My Love hate relationship with a 3rd gen prelude
I purchased a 3rd gen prelude in 2015 and loved the car. But after the struggle of getting it, and realizing the troubles of owning one. I began to hate the car, now I am blogging about my experiences. This is going to be a series of ongoing posts about my extremely unhealthy obsession of 3rd generation preludes. By the way, I still love the car!
Start of a love-hate relationship with a 3rd gen prelude
A few years ago, I had a crisis and wanted to purchase a project car. I knew I wanted an older Honda. So I searched Kijiji and came across this 90′ prelude si. The price was pretty sweet at only $900, and the car looked like it was in good condition. The other thing was, it had under 200,000 Km and it was safetied. This meant I would be able to drive it right away!
So I decided I would go and take a look, I found out someone else was interested in it, but still went anyway. The second I sat in the car, pushed in the clutch and turned the engine over, I realized I needed to own this car.
I told the guy, that he needed to call me right away if the other guy bailed… Two days later, waiting impatiently like any person with ADHD would do. Finally, I got all that sounded like bad news. But it turned out the other guy bailed and the car was mine. So I ran straight to the bank, grabbed the money and went straight for the car. I offered the guy $600, we settled on $750.

The first big disappointment
As soon as I got the car, I ran to the insurance company to get insurance. And what I heard shocked my world, it turned out the car was two days out of safety. I just realized I purchased a car, without a safety inspection and knew I was in trouble. I honestly felt like I was going to explode. If I would have bought the car two days prior, I wouldn’t have had this problem. I started to freak out, because if anything was wrong with the car when I brought. it would not pass a safety inspection. And who knew was was wrong with the car at this point.
So, I purchased a 5-day travel permit on the car and drove it home cursing the whole way.
And search begins
So as soon as I got home, I started using Facebook to try and find anyone who knew someone, who would be able to get this car to pass safety. A couple days a later, I found a guy who was going to take a look at the car and see what it needed. The only thing I knew about this was the guy, was that he was a mechanic of a friend of mine and worked out of this guys shop. So figured what the hell, I took the car to him, and he told me I should have it back in a couple weeks. He told me to give him a call every couple days for progress on the car.
After about two months of trying to get updates and missed calls from him, a bunch of text messages. I began to wonder if I would ever get my car back, or ever get the car on the road. Finally, I got a text message 2 am one night saying the car was ready. He told me it was about $700 worth of work. That morning I ran to the bank, got the cash, and got the car. The papers checked out, and I was able to insure the car.
I gotta tell you, the feeling of being able to drive this car is unexplainable.

Doing research on 3rd gen preludes
I pretty much drove it everywhere I got a chance too. I will admit I spent a lot of ours just driving the car for no reason what so ever. Also, a couple people offered to buy it off me on the spot. Thinking they were crazy for offering me cash and did not know why. I decided at this point, I would start doing some research on the car. I found out 3rd gen preludes are actually pretty rare. So I thought that was a bonus.
I also found out that the engine within the car, the b20a5 was called the “bastard B” for being almost impossible to modify. It was the precursor for the 90’s b series engine that was majorly popular in the Honda Civic, Integra, Del Sol, and CR-X lineups. And impossible to modify meant that, no other b-series parts worked on the damn thing. So that limited the number of options to work with or rebuild the engine.

And the problems start
Anyways, after I learned more about the car, I didn’t really care, because it was my new baby and I was going to do whatever it took to fix it up and make it look amazing. But, after a month or so cruising around Winnipeg, MB in the spring time weather. I noticed that the car was starting to overheat. And figured it had to do something with the water pump the guy I bought it off of mentioned.
So I decided I would investigate which made me start to notice a lot of other issues under the hood. Given that the water pump on this car was in such a tight spot, I wasn’t looking forward to replacing it. But then again, I had swapped a civic engine a few years prior, which I talked about in the post “I pushed a car for 3.5 km with passion!.” So, I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing. In the end, I did a lot more work to the car then I anticipated.
But, I’ll save that experience for another post, and continuation of my love-hate relationship with 3rd gen preludes…
Question!
Do you have a project car or a love-hate relationship with your car? If so, comment below, I would love to read your comments, and or posts on it!
March 23, 2017 @ 5:16 pm
Lol first week I went to drive my lude water pump went . I didn’t know how to work on any car, but that was the start now I do all the maintenance on my 3rd gen.
March 23, 2017 @ 5:18 pm
Hey Joey, thanks for the comment!
I know that feeling of having something go on your car all to well, stay tuned for my next post… Its going to be a funny one about this on going love hate relationship!
March 23, 2017 @ 12:29 pm
Thanks for checking out my 3G resto blog (https://corporalgreen.wordpress.com) – not sure if mine will help, inspire or deter you but these cars are definitely worth the effort as they’re great to drive and still turn heads nearly 30 years after they were fist launched!
Good luck with all the fixes and upgrades – I’ll keep checking back!
~Phil.
March 23, 2017 @ 12:32 pm
Hey Phil,
Thanks for the comment.
A lot of people have told me it isn’t worth it to fix one up, but I don’t think anything will deter me from rebuilding one of these magnificent cars.
Good luck to you too!
March 23, 2017 @ 2:08 pm
Good luck with your car! I have had almost the same exact relationship with my car. I also bought it as a project car in 2014, and still haven’t driven it! Check out my build thread on preludepower.com
http://www.preludepower.com/forums/showthread.php?t=428289
March 23, 2017 @ 2:30 pm
Hey Brandon,
Thanks for the comment!
I am on Prelude power, that site has a lot of great information for newbies, and a lot of great threads on preludes people have worked on.
Ill be sure to check out your thread dude!
February 17, 2020 @ 6:13 pm
I’ve got an 89 prelude and I’ve got a pretty similar relationship with it. I love it but can’t stand having to fix it every weekend or so. Runs great even when something breaks. It’s never left me stranded. I just hate having to fix it.