Paranoia

[suffolkboy]

Hello everyone - OK I admit it , fell on love with the BEAT - saw one, bought it and now realise the questions I should have asked - Oh well !!! - join the club I guess !!

So - now I know I need to check if the distrubuter has been changed / what serial number. Am I picking up that Honda will replace it as a product recall ????

So - now I know I should have checked if the CAM belt has been changed.....doh.... I'd have done that if buying any other car ... what is it about this BEAT thing !!!!!

There's a few little niggles which I'll get sorted.

Air con not working.
Passenger side central locking not working
Radio still on Jap frequencies

Main worry of the moment is a rattle / grinding noise when in neutral - goes as soon as I depress the clutch - only seems to do it once the car is warmed up - any suggestions?

Go on - give it to me straight - I'm a man, I can take it !!!!

I'll get round to filling in profile / pictures of the beast in due course.

Oh - by the way - adrianp is it? Ipswich Beat owner - the yellow one with Honda Beat down the side - saw it down Sproughton Road and it inspired me to buy a BEAT - so "YOU ARE TO BLAME". Your website has been invaded by a program that trys to download something or other - best you look into it.

[Adam]

Air con could have been empty before the car went on the boat for safety.

Central locking was never an option on the ca which means that people did it after they got the car so you need to take off the door panel and look.

As for the radio, you need a band expander which you can get in a lot of places, it just plugs into the antenna at the back and pushes the frequences forward.

Rattle is most likely release bearing on the clutch. But I would leave that alone for now, unless you have clutch issues.

And the distributor should be done by honda but first open the door and check the latch screw for a red dot, this would mean that the distributor has been either changed or replaced.

[adrianp]

Hi Suffolkboy,

Typical, I go and sell mine because I wasn't using it as much as I wanted to and now another one turns up on my doorstep... :rolleyes:

Ta for the Website info, it looks like the hosts I use for web forwarding have decided to stick a load of adverts into the pages, it used to be fine whilst I was paying for the service but they stopped that side of it and made it free, I guess they get paid more from the advertisers than they do from the users. :(

I've changed my links so that they point to my direct homepage for now...

Now, to your questions...

1) Aircon.

Couple of possibilities, Either it has a leaky pipe/rad somewhere or it hasn't been used like it should (should be run weekly for a few mins even in winter) and the gas has leaked out via the compressor seals, Either way, it will probably need a recharge with a dye in it to find out where the problem is. (Marine Auto Electrics did my R12 to R134 conversion for me and it worked fine)

2) Central locking.

As mentioned, the beat didn't have central locking as std, It's probably part of the alarm system, when I had mine fitted, they had problems with the motors and ended up having to replace them with better ones as they kept blowing the locking fuses... Hopefully it willl be a simple fix (that is if it even had a motor put in for the passenger side...!!!)

3) Radio.

The radio will still show Jap frequencies even if it has a band expander fitted, all the expander does is lower the incoming frequency to allow you to pick up more than Radio 2...lol

4) Rattle.

Like Adam said, the rattle is probably the clutch release bearing, it is quite common for this to start rattling on many cars, normally it will keep on doing this right until the clutch wears out the same as it would without the rattle, obviously if it gets worse then it might pay to have it changed but without hearng it we can't advise much more.

5) Distributor.

Unfortunately Honda UK seem VERY reluctant to honour recalls on the Beat, I think the problems are the fact that they are getting on a bit now and also that they have no idea what they are over here with only a select few dealerships even willing to work on them. (John banks honda wouldn't even change the oil on mine when I asked them 5yrs ago)
SteveM on here works for a dealership in kent that knows what a beat is (steve has had a few) and several people have made the trip down to have work done (me included)

6) Cam Belt.

Unless you can find a sticker on the car somewhere that says when it was replaced, I'd look at getting it done fairly quickly. Honda reccomended 100,000Km (60k Miles) between changes BUT apparently they have been known to go in little more than 50,000Km (30k Miles)

Any help, just ask and I'm sure someone on here will be able to help.

Ady.

[Steve_M]

Originally posted by suffolkboy
Am I picking up that Honda will replace it as a product recall ????


Not anymore, I managed to get a few through, but honda UK have now said No, as Honda UK were not getting paid by honda japan.

Your looking at approx £250 for a new distributor.

[LawrenceHarding]

Depending on what else breaks a seized distributor could cost upward of £1000 to deal with.