Guys cost or research is not the culprit. I did everything myself that I could, basically all but take the engine out kinda deal, I don't have a hoist nor a dyno to tune it etc. The only real correlation here is aftermarket has a higher rate of failure by far. I found this out the hard way trying to boost and ended up getting an H22 swap instead, more OEMish. All I was hoping for was to get a bit of durability and the cheap performance car tunning generally proclaims. Some of you say you get what you pay for. Well I paid about 10k for the H22 swap so far and the value is way to low. I didn't get what I paid for, I got less than I paid for.
Research is money too btw. Think the time lost researching you could work and get paid an hourly wage. Either that or pay someone to do it who invested his time in research. When you do work by yourself it's not free, and most of the time to do it right you need tools and it's maybe even more expensive. I have to teach as part of my graduate program contract, I think I get higher payoffs by researching in economics. I don't mind paying someone to do their work if it's just, but it really isn't, I find myself always working on my car tightening screws that others forgot to put in, it's too sloppy and parts are ****ty, like Drift said you need to spend some quality time and money to figure out the 1 in 20 that works well.
In the last two years I've gone though half a dozen shops that I've dealt with on more than one occasion until I got fed up and moved on to the next. These shops were chosen not based on cost but based on reputation, research or what have you. I've had my car worked on in shops that have been on TV, shops that are true legends on the forums, several Honda Services while I was stock, shops that cost way too much, Honda specialty shops, shops that specialize in only the thing I needed them to do etc. I don't want to drag names in dirt, I think this is an industry wide phenomena.
I think we put up with most of it and some of you may not even realize the degree of failure because we have a higher tolerance for mishaps. An Accord however is hardly a toy car and usually a daily driver. Reliability and drive-ability should be at the top of the list. I'm all for having fun, but we do share the road and some of us do need it to start-up in the morning.
Well I'm not here to say I'm quitting at least not yet. I've been on the forums before I bought my car, researched it for a year before buying, I've been here since before this site. I will most likely keep this car until something irreversible happens to it. I built one piece fiberglass doors to house 10 inch midbases, that took 2 months out of my life and some lung capacity, I built a carputer that integrates the Hondata display as a real time monitoring device, a track ready suspension etc. I know how much time I put in this car and it's not a good deal to let it go, because time is money.
