u/Nikonnate627

Hi all, as the title says, I'm considering adding a lightly used Gen 3 to my garage as a general commuter/winter car. After an entire driving life of cars that, at best, barely break 20mpg I'm ready to make the move to a hybrid for my next mileage sponge. I'm not particularly interested in any of the typical silly BS that most car shoppers are interested in; I don't give two fcks about the tech or 99% of the other features. I don't care about driving dynamics or performance as long as it's not dangerously slow on the highway, I have an Rx8 and a 320whp STI for when I want to have fun. My questions to you fine folks are as follows:

I'm primarily considering either a 2019 or early 2020. On top of the older model years generally being less expensive, I'm an electrical engineering tech and know all too well what happened to the auto industry as a whole during the Covid chip shortage. Is there cause for concern with the Covid and post Covid cars, or did the later MY20s-22s dodge the issues that a lot of cars of this era had?

What's your real world mpg like? Particularly interested to hear examples of touring vs lower trims as they seem to pay a big mileage penalty just for having bigger wheels. I tend to see a lot more touring trims come up for sale, and I'm also a sucker for top trims. Not sure if it's worth it though unless mpg hit isn't too bad. Do you notice a drop in mpg when changing to non OEM tires/how bad are the OEM tires in terms of performance? Along those lines, what are these like in the snow? I'm perfectly willing to get a set of steelies/winter tires if good all-seasons tank Mpg and/or don't do well enough in the snow. This is the one performance metric I REALLY care about.

I maintain all my cars myself. How bad are these to work on? I have a bidirectional scan tool and extensive electrical knowledge to help me on the hybrid side and mechanical knowledge for everything else so I am not afraid of getting my hands dirty, but I have only heard of one of these having battery issues so far and it was at 300k miles. Other than that, how easy are these to work on? I'm very much not a fan of transverse mounted engines and the hybrid components further constrain available room for activities, but at least it's inline and not a V-style like the one I just got rid of.

That transitions neatly into my last question, which is how are these in terms of overall reliability? Any common wrenching pitfalls? Problem items to watch out for? Maintenance intervals to increase? Anything that makes these cost-prohibitive for a tight-ass such as myself, or are these generally textbook bulletproof Honda for a few hundred k with proper maintenance? I'm assuming this engine is direct Injection so do these need that bs walnut blasting that a lot of DI engines need? I come from a background of very needy performance cars so these are the questions I think to ask.

Sorry for the long post... Hope yall take a moment to share some wisdom. Pic for attention, nice spec but who knows if it will still be available when I'm ready to buy. TIA!

Just noticed this sound today. It actually came through louder in the video than it does irl, but it definitely sounds like it's coming from the ports side of the engine. It's not noticeable with the doors closed, I happened to have the door open while running the scan tool in my endless search of answers to another problem. Engine is original at 61.5k miles, sohn/idemitsu premix since I got it at 48k. Meticulous oil changes with 10w-40 and it's obviously never run low (at least while I've had it) bc of the sohn so I highly doubt it's bearing related. I also come from the Subaru EJ world, so I know very well what bearing failure sounds like and unless it presents differently on rotaries, this isn't it. I did just get gas right before noticing it. Didn't fill all the way up bc gas is still insanely expensive where I live, and I filled it from a common hose, so I may have gotten a shot of ditch-water 87 in there causing it to knock a bit. The motor did seem to be shaking a bit more than usual under the hood. No CELs, no obvious driveability issues but idle seems a bit unstable. It has, however, done this intermittently in the past.

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Any other ideas what this might be? I have a bidirectional scan tool, so I can get any data that might be useful.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a non-Chineesium plug-in transformer for the doorbell? This one shat the bed within a year. I've spent the last two or three hours working the problem and can't find a single one of these in the same form factor that's not another piece of Chinese garbage on Amazon that reviews state dies within a year. I do not have existing doorbell wiring to run a typical transformer or I'd have done that a long time ago. This is my only option for continuous power. Appreciate any advice.