6th Gen Honda Civic VTi

I bought my MB6 with 74k miles or so on it 7 years + ago - 1998 one

its been very reliable, "warm" hatch - I use VTEC liberally - and frequently go to 8k revs every day

its now up to 158k miles - and still on oriignal clutch, gearbox etc etc

the only things I've replaced on it are:

exhaust
suspension
heater blower motor
battery
lambda sensor

:) it surprises even some quite decent cars at traffic lights too .. its not that quick off the mark as its high geared - but in first you can get to 40 .. so if its a 40 limit and they have to change gear .....

extra positives - the 1.8VTIs all have front Limited Slip Diff :) which can be good fun and very useful on damp road days

note the 1.6VTI does not have LSD

negatives ?

doesn't handle quite as well as I'd like at the rear - its a bit "soggy" - helped a bit if you put some weight in the boot.
Also seems to scrape through the emissions tests on MOT each year.
likes petrol ! I average only low 30s on longer runs, and 20 ish or lower around town

also eats tyres - but I think thats as I enjoy driving it too much .... I've found the current tyres I've put on work verywell with the car (FALKEN 8 somethings)

overall though very cheap motoring - and I don't regret my purchase at all
 
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We (my GF and I) have the the SR version, I think it's 120 something bhp.

It cost us £100, we've had it for 18 months and put 28000 miles onto it. It has leather, air con and it's quite quick for what it is. The rear arches almost fell out so that cost £100 to fix up and spray can over so it could pass the most recent MOT. CV joints at the front had also failed and were replaced. Engine is rock solid though.

Lovely little car, it's done us well for what we have spent on it.
 
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The clutch needs changing as 1st gear judders but we're going to wait out I think, it's been doing it for the best part of 10000 miles lol.

She is buying a new car next year, unsure what yet but I am half tempted to keep the Civic rather than see it scrapped.
 
lemonade said:
Might be going to see one tomorrow.

Does anyone know if this car uses some special clutch? Also do they come with alarms as standard? Anything else to look out for?
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Clutch is a standard Honda item, same one used in the B16A engine AFAIK. It's not a bad job to change them either, as clutches go.

These have a timing belt so either make sure this has been changed, or budget for a change. Again though, it's not a difficult job though if it has aircon it's a bit of a pain.

The void bushes in the rear trailing arms are a very common source of MOT failures (common to numerous Hondas and Rovers of the era). Cheap to buy, a bit of a PITA to replace without a two post ramp though.

The heater fan resistor pack always fails on these cars at some point, hopefully yours will already have been changed. The symptoms are loss of one or more fan speeds, though maximum speed will always work. Failure is exacerbated by people not changing the pollen filter.

Rear wheel bearings are a common failure, Very easy to change since you buy the entire hub with bearing already installed. The downside is this assembly is quite expensive.

Check for a rotting radiator, the fins in mine had mostly disappeared so I had to fit a new one.

Rear ARB drop links wear to the point that the balls can pop out, giving you no ARB operation. These were surprisingly expensive, about £50 for two from local motor factors but you may be able to source them more cheaply if you don't need them urgently like I did. However the pattern ones I bought looked far better designed and built than the OEM ones.

Handbrake can be a bit crap, especially if some bodger has "adjusted" it by winding the cables up which stops the caliper mechanism working correctly.
 
Dogbreath said:
The heater fan resistor pack always fails on these cars at some point, hopefully yours will already have been changed. The symptoms are loss of one or more fan speeds, though maximum speed will always work. Failure is exacerbated by people not changing the pollen filter.
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How much are these? I think this job needs doing in mine (Civic not the ATR).
 
MilanoChris said:
How much are these? I think this job needs doing in mine (Civic not the ATR).
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The are pretty cheap and very simple to change. You need to remove the glovebox to expose the fan and resistor pack, but it's only a few bolts.

You can do this even cheaper buy replacing the resistors on your original unit, but you will need to do a bit of soldering and the complete resistor pack is so cheap it's hardly worth while. Some people also replace the wire coils with big ceramic coated power resistors, but unless you get exactly the right values you end up with useless range of fan speeds, and they are much more bulky than the proper resistance wire coils.
 
I think it's that anyway.

I'm pretty sure the fans are next to useless and either don't blow hot or don't blow cold.

She's got the car and is in Dorset atm so will confirm and post back if that is the issue, and then order.
 
