visiblystealthy

iTrader: (1)

I'm not much of a wheel *****. I've seen those wheels a time or two though, and really like them. What are they? TIA

NewCarScent

They're Enkei RPF1's, very popular choice as a budget lightweight wheel.

kab00m

Are those 15" wheels?

NewCarScent

15x7 with a +41 offset and a 195/50/15 tire

NewCarScent

UPDATE TIME!!!

Got a little bit of time here before I have to get ready for work so I'll try to get you guys up to speed on what's been going on with this thing.


So after I did all the valvetrain, I started getting all the components from my Y8 head ready to transfer onto the Y5.

Took everything apart, inspected it, cleaned it up, lubed it, and put it back together.











I also picked up this beauty for cheap, so I couldn't say no




Still have to match it to my 70mm throttle body that I picked up and then send it out to get coated.

Going to do a chrome-like finish on the manifold (TB is the same finish) and get my valve cover in a teal-ish blue color.

I think it'll look nice once it's all together.


For a little while I didn't do much but work my *** off (boss had hernia surgery and I ran the shop for 3 weeks, so I didn't have time to do much)


Then one morning I went to go pull down my sun visor and it ripped the clip right in half...so I went to the dealer and got new ones.

Figured I could go to the junkyard and pull some, but I'd rather get brand new pieces that aren't sun beat. Plus, they were only $5 each and they magically had them in stock.

Love seeing these things pile up, makes me feel like I'm doing something right.




Also, my car decided to show me the sign of the beast

NewCarScent

So after a couple weeks of stock piling parts and doing research on how the whole ordeal would go (cam degree difference between Z6 and Y8, wiring differences between Y5 and Y8, etc.)
I borrowed the shop key to knock it all out on a Sunday.

Got there a lot later than I wish I would've, but it all went relatively smooth.

Got the car in, racked it up, and took the notorious "before" shot




Took all the old stuff off. Went extremely smooth since I had already done it to get the valvetrain in place.




Only thing that was a snag was when I was taking one of the valve cover retaining bolts out, the little rubber grommet that acts as a seal on the PW:JDM units fell into the valve cover.

I was really hoping that it didn't fall down into the block, and to my surprise, I found this.




How I was lucky enough to have it sit perfectly in the middle and not fall anywhere? I have no idea.
But it certainly let me breathe a little easier for the rest of the job.

Not only did I swap the cam and Y8 rocker setup, but I also went ahead and replaced the timing belt, cam gear, tensioner, water pump, oil filter, and cam seal at the same time as cheap insurance.




To my surprise, everything that came off the car was in surprisingly good shape for having almost 150k miles on it.

After a little more time, everything went back in without a hitch




I was pretty nervous to start it up after all the work I had done to it, but she started right up and sounded healthy (other than the ticking, have to readjust my valve lash again)



After that, I played around with an intake pipe I had laying around and some aluminum heat tape. Wanted to see how it would look/perform to gather ideas for my intercooler piping down the road.






Once I had finished bleeding the coolant, checking oil levels, and buttoning everything else up, I took her for her first drive. Ignition timing was way off still, but man does the vtec crossover kick way harder now! Noticeable difference!


At this time, I was still running the Y5 ecu and wiring.

I went out and bought a set of NGK plugs and an NTK upstream 02 sensor to finish up the conversion since the Y8 ECU isn't compatible with the wideband 02 sensor that the HX's come with.




Getting there! Still have to find a place to conveniently mount my catch can...

NewCarScent

After all that, I fucked around with my ignition timing some more since my car was still running very sluggish under 3k rpm.

Finally had some time to get a timing light on it and found out that my timing was about 20 degress off of what it should've been.

Even with my distributor advanced all the way, I was still only at 2 degrees instead of the 12 I should be at.

Had to take the distributor off and bore the holes out with a dremel to make room for more adjustment.

After that, car ran GREAT!


Somewhere in the mix I was able to sell the Rotas that I had and found a stellar deal on some Enkei RPF1's.

Met up with the guy at a local parking garage to do the trade, but the HX wheels rubbed on the caliper brackets of his Fit so we headed to a nearby Honda shop that had spacers in stock.




These wheels really define how much height difference there is between the front and rear. It wasn't nearly as noticeable with the factory wheels on it.




Wheels sit perfect to my taste. They have 195/50 Nitto NT450's that are louder than hell. I don't know if any of you guys run this tire, but at first I thought it was a wheel bearing going on me. That loud.




Mandatory gas station shots. In love with the way the car looks now.






Then I ended up having a Saturday off (something that never happens) because my coworker wanted to switch for his Sunday shift so he could spend time with his wife on Easter.

I took advantage of the nice weather and did a few more things to her.

