A New Adventure - 1997 Civic Coupe resurrection

Progress is looking good! Excited to see it running. 

Another Monday update! 

I seem to have very moderate motivation for this one. I feel like in the past I've spent a lot more time 'grinding' on a project, this one I'm taking a more modest pace. I think it's a good thing but in my head it feels like I'm being lazy. Also, I'm trying to pace my spending, and without parts there is only so much one can do. 

Anyhow, This weekends couple-hours worth of work netted me a functional shifter!

New linkage with poly bushings and a Blox short shifter. So of course once it was installed I hopped in the car and made vroom noises and shifted gears. The car hasn't had a shifter in since I've owned it so this was another pretty crucial step towards a functional vehicle! 

Many Vroom Vroom's ensued. 

I also took off that goofy CRV intake and put on the Integra one a friend gave me. It looks like it should work out good once I figure out some injectors. 

Many much more clearances for hoods. 

I also spent a little time cleaning up the PS reservoir and looking at how that was all going to fit. 

And bolted on the crash beam. Which means it isn't on my floor tripping me. 

It's been challenging starting with such a blank slate as I don't have any memory of where things came from. It is a learning experience and I'm grateful for the vast amount of documentation online for these cars. Most things so far have been fairly straight forward, but it's definitely nice knowing many others have done this successfully before.

I get happy when I see this thread brought back for an update. I also struggle with modulating my project progress. I also tend to grind. I always tell myself that I will space it out and enjoy the ride, but in the end, I'm getting up early before work and putting in hours as well as any other free time, turning the whole deal into a job more than a hobby. 

I have the same urethane shifter bushings. I have considered a cheap short shifter many times (not that yours is cheap, but mine would be because my car is ass). But the online reviews talk about people snapping off cheap shifters. I have to think that they're doing some Fast and Furious foolish E36 M3. I think I could use a shifter made out of styrofoam and probably not break it, because...old man ya know.

In reply to Cousin_Eddie :

I really appreciate it man! Your threads are the best kind of encouragement for build OCD and making things nice. I was actually laughing to myself reading your post about the clutch fan that just wouldn't do and the nagging thought of "why do I keep doing this to myself" - I feel the same way at times. MAYBE, just maybe, this Civic will get finished and actually driven for a couple years and enjoyed vs. getting sold and moving on to the next thing. 

I think some of my slower pace is due to just the scope of the project - this is the biggest challenge I've tackled, and I have very little experience with this particular breed of car so I'm not as comfortable just banging it together. Plus it's winter here in Minnesota so the car won't get driven till April regardless of when it's actually done, so there's no specific rush. 

As for the short shifter - we shall see, mine may be cheap. I ordered it from eBay because it was a whole kit with linkage and hardware. I too don't think I'll ever snap a shifter off no matter how cheap. I do have a friend who's broken his Civic shifter a couple times though come to think of it.

Whaaaat double weekly update?! 

That's right, I had some motivation after work yesterday and went out and visited the Civic. 

Front clip is installed. I may later regret or even have to remove this, but sometimes you need some aesthetic motivation to keep things fresh. 

If you look closely, you'll see the E36 M3 panel alignment. The hood, fenders, core support, front bumper, and headlights are all aftermarket. Someone (not me) decided that a 1997 Civic coupe was below their station, so they purchased all new [cheap] 1999 Civic stuff. I'm thinking somewhere along the line somebody wanted to make this an EM1 clone and I decided to roll with it.

As it were, nobody thought it necessary to purchase hood latch securement solutions. Luckily for me I had a set of hood pins lying around from a MK2 VW I did 3 or 4 years ago. I put them to use last night, and though they are a little fast and furious, I've always wanted something with hood pins. 

Man, that panel gap though. 

Some adjustments later and I have it fitting a little nicer. 

Keep in mind - this is a cheap aftermarket hood that flew up on the highway so it's all bent and twisted. I think I can straighten it out more with some time. I do intend on cutting the bracing out of it to add lightness, and either painting or wrapping it. Part of me doesn't want to waste the paint on the hood, the other part of me says that I have it so I may as well use it. I can always get more should I find a nicer hood. 

