Old Car and Bike rambling

My recently acquired 2003 Honda Accord EX 4 cyl had a faulty door lock actuator in the front passenger side door.  Here is a run down of what I did wrong in case you find yourself in a similiar situation. Shopping for door lock actuators - Prices go from around $10 to over $40. I mistakenly ordered a pair of door lock actuators ($20 for left and right) for a coupe and received 2 black actuators that were not sized correctly for my 4 door sedan which has smaller white actuators. I did not discover the problem until after I had the door panel off and the actuator removed from the door latch assembly. It was hot, the flies were landing on me and drinking my sweat and I just wanted to button the door back up and stay cool inside so I searched for the closest parts store that had the part in stock and went there to buy it for $45. (I did return the 2 wrong parts but did not get a full refund, but I'm ok with that...$16 back in my pocket is better than $0) Reassembling the door l...

2003 Honda Accord EX 4 Cyl - Graphite Pearl I just acquired a new car from my generous brother-in-law.  He wanted the car gone so he could buy his son a newer Acura. Since it's a 12 year old car it's basically an old car and I can talk about it here even though it only had 35k miles on it when I took ownership.  Since I live almost 2,000 miles from my Sister and Brother-in-law, we arranged for my daughter and wife to make a trip to visit and to drive our car home Driving it around, it still drives like it's brand new although this first year car has a laundry list of items that require some attention in order to make it a pretty decent car for a few years of continued ownership. The car was involved in a left rear broadside collision but it was repaired.  Visually, the car is 5/10 due to a little rust, some dents, and lots of peeling clear coat. I have some receipts from when the car was brought in to the dealership for repairs. Here's a run down of what the...