So one day while bullshitting at my buddy Moe's shop, ef parts, I was looking around at a few of his shells and got the idea 💡 like man, why don't we do something with one of these? He said if you want a shell to build just pick one out. He then pointed out a little crx hf with straight quarter panels, almost no run st what so ever, a straight roof and even good windshield in it. I had been getting the urge to build another all motor car so I started thinking of build ideas, that night I was beyond excited and started getting the ball rolling. It started as this. Looks like something you'd be taking parts from at pick-a-part.




So step one was to take all the crap out of it which surprisingly only took about 15-20 minutes.





After the cleanout the shell was a bit dirty so i so I picked up what I could then vacuumed it out. Got a bottle of degreaser and sprayed it down and pressure washed the inside a few times

Oh yaaaa! Starting to get there. The nice thing is for what I want out of this for just about perfect. Minimal sound deadening, no extra interior I need to pull, pretty much as bare bones as you can get a car.




I already have front and rear bumpers for it, tail lights, a set of wheels, a built p75 head from my last turbo awd crx that's getting built further now so I feel like I'm off to a good start. Moe also hooked me up with some Kyb gr2 struts and some DNA coilovers. I wanted stuff springs for the back so he let me get a full set of the heavier spring rated springs. I'll be building a set of extended top hats so I'll be able to preload the spring quite a bit in the back as well. Here is some pics of the p75 head and portwork I did on it. I will most likely go back through the portjob and polish it a lot as well as clean a few things up.






This is a b16 intake manifold I ran on my last turbo motor. We cut it apart and ported it but I don't think the plenum is optimum for this build so I already have a much larger plenum off of a b20 giraffe intake manifold that I hacked off and I just picked up another b16 intake manifold to mate it with.

Not gonna lie, trying to post on here from my phone really sucks. It's a nightmare to try to get pictures in order, with comments that fit the picture so just bare with me here...

my whole purpose for this build is to have a car I can take to the drag strip, beat the **** out of it and not feel bad. So far I've had an insane amount of hookups for parts so everything has either been dirt cheap or free.

goals are deep 12 second maybe high 11s if all goes well out of a b20 non vtec. I am building the car for fun, to experiment with and to help myself learn. I've always been scared to build bottom ends after seeing allot of failed "fresh builds" by people who didn't keep enough attention to detail.

Plans the car:
-as light weight as possible, hoping for under 1750 with me in it. If it ends up lighter I will not be mad about it.

-I want to make 200 whp or better. Any less and it will be taken back apart and changed until it breaks that two hundred mark.



the bottom end will be a 85mm b20 with moroso block filler in the top 1", ycp 85mm pistons that will be weight matched to the .1g arp rod bolts on stock rods, vtec oil pump, water pump and timing belt.

the head is off my other crx that is going bigger and badder on everything. It's a p75 b20 head with super tech single springs and retainers matched with crower 404 cams, ported by myself, valves deshrouded, port matched to a b16 intake manifold that was also ported, I don't think this intake manifold has enough plenum volume so I have another that I will be customizing, shorten the runners slightly and taper them, weld on a b20 giraffe plenum and bore it for a 70mm Omni throttle body.

i want to get one of the dna smsp knock off headers as soon as they come back in stock, I will be cutting the flange off and welding in a 2.5" v band and making a few different megaphones with v bands on them so I can change them out easily and see what works best for this motor.


The shell will be receiving the full Jenny Craig diet. Lexan windows from Home Depot 🤙 Cut off wheel treatment and nothing there that isn't needed. I don't plan on driving this car on the street besides to work on the tune so I don't need any creature comforts.

Either pump or possibly e85, my compression ratio should be just under 12 to 1 static which should work just fine for pump gas with the cams I have but there's only one way to tell for sure and that's running it and seeing what the ignition timing looks like when it's done being tuned.

same, it makes making a little bit of power allot more fun. I was explaining to my wife that this crx allows me to add some weight in my white awd turbo crx and not feel bad about it since it's getting bigger brakes, carpet and a few other things.

Define pickle? Lol

Decided to weight match all the pistons as well as wrist pins. They are matched to .1 grams. Pretty happy with this little scale I got on eBay. The repeatability of it is on point.

Material taken from under the piston crown using a small carbide bit on a dremel. Luckily these ycp pistