and then a hot radiator, then again blowing that hot air onto a hot header and flows over the motors until it swirls around finding it's exit.

I just pictured it if I was locked in a hot box on a summer day, I'd use a straw to breathe cooler outside air vs breathing my own heat soaked containment.

I am thankful enough my wife knows it's a car and not a boat lol, this way very unlikely to end up "Fish tanking" the motor as I like to call it ,lol.

Any ways, It might rain here soon and looking a lil cloudy, so I just grabbed some quick pics and as such did not have time to clean the engine bay so forgive us.

I wish I had taken some old pictures of the old OEM intake actually separating and crumbling as you held onto it, it is hard to tell from these pictures, but the part that bends is actually separating at every seam. Also the air vent tube hole on that intake arm that comes from the valve cover had already been glued back on as a quick "till we get paid" moment lol.

 

Looks good in there. Not bad for a lazy Easter afternoon's job. I may have to look into something like that. How was the fit of the unit?