This is me this morning picking up my newest acquisition.... Car #13... a 2009 Honda Civic Si
Here's the kicker and where the namesake of Hazmat comes from.....
It's absolutely DISGUSTING inside....
Owned since new by a Pizza delivery guy for the past 10 years...
These are delivery receipts stuck together.... There were 7 of those "bundles" in the car... they're 6 inches long and 4 inches thick in the middle... this car has hauled a LOT of pizza.
I knew all of this before I had Seth look at it yesterday... well I didn't know it was THAT dirty... but the asking price was too good to pass up .......
$1800. That's right! I bought a running 2009 civic Si for challenge money....
It has no lights on (no CEL, ABS, NOTHING), motor pulls strong with 160k miles and all the syncros and clutch are in excellent working order.
Air conditioning was sold as non op and didn't work for Seth but started working for me on the trip home today... kinda... I think it's low on freon plus maybe more...
This is going to be my new track toy and Seth and I are going to keep it under Challenge budget 6or the time being so he can take it to the challenge in Sept.
There's more story to tell from today but I'll save that for my next post!
But here's a teaser...
I thought Seth was exaggerating with that confession post. I was wrong.
That’s a damn good deal. Nicely done
I'm innocent! I swear!
Though I did have to take a shower after cleaning vape juice off every interior surface. How do you even do that to a car?
Looks like a prime Deliverator example. Congrats & Good Luck.
Nice find! I wish I knew about the challenge when I found my car. I could have stayed under budget...
If this doesn't recieve a snow crash livery of some sort, you will have both failed at being human.
If it does, i promise to get on my knees at the challenge and do my best to copy wayne bowing to alice cooper while saying "we're not worthy "
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
it took a lot of self-control not to "quote post" two of the first paragraphs of that book in my original post. I might have to pack my copy of it, if Pete hasn't read it yet.
I have all his books on kindle....
My suggestion is to go with vitality Chernobyl and the meltdowns.....
Slammo
Reader
4/28/19 9:42 a.m.
I remember my Dominos days. Those sticker stacks were a badge of honor. I miss some things about that job but my car constantly smelling like pizza was not one of them.
Also, that interior doesn't look that bad. Tear it apart, go to town with a pressure washer, simple green, and a scrub brush, and reassemble.
Might be a nice addition for on-track
Ill be damned. eBay
The car is a winner.
I'll let spacecadet tell the rest of the story when he gets home. We had fun.
Wow, that some really bad paint!
Taking the story back to where it started on Saturday. Deal closed and done at 9:30am in Lake Jackson, TX. We immediately headed north to MSR Houston to see our buddy Evan doing a track day in his new NC miata and show him the car.
We hang out for a while and around 11:00 we realize there's parade laps at Noon... we leave site to run out for Mcdonalds and get it "To-Go" because we know we're pressed to make parade laps. We Pull back into the track and cars are leaving grid for Parade laps and so we break out the Video Camera and the French fries in the bag...
And so less than 3 hours after purchase... Hazmat was on Track.
Quote of the day from Seth while on track
"Don't wreck it... I'll spill my drink"
Today was Seth and I shaking the car down at the Houston SCCA Autocross. We threw on the spare testing set of wheels and Conti's from the Traccord... since the wheels were the OEM type for this car....
Seth and I had an awesome battle. Seth beat me... and we both finished in the top half of Pax... Car did great... suspension held together and I only made the engine hit the firewall once.
But the AC blows cold, the car runs amazing and it's just a blast... now we just gotta fix the rear blown shocks and we'll be on our way...
Total spent so far $1800.... Now we wait to find out how much change Seth pulled out of the car...
I've definitely done worse than a running/driving Si for $1800.
Also of note.. Seth and I spent 2 hours going to town on the car Saturday afternoon... we brought the interior back from the brink...
We thought that glistening was the suede being gone and exposing the underlying material... NOPE.. That's BODY OILS embedded into the fabric... on the steering wheel and on the radio knobs and the dash and center console was covered in dush combined with vape Juice condensed vapor residue......
*retching noises*
Front Floor mats are a total loss.... Like not bothering they were rancid.. Rear may be salvageable..
But with 2 hours of scrubbing with a stiff bristle brush on all those interior surfaces... we were rewarded with this..
More work to be done on the carpets with cleaning and the suede to help bring back the softness to the material.. But already... HUUUUUUUGE gains...
Full admission, I've got a bunch of miles behind the wheel on an 8th gen. I've driven a Sedan for the past two years on One Lap of America. I've also rallycrossed that car taking a very mid pack nationals finish while the car owner took home a national championship. On top of that, the tires we used were on the Accord for testing and I've done a few dozen autocross runs on them and about 100 track laps. This Civic felt like home and I knew what the tires wanted to be happy. I leveraged every advantage I had to beat a better driver than me. That felt awesome and I'm still gloating. 
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
It was fun and we don't have battles where you stay in the fight often...
Solid work on that interior. As a detailer, that interior horrifies me, 2 hours is pretty short work for that.
Seems like a steal at the price! And as gross as that is, I'm sure the results are quite satisfying now that it's pretty clean.
Eating McDonalds on track. Now that's amusing.
It is always amazing how much better a car looks with just a little care spent on detailing.
Since Hazmat is wearing the old Accord wheels from yesterday, and since I need one of those for a OLOA spare, I decided to throw the car on the lift to do the wheel swap.
Rear shocks have both vomited their guts out, we knew that.
Front shocks are still solid (if tired) though the boots have decomposed.
CV boots are good, all of the bushings are good, not torn anyway. End links are all solid. Ball joints good. The worst thing under the car is where we wore a hole in the fender liner yesterday runnign too tall tires.
For all of you up north, this is what 160k miles of neglect looks like in Texas.
