1994 Civic EG CX Hatch.....My Road to HPDE.......and more?

2016 was a great year for me with the 1991 Civic Si I picked up from Mazdadeuce. But as the year went on after Nationals and at the new lowlife ride height....... I started to realize driving the car around Houston that I was putting the car at risk for major damage. Scraping the ground was a common enough occurrence that I was starting to worry about damaging some of the nice parts like the Hytech Header...

This was compounded by the fact that the car now has a huge sentimental value to me, with where it has taken me with SCCA and getting onto the cover of SportsCar Mag.

So in the back of my mind I started to think about what kind of car I should be looking for sometime in the future.

I knew one of my 2017 my goals was to not only continue my Campaign in STS but also get on track some with Track Night in America or someone else.

Then in November my new co driver for the STS car, that I had just gotten hooked up with for 2017, brought something very fun to our Autox....

Yes that is a half Cage you can see through the rear windows....

A car he built 95% of the way for Honda Challenge H2..

before he moved to Texas a few Years ago. Upon arriving in Texas he realized nobody ran the class.....

aaaaaaand stopped the build.

But the car underneath was still very drive-able around town. So it's been his 2nd car for the past few years to offset his Truck.

He and I chatted about the car more in November and December some and I put my sights on it for sometime in 2017 as a purchase...

Then on the 30th of December he finds a better car to serve the 2nd car place in his life(but doesn't tell me this) He picks up this new car and asks if I can help him pick up the truck from the dealership that night... my response of course is No problem!

AS he hops out of the Truck he goes "Oh by the way, just get me the money whenever and I'll be around all day on Sunday for you to come pick it up.." and hands me the Key to the Honda.....

And all of a sudden....2017 got that much more interesting

Here's a Survey of what i got my Hands on

The Chassis is a 1994 Honda Civic CX Hatch.

Power NOTHING.......... crank windows, no power steering and turn key door locks

Perfect! less things to go wrong

The car has a well built B16a3 lying under the hood. But P.O. could not leave good enough alone...

So a pair of ITR Cams lie on top spinning up to 8200 RPM.

This gem of an engine is mated to a ITR trans upgraded with more durable synchros and the stock LSD.

My fat butt sits in a Momo Race seat with both the Factory Belt and buckle and a G force 5 Point harness to keep Myself in place.

Helping me keep the car pointed in the right direction is a Momo Race wheel with a Quick release.

The rear seats have been removed and in their place sits a nice Bolt in 4 Point cage that leave all of the rear space open.

The car rides on Koni Yellows and a firm but tolerable spring.

and last but CERTAINLY not least...it has WORKING AC!!!!

So there it is...my new toy and soon to be daily driver.

My 2016 Mazda 6 will soon be going to live with my Parents in Chicago because their 1998 Pontiac Grand Prix is about to snap in half with its rotting frame rails...

When a half caged Civic with one seat is your "nice" car.

I started driving the car pretty much every day that next week.

Including to see my buddy where my 1st steps are beginning to make the car a little more tolerable for normal street driving.. and less appealing to thieves...

The Race seat is coming out to make away for a stock seat that I'll steal from my buddy who is Building the Hoonda Rallycross EG into a Stage Rally car and no longer needs stock seats!

I am also planning to change out the Wheel for something less nice just because the Momo wheel has suede and I don't want to ruin it...

The Car just looks so right sitting in the driveway...

Then on this past saturday all went awry... a half mile from my House(on my way to work no less)...the car stuttered and died pulling up to a light. The car would turn over no problem but for 3 minutes I couldn't get it to fire... I admitted defeat and pushed it the half mile home and there is has sat until last night when I was able to get out of work at 6pm and start diagnosing the issues with it sitting in the street and not pissing off my neighbors TOO much.

The Quiet Texas night allowed me to hear the fuel pump working so time to check for spark...

and.......nothing... but it was dark so going further was tough and i called it a win and called it a night.

Late start today at work so i took a few minutes this morning to try and figure out what was wrong

started with the distributor...

And lo and behold it turns 360 degrees with the setscrew securely in....

video of wiggling the rotor I sent to the Previous owner...

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOivza456RYfCaKBqkaZvhlwHjnZBIpbKIE3VVhE2Xny6USnWVqTIlvjbS5GfhtJw?key=VDFvcWZPUERwbENHTGxPYVE3S0M4ajJvTHd6RDhB

So new toy becomes serious project car after 7 days......WHAT A SURPRISE!