Oh and big time excitement here: I installed my much cleaner PS fluid reservoir and hooked all the lines back up. Finally that isn't all dragging on the ground when I push the car around. Progress! 

Had some time off work over the holiday, spent very little of it working on the car, but did play around some. 

Took the front suspension apart in order to replace the demolished wheel bearings (both sides thrashed!) and ball joints. Probably attack the control arms with my favorite thick rustoleum brush paint in order to make them suck less. I also laid the engine wiring harness in the engine bay and started acclimating it to it's new B-series counterpart. Some things seem right, some will need to be changed. Fortunately much documentation exists online for these procedures so I'm not going it alone. 

I need a trip to the junkyard. I have a few screws loose. 

I mean I'm missing nuts.

I mean I need hardware! Hardware I say. I have a fair supply of SAE fasteners but very few metric ones.

Gunchsta said:I need a trip to the junkyard. I have a few screws loose. 

 

I mean I'm missing nuts.

 

 

I mean I need hardware! Hardware I say. I have a fair supply of SAE fasteners but very few metric ones.

I was just at my junkyard this morning and mentioned to the counter guy that we needed to work out a price for bulk hardware. I think I'm going to bring a big coffee can with me next time and negotiate a flat price. Then I'll roam the yard getting screws, clips, springs, etc. I'm feeling like he's gonna say 5 or 10 dollars, and I'll be glad to pay that. With my cordless screw gun and cordless 1/4" impact, I could clean up. You can fit a metric buttload of screws and little bolts in a coffee can.

In reply to Cousin_Eddie :

That's a great idea. I usually go to the U-pull yards here and they're pretty lenient about that stuff, though I don't think I could talk them into letting me fill a coffee can. 

Truth be told I've purchased certain bolts for this car from eBay and Honda because I didn't think I could easily score them at a yard. 

More eBay trinkets showed up last night, so I whipped the heat on in the garage and had a Hamms and looked over some things. 

Firstly, I tried to make sense of the distributor plugs I was working with. It looks like my engine harness has the common '10 pin' connector and my distributor itself has the '8 pin'. And, in typical Honda engine-swap fashion, somebody makes a $35 harness adapter that connects the two. I could also de-pin connectors or splice the smaller connector onto my harness, but it's likely I will spend the money and buy the adapter. 

I'm sure others work this way too - the handwritten notes are just me copying things from my phone to paper. Somehow manually re-writing what I was looking at online makes it easier for me to understand. This will also serve as a guide to double check the harness adapter when that comes. 

Beyond all that nonsense my cheapo $50 eBay header showed up yesterday, and it's honestly not that bad. Some trimming here and there but it seems to fit alright. 

Without an AC condenser you'll probably be able to see the header through the grille some, which I think will be kinda cool. 

And the view from below - It doesn't even hang down all that far, and since I don't have any huge slammed stance-y goals for this car it should be just fine. You'll see the little tab that interferes with the oil pan, some further trimming is needed. All in all pretty incredible for $56.88 shipped, which was less than the midpipe needed to use the stock CRV exhaust manifold that came with the engine. 

Fun stuff! 

Played around the car a bit this weekend - two steps forward one step back it feels like. 

Saturday morning I went to the junkyard and scored a pile of fasteners/bolts I was missing, as well as a pretty clean rear seat from a car with 90,000 miles. I grabbed a grille as well but apparently it was either from the wrong year, or my sorta-fit front bumper is realllly off. I'm hoping I overlooked the grille a little and it's for the wrong year. Minimal pictures were taken. 

Gatsby approves of the new rear seat bottom. 

Moments after this I moved the seats, vacuumed them, and the kitties thought they were nice new scratching posts. Out to the garage they go! (the seats, not the cats)

To occupy this space in the car! 

