the ghoul

Hey all,
I saw these pics and got all kinds of inspired





so i started doing some homework and lusting after the teg front end.....
Not much info out there, ran across one guy on cardomain.com asked him a bunch of questions so i bought an integra front clip two days ago, as well as the bits for the rear disc conversion.


so i started on the swap today... Im going to use this thread to document how exactly i did the swap. I can see about 3-4 different ways to go about this, but this is the way that seems easiest me...
enjoy!

the ghoul

First 8 hours of integra front end swap.
I decided that because of MLK day and my sweet sweet gov-ment job Ive got 3 days to play around with this swap. So im going to document the swap as it goes..
Enjoy!

So just for comparison sake here is how the front end looks stock.

The happy pile of integra bits



The first step was to pull the wheels off and strip the front end, including any thing flammable back to the strut towers.

I left the front fenders on to see how the hood would line up with them.


I was surprised that they lined up very well. If you notice the hood is sitting a bit higher than the fenders. The integra fenders have a higher arch to them, that and there was a mild clearance issue around the cowl area. The plastic grill was interfering with the hood.

the ghoul

I am still amazed that the integra hood lines up so well with the civic fenders. The back of the hood line and the fender to a-pillar joint isn’t perfect but its close enough for me.


Little though to make out but this is a pic of the hood loop and the civic clasp, it comes very close to being right… but not close enough.


As mentioned before the plastic cowl keeps the hood from closing all the way, the quick fix for me was to take the propain torch, warm the trouble spots up, and close the hood. It worked very well!

the ghoul

Well the radiator support has to go. A quick look at the spot welds reviled that the whole assembly is attached by the frame rail and a couple along the front of the fender channel. I also did away with the fenders at this stage to gain a bit more room. Some spot drilling and carful hammer and flat screw driver work and the old piece was free.





I striped down the integra core support clip much the same way. After welding in the holes I made to the frame rails and grinding them smooth I could test fit the core support section. Two of the four bumper bolts lined up allowing me to test fit the clip without having to tack weld.


The hood latch lined right up perfectly. I was a little bit suspicious but it turns out the integra and civic frame rails terminate at the same length. This project is so sick the way every thing plays so well together, even the hood pop cable fit right into the integra latch.

the ghoul

Once I giggled for about a half hour over the madness of it all I decided it was time to get serious. I took some of the inner fenders from the integra and re-welded them to the core support clip to use them as filler panels and welded it all to the car. Note the lower bumper bolts have been replaced ! what I did was found a 10mill nut and drilled the frame rail tab and welded the nut to the back side.. works a little too well.


Looks like the only struggle is going to be mating the civic inner fender to the integra inner fender section…. Gotta be carful about all of it, but im sure ittl happen. Tomorrow will tell.

arrocha87

sounds god. most ppl will say "why are u doing this!" but i saw it on a crx and it looked gud and that was with the crx all boxy. i think the only hard part here is cutting the civic and teg fenders in the right spot and welding them together again... i wonder if this swap is as easy with sedans as well...

dj theoretic

cool idea clean job.

the ghoul

Quote:

Originally Posted by arrocha87

sounds god. most ppl will say "why are u doing this!" but i saw it on a crx and it looked gud and that was with the crx all boxy. i think the only hard part here is cutting the civic and teg fenders in the right spot and welding them together again... i wonder if this swap is as easy with sedans as well...

see im not stressing that too much.
body sheet metal is a bit thinner than inner fender metal, so once you cut the re-enforcement behind the panel it should be fairly flexible, allowing you to bend and blend a bit easier.
again tho, it was a stroke of luck that the a pillar "cap" on the civic fender lined up with the hood so well. that means i can cut the civic fender from that point down to just above the body line, over to the wheel well (where the wheel flair just begins to form). This will give me the door curvature, and body line section of the civic. The rough part at that point will be hinging the integra fender high enough off the fender rail to match up with the hood....
ah well, ill do that today , post pics and info!

As far as what people will say, all I have to say back is “its mine, and I wanted to”
thanx for looking, and thanks for the encouragement!

Inliner

def gonna be watching this, I'd like to do the JDM integra front on my coupe I personally think it would look good.

arrocha87

yup im definitely watching. hes inspiring me to do this on my 4dr, specially since it has such bad hail damage. hey the ghoul do u know if its just as easy on a sedan? cause i know that theyre slightly diff... would i need a sedan teg front end?

the ghoul

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inliner

def gonna be watching this, I'd like to do the JDM integra front on my coupe I personally think it would look good.

