A New Adventure - 1997 Civic Coupe resurrection

Wednesday progress report: 

This, mostly.

Took the car out of the garage to make room for this little package

and decided to peel my tape & mask off, revealing that I had gone a little heavy on the trunk paint. 

Was nice to see the white out in the sun, and even though I pretty much slathered the paint on like some kind of hussy, the color is closer to right than anything I've previously painted, and I'm confident that I can smooth that off SOME and make it presentable. It was good to see the car out in the sun, it's only been garage bound for a couple weeks, but it's made some changes since then and is looking nicer already. 

I sanded down the spots in front of the rear wheels where the side skirts used to be, that too is going to be a less than perfect area. Bodywork is definitely something that requires a ton of practice. I'm to the point that I can fill & vaguely smooth holes, but I haven't been able to fully make them go away yet. Anyhow, as scope-creep goes, while I was sanding off the filler in front of the rear wheels, I noticed the bottom of the doors were a little scabby, not rusty yet but had some funk on them. So, out came the die grinder and small flappy wheel, and now I have much more to paint! 

This also lives in my garage now too. Hopefully soon it will live in this car! 

Paint progress continues. I had some issue spraying the bottom edge of the doors/rockers as I was kneeling down and didn't have very good control of the paint gun. Ended up with minimal runs after a couple attempts, not my finest work but it's satisfactory. I may be able to wet sand some of them out come spring as well. 

You can see the runs under the side skirts, and the tape line up by the side trim. Overall though the color matches better than any rattle can I've used and it has a pretty nice shine. 

Going to be in Houston this weekend for the Texas Mile event so I'm taking some time off, but it was nice this week so I pushed the car out of the garage and sprayed the fenders and bumper cover. 

Here's the layout with the car pushed outside.

It worked well, felt like I had better control of the gun and more space to work. I did have to grab the fenders so I could paint the inside edges but I managed to do that first. Being single stage paint if everything dries and I see something I missed with them in this position I'll touch them up. 

And color! 

And tucked back away for the weekend. Spent some time outside washing the overspray off the car and cleaning the windows. It was getting crusty to the point that it frustrated me to go out to the garage. Feels a lot better to have it cleaner and to have the majority of the painting done. The car is painted as much as I intend to, so it should remain cleaner. I can push it out to paint the side skirts, trim, rear bumper, hood, etc.

The hood is garbage because it flew up on the previous owner on the highway, so I'm debating between painting that or just doing some kind of cute arctic camo wrap. I'm going to cut the under supports out and straighten it as best I can, but it's pretty beat. 

I feel good with the progress I've made, it'll be nice to take a little trip and see something new. Hopefully come back and do some fun mechanical stuff and POSSIBLY have a running car before too long. Knowing myself I wanted to get the bulk of the painting done A.) before the weather was brutally cold, and B.) before I dove into making it run & drive, because I know myself and once it ran and drove I wouldn't take it back apart to make it pretty. Naturally it's going to get scuffs and scratches in the assembly phase, but it'll be better than not doing any painting at all. 

Looks great!

I really like that you're painting it yourself, that's something I want to try some day.

How much paint do you have left over? If you can paint the hood for $0 in more materials, I'd do that. If the damage looks too bad once the hood is glossy then you could always do a wrap later. Arctic camo should hide dents and waves well.

In reply to Run_Away :

Thank you sir! I too always wanted to try painting stuff myself - having someone paint a car is a ton of money (and for good reason) so I wanted to see if I could accomplish it on my own.

I should have enough paint for the hood, and that is a great point that it can always be wrapped later if it's horrendous. In my dream vision of the car it turns out pretty stock looking, which definitely doesn't bode well for the camo wrap. I have the rear bumper cover, side skirts, and some door trims left to paint. I may save the hood for last and play it that way. I'm also not 100% certain the hood will fit presently - my B20 has the tall CRV intake manifold which the internet says might have to be swapped out in order to have enough clearance for the hood. Given current budgetary situations I'm going to be at least firing the car with the CRV intake manifold because I currently own it. I may just forget the hood entirely until the thing is sorted. I always have fun driving something around without a hood for a little bit anyway.

I'm thinking I may change gears and try to get the engine in the car & running, and save the remainder of the painting for next spring. I'm looking at April/May before the car is back out of the garage again, so I have plenty of time. I mostly just have a pretty confined space out there and painting really makes a mess of it.

