Junkyard EK9 CTR Restoration Will Leave You Stunned
Rare and rusted Civic looked like it was far from its best days. However, one determined enthusiast put the work to revive this ’90s icon from the grave.
Is there anything more painful than seeing an iconic car rotting away, sad and neglected amongst a set of bushes? Well, the unfortunate reality is more often than not these classic vehicles end up being ghosts of their former selves, left unrepairable.
The abandoned 1998 EK9 Civic Type R seen at the beginning of this YouTube video by Mad4Motors looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. However, Mad4Motors believed in the forlorn chassis and decided to buy it with one goal in mind: restoring it from the ground up.
See, 15 years ago the host had owned one of these legendary Civics and nostalgia is one hell of a drug. According to the previous owner, the car hadn’t run since 2015 and had its fair share of rust from battling the UK’s harsh winters.
However, determined that nothing was beyond the point of repair, the project continued on. Safe and sound on the trailer, the journey back to glory for this little EK9 Civic had officially begun.
EK9 Road to Recovery
He begins by removing every body panel from the Civic, piece by piece. As his plan is to respray the entire engine bay, the hood, front fenders, and headlights are all removed.
The front subframe is also removed along with all the engine harness, wiring, and braking systems. After making repairs on the frame and front crash bar, he sanded down the remaining paint and metal to prep for a fresh coat of color.
After a primer grey was laid down, the almighty Championship White (the original paint color) was sprayed to uniformity in the engine bay. Now the engine was ready to be reintroduced.
Thankfully, the car still came with the original B16B. However, there were no service history or maintenance logs regarding the engine, so a timing check and compression test were completed before committing to this particular unit.
After the timing numbers checked out, he determined it was ready to test run in the car before replacing the timing belt and water pump with fresh components.
Without much of a fight, the B-series roared to life for the first time in over half a decade. With the engine concerns addressed, it was time to move on to a new area of interest: the rear end.
No corner left untouched!
After what could only have been many tedious hours behind a heat gun removing the old wrap, the exposed body was in surprisingly good shape.
Very minimal body damage, but a lot more rust that you’d hope to have to deal with. However, Mad4Motors was determined to keep the quality high on this build.
So out came out the grinder and welder, fabricating a new metal plate to replace a section on the chewed-up frame rails.
Next on the list was fixing the dents and dings in the hood with the help of some body filler. Now just about every surface was ready for some fresh paint.
Never forget the red details when building a Type R
With all of the body panels now matching in the beautiful Championship White, the project at this point had really come together. However, it is the details that make this build standout.
“I finally have a set, but definitely the rarest and hardest part I’ve ever had to source”, said Mad4Motors when referring to the original JDM red Recaro seats.
The seats are simply amazing, but true joy was brought to our eyes when we saw him making the cutouts for the matching red interior carpet, soon to be fitted.
After a quick test fitting of all the body panels and a test drive, the paint was ready to be buffed and detailed to perfection.
One of the final finishing touches was the repainting of the blue valve cover to the original wrinkle red deserving of a Type R.
With the first proud re-badging of “Civic Type R” on the sides of the doors and the rear hatch, the EK9 build was truly complete.
The end result is truly a thing of beauty. A true demonstration of the result of a lot of hard work and dedication to a project. We commend you effort Mad4Motors, keep doing your thing.
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