I dug the looks of the jdm front end, but the swaying fact in my mind on this project is because every one is going with the jdm front end on there integras you can buy the usdm integra front ends for nothing. That and i love the bubbly goofy looking front end on the bubbly goofy looking hatch back... it makes me smile.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arrocha87

yup im definitely watching. hes inspiring me to do this on my 4dr, specially since it has such bad hail damage. hey the ghoul do u know if its just as easy on a sedan? cause i know that theyre slightly diff... would i need a sedan teg front end?

Oh, i have no idea on the sedan, I couldn’t even tell you if the front end im putting on this car was from a sedan or a coupe.... I think i have seen a few pictures of sedans with this front end... you might want to do some digging and see if you can get in touch with some of those guys.
I imagine they all have the same length frame rails in the front which was the determining factor in my project and what made it so easy, just when you go to do it, make sure you bolt the hood on first (using stock civic hinges) and before you weld the radiator core support in place make sure you close and latch the hood. this will hold the core support in place while you weld.
other than that IDK

the ghoul

5 hours into day two… I decided to get inside, take a shower, warm up get some coffee and update the threads.

Little bit of a set back this morning; I accidently left the gas on for the mig welder. So that meant I couldn’t use the .023 solid wire I love so much for sheet metal. My cash flow is zapped from buying the front end bits and rims so I cant afford going out and getting the bottle filled. With luck I had an old role of .030 flux core wire kicking around. It will do but it’s a hot wire and I hate working with it. It is sloppy and makes your work look hack!

Well that aside I got right back to work.
With a little carful hammer and dolly work I was able to piece together the inner fenders.


I then turned my attention to the passengers fender.
I started by cutting the mounting tab off of the hood side of the fender. I cut it along the bend line to get the most of the tab I possibly could.


I then cut the fender where the a pillar tab joins the fender line, down to above the bump guard, across to where the wheel fair starts to develop.


Then with the front bumper cover hung, with lights and all the fixings I bolted the civic fender mounting tab in place loosely and closed the hood. I then carefully lined up the tab so it ran perfectly parallel with the hood.

the ghoul

I then took the door portion of the civic fender and hung it so that I didn’t scrape the door when it opened or closed.


I then cut down the integra fender taking as little metal as possible. I still didn’t know where the blends would happen so you can always take away metal later rather than trying to add it! So I cut off the under-hood mounting rail, this time cutting it where the mounting tab meets the upright section ( you will see why in a moment). I cut the fold section where the door jamb seam folds under, lower part of the ‘dog leg’ and the tab that meets the fender to a-pillar


I then bolted the integra fender to the front bumper, overlapped the under-hood section of the integra fender section with the civic one, then started carefully trimming down both fenders until the contours met closely. It was not perfect, I had to use a small screw driver to line them up as I tack welded. I think its important to mention a little bit of technique here. To weld thin sheet metal panels like this it is very important not to over heat the metal. This can cause warping. This warping is a pain to fix and will require a lot of body work. The correct way to weld sheet metal like this is to line up your starting point (for me that was the portion of the fender by the hood) and tack weld it. Then line up your end point (for me this was the wheel well) than tack weld it. Line up a mid point ( I chose the corner where the horizontal cut meets up with the vertical cut above the bump guard, again tack it. Then split the distance between your tack welds, line up the metal and tack. Then allow the panel to cool, then again split the distance between your tack welds, line up the metal and tack again. Remember if its too hot to touch with your bare hands, its too hot to tack. I highly recommend as far as gear a mig welder (my 115v Lincoln does very well) with .023 solid wire, and 75/25 gas.

the ghoul

Now, the reason I go into great depth with all of this is because I did absolutely every thing wrong. I didn’t have gas so I couldn’t use my .023 wire. I was forced to use flux core that burns way too hot and leaves one heck of a mess. I had to do so much tack and re-tack (because I kept burning through the metal) that I over heated the panel like crazy. My welds looked like crap, the panels are warped and this would be one heck of a mess if I were trying to make it look perfect… but… lucky for me, these metal panels will only be my winter gear and as you can prolly tell by the multi colored nature of the car, I don’t give a crap what it looks like in the winter!


With the door side of the fender squared away, I carefully adjusted the hood/fender gap, making sure the fender was sitting at the proper height. I then opened the hood, being very carful not to move the fender, and then tack welded the Integra vertical section to the civic vertical section/mounting tab


After that was all done I took the Integra fender support bracket, cut off the end of it, bolted it to the fender and welded it to the underside of the inner fender on the civic, making sure it wouldn’t interfere with any thing that needs to go back in that space.
And there she sits,
One side done


Now to get another cup of coffee, watch some initial D and get psyched up to get back out there and finish the other fender…

lluks_844

WOOOOH Initial D lol
you make it look sooooo easy.
keep up the good work

arrocha87

man i wish it was as easy as u make it sound/look!! i tried looking around but i cant find any indo on an EG sedan swap. i might definitely try this l8r in the yr but for now my priority is getting my B16a ordered and swapped.?