Which I'm really quite excited about. The car had no rear seat when I bought it, and getting a new one seemed like it might be tough, so it was low on my list of needs. Plus the car will function fine without it. But, I really didn't want to be driving around sans rear seat for no reason, so I'm pretty excited to have found one. 

But, unfortunately I decided to postpone the gratification of installing it because I have no idea when this car was last on the road. Meaning I have no idea the condition of the fuel pump & tank. The seat isn't awful to install, but it takes enough time that there's no sense in putting it in just to have to take it out again before I use the car. So, when I went out to put the seat in, I ended up removing the fuel pump access cover and peering into the tank. Yuck. It smelled so varnished and was so brown that I didn't even leave it open long enough to snap a picture. So, add fuel tank R&R to the list. I may try and clean the old tank, I may just buy new. Cleaning it would obviously save me money, but new would be the easy button. 

The junkyard trip was educational however, and I think I figured out what HVAC controls I need. Previously I ordered the 1997 controls and nothing corresponded to the set of plugs I have in my harness. I found a car with the updated 1999 style in it and took some pictures and compared to what I have, looks to be a match. This car has a strange history. 

Another big question was this pile of plugs where the HVAC/stereo stuff goes - Particularly the cluster of green/gray plugs pictured in my hand

The black/gray plugs bottom left go to the fan/heat controls, the top left is for the flashers, and the top right is for the hazards. Those three plugs in the middle I was confused about, and googling didn't really net me anything. So, I conferred with some of my Honda friends and it would appear that one (the bigger gray plug) is likely for the stereo, and the others are for the factory alarm and keyless entry and can be ignored if I so choose.

Last night I took the 25 minutes before dinner to go outside and fiddle a little bit and it actually felt really good. I just picked a small thing to work on and went to town. I've been getting kind of intimidated/distracted by the amount of things that still need to get done so it felt nice to let go of that and just do a thing. 

What I did was something I learned playing around at the junkyard on Saturday. I took the rear seat and some other misc. parts from a coupe similar to mine that showed 90,000 miles. The car was quite clean, but what I discovered is that when I pulled the fender liners down (sort of wish I would have grabbed them in hindsight) there was some small rust starting on the frame rails above the upper control arm. Now, my car is quite clean but I have no idea how many miles are on it, and I have to assume that it's far more than 90,000. So, I pulled my fender liners down, and low and behold the same rust had started on mine as what I encountered in the junkyard. 

The good news is that the rust is minimal. I cleaned it up with a wire wheel and brushed some rustoleum over it to seal it up. 

I also laid my brake parts out and put some high-temp rustoleum on those as well.  Here's the before picture. 

No after pictures were taken yet because it was dinner time when I was finished. 

Over the weekend I was able to extract the old crusty gas tank from the car. It was probably half gas and half rust & sediment, a real yucky situation. This is all going to be replaced with new at this point. 

First indication of Yuck... that fuel pump. 

Gross. Supposedly this car was running 2 years ago. Sure doesn't look like it was to me, but I could be wrong. 

Inside of the tank. The sock came off and stayed in that rusty hole. Gross. Rather than attempt to clean any of this garbage I'll just replace it. I suspect with enough effort one could clean this all up, but frankly it doesn't seem worth the hassle to me. I would rather just start fresh and hopefully minimize complications going forward.

After all that fun I also extracted the underside support structure from the hood. Partially to add lightness, partially to give myself access to the back of the hood to hopefully pound out some of the creases in the hood from it flying up on the previous owner. The hood is pretty much complete garbage, so there's no real risk here. 

Yippee!  

Nice work man! I love hondas. Have owned an EK SI, 2nd gen integra, and an EF hatch. They were all awesome and they are all missed. I'm constantly browsing the 'list for Integras and CRXs.
 

You going oem for the gas tank and pump or fuel cell? Either way I agree going for new parts is a time saver here...

In reply to HyperspaceTurd :

Thank you! This is my first Honda so hopefully I enjoy it when it's together. 

I have ordered an OEM fuel tank as well as a pump assembly. Easy button - everything should just plug back in as it was with no modifications. 

