Timing problem with a VX
 

Well I might just buy a VX with less then 100k miles on it. The car is clean, no rust, and this VX seems in real good shape. I'm going to see the car tonight, 2 hours trip to go. The only problem would be the timing the owner told me. She told me that the car need a TIMING. She described it to me like this: when crusing in gear, the car rpm will suddenly drop from 2500 to 1700 lets say, and then go back to normal. But the car never stall or anything.

I'm wondering what exactly will I have to change or do and what price will it cost. Is that a valve adjustment, the O2 sensor, ect. I aint gonna buy the car until I find out about that. Anyway I'm going to try it tonight and will have more info to give you to try to help me.

If the RPM drops like that I would suspect a slipping clutch, and when the RPM drops at a steady speed like that , it means the clutch is actually grabbing properly then.

Take the car to a Good Honda mechanic if you can and get it checked out.

good luck! seems like drastic RPM drop !! It seems a lot of VX owners are having problems with power loss and lower than expected FE. I've never heard of a car having the RPM drop without the speed dropping too. If you were cruising on the highway in 5th gear at 2500rpm you'd be doing over 80 miles an hour and if your speed were to drop along with the RPM you'd be doing 50mph at 1700rpm. So is the rpm dropping without the speed of the car dropping? That to me would seem like a very serious problem and a sure sign to steer clear of the car.

Check for a mechanic locally that will inspect it for you. Then you can have a bargaining chip to reduce the price of the car depending on whether the tachomerter is just being funky or the clutch is slipping.

Yes I will get it inspect, also to see the compression of the engine. But how much a clutch cost, with installed?

If you can do it yourself, it can be as cheap as $100, but to have it done can be from $300 - $500 dollars.

Yeah, doesn't sound like a timing issue. Is the car a manual? Doesn't seem like they would have come up with the timing thing on their own... I wonder where they heard that from?

I agree, get the car checked out by a mechanic.

I don't see how it would be timing related.

I would assume it is either a problem with the tach (which could be a ground issue, a distributer issue, or an instrument cluster issue) or possibly the clutch.

it sounds like the clutch is starting to grab properly, as the RPM's drop, they it starts to slip again, if it just feels like the engine speed is droping, and the tac reads the same then it's the o2 sensor, if someone checked it out and said that it is a problem with the timing, then I would guess that the timing belt is off by one notch, as the timing belt should line up with a 2nd arrow, insted of the top of the head like most cars, and is commenly installed wrong when replaced, but I would start out with a test drive, and offer at least $500 less then the asking price because of the "cost of fixing the problem"