AH,

The sticker inside my 91 Civic's glove compartment specifies
the 175's. What's your source for the 165's?

My doggone Civic better last another 100k miles after the
guzillion hours of labor I put into control arm bushings not
long ago.

I had the breather chamber off a few years ago and thought I
replaced the O-ring then, but maybe not. That's a good idea
for older cars. The slowness of the oil accumulating at the
bottom of my oil drain plug suggests a very slow leak. Could
be a poor fitting drain plug (it's metric but aftermarket)
or somewhat stripped oil pan threads. I also suspect the
distributor housing O-ring (or seal near it) is leaking a
wee bit, though it's only three years old.

JT (a.k.a Grumpy): Perfect. I wasn't sure about the rate of
wear of front vs. back. Earlier I returned my fairly new, 5k
mile old tire to the front and the worn one to the rear. No
significant steering wander now. I did not want to spend $50
on a new tire, anyway.

Thanks for the input, AH and JT.

<ah1244@wayne.edu> wrote
> Hi Elle: After seeing your post, I looked up the Viva 2
> tires at
> Walmart and they are listed as 175/70R13, not 165/70R13 as
> specified
> for the 91 Civic. If you find the 165's at Walmart, please
> drop a line.
> I am looking for a new set of tires for my own 91 Civic,
> but the 165's
> are now very hard to come by (Yokohama still makes them,
> but every
> service place I have checked lists them as on backorder).
>
> By the way, as Grumpy notes, your Civic should last
> another 100K miles
> easily. I am planning to get mine beyond 250K
> one-way-or-the-other.
> Your infrequent oil leak may be from the breather chamber
> grommets.....if so, replace the O ring and the grommet
> that connects it
> to the PCV, and you should be good to go.
> Regards.
>
> Elle wrote:
>> Any sage advice on whether to replace the other tires or
>> how
>> to rotate them at this point?
>>
>> Background:
>> 1991 Civic, 179k miles. One of my (then) front tires
>> displayed inboard wear about 7500 miles ago. Back then I
>> rotated it to the rear, did some suspension work, and
>> think
>> I found the main cause of the wear (severely worn
>> stabilizer
>> link and associated bushings). So the wear is not
>> continuing
>> (knock on wood).
>>
>> Yesterday I rotated the worn tire back, from rear to
>> front.
>> Subsequently I noticed steering wander towards the wear
>> side
>> of the tire. I switched my two front tires, and sure
>> enough,
>> the wander switched.
>>
>> Two of my other tires have 30k miles on them. The third
>> has
>> 5k miles on it (got a serious flat a few months ago).
>> None
>> of these three tires are so showing irregular wear; just
>> what looks usual for 30k miles, and certainly not down to
>> the wear bars.
>>
>> I am going to buy at least one new tire this week and
>> change
>> out the badly worn one. The tires are Wal-Mart Viva 2,
>> size
>> as recommended by Honda. Very inexpensive, consistent
>> with
>> my expectation that the car may not last more than five
>> years more.
>>
>> I certainly do not plan on losing any sleep over this. My
>> Civic drives great otherwise, averaging around 42 mpg for
>> the last five fillups. Little oily down below, but not
>> enough to cause garage floor spotting.
>>
>> I have been holding off on the alignment (mentioned some
>> weeks ago) because of this, for good or bad.
>