Now i Fixed the Photos so they can actually be SEEN.... stupid permissions

Show us some broken parts. We love broken parts. Well, we actually like fixed parts, but you have to go through broken parts to get there.

I'm pretty sure B16 distributors are considered consumables. lol

have a picture of the two together or am i missing something?

so when's the first hpde?

In reply to TurboFocus:

I do not have a picture of both my Civics at the moment.

My buddy has a Stock 88 CRX Si and 94 EG Sedan and we want to get a picture of all 4 cars together at some point.

In reply to sleepyhead:

Supposedly Track Night in America is coming to Houston this year, and I live 30-45 Min from the track that they plan to use. I can have pretty much any weekday off I want with work. So as soon as they announce a date...I'm signing up and I think they usually kick off in March/April down here.

In reply to Crackers:

I hope not, because they are not what I would call cheap... when the rock auto prices are $100-200 and the OEM price from HPD is $600...I hope I don't start going through these...

there has to be another distributor that can work on that car

My friends b18 swapped civic does eat distributors. Hes averaging about 50k per. But hes also only averaging 25k per trans so maybe its him.

In reply to TurboFocus:

There are other options with a small jumper harness I can run the B18 distributor. Which provides more options but not necessarily cheaper ones.

Previous owner did bring to my attention the rotor may be the issue, I'll look into it tonight.

In reply to dropstep:

If I get 50k out of it then I will not consider it eating them.

I suppose 50k isn't horrible, but IMO that's still poor longevity comparatively.

I think B series distributors accounted for probably 90% of the bad units I saw when I was still doing line work.

In reply to Crackers:

Agreed, not great...but if I can get 1.5-2 years out of distributors...that's not an impossible pill to swallow

Got home from work a bit early last night, so I had about 3 Hours to crack into the car before midnight.

Got the distributor out and lo and behold the problem was staring me in the face!

Here's where it gets bad

Now I have 2 teeth somewhere inside the motor that i need to find..

This turned out to be ok because I immediately found 1 and then discovered the other one next to it looking through the distributor hole....

But, I couldn't fish them out the distributor hole so I had to remove the valve cover and loosen all the bolts on the top rail to get the end cap off and then fish them out with a tiny magnetic screwdriver in the worlds LEAST fun claw game.

SUCCESS! both teeth removed just to bolt it all back together.

With that I marched down to my Neighborhood Autozone.

There I learned that even though my Motor comes from the 94-95 Civic Del So VTEC my wiring harness and distributor do NOT!

Turns out I have a 99 Civic Si distributor and related hardware....

After swallowing the $300 for a Duralast distributor(But lifetime warranty! and also half the cost of OEM through the HPD Program).

Mounted the new Distributor and moved the car back into the Driveway!

I took a photo of the Red Civic and my STS car together for TurboFocus!

Now it's back to the fun stuff!

Are you gonna take it off any sweet jumps?

*tater tot munch munch

That's a 1994 Honda Civic! How dare you!

Good job on the fix. Working cars are better than non working cars.

Good job rescuing the dizzy teeth from the engine. It's one of my big fears about my Civic, even though I assume the D15 dizzy is a lot cheaper to replace than the B-series parts.

In reply to ssswitch:

Like the real thing, pulling the teeth was a pain. But I got them out

D series distributors seem to cost about 15-20% of what I spent on mine.

Had a Quiet Sunday yesterday holding my Annual Tech event for our Local Autox Region and Hanging out with Friends.

Not content to leave good enough alone....... I had to make easy changes to the Civic that make a pretty big difference.

I held our event in front of a bagel shop and Bike shop and so I popped in and grabbed a multi Tool to keep in the car! Said Multi tool was chosen because it had the metric hex key I needed to swap the steering wheel!

I replaced the very nice Suede Momo wheel with a Cheap leather wrapped wheel I got 2 years ago for my CRX project and hung on to even after the car was gone. I paid $20 for this thing and it certainly shows and I can feel it flex a bit. But, it's 2 inches wider than the momo wheel and so I get better leverage, which is nice when its a manual rack!

The other big visual change is reinstalling the OEM wing!

I love how the car looks with the "Whale tail" roof wing, but my current goal is to go back to stock visually, to keep thieves away.

Before:

After:

The car is as subtle and un-stealable as any Civic in Houston. Perfect for a daily.