Yesterday I hung the bumper cover & fenders on the car just to get a visual. Might roll it out into the sun today after work, at which point I'll likely take more pictures. 

Anyhow, most of this will have to come back off again but I wanted to take a look at it

I'm pleased, but in typical fashion now the rest of the car is starting to look shabby. Hopefully some buffing next summer will cure that. 

Here's some more goodies cleaned up and reinstalled. Which means less parts on my floor. Which means a happier workspace. 

Clean is good :) 

Also woooo I'm a half dork now! 

This was a good weekend. You ever have one of those 'good wrenching' vibes where tasks get accomplished easily, bolts come loose and don't break, and everything works how it should? That was my feeling this weekend. 

Started off Friday night after work putting new strut bushings in my new-to-me 2002 VW Jetta. Inherited it from my wife when we purchased her a new car. I've had it up for sale locally for $875, but virtually no interest. It's been a good car, might need a turbo or a cat soon. Anyway, considering it's apparently not worth any money, I'll throw some parts at it and enjoy it for a bit. 

Strut bushings were nuked. They were used when I put the bilstien struts in it this summer off of my OTHER mk4 VW (which has since been sold). They are not nuked anymore and surprisingly the car drives way better. 

Yes, yes I know that's not an approved spring compressor. Think of it as a 3rd hand. I could compress the springs (lowering springs from Amazon) enough by hand to get the top hat on properly, but I couldn't keep them there AND put the top hat on. So hose clamp ingenuity to the rescue. 

Anyhow, got those changed out and an oil change all before dinner on Friday night, then went out for a little drive after dinner to make sure everything was copacetic. Listened to some tunes, did some turbo things (car is a 1.8t), had a nice evening. 

Then I woke up on Saturday and took the Jetta to the local U-pull yard and found some items for the Civic I didn't even know I needed! I was checking out some other Civics and noticed the front bumper support/crash bar (that I don't have) had some mounting points for the bumper cover. So I snagged that. I also found a very nice windshield wiper cowl cover as well as a decent OEM rear bumper cover. The black one previously pictured is some cheap aftermarket one that essentially doesn't fit. OEM one is way nicer. Upon removal at the yard I was also able to grab some of the necessary clips and hardware for installation. The Jetta did a great job pretending to be a truck. 

You can also see my sweet junkyard tool briefcase. 

I kept the good vibes rollin and pushed the Civic out into the daylight with painted bits on it and admired it while I cleaned the green bumper cover and got set up to make it white. 

So my new rear bumper cover is painted now. I'm going to let the paint dry a bit longer and hang it on there. Then aside from the hood which is basically junk the car is all white! It was exciting to see it mostly one color sitting outside. Helped the motivation for sure. 

Monday update: Mated the engine to the transmission for the first time on Friday.

And the engine was removed from it's pallet and inserted into the car! 

Then I spent probably an hour and a half wrestling this one bolt in the rear T-bracket.

Yes, I know that bolt is going in the wrong way, that was in an effort to get everything aligned because it was just off by a hair and I was having a heck of a time getting it situated. I did use the phone-camera method to see exactly how mis-aligned it was. 

And mis-aligned it was. Some considerable effort later and it was good to go. Overall it went pretty well, I've never put an engine into one of these cars, and I didn't take this one out, so it's always a learning curve. Despite how much room there is, it's kind of a tight fit lengthwise. The engine &  trans are about the same width as the framerails. 

Here's the overview with all the lifting apparatus removed. Happy to see how it looks in there. Obviously a b-series into an EK civic is nothing new (hell the SI's came this way from the factory) but having owned the car for a couple months sans engine it's great to see one in there. I was getting a little anxious about putting this thing in there [fear of the unknown I guess] so it's a relief to have it installed. And as usual having it installed has opened a whole assortment of other issues to pick away at. 

Namely - this one. I read on the internet that the CRV intake wouldn't fit, but I thought maaaaybe I could prop the hood up/cut the supports out of it and get by, but nope. I'm certainly going to have to get a B-series car intake manifold OR aftermarket. 

Fun stuff! 

In reply to Gunchsta :

Very impressive project! Too bad, the intake looks to be too high even for a small, factory-looking scoop or “power-bulge”.

Still watching. Still enjoying each update. Still sad that cool car guys like you never seem to live around where I do. 

In reply to ebonyandivory :

Thank you! This is the biggest project I've tackled yet and getting the engine in feels like a good step to it actually being a functional car someday.  