First, I went and got my banner put on at a local place that I used to manage.

Owner was cool as hell and hooked it up for free.




Then I lowered the front another 1/2" because it was bugging the crap out of me, and went to go get an alignment since I didn't want to have these tires getting chewed up like the ones on the HX wheels did (never had the car realigned after swapping out the rack)

Only a handful of places were open on a Saturday afternoon. A Firestone a couple towns over was open so I figured I'd go and get a lifetime alignment since I'll be messing with it quite a bit.

Car wouldn't fit on the rack, so I had to take the bumper off




Then once they were done, it went back on




And this is how the car sits now. Super happy with the way it's turning out.




Car feels great after the alignment other than still having a slight pull to the right and the tires being loud.

I recently picked up an integra shell with a friend of mine that we're stripping for parts, so I'll be doing a huge brake upgrade to this pretty soon.

I've also got some other parts like cleaner fenders, an aluminum radiator, and new headlights that will be making their way onto the car in due time.

Nave43

Nice work, i would have that pull to the right looked into. Ive heard bad things about the precision of Firestone's alignments.


A few questions:

What brand was the OEM water pump?

Does the heat tape on the intake make any noticeable difference? In sound or temperature?

Where did you get the braided clutch line and how much was it?

NewCarScent

Water pump was an actual dealer piece, so it was a Yamada unit (as I think all dealer ones are)

I haven't gotten to play around with the heat difference yet, but it is on my to-do list.

Clutch line I bought from a local company that makes custom lines, I wanna say it was right around $60 with the fittings.

NewCarScent

So since I got the new wheels, I haven't really felt safe with having the usual tuner lugs that everyone has a key for on there and decided to order a Muteki SR35 lug/lock set.
While I was at it, I also ordered a set of the Spoon reservoir cover to add to the Spoon collection on the car and tie the engine bay together a little bit.




I've been pretty sick for a few days now, but felt a but better this morning so I decided to go out and throw the new parts on.

The blue colored lugnuts are a very subtle hint, but I really like the way they look on there. Plus, the key for the locks is not a very common one so it makes me feel a little more safe about the wheels.




Then I put these on real quick. They really tied up the look of the engine bay, although I've yet to take another full picture (soon to come)






I was planning on going to a dyno day this morning to get a baseline of what kind of power my car is making right now before the turbo install, but just wasn't feeling well enough for it. If I'm lucky, the same spot will be having another one in a few months and I'll be able to do it then.

turbohatch96y7

iTrader: (15)

Your lip is bugging me

Fix it

tony_2018

Yes its crooket, but who cares. Its his turd and he can do whatever he wants

joey1320

Says who??
An alignment machine is a simple thing to use and as long as the tech using it knows what he's doing, there should be no issues. And there are **** techs everywhere, so its a toss up.

There were a few BMW certified/trained techs I have worked with that I would never let touch my car, so its all about who you deal with.

xWhiteGx

Hey homie, you're car is lookin' clean af. I have a HX as well and was wondering what kind of tranny you got? I thought all hx trannies are cvt, at least that's what I got. Also around how much hp and trq are you making right now?

NewCarScent

It bugs me more than you know, but unfortunately it is not in the list of priorities.
That's what a shity ebay lip looks like.
Who knows, I may run an SiR lip soon instead of what's on there now.

Someone gets it

THIS^^^

The tech that did my alignment was some old fart that told me I need to get drop spindles for my car...
I will be having my local Firestone recheck everything since my work does a lot of business with those guys, car is pulling pretty hard.

Not all of them were CVT, some came as a 5 speed stick (like mine)

I have no idea how much power I'm making now, but I'll hopefully be hitting a dyno sooner than later.

I'll post numbers when that happens.

chrysler kid

The cvt cars were more common, however there are less of them on the road now because of the expensive cost to rebuild the cvt transmission making them junk yard bound

Horse power you're probably around 130whp. You may want to switch to a y8 ecu though. The y5 cam had a more aggressive profile for Vtec which is probably why you had to advance the timing so far forward on the y8 head. Just remember you want an obd2a ecu

I don't think a clean hx is a turd, and I do think they polish up nicely the lip looks good just the alignment looks off back by the wheel well. The font looks off on those socks, like the SpOON

Your next mod should be to ditch the ultra long geared hx trans and score an s40 LSD unit. If the car still has the stock flywheel they were light weight from the factory so you may just want to have it resurfaced and then snag a clutch kit

My hx has a Jdm s40 LSD trans and just the trans swap made my car a lot more peppy to drive. The long gears on the factory trans did make it a "turd" to drive around town

f15Civic

Nice build man, you have done a great job with the car.

zdizzle

To the OP:

I think you have done a great job of bringing this car back from the dead with all the rust, and SF damage. Your mods were tastefull,functional & made the car more fun to D.D .

