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CURRENT STATE: The car is pretty much finished now and I just enjoy it on nice days when I can. Thought I should add a current state pic here to boost interest to read through the build when people first click on it. I am no mechanic or paint/body guy, I have just learned as I go from necessity. I have done 99% of everything on this build myself. This is proof that with enough patience and dedication(over 4 yrs worth in my case), anyone can save one of these cars from any condition. Here is how she sits as December 2015.

Hey everyone, my name is Colton. I always wanted to build a DA integra or CRX. Well here is my ongoing story that started back in 06. Along the way I have changed priorities over and over but one thing hasn't changed.....although sitting with little to no progress at times for lack of effort or money, I was dedicated to finish this car as long as it took. The purpose of this build isn't a show car or track car or daily driver, but kinda of a mixture of all of those. I want the car clean and nicer than most, yet not too nice that I'm not afraid to drive it. I want it quick enough to be fun to drive and reliable enough to be able to take just about anywhere. I want it to have a low aggressive stance but not stupid low where it's completely not functional. Full interior functioning car.

This build started as a daily driver back in 06. I originally had a EG coupe that I got for free when it didn't run and after rebuilding the top end and adding a new dizzy, drove great till I traded it for my CRX.

The CRX was an original California car with NO rust, but was completely molested! Rattle can paint, half-*** hood pins, front lip, no interior no power brakes.......but a perfectly running b16a swap with S1 tranny! So my first couple of years were spent fixing some of the stupidest stuff that could be done to such an undeserving car while driving it daily. I can't wait to see this molested car transform into a deserving machine as Honda intended from the start!

Here is the car when I finally got home from about a 9 hr journey of picking her up from an Army base somewhere in Kansas.


Here it is as it was when I got it. I know it is so haggard but it ran like a top and had NO rust. I saw so much potential in this ugly thing!










The guy I bought it was like, "yeah it has a full interior". What he didn't say was it was all piled in the hatch as well as the heater controls and radio as I drove back in the freezing cold with no heat or tunes :x Funny thing is I drove it with only 1 seat forever. Even passed inspection that way! It was really nice when I traveled with my dog too cause I would just sit her kennel where the pass seat would be and she had all that room to herself!


But man did she run good with this under the hood!!!


I vowed this was the last time this car would see the snow and its held true so far!


Traded a kid that hideous front bumper for a factory one and bought a factory black hood and t-bar. Also picked up some amber corners.

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Bought some stupid 18" wheels for $150 with crap tires to try and make money on or trade for something I would actually run on my car. Ended up trading those wheels for some polished del sol wheels with practically brand new tires, plus the guy gave me money on top!!


I hated the look of the polished wheels and center caps so I sanded them dull and out of boredom painted the center caps black and drove it like that for a while.




I then painted the entire set black.






The carpet that came with the car was bad so I never put it in and found this better one on ebay and put it in along with the center console and some of the other interior.

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Clutch had seen better days at this point so I took this opportunity to install something that would put down a little more power and rode my motorcycle for a few days and of course it rained!!


So much fun!!


Old junk




This was a great way to break in the garage of my buddies new house!!


See my buddy Bryan supervising lol




Replaced this while I was at it.


That's more like it!!!!!


Also shed a few lbs with a Type R flywheel




All was good for quite some time after this then on my way to work about 5 am one day my timing belt broke :roll: Never trust someone that you don't know saying, "Timing belt has been changed recently". Towed it back home with my buddies ranger and my driveway was so steep we had to pull the bumper cover off to push it in the garage with the truck!


Should I just put a new TB on and try it or pull the head and have it check out? I was almost positive that it was ruined being such a high compression motor.






May as well add something else while its apart!!

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Believe it or not everything checked out fine!!! I was thrilled so I picked up my beautiful clean un-damaged head, a timing belt, new water pump, and head gasket and brought her back to life again!!




Figured I try to repaint this back to the original black that Honda intended it to be while it was off.


All was well for quite some time. I then was blessed enough to buy this un-molested daily!!! DX, auto, 100% stock, full (blue :x ) interior, and rusted horribly but it only had 120xxx miles on it and I figured it would be great transportation to work on the other car more and could be a donor for odds and ends. Even if I had to dye some carpeted pieces to use them in my other black interior car.




Yeah buddy, All in one piece. I pulled this out and it went to the attic!! After some dye this will be a great donor piece as I was missing it!


This is also now in my attic. Hopefully I can paint/dye it black and make it look factory too!




My buddy A.J. and I took a trip to KC to grab some parts late at night.