I was really hoping I could fudge the intake, but I don't think it's going to happen. The fuel line is on the wrong side, it's way too tall, the throttle cable doesn't seem to reach appropriately, etc. Basically there are enough obstacles in the way that it doesn't make sense to even run it for a little while to sort things out. 

One thing I'm trying to let myself do on this one is put it together how I want to. I've had a lot of projects that I've sacrificed certain aspects/goals in order to get it together cheaper or faster. I'm trying to let myself be loose (within reason) with the budget and end up with what I want. Which really is something quick & competent enough that I'll try a track day with it and really spend a lot of time behind the wheel. 

In reply to Cousin_Eddie :

Thanks Eddie! The feeling is mutual, I really enjoy open minded people that can appreciate a wide variety of cars. I feel fortunate to have a pretty decent network of guys in the Minneapolis area that share the same broad taste in cars as I do. We try to get together on Wednesday's in the summer and stand in a Wendy's parking lot and chat. You (or anyone from GRM reading this) are more than welcome should you ever find yourself in the area. 

Yup need an integra b18b manifold or oftermarket. This girafe intake kill the top end anyway... swap b18b cams or better while you are there. And a 96-98 ecu.. so will basicly have an overbire b18b integra :)

I remember having a lot of fun back then with those.. seing them cheap lately make me think of swaping a motorcycle for a 9000 rpm civic...

In reply to physician :

Good to know about the cams, that'll be a down the road modification. As for ECU I have an OBDI p75 I plan on chip tuning down the road as well. 

There is also the jdm ortia b20 with the p8r head.. the head match the bore (Un shroud) and they have bigger valves. Instead of the stock b18 head we have. It.

For the intake manifold, you can adapt one from a sir or type r (same head) it is reported to give some power.

I think cams are tbe same profile for 92-2001 b18b.

A friend had the b20/p8r with a skimmed head, b18b cams,  and intake and advanced. Passenver and rear seat removed and a cold air intake through the headlight In a 91 integra it did a 14.99 pass...

I went for one last ride in my friends 89 civic hatchback with a stock b18 non vtec swap and I forgot how quick it was. Kind of sad he's putting the engine back in another integra.  It's always weird to go from my vehicles I don't rev above 5k rpm to riding in something that gets revved 8500.

In reply to dropstep :

I've been mostly a v8 guy as well... it'll be a change for me! It seems like it should be pretty peppy. 

Last night I scored a P75 intake manifold from I believe an integra, as well as a set of injectors and a couple fuel rails to try out. Hopefully between the parts I have and this new stuff I can piece something together that will run & let the hood close. Such luxury! I'll have to look at the injectors and see if I can decode some numbers off them to make sure they're ok for my application. I've read conflicting information about using the B20 injectors with the integra intake manifold. Something about them being too long perhaps? 

More research is necessary, but at least now I have some hard parts to play with. 

Which motor mounts are you using?  They look like the Yonaka ones I bought as an experiment to replace the failed mounts that were on my car when I bought it.  I imagine installing them without all the wiring and plumbing in place was easier than doing it with everything hooked up.  

In reply to chrispy :

That is correct, these are the Yonaka ones. The motor install was actually a bit more of a wrestling match than I had anticipated, but it was certainly nice having nothing in the bay to get in the way. 

Does your engine sit level? Mine seems to be a little low on the drivers side. 

Mine looks the same as it did on the mounts it came with (see below).  It took me most of a day to replace all 3 mounts (I've never replaced any motor mounts before).  For the back "t-bracket" mount, I had to lube it up with soap to get it to cooperate, it was the hardest one to do.  They have held up well to a couple of thousand of miles and a few autocrosses.  I kept the old ones to pour my own polyurethane at some point.  

Gunchsta said:

 

 

The valve cover height doesn't look far off to me from this view.

You have amazing talent.

What new car did the wife get?

In reply to chrispy :

Yeah the rear T bracket gave me some headaches as well. Glad to hear they've held up so far - I would have liked to buy the Hasport ones I see everyone running but the pocketbook lead me to the Yonaka ones. 

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

Thank you! There are far more talented people on here than I but I appreciate the compliment! 

The wife got a 2014 Hyundai Accent hatchback. She loves it so far! 

Gunchsta said:

In reply to chrispy :

 I would have liked to buy the Hasport ones I see everyone running but the pocketbook lead me to the Yonaka ones. 

That was my concern too, plus I have pimpy mounts that only need new poly.