Life with a 1985 CRX Si

And they do So, braided lines on the way.

YMMV … but I've found no real advantage in braided lines … actually the opposite

the rubber in brake lines will deteriorate over time … which is the reason for braided lines in the first place .. but they have the same rubber inside the braiding ..all the braiding does is keep the deteriorated rubber from expanding under braking pressures as it ages

keep in mind that with the covering, you can't seen the rubber as it deteriorates … when a failure occurs (and even with braided lines, it will eventually) it will come as a huge shock

OEM soft lines are fine for a while …no bulging, or collapsing …. that's why they're on production cars in the first place … plus you can monitor the condition visually

on my track car, I use OEM soft lines, and just count them as consumables … swap them out ever 2 - 3 yrs … same pedal feel as when I had braided lines… and less chance of a surprise

I'm pretty sure ours have teflon liners, not rubber. The only failure I've seen on a braided line was one that was rubbing on a Jeep tire. It eroded away the steel and exposed the teflon. That didn't last long.

wbjones wrote: but they have the same rubber inside the braiding ..all the braiding does is keep the deteriorated rubber from expanding under braking pressures as it ages

Most manufacturers use some form of teflon liners. (as in ZERO rubber content) with a rediculously high MTBF... Linkage

Edit: Keith beat me to it.

that's good to hear … I have seen what happens when the insides of braided lines deteriorate to the point of failure … would not have happened if OEM soft lines had been in place (visible inspection would have noticed the pending failure prior to it's happening)

I just saw a mint silver one of these on the way home. I about broke my neck trying to get a better look at it.

Last week I was sorting through some stuff and I found a 1988 vintage Jackson Racing catalog. I'll try to dig it out again and see what they suggested back in the day.

Woody wrote: Last week I was sorting through some stuff and I found a 1988 vintage Jackson Racing catalog. I'll try to dig it out again and see what they suggested back in the day.

Is that the one that said something along the lines of "How else are you going to drive under that Porsche in turn 11?" Ha! I wrote a letter to get that catalog.

You're really making me want to track one of these down. I've got enough projects right now, but a CRX in that kind of shape would make a decent daily driver.

I was wondering if you could make some metal repair/reinforcement plates for the fender mounts and rivet/JB Weld them in place. I had forgotten these had plastic fenders.

Paperwork bonanza! This package just arrived in the mail from the PO. It's pretty interesting. That's a 1985 CRX Si brochure - not a generic CRX one, but specifically for the Si.

The bill of sale. $10,000 cash, minus a trade-in. I love the "dealer profit" line of a grand. Yup, 10% of the price of the car. What did he trade in? A yellow 1972 Honda 600 with 102,252 miles. They gave him $600. That would have been an interesting change.

Looks like he also got numbers for an HF and a 1.5 automatic. Note the much lower dealer profit on an HF. I'm guessing the new hot Si model was in higher demand.

Window sticker!

This is very cool. I love the history of it. Especially the 600 trade-in.
And something else - here's what the scales had to say about my car with a brimming tank of fuel.

Interesting. I went to Marrietta (Ga.) Honda the day the Sis arrived -I'd been calling every day - and they had raised the sticker price and wouldn't bargain. So pissed, I didn't buy it.

That's lighter than stock, too.

great thread!

without having done anything to it .. you're already at 48% cross … not bad (was that with you in it ?)

I love finding paperwork like that. It gives you such a sense of the car's history.

wbjones wrote: without having done anything to it .. you're already at 48% cross … not bad (was that with you in it ?)

That's without me and with the sway bars hooked up. The latter helped the cross weights. I wasn't corner weighting, simply curious as to weight and the scales were right there...

Well, now you've done it. On a whim I texted a buddy of mine that's the second owner of a '91 Si that I've been hounding him about for going on 4 years. He called me a year or so ago and told me he had killed the motor. I wondered if he was lazy enough to still have it around. He does! It's running now with the distributor as the culprit. Said he's ready to sell it. Wife approves as we had a '90 HF with no AC when we first got married in 1990. We used to clock 54mpg on highway trips with it.

Great project Keith.

you'll love the Si .. but don't expect the same milage with the Si that you go with the HF … great cars .. lot of fun to drive

I've driven a bunch of 88~91 CRXs and my favorite was a silver 89 DX.

So, long-overdue update.

The braided lines arrived. And they didn't fit properly in the front. But at the same time I discovered that, I also discovered that the car had what looks like brand new rubber lines all around. I'm liking the previous owner more and more. So the braided lines got tossed on to the shelf and I started messing with the pushrod on the master cylinder to make the brakes feel better. Not much luck, unfortunately.

So I'm trying to think of how to make them feel better. They're working well enough, it's just a squishy pedal. Like there's a lot of flex in the calipers. Apparently the front brakes are updated with ones from a second-generation CRX so they're bigger, and the master (or booster, I forget) is also upgraded. But the piston sizes are different between the 1988-89 donors and the 1990-91, so I'll check to make sure I'm not rocking a mismatched setup.

The sunroof isn't sitting quite right, it's slightly high on one side. I'm going to have to go dumpster diving to find parts and see if I can fix the tracks for it. Still, it fits well enough to work so it's not high priority.

According to my notes, the car is running 33 mpg no matter what I do. While it's still not getting any love from the other member of the family (she called it "your weird little hatchback thing"), it's really fun to have a car that's not needy in any way.

I think you are missing one important part of owning an early Honda. Back in the day, they were head and shoulders better than what the Big Three offered at the time. You should give yourself some reference and drive some other small, sporty hatchbacks from the era (if you can find one running and not rusted out) as a comparison. You won't believe how great the Si was in it's day. No knocking any of the other cars here, but the level of fit and finish, the features, the fun-to-drive quotient...they could not compare with what Honda was putting out.

The last fill up got 34 mpg and cost $15. It's a flashback machine.

Since I got it, there's been a bit of noise from the rear hatch. Sort of a light rattle. I thought for a while it was the hatch moving against the body, but it wasn't quite the right noise. I decided it sounded like rear struts rattling on the their mounts. A couple of days ago I finally got around to popping the covers off the rear struts and voila, I could see the shaft moving up and down as I bounced the car. There are rubber bushings on the top of the strut and they weren't preloaded at all. The nuts wouldn't tighten any further. Popping them off, I found that there's a metal sleeve down the middle of the bushings that prevents you from over-tightening. I figure the bushings must have compressed with time. Putting a washer under the metal caps on top of those bushings stopped the problem for now, and a couple of new strut mount bushing sets are being ordered today for about $20 per side. The car now sounds a lot less old. Quick job, a nice little victory.

I'm not sure if you've heard of the company before, but Cheddas Auto puts out some pretty impressive pieces for this chassis!

In reply to pinchvalve What are these? I assume the first one is a GM, because it appears to have a Z badge where the cavaliers (IIRC) had them, on the rockers in front of the rear wheel.

and the third one i think is an omni.

Cavalier Z24, Escort GT and Omni GLH.

I'm trying to avoid companies like Cheddas Although those front camber plates have me thinking. I'm also trying to avoid the temptation of the Enkei Classic Apache II wheels so I can run a 15x7 and better rubber.

Life of Si?