Little sanding and pulling her apart. Just like the rest of the car and the paint on top, the guy has some crappy orange paint underneath. Nothing surprises me anymore on this car. What is wrong with people!!?? Still NO RUST!!




This shows how steep my driveway was!! This was the last time I drove it I actually took it around the block and ripped it a couple times just as it sits and got some looks lol!!!!










Pulling the heart out


Found this little treat in the bay when we started pulling the motor. I had a stripped bolt in the tranny mount quite a while back and it seems ripping gears with a loose tranny mount leads to bad things!! Better put it back in place and weld it up before we pull the motor!














It's out....now what???


Pose!!! Hahahaaa. Me throwing up my white gangster signs and A.J. representin' with the Honda tattoo!! DORKS


"I spread my butt cheeks as Mike Honcho" lol!!

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Well, time went by and priorities changed slightly. As my buddy was having a girl practically move in it wasn't the same bachelor pad and I wasn't happy there anymore. I had also spent a lot of time and money getting my photography career moving and was making that transition from photography being a second job to my only job. I started looking for a house to buy because the market was down and I was ready to stop throwing away rent money. Car also sat for a long time with little progress for my love of my motorcycles and I never had money for the car because I wouldn't go with out them.

Found a house, moved out of my buddies nice house with a big 2 car garage to my little house with an extra deep 1 car. Couldn't move the car for a while then I got to bring her home!!


Her new home!! Now its time to build shelves so I can get the rest of my stuff there and work on it again!


Had so much stuff in the attic. Brought 2 truck loads of mostly interior parts from where I used to live to my new houses attic. Probably enough for almost 3 CRX's!!


Building shelves

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I'm happy to say that as of lately, I have definitely been getting some progress under my belt. I've still got a long road ahead but I'm starting to see transformation.

The guy had not only painted the car like 3 times over but half of the engine bay had been rattle canned black too. So its been a real treat getting all that out of the bay and head light housings!! Got most all of that sanded down to at least the factory red paint in the last month or so.




Then my buddy John came over this weekend to help weld up the bay for the shave. We call him Chip, named after the great Mr. Foose. He's a master at metal work. He is building a RHD EG himself and he has been such a help and good friend to me. Couldn't do it without him!!!!


Also cutting off all the little tabs and things I don't need to make it look cleaner. John's theory is, "if you don't remember what its for, you don't need it" lol!!








Making some filler pieces for bigger holes


John you crazy animal!!! lol


My vision for this car is:

clean shaved bay
wire tuck
turbo b-series goal of around 250-300 hp
JDM front with usdm fenders
stock body with all black moldings
charcoal grey paint
full interior

I'm building this car to ENJOY. I have no intention of having a show car but I'm not going to cut corners either. Just a "showable" but practical car.

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Went to a car show today that a couple buddies entered and one of my buddies got first in class with his EG hatch, and my other buddy got second in class with his sweet boosted Altima! Not bad for the first show they have entered. This is the first year both cars have been finished. Definitely getting me more and more motivated to keep moving forward on mine!! Here are a couple pics I took of them!

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Prepped and sprayed the bay last night. Also got all the factory undercoating out of the front wheel wells. Metal work looks pretty smooth, I'm pretty happy with how it looks before I even start the body work. Now its time to start body work on all those little imperfections! It may be a while still before I can actually have the bay painted because I will still have to buy some parts to mock up before I want to put pretty paint in there like, radiator, turbo......

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Just ordered EF8 front bumper, t-bar, glass headlights with corner lenses, and metal hood today! Those should be in about a week from now hopefully. I love the JDM front look but I want to run USDM fenders cause I don't want side markers. Wanting to keep a super clean look down the side of the car.

Been doing alot of filling/sanding to get the small imperfections out of the bay and get that nice smooth shape on some stuff. Post up pics when my front end comes in!

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Wow I haven't posted for a while!! Wish I could say I have made huge progress but I bought another motorcycle(2002 Yamaha Road Star Warrior) and work has been stupid busy and I got married on top of all of that!

Pic of the bike:D


Got my JDM front end in with 3 corners of my hood dented bad and like 3 dents on the top! Front bumper isn't all that great but it can be fixed and will be fine. I have been trying to deal with the seller and UPS and trying to get replacements or partial refund or something and have pretty much given up and I'm just going to fix and use what I have.

All the bodywork in the bay is finished. Just need to get a radiator, prime again and do final touchups then pick a color and it will be ready to spray. Gonna try to jam the car with at least primer at the same time I do the bay so I may wait a while for paint. Pics will be up soon.

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Ok so sold another bike. While I had mine in there I also had my dad's and not any room to hardly move!! Now that his is out and I sold mine I got the garage all cleaned up again and I can really dig into the crx again! I'm committing from this point on I will not buy any more bikes until this car is back on the road!! Had to buy a truck though so I got a steal on a nice Silverado with only 55k miles on it! Also bought my wife a nice Camry so I don't have to work on her crappy Grand Am anymore!! Work has been really slow and not much money to put into the car. Also lost a lot of motivation since my jdm front came in damaged. Never got any kind of compensation from that.

Here is a pic of my Silverado in front a cool sunset we had and I had to just pull over and shoot a pic.


The wifes new whip! Shot with iphone lol.


My buddy that just finished that beautiful green eg hatch on the previous page just sold it and bought a clean ek and a k-swap for it! But not before we ran out and did some quick shots of it!



Here is a little of the damage that was on my hood. This is just the two front corners and the rears were worse and like 3 dents on top!!

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So once I started doing my final small work on the bay I kept getting more and more picky and have spent way too much time on it. But it will not be some thrown together driveway job when finished. Will be just as good of quality as the outside. Put this yellow coat of primer on and did my finishing body work. also did one of the jams. Should be doing the rest of the jams any day now.





Also kind of fitted my hood and bumper with an old t-bar and the one good fender I have. Couldn't find the ef7 t-bar for correct fitment of my hood to save my life!!! Finally picked one up for $200 shipped on ebay. I know way too much to spend but was willing to do about anything. So I'm also selling the sir one and the usdm. Also pretty much got the hood fixed for the most part. Still have to heat shrink the top in a couple places. And got bored and took a spray can and sprayed "SIR" on the hood a while back you can barely tell now lol.

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Removed the rear cross member and all suspension components and thoroughly cleaned them. Gonna paint all that stuff and nice clean gloss black before I put it back on. Also ordered poly trailing arm bushings cause the factory ones were shot. Probably put a master kit on everything else while I'm at it.


Put undercoating on my front wheel wells to see what kind I liked. Used Permatex in a can from O'relly's and wasn't too impressed. After I seem seal it gonna get something a little thicker and do it again. Probably bed liner is what I'll try next. Also cleaned out the rear wheel wells and gonna undercoat them when I redo the fronts.

These fronts are really clean you can just see some filler dust from me sanding lol.


Rears all clean pre-undercoating:


Also planning my brake tuck. Gonna get the hardware from down star. Not real cheap but my buddy did his with their hardware and its super nice! He also used the Fedhill softer brake lines(aluminum maybe?). You can bend them by hand but I'm not sure if I'll go with those yet or not.

Here is the ek prop valve I picked up from a buddy that I'm probably gonna use. Just think it will tuck a little cleaner than the style that came off the car.

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Just ordered my correct tbar and its coming from Hong Kong and said it could take over a month to get here patiently waiting for that and on the look out for a driver side fender. Too bad the one on my dd got smashed by an old man a year ago!! :x Too bad this SIR tbar won't fit on my car cause its super clean and complete with the vent and I guess the little switch on the other side is for "hood ajar" light? Its on ebay for sale now.


Think I'm gonna go with Fuction Form full body coilovers for it. Seem like a great value!

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Just got home for 2 days from a big job out of state. Now I'm leaving for another one for the rest of the week. I think I will be in town for work next week so hopefully get some stuff done.

Here is a pic of all my stuff freshly blasted and ready for bushings to come out. I did get the control arms dropped off today to get bushings pressed out. Should be able to pick them up first thing next week when I get home.


Pic of the bay finished in final primer. Not the best quality but my gopro is suer easy to just grab and snap away.


My Prothane master kit was here when I got home. My dog was excited to see it too lol.


Now next week I should get my stuff back from being pressed out and be able to paint all my stuff fresh gloss black and put my new poly bushings in!

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Wow, its been a little bit since an update. I have been way busy all summer and progress has been a little slow but progress none-the-less.

Got all my suspension stuff painted gloss black, rear bumper support, front jdm bumper support, sway bar, trailing arms, calipers, traction bar, and subframe. All the poly bushings are in, new oem style trailing arm bushings installed, all back on the car and its back on the ground and rolling. Also undercoated the rear wheel wells also.

Fixing a couple things that my front bumper had wrong with it. Also shaved the front plate holes and shaped it to match the rest of the front molding. Need to get a drivers fender here soon. Got the car back on the old suspension for now. Not gonna change it till its painted so I don't paint my good stuff.

Now just getting ready to get the doors jammed with primer so I can put all the body pieces back on and start the prep for paint. Slowly still coming along.