Yesterday I also picked up my front knuckles - I had a friend at a shop press in my wheel bearings and lower ball joints. 

Hopefully soon some progress will start being made forward, I feel like I've been in some level of progress-purgatory for a while now. Naturally that is part of the process, but sometimes it just feels good to actually check an item off the list versus circling back around to it when it makes more sense later.

Still plugging away. 

Ooo- shiny new balljoint & wheel bearing! 

Brought the knuckles in and warmed them up for a slathering of Rust-OLeum

Then the Holidays & surrounding stress happened. Minor tinkering happened in December, some parts were acquired. Actually, lots of parts were acquired :)

What was that famous song lyric by Simon & Garfunkel, "Hello scope creep my old friend" ?

So, gas tank. I decided to replace it due to an overwhelming amount of scuzz in the original one. Great, no problem it'll be another item not to worry about. So I'm under there taking a closer look at things and notice the rear struts are held in with the wrong bolt, leaking oil, and overall crappy. Fine, replace those. Also notice the lower control arm bushings are shot, not really a surprise lets replace those too. May as well get front struts and their associated mounts too. Hey what's this, the rear trailing arm bushings are completely demolished too? Well what's another couple bucks. 

Frankly it's my own naivety to blame here. I thought since this car was 20-30 years newer than what I have played with in the past I somehow would be exempt from such demolished suspension components. Not the case, especially not with an unknown mile, unknown history shell of a car. So, we're getting it all up to date, safe and refurbished. As with any car project it's costing more than originally anticipated, but that's pretty much the rule as well. 

So, I'm still in the process of pushing my way forward. Last night I hit another snag disassembling the rear suspension. The drivers side toe-arm was giving me some grief, and I think the end result will be a notching of the mounting point so I can get the stuck bushing & bolt out of there. Thankfully I have a welder. 

Forward, ho! 

I did all of that to the rear suspension on my Civic. I wound up using Moog trailing arm bushings and Hardrace control arm bushings. It's been a while, but I suspect that the Hardrace bushings were cheaper than Moog, or there was an availability problem getting the Moogs.

Also, I am sending you a message right now. Don't order any more suspension parts till you get my message.

In reply to Cousin_Eddie :

10-4 sir. I'll check my email. 

Haven't seen anything come through. I've heard of issues with the forums email relay service, so if you want to just try to communicate outside the GRM time-space continuum my email is gunchsta AT gmail dot com.

Here's a photographic journey through the last few evenings in the garage. Lots of monkeying around with stuck toe arm bushings, and some suspension disassembly. 

Bad Bushing

Really bad bushing. Horrible really. This is the main trailing arm bushing, the rest of the junk around it is going to be replaced as well. Most of it looks similarly crappy. 

Toe arms. Both sides suffer the same fate - the steel sleeve portion of the rubber bushing has rusted to the bolt going through the whole mess. Which means breaking the sleeve loose from the rubber, spinning it out and destroying the bracket portion of the frame, and hopefully repairing it with steel and ingenuity. Fun! 

Toe arm is out, mounting is mutilated. 

Here's the proposed solution:

Duplicate bracket shape in old GMC Sheetmetal, double layer, weld in place. Not perfect, but it should be functional. If anyone has any better suggestions I'm all ears... I will have to do this on both sides. 

Yesterday I received a gift from a legend... 

Large Moog box... what could be inside?

Look at all these goodies! New front control arms, new lower control arm bushings (with sticker included!), tie rods, sway bar links, rear toe arms, and axle nuts. 

All sent courtesy of our very own Cousin_Eddie. I really appreciate it and think it's pretty cool that a forum full of strangers can help each other out in as many different ways as this one does. Cousin_Eddie, if you're ever in MN or if I ever find myself your way in Texas I owe you a tasty beverage of your choice. These parts won't go to waste! 

I love watching this take shape. I miss my old EF hatch, and tried to find something in my beater budget last year to pick up another. Most are way too rotted out up here in MN, and I am no body guy. Keep moving forward!