G'sCivic_98

X2
Great job man, love to see ppl who actually mod their civics in a tasteful way! Ill be interested to see what numbers you get on the dyno. Keep up the good work!

NewCarScent

I already have a Y8 ecu, narrowband 02 sensor, and pigtail.
Just have to find time to wire it in.
As far as the trans goes, I think the longer gearing will be nice with boost.


Thank you!


Thanks!
I do take a lot of time to plan everything I do before I do it and don't just "throw" parts at a car.
Good to know that it doesn't go by unnoticed.


I will be attending King Motorsport's Dyno Day on June 14th so I will see what kind of numbers it is making then!

NewCarScent

Also got these in the mail today thanks to the guys over at Wireworx.




They are the last puzzle piece I needed to be able to intall my super awesome EDM motorized headlights.

I will try to start on wiring for them tomorrow morning, so we'll see how far I get.

NewCarScent

So, I went to the shop bright and early today to do the install on the new headlights.

I gotta say, wiring them in was a lot easier than I expected.

First off, I took everything apart and made sure clearances were going to be ok with the power motor in there.






It was a tight fit, but no modification was needed.

Next up, I wired in the city lights to the parking lights so that they work at the same time.




Then I started to create my own harness that would plug into the in-cabin fuse box and then go to the center console (where the switch is mounted).

I decided that individual grounds would be best, and extended the wires with some stuff I had at work.




After soldering and heat shrinking everything, I got some wire loom and wrapped everything up to make it look like a factory harness.




After running the harness from the passenger side, under the core support, and to the driver side headlight, I followed the hood latch cable into the car.




I then made an inline fuse holder to house a 20amp fuse in line (terrible picture)




The 12v switched and signal wires then followed into the center console, where I cut them to length and added the plug for the switch.




And after everything, this is how the car looks!




I still have to take pictures of where the switch is mounted.

I will play with them tonight and see how much difference there is between settings and where I want to have them at.

I also have to see if the switch illuminates or not because I wasn't able to see anything in the daylight.

NewCarScent

Just tested them on after my midnight shift at work and THEY ARE AWESOME!!!

Light cut off is 100x cleaner.

The motorized height adjustment is pretty freaking cool too.

I'll see if I can post a video of them tomorrow.

jerryward58

correct

Figit090

Cool build! I started my Honda interest on ecomodder but I came here for more technical stuff, and one of the recent emails had your thread featured.

I'm currently looking for a sock HX so it's neat to see a build starting with one. I was a bit bummed that the drivetrain will not be used as a fuel-efficiently as possible, but I don't care either. Despite what people say the HX is NOT a rare car. My Supra is sorta rare, and a DeLorean is rare. A clean un-molested stock HX is scarce, and worse if you're picky like me, but it seems many ecomodders don't care about clean looking cars, and would have purchased several I passed on. I guess if MPG is SUPER important, many people disregard aesthetics? Anyway, once I started searching (granted that was 8 months ago) I see them all the time.

What killed me more than ditching the y5 was a guy that took a perfect looking HX with shiny black paint and sanded the heck out of it, then made all sorts of aero mods. Ruined the paint, ruined the body, and kinda put a sour taste in my mouth because it was exactly what I'm looking for. I thought he could have found a worse looking body since 60% or more have faded paint; but to each their own! I just stopped reading.

I think that good MPG can be found from turbo'd performance engines and I'm curious what your engine will achieve with a turbo and no lean burn. Has anyone ever thrown a turbo on the y5 head? There's a guy who gets good MPG out of an HX block in a 4-door EX with a VX tranny (or something) just by using a super tall gearset...no leanburn I guess.

EDIT: found the "EDM headlights" part, and searched a bit. I'm guessing EDM is European Domestic Market? They look cool, and they're glass right? Are they meant to be adjusted all the time or just occasionally when they don't seem right? Do you still have high and low beams?

I like what you've done with the car, and the Enkei RPF1's, those look great! Do you know how much they weigh for your size? I'm thinking perhaps I'd look into getting a similar pair but I don't know what they usually cost, weigh, and what normal tires cost. I'll also have to check if low rolling resistance tires are available because that's a goal for my future civic.

It's likely I'll just stick with the stock HX rims (also made by Enkei and weigh ~12lb) on whatever I get though. If memory serves, lower profile tires always cost more, and LRR tires are limited in size availability. I'm shooting for 45mpg average and inexpensive maintenance so tires are important to think about (and a huge annoyance for car buying because many HX's have steelies now).

keep up the good work, it's looking great!