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Here are a few pics. Can't see a lot of the change from the last pics but here they are.

right after I got the front suspension back on, getting ready to undercoat the back wheel wells then re assemble rear trailing arms, control arms and stuff with new poly bushings


suspension stuff all painted and new bushings, back on the ground rolling again.


traction bar


of course the bay won't change again until the rest of the car is pretty much ready for paint but it is finished until that point. Just need to make brackets for smaller radiator and figure out where to mount my relocated battery turminals under the hood.


trying to get this hood that was damaged in shipping exactly right is about to kill me!!


notice where those two goofy places on the bumper that used to stick out to mount your plate are gone! forgot to shoot a pic of that in focus but you can tell where I shaved it.


Thats about it for now. Have to heat shrink another place in this hood!! Then get the doors and hatch jammed and back on, then buy my drivers side fender. Met with a guy this week to buy a used "OEM" fender and it was clearly aftermarket and also from some other ef not a crx......sigh. Stupid kids. Think I'm just gonna buy a new honda OEM and be done with it.

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Got some time to work on her Saturday. Got her out in the driveway and got the pass door on and sanded on it a little more. Decided to throw on the pass fender and bumper to see how things were lining up. Had to do some more mods to the bumper but everything seems to be lining up pretty well!!

This weeks plans are to get the drivers door and hatch jammed, possibly the pass fender and hood too. Would like to maybe have the drivers door and hatch on this week. Then all I basically need is to buy a drivers side fender and I have outside almost ready to prime!!

Here is a pic after I roller her back into the garage after wrapping up for the day.


So nice to be able to roll it in and out again to clean the garage or have room to work in there again. Was on jack stands for like 6 months it seemed like. Maybe more!

Business has been booming which leaves little time to address the CRX. The good news is I have some money for parts and usually around the 1st part of the year work slows to a halt for a couple months and if this year is like years past, I should have plenty of time to get much done on the CRX in the months soon to come!

Went to Import Alliance fall meet in Nashville last weekend. Was my first time ever and was amazing and helped keep me super motivated! Not many EF's there and fewer CRX's and I didn't see one CRX with JDM front which makes me happy cause means my will be rarer than I thought. Here is a fun little video I did of our trip:

We are from Missouri and it was over a 7hr drive plus I drove an extra 3hrs to meet my buddy from where I live. So worth it though. We took his RHD EK with a B20vtec and type R tranny.

Other than that, I have all exterior panels for my car except drivers side fender. Should get that soon. I also bought primer for everything. Waiting on the fender to prime the whole outside. Got the hatch back on and prepped. Drivers door is ready to be put back on too.

Got my hood emblem and windshield wiper squirters welded up and shaved. All exterior is ready for primer just need to get that fender!!!

Here is a pic of shaving the hood holes.

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Can't find a fender for this dang car!! I have looked high and low with no luck. Really would like to use OEM Honda part but its not looking good. This is the only panel I need for the outside so I can prime everything and start prepping for paint!!

Ok, so I've got some more progress updates. My damaged hood from shipping was a nightmare to try and get right without filling it up with filler but I finally got it pretty much where I want it and got the hood, fender, and bumper primed. Also got the drivers door jammed and back on the car.

It was freezing cold here and I have a tiny garage so to have room to paint had to push the car outside. The upside to the small garage is I have a propane heater that heats it up in about 15 minutes! And got some Christmas lights up lol.


Patiently awaiting freshly sprayed parts out in the cold



Car back in for the night to let parts dry over night.







Actually had to end up sanding and respraying cause I had some bad gun/primer problems but with a new gun and primer kept inside where it was warmer, second coat turned out pretty well.

Still cannot find a fender. I have called Honda....dicontinued, salvage yards 2 states away and can't find a clean OEM donor! I have a job to shoot in Nashville next month and a friend that I made there at IA last months says he can get me one to pick up on my trip so we'll see if he comes through.

Should have these parts sanded down and the little bit of body work finished on the rear of the car by this week. Have a guy coming to cut out my little rear glass from my hatch so I can paint a clean line there hopefully today. may wait till I get the fender to spray the whole car in primer. Then again, I love seeing something fresh so I don't know if I can hold out almost another month to see more primer on it lol. Moving forward.......

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So I've had some frustrations but still some great progress this week. My buddy ordered me an aftermarket fender through his shop and it was a horrible fit! I am sending it back. Have a guy in Nashville that is supposed to hook me up with an oem used one while I'm there for a job mid January. Hate to wait that long but don't know what else to do

The good news is, got the entire car primed and most of it blocked out. Blocked out really well. Of course found a few places that need very minor work but was very pleased!

