AtWhatMileage
Glass · 18 owner reports

Other visibility problem on the 1998 Honda Civic

Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 18
With an odometer reading 3
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $150–$1,400
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 8th

When other visibility problem gets reported

There are 18 reports of other visibility problem on the 1998 Honda Civic, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 75,000 miles. It is the 8th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 3 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 110,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $150–$1,400 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 26 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2004, at a median of 30 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 110,000 miles.

By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 229; the 1998 has 18. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1996 Honda Civic other visibility problem 106k
  2. 1997 Honda Civic other visibility problem 103k
  3. 1998 (this one) 110k
  4. 1999 Honda Civic other visibility problem 78k
  5. 2000 Honda Civic other visibility problem 87k
  6. 2001 Honda Civic other visibility problem 109k
  7. 2002 Honda Civic other visibility problem 60k
  8. 2003 Honda Civic other visibility problem 25k
  9. 2004 Honda Civic other visibility problem 30
  10. 2005 Honda Civic other visibility problem 52k
  11. 2006 Honda Civic other visibility problem 45k
  12. 2007 Honda Civic other visibility problem 40k
  13. 2008 Honda Civic other visibility problem 45k
  14. 2009 Honda Civic other visibility problem 38k
  15. 2010 Honda Civic other visibility problem 39k
  16. 2011 Honda Civic other visibility problem 40k
  17. 2012 Honda Civic other visibility problem 8k
  18. 2013 Honda Civic other visibility problem 3k
  19. 2014 Honda Civic other visibility problem 30k
  20. 2015 Honda Civic other visibility problem 24k
  21. 2016 Honda Civic other visibility problem 25k
  22. 2017 Honda Civic other visibility problem 12k
  23. 2018 Honda Civic other visibility problem 59k
  24. 2019 Honda Civic other visibility problem 13k
  25. 2020 Honda Civic other visibility problem 17k
  26. 2021 Honda Civic other visibility problem 15k
  27. 2022 Honda Civic other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  28. 2024 Honda Civic other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  29. 2025 Honda Civic other visibility problem
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

1998 honda civic ex coupe- great car except for the power windows. I have not been able to have them professionally fixed because of the cost. They have been stuck in the up position for a few years now. They come off track if I try to roll them down and the glass literally falls into the door. *jb

90,000 miles NHTSA complaint 521593 filed 2005-02-13

The driver side window is not working properly. The window has a hard time opening and closing. Sometimes the window would get stuck while in operation and the only way to keep window moving is to constantly switch the window switch back and forth between opening and closing. Worst is when the window would slip out of its sliding bracket. When this happens,the window is totally stuck and the door has to be taken apart so that the window can be put back into its bracket. This is a potential safety issue. *nm

166,000 miles NHTSA complaint 604813 filed 2006-11-30

Tl* the contact owns a 1998 honda civic ex. The contact stated the front driver and passenger side windows came out of the rolling track constantly. The contact had to remove the door panel in order to put the window back on the rail and resolve the issue each time the failure recurred. The contact stated that she was unable to open the window. The vehicle was taken to the mechanic who determined that the mechanism that allowed the windows to be opened or closed needed to be replaced. The contact made the repair but failure persisted. The current mileage was 140,000. The failure mileage was 110,000.

110,000 miles NHTSA complaint 922948 filed 2012-06-14

Also reported on the 1998 Honda Civic

Other powertrain problem

40 reports median 60k

Other electrical problem

39 reports median 154k

Airbag failed to deploy in a crash

38 reports median 72k

Other body or interior problem

38 reports median 162k

Exhaust leak or fumes in the cabin

21 reports median 91k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 18 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 18 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does other visibility problem happen on the 1998 Honda Civic?

Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 110,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other visibility problem on the 1998 Honda Civic?

18 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed