drivetofive

Odometer:  509,088

Uh oh – the “Maintenance Required” indicator turned to yellow from green!  Not to despair, on these old Legends the indicator is driven by the odometer and it rolls over every 7,500 miles regardless of what maintenance is done to the vehicle.  There’s no relying on a computer here to tell me when my car needs mechanical attention.  Today’s vehicles are far more advanced – constantly communicating with their drivers about low tire pressure, upcoming service intervals, and more.

I grabbed some fuel on the way home from work today.  As we’ve seen every year around this time, it’s costing more and more to fill up a tank of gas these days.  One thing that I have never cut corners on in my Acura is gasoline quality.  “Premium Unleaded Fuel Only” is written on the fuel gauge in the cluster — and I take it seriously!  Usually that means 91 octane, but on a few of my east coast trips I’ve managed to find 93.  The only time this car has seen anything less was on the Alaska trip back in 2006 and my dad and I had to settle for 87 in the Yukon Territory.

Premium is running $4.19 today at the Shell station in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Would you believe I saved my receipt for the first time I ever fueled up in this Acura Legend?  The date was March 26, 2003, and I paid $2.49 for 91 octane in Firebaugh, California right off Interstate 5 after buying the car in San Jose and heading home to Utah.

81 degrees today – and already using the A/C in March!  Welcome to Phoenix.

I took the opportunity here to check the fluid levels (again, old fashioned since my car doesn’t tell me when it’s thirsty for anything!).  Oil and coolant levels looked great.

Hard to believe that nearly 10,000 miles have already passed since the Drive to Five reached its completion.

I came to the aid of a friend (and his family) who needed help with a ride from the Phoenix airport this past weekend.  Don’t try this at home!  We made a very short drive with six people crammed into my Legend coupe.  Recognizing the space issue I made the comment, “Wow, are you guys okay?” and Greg’s smart remark back, “Oh, I’m fine, thanks!” as he enjoyed plenty of room in the front seat!   He took a picture so that we could remember just how cozy we all were.

The Legend coupe finally got some new OEM upper control arms this week, thanks to Wes Hawkins.  Wes first worked on my Legend in 2010 when it had 434,000 miles on it, but he’d done a lot of work for me in years prior on an old Honda Prelude I owned.

Here’s one of the old upper control arms with 509,030 miles on it.  There was a lot of play in these – they were well past their prime I think.  It’s now handling great with the new ones!  All 4 struts on the car are still original to its October 1993 build date.

I was digging through some of my auto literature collection and came across the October 2006 and May 2007 issues of Honda Tuning magazine.  I was featured in the “Grassroots” (basically, readers’ rides) section of BOTH these issues — with the same photo & description!  I guess the editors inadvertently published my story twice:

My Legend had about 265,000 miles on it at the time this went to print.

Full page scanned:

A fun little walk (drive) down memory lane there.

I’m starting to field some reader questions on the all-new Acura ILX and will be responding to these via Acura’s special Facebook page dedicated to this experience.  I’ve had a blast interacting with other people who are as passionate about the Acura brand as I am!

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

This entry was posted on March 14, 2012 at 2:06 am and is filed under Legend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.