morbius18

I'll give you all a little background on myself. I am in the military and stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. I am getting medically retired from the Army due to injuries after doing a 50 mile ruck march, and was looking for a project to do while I awaited the long (1.5 year and counting) process. Since I am practically useless to the Army now, I have plenty of spare time to work on my car.

I used to have a 93 Del Sol S years ago and a 1998 Integra GSR, but got married and joined the army and got out of the scene.

I purchased this 1993 Del Sol SI with what I was told was a 2000 civic SI swap. The guy wanted $3500 but it had some issues. There was a clunking when turning and the motor was running like crap. I knew about the motor and the frame was solid but the body looked like it was in a hail storm.

I talked him down to $2700.

morbius18

The first thing that I did was fix the spoiler holes that someone had used electrical tape to cover up. I bought some Bondo, sand paper and primer to fix this. I decided to shave off the holes for the emblem on the back, remove the civic del sol and fix a dent below the license plate.

Sanded down to metal, used bondo to fill, sand flat, apply spot putty, sand flat, and prime.

morbius18

So after driving it around and wondering why it only redlined at 7600 or so, I pulled up the carpet and checked the ecu. It was running a P28, a SOHC VTEC ecu. I guess when they swapped it, they either left the ECU or switched it out to sell it.

morbius18

I got a chipping kit off EBAY and told the guy that I wanted the B26a2 basemap with redline at 8200. I had the check engine light flash at 8000 as a shift indicator. The kit was like $35 and took about a week to get here. I went to radio shack and bought a soldering iron, a desoldering iron and some fine solder. I spent about $30 on the supplies and proceeded to install the kit.

morbius18

I picked up a B16 Del Sol VTEC cluster of Craigslist for $75 to replace the Del Sol SI cluster.

morbius18

I got some Night Shades tint for the tail lights for about $8. I cleaned them, wet sanded with 2000 grit paper, applied 3 coats of the tint and 2 coats of clear.

The first pic is after those steps.

The second pic is later in the build, but I pulled them off and wet sanded them smooth, used buffing compound and put 8 coats of wax on them to shine them up. They are slightly dirty in the pic from all my body work.

Total spent about $30.

morbius18

Next I removed the ghettoish faded orange caliper paint and panted the caliper/rotor cap with red. I also cleaned up the rims.

morbius18

I got some thermal gaskets from ebay and pulled off the intake manifold/throttle body to clean them up. Since I was there I also pulled off the valve cover to repaint it with red wrinkle paint.

I had to strip off the old baked on white enamel paint with airplane stripper (about $15) and took my dremel to it to get off the stubborn parts. I then bought 1 can of VHT Wrinkle paint ($9) and painted to cover according to instructions. I let it dry overnight and then baked in the oven for 2 hours at 200 degrees.

I was too lazy to mask all the letters and just used my dremel and 80 grit sand paper on a block to sand off the letter.

morbius18

About this time I started looking at the head and noticed it was a PR3-1 with a casting date of 94, so I'm assuming it was off a Del Sol VTEC b16a3 , but the block was definitely a b16a2.

morbius18

and with that, I'm going to bed. I'll continue to post more pics of the build tomorrow.

Josueneta

Nice not bad I'm also working on a 93 Del Sol and I'm also In WA Kent If there's any time u need help lete know I'm always down to help friends in need

morbius18

I forgot about fixing the rough running problem in the beginning. I changed out the spark plugs and wires. It turns out that the plugs were gapped wrong and one wire was shorting outm

morbius18

The car had a really bad dented lower driver quarter panel. I cannot weld and don't have access to one, and my apartment landlords would probably be pissed about me doing this in the parking lot, so I started using bondo and repairing the part.

Repairing a body line with bondo was a royal pain in the ***.

morbius18

I also filled some minor dents on the front fender and 2 dents above the rear tire. The pinstripping was peeling and missing in spots and the goo gone wasn't working, so you can see where I ended up removing it as well.

morbius18

I picked up a used cold air intake on craigslist. I'm not sure if it was for a crx or a DA integra, it had bends for where the battery would be in the front. I used my reciprocating saw and cut the bends so that I could move the filter behind the bumper.

barrett_5

not a bad pick up. i love del sol's. didn't see much of them anywhere now they're popping up everywhere along with build threads. it's awesome.

morbius18

I ordered a front abs plastic lip from ebay and pulled the headlights to polish and remove the haze. I started with wet sanding with 2000 grit paper, then using a commercial headlight haze remover with a clean rag. I got out the dremel with a polishing wheel and set the speed to LOW (if you go to fast, it will melt the plastic and look like ***). I used a buffing compound twice, the haze remover twice and a coat of wax. Before and after pic. I also pulled the tail lights again and polished and waxed to perfection.

morbius18

I started sanding and filling the front bumper on my back porch and painted the intake and OEM Strut bar that I picked off someone on craigslist. I used my dremel to cut out the grill and picked up aluminum gutter lining from Lowes for $8 and cut to fill.

I ended up removing the black from the intake and going to brushed aluminum because the black didn't look right to me.

I also remove the stock accessory lights and replaced with aftermarket 55w driving lights. I intalled a low only HID kit and rewired the high beams to the driving lights in the fog light holes.

The lip came in and I mounted it and installed everything on the car again. The pic with the lip didn't have the mesh installed yet, but on the light pics you can see it.

morbius18

I got a spark plug wire cover and installed the intake. I don't like the wire cover and am trying to find an OEM one.

barrett_5

wow. nicely done. i'm digging the build.

morbius18

I have been doing body work on the car all along, but get burnt out of doing it 12+ hours on the weekends, so I have been bouncing around on projects for the car.

Keep in mind that I have never done any of this before, just lightly tuned back in the late 1990s.


I started on the fender and door. I swear they must have hit golf ***** at this car for all the dings in it. Again, I just used bondo to fill the minor dents and tried to get behind the panel to beat out any that I could like on the fender.

I attempted to start on the hood, it looked like it had been run under another car.

apexi_rsx

looks good so far but you probably would save yourself a lot of time just working with a hood thats in better condition that hood looks wrecked they bend very easily.

morbius18

I ended up throwing away the hood and picked up a less beat up one for $30 from someone locally. I had to drill a $hit ton of holes to pull out the front, but ended up doing the other side the same way. Now the lip of the hood has a slight duck lip to it instead of the usual curve. I thought it looked a little better.

I got a pic of the bondo dent hammer in there. You just drill a small hole, thread a screw tip in and bump the slide on the hammer to pull out most of the dent.

After a few weeks of on and off work on the hood, it looks like the pacific islands of a calico cat or something. Its about 95% fixed, but I'm done with this PITA. I'll get a carbon fiber hood one day.

SpoonfedCivic

Lookin good! I wish I had more time and money to do with my Sol as I want. It will just take me a lot of time, alas... Rome was not built in one day. Keep up the good work!!!

morbius18

I picked up the primer, paint and clear coat. It was $240 for all of it and the associated reducers, hardeners and supplies. There is a paint shop on Fort Lewis, and they charge $140 to paint the car for you, so I will be getting it primed this friday, and hopefully painted a week later. It will be the original black granada pearl color.

I also picked up some black reverse glow gauges from ebay for $35. I got it installed and really like the look now. I have some red led lights in the mail for the back so that the needles and climate control stuff will be red.