Ok... So I'm 17 and I recently bought my 1997 Accord LX from my parents. The Accord is sitting firmly at 118k miles, and so far im pleased with the car. There are a few things that have come to my attention that seem to be more of annoyance than actual danger, but none the less, what am I going to do when I sell the car? (4dr's just dont go over well with the ladies) haha...

1.)
The power door locks have always seemed to give me lip, whenever I lock the car, driver side door or passenger side door. The car insists that after I press down the lock button and the car has locked itself, that it is, in fact, not locked at all. The car continues to lock itself! It does this maybe for 5 minutes, but to be honest, I'm not sure how long it does this... but it's stopped in the morning when I start it to go to school. (I don't sit around and wait for the locking spasm to stop... hehe).
But Wait! There's More!
When I bought the car from my parents, some jackass had broken into it via the passenger side window and bent the window frame. They replaced that, but through the process, the passenger side door lock was dissconnected. I'm not sure why, and as a matter of fact, I'm going to ask my dad why it is that way. But anyways, I think its some sort of regulator that deals with the door locks... but as i said, it's more of an annoyance than anything else... the battery doesn't seem to give me a fit after the locking spasm, so I dont think it's anything serious.

2.)
The power windows are extremely slow! Sometimes the passenger window doesn't even want to go up... only when it's wet outside though... Don't ask me why, haha! When my parents owned the car they had it taken to the dealership and all they could do there was grease the window frames and hope for the best. I'm wondering if there is just a weak motor in there, or if there's another motor i could put in to speed things up.

3.)
My stupid check engine light is on, even when I think I have diagnosed and fixed the problem. I recently put on a Tanabe racing catback exhaust (2.5" piping). But to start, I had the car jacked up in my driveway all ready to work on (i even had the mechanics gloves on!) But to my dismay, the catalytic bolts had welded themselves onto the calatytic through extreme heat! I could not get them off!
I sat there with a wrench, and almost killed myself when the wrench flew off and bounced past my head. I took it to the mechanic shop down the street (maybe 3000ft. or like a 1/4 mile) and i had them put it up on the lift and use heat to get those bolts off. I also had them replace the 3 welded on bolts with 3 new ones, but i asked them to put them on loosly, so I could get them off when i got home.
I proceeded to drive the car home, only to realize that the check engine light had come on! I knew that I was leaking exhaust, and i think thats what was wrong... but nonetheless, i removed the stock exhaust, and replaced it with the tanabe exhaust that i had aquired. I tightened everything up very securely and sat in my driveway listening for leaks (this was at 11:30pm... i had the cops called on my because of it!)
I didn't hear any leaks, so i figured i had it on there pretty good... but the check engine light is still on! what can i do to reset it? or is there something else wrong with it, and it will go off when everything is fixed?

The car is driving fine as it is now... not overheating, no clunks coming from the engine... the exhaust sounds amazing! (no farting... this thing was 650 bucks!)

4.)
haha... just kidding... theres no 4... hehe...

Thanks all for any help you can give! Im basically trying to get this car into working condition before i put any more mods into it (headers, CAI)...

i can put pictures up if anyone wants... but believe me... its not pretty... green, 4dr, and a black hood with no grill because of my front end ...
Though, through the i did manage to finaegal 3500$ from the insurance company, and only used 500 of it to fix the damages... so im left with $3000 to get my car back into pristine condition and put some well deserved mods on it!
P.S. i wanna keep the sleeper look going, so no kandy paint or anything...
THANKS!
~Tim

 

1st of all, welcome!
Whew....lots of questions.
1) sounds like a bad door lock actuator
2) try cleaning the window tracks with lots of q tips (there is a thread on this site - try using the search function)
3) try resetting the ecu by either unhooking the negative battery cable for a few minutes, or pulling the "backup/radio" fuse in the underhood fuse box (top right fuse)
4) congrats on finagling $ from your insurance. I am an insurance asjuster and I know we don't give away money! I personally almost like it when we pay for repairs and the person gets it fixed for cheaper than we paid - I know I would do the same thing.

Oh yeah....4 doors always seemed to go over pretty well with the ladies with me! Easieraccess to the back seat

 

if chk engine lite comes back on again after clearing it as per OOaccord advice ( pull the fuse ) .. you need to read the code and input it here ..

 

omg! so the junior parking lot by my school was empty just now, so i went there with my car after our schools band rehearsal and decided to destroy my stock clutch
(original clutch, 120k miles on the car!)
-i just picked up a stage 1 racing clutch... awesome!


-so i found a pile of wet leaves and revved the engine up to like 5k rpm, and then popped the clutch... the wheels broke loose! wow... that was exhilarating!

i did a couple of drifts too, accelerated in 2nd gear and then turned the wheel and kept accelerating, and then i just started sliding! dood

 

lol

 

You may need to use some of that insurance money on a new timing belt if yours has not been changed yet. They are supposed to be changed every 90k miles on your carand itcan becatastrophic if it breaks.

 

timing belt and water pump have been done! I turned off the check engine light... and just bought a cold air intake, so gonna install that when it stops raining...

gotta get some headers, a new paint job, and a front grill...
what i was thinking was take the stock grill and take off the chrome outer ring, then lay down some cool looking mesh of some kind, and also put it on the bumper... then put the chrome back over the grill, do you think that would look cool?

tint also!

but as for the door locks... should i just do some research on the door lock actuators? or are they waaay expensive?

 

not that expensive. try here www.1aauto.com

 

anyone know what aluminum pulleys will do? or what the worst that could happen when i pop my clutch after revving it to like 5,000 rpms? just curious... nothing has gone wrong yet... and its dried up, so no more burnouts

 

The worst that could happen would be snapping your crankshaft and shattering the flywheel sending pieces of it flying through your car which in turn shears your timing belt and resluts in bent/broken valves, pistons, crankshaft, flywheel, transmission casing, radiator, fan (from the pieces that fly out) and a burnt clutch/pressure plate... but that is an absolute worst case scenario...

Aluminum pulleys are lighter weight and oftentimes under-drive your accessories, this allows more power to be transfered to the wheels since it's not lost at the crank, also allows slightly faster revving. www.unorthodoxracing.com or www.aem.com both have them