If the pollen filter is clogged then you get barely more than a waft of air through the vents, and since the resistors are cooled by the airflow from the fan, this causes them to overheat and burn out. If the pollen filter hasn't been changed in your ownership then change it at the same time you do the resistor pack (the filter is in the same location as the resistor pack). They are about £10 from memory.

If the problem is simply temperature i.e. it's stuck on hot or cold then the problem is either down to the linkages that operate the various flaps within the heater assembly, or if cold all the time you may have a clogged heater matrix or simply an airlock. Another possibility is the engine thermostat; mine jammed open during winter and the engine would barely get warm enough to move the temperature gauge, which also made the heater useless.
 
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The pollen filter was changed around 3 months ago.

Still waiting on her reply, reception doesn't appear to be so good where she is. :)

But your post above explaining the symptoms rang a massive bell.
 
my fan blower itself went (2 of my resistors gone too - so only have 3 and 4)

fan blower from Honda was 280 ! ouch

so went for a Rover 400 one off Ebay - 50 quid - fitted it myself and works a treat :)

went through one year without it - summer was fine - but winter - right pain in the wot-nots for steaming up
 
Okay pollen filter is not confirmed to have been changed, but she says the blowers only work on 3 & 4.

So new pollen filter and resister pack a good shout then?
 
MilanoChris said:
Okay pollen filter is not confirmed to have been changed, but she says the blowers only work on 3 & 4.

So new pollen filter and resister pack a good shout then?
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Yes, this is a classic resistor pack failure symptom. Usually position 3 carries on working as it has the largest and most robust resistor, position 4 uses no resistors so will always work (providing the fan motor etc. is ok). It's not more than a 10-15 minute job to change both.
 
Cheers mucho for the infomation. Went to see the car, everything was in good order apart from one of the rear arch which was rotted really badly, the guy put some plaster on it to stop it but you can feel and see the rot underneath which was really quite bad. Shame as the rest of the car was pretty good for the age, probably could have haggled for £600-700, but the rot simply put me off.
 
MikeHiow said:
I love people who seem to get offended when you mention the commonality between Hondas and Rovers/MG.
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I think most of these people are correcting others who don't know what they are talking about.

No one would dispute the similarities as the platform is essentially the same. However, it's not a Rover creation, it's Honda one that was licensed to Rover. This was in the same era where you'd find Honda engines in some Rovers allegedly due to Rover not getting their engine line ready in time.

As far as I'm aware, very few mechanical parts are transferable due to the engines and drivetrains being totally different. Obviously Rover tried to customise it to their taste and so the interiors are different and so are the body parts. The chassis is obviously the same and perhaps some basic trim and peripherals. But I never put any Rover parts on mine on my ownership, but thats no snobbery - if they were cheaper, I would have done so.
 
Gayjin said:
I think most of these people are correcting others who don't know what they are talking about.

No one would dispute the similarities as the platform is essentially the same. However, it's not a Rover creation, it's Honda one that was licensed to Rover. This was in the same era where you'd find Honda engines in some Rovers allegedly due to Rover not getting their engine line ready in time.
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Likewise you'd also find a Rover engine in the Honda Accord and Civic, since Honda didn't have a suitable diesel engine at the time.

Gayjin said:
As far as I'm aware, very few mechanical parts are transferable due to the engines and drivetrains being totally different.
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Loads of parts are the same, though there are lots of small differences around the car (aside from the major panel differences). The entire suspension design is identical apart from spring rates (and hub PCD in the case of the MB6), same steering rack, same steering column, most of the dash is very similar (different faces on gauges etc). Fitting a B16A into a Rover 400/45/ZS would not be a particularly difficult job.
 
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My MB6 lasted me well, and apart from wheel bearings and brake calipers and of course the heater resistor, nothing ever went wrong. The rear brake calipers are more or less the same as rover ones, although rover ones are just a tad smaller so you can't get a new disc and 2 new pads in at the same time, so I used to have slightly worns on the outside of the hub so I could keep an eye on their wear rate.
Don't worry about the syncro unless it's really bad, mine crunched 3-4'th on vtec since the day I got it. 5 years and 50k miles later and it was no worse than day 1.
A friend has it now and he is loving it, he says he never gets tired of surprising the boy racers! lol. Oh and he's had the "is that a rover with a bodykit" etc.
 
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