VTECROAR96typeR

why did you choose the usdm front instead of the jdm???

iliv2xlr8

My guess would be cost, but maybe not......

arrocha87

earlier he said in a post that they wer easier to come by and cost. plus he was inspired by a usdm swap, not jdm. plus he likes how it looks on his hatch...

turbojdmhatch

i would much rather see 98+ headlights and front bumper...but imglad to seee you actually cut and welded the fender..a kid from around my town did the integra front end on his ej8 and just bolted on the integra fenders and looked like **** about a inch gap between the door and fender

ek4_b16a

not bad! you do some nice work. not my taste, but i still think it looks good. get that thing finished up then get the 98+ front.

the ghoul

lol
thanx all
I gotta say if i was a fan of square looking headlights i would have swapped the 90-93 integra front end... I can see why people like the jdm integra front end, but it just dosent work for me.
yeah that and the money comes into play, what is it now $1300 for the jdm integra swap parts? where i scored every thing i needed plus every thing for the disc brake conversion for $600..

well here is your moment of zen, when its day light i will take picutres of the finished product.

‘fin 5 ½ hours

Well I knocked out the drivers fender. Lots of odds and ends after that.
I had to get creative with the washer mount bracket that also supported the civic fender. I cut half the ear off of it and cut the integra fender bracket in half then welded them together.


The only other thing that required major modification at this point was the radiator mounting system. I drilled out the two radiator mounts and re-welded them in the correct position for the civic radiator.


There is a lot of stuff your just going to have to play by ear.
Here were my solutions.
On the civic headlight connectors there are 3 pins and 3 wires going into the connecter in two different locations (2 wires side by side, seemingly going into one terminal). Those two wires are the ground and the hot for the low-beams, the single wire is the hot for the high beam. What I did was took the headlight connecters for the integra, soldered the grounds together and soldered them to the civic wire harness, and then soldered the high beam hot, and the low beam hot.
The turn signals and running lights were an easy fix. It turns out the inner socket for the integra signal lights are almost exactly like the socket for the civic marker lights. All that needs to happen is you have to take a square file and lengthen one of the square notches cut into the housing. All that’s left at that point is extending the turn signal wires down to the bumper. This is just a temp fix for me, the guy I bought all the front bits from is going to get me the correct light holders and connectors. At that point I will split the wires as I did with the headlights.
The window washer sprayers are a project left for another day. Im sure you could do some carful drilling and achieve the correct shaped hole to put the washer nozzles on the integra hood. I personally am just going to go out to the local auto parts store and buy some aftermarkets that use a round hole for mounting.
The wheel well plastics fit perfectly with a couple of holes re-drilled.

Well that’s all folks.
18 ½ hours invested.
I wouldn’t recommend doing it all in two days because Im beat. And keep in mind most of what I did was a hack rush job. I plan on doing a bit of body work to the inner fender seam when I refinish the engine compartment. Just plan to do a lot of body work. I would recommend after welding the fenders doing a base coat of long hair fiberglass filler, then a layer of body filler, than your glazing putty.

here is the side by side of the before and after.

wdissident

very impressed.
i could use you at my house!!!

xxblazexx

Nice work man....
need to take up a TIG welding class.......

NOFX

Thank god someone did this write up. I can't say I like the conversion, but we get questions on how to do it all the time! Now we have something to link to.

For that reason I am rehosting all of the images and will link them here so that the images will hopefully still be available when your PB goes down or you decide to move them, forgetting about this thread (as so often seems to happen).

They are separated by which post number the images appeared in in this thread. The OP did not post in all posts (other people did), so the post numbers do skip some numbers.

These are all the same photos already posted by the OP. They are just here in case his images go down.

Post 1
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, pic 4.

Post 2
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, pic 4.

Post 3
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, pic 4.

Post 4
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, pic 4.

Post 5
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3.

Post 12
Pic 1. pic 2, pic 3, pic 4.

Post 13
Pic 1, pic 2.

Post 14
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3.

Post 22
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, pic 4.

Post 26
Pic 1, pic 2, pic 3.

front end conversion integra civic headlight bumper fender hood core support radiator support bulkhead cut match fit weld latch