This is finishing up my minor body work getting ready to prime the rest of the car:


Got my t-bar back on and the headlights mounted up. This JDM front is a pain to try and get lined up perfectly. Mainly just the headlights and corners. I got the drivers side headlight perfect but the pass side still needs work.

This is right after the prime getting my headlights mounted up for the first time WITHOUT the t-bar. They were way off at this point. Also notice the horrible fit of the drivers side fender!


Gonna spray the whole car with primer again and block it one more time just to get it as straight as possible. Should be putting some color in the jams and bay shortly after I get my fender!

It's project has taken way too long because of life and priorities, but I never sold the car and its great to finally see it starting to come together and start looking more like something I in visioned when I got it.

I'll put some pics up soon.

Spent all new years eve night painting.......the house lol. Unfortunately not the car. Gotta get a few things squared away on the house to get it ready to put on the market and hopefully it sells quickly and we can put in an offer on a house that has an actual SHOP!!!

Anyway, just wanted to bump back to the top for the pics I added in on my previous post. Happy first day of 2013!

My biggest new years resolution is to drive this car again all painted this year!! Maybe even be able to take it to IA summer meet in Kentucky!

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I haven't taken any pictures that really show big progress but I've just been getting picky with some things. For one, I took my rear bumper off my rusty beater car and the bumper support basically broke off the car. It was so rusted! The reason I was getting it is its a great bumper cover and was gonna swap it out with the crappy one on the good car. That took tons of cutting with an angle grinder to get the cover off the broken support without damaging it. Then I got a donor bumper support from a friend out of town over Christmas time but it wouldn't fit in our Camry to bring home. So the beater isn't
Legal at the moment so I'm driving the gas guzzling truck.

I wasn't happy with some little low spots on the car after blocking. Some of which will be covered by moldings but they still bothered me lol. With the hood I was chasing very shallow low spots all over the hood so I decided to cover the whole center of the hood with a thin layer of filler and block the whole thing again. About 2hrs later I think it is way better.

Only a few more little spots on the rest of the car to touch up and I'll be spraying another coat of primer and block again.

I also did some rigging to get some adjustment out of my pass side headlight. Got it moved back where it needs to be, still not sure how to pull it up to tighten the gap between the top of the headlight and hood.

Changes coming soon!

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So I spent most of the day yesterday in the garage. I was determined to get everything ready to spray another coat of primer. I got my door latches back on and lined up. Got my hatch lifts put back on. Then sanded all the parts that I hadn't gotten to yet and searched for pin holes and stuff to fill with finishing filler. I got everything prepped except the front pumper but I didn't know if I'd have enough primer to do everything anyway. Today is my birthday and I kicked it off by staying up spraying the car till 1am to officially welcome my 28th birthday lol.

Still trying to get that hood right. I am so sick of blocking from this dang hood!


Take note of the manly "man cave" bar stool lol.


Doors latched and hatch lifts on.


All wiped down ready to go.


DO WORK

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Here we go for round 2! I really hope this is the last time I block it all.





Also forgot to mention that I am stealing some parts off a buddies CRX that lives where my parents do. He said he'd sell me the whole car with a new quarter panel for $200 but I don't have a place to keep it. He was building the car for his girlfriend then they broke up. It's not a real nice car but has most of the molding besides doors and fenders, nice interior and lots of very nice odds and ends like door handles and stuff.

I got a clean pass Si seat that I'm gonna try to pull the bolster and fabric off and mount it to my drivers seat to have a nice set. Also gonna swap dashes since someone had put a haggard 88 dash in mine so I'm gonna put a clean 91 dash back in since its a 91 car. Plus I got 2 nearly mint Si door panels. Hoping to steal as many parts as possible off that car. And if I get a house with a shop as planned here soon ill take the whole car off his hands.

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Got back from Nashville last night. My guy came through with my fender. Not quite as clean as I'd hoped but very fixable just gonna need some love. Also got some cool shots of his rat rod style Rex while I was there. His car is far from my style but I can respect that it's cool in it's own way and it's a CRX lol. Plan on getting that fender straight and primed and most of the car blocked this week!

Here are a couple shots of his car.

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I'm really glad I'm keeping this log if anything just for myself for when the car is finished.

Got my hood latched again. Been spending some time getting the hood and drivers side fender to line up right. Got it pretty close now. Got the front bumper primed again and got the dr side fender straight and primed. Gone through a gallon of 2k primer now and looks like I'm gonna need to buy another being picky sucks sometimes.



Prepping the fender.