are there any known problems with a 91 honda prelude with 178 k miles?

Question

I wanna know how hard it is to replace an o2 sensor, and would i need to replace my timeing belt?

Answer 1

It's not hard to replace the o2 sensor. You have a 91 so you only have 1 sensor and it is located in the downpipe, before the cat. Jack up the car, disconnect the sensor from the harness, which is located near the oil filter. All you have to do is follow the wires. Then you take a flare nut wrench slip it over the sensor, loosen and remove.

178k on a well maintained Prelude is not alot of miles. If you have the B21a1 engine, you'll probably be burning some oil. This is due to the FRM sleeves, the sleeves chew up piston rings like crazy. One good thing about the sleeves though is that they're strong, and even after 200k miles, they maintain factory cross-hatching.

With any car that you buy used, you should always replace a number of things, just to make sure.

Timing belt
Spark plugs
Spark plug wires
Distributor cap and rotor
Air filter
Oil change
Transmission oil fill / change
Check coolant
Check P/S fluid
Check clutch - brake - and ABS (If applicable) fluid level
O2 sensor(s) (Recommended but optional)

and if you can get a compression tests done.

I own 2 3g (88-91) preludes, and a good forum to learn about our cars is www.preludepower.com

Answer 2

Many things should be taken into consideration.Do you have service records on this vehicle? If not it wouldn't hurt to change a few parts as follows:
Timing belt ( saves alot of money and bent valves to change prior to it breaking)
Fuel and Air filters
oil and oil filter
plugs and wires

Answer 3

If you just bought this vehicle I'd wonder why a previous owner, knowing what they had, got rid of it. You can't ask a stranger, they just lie. They probaly knew it had a lot of problems coming up because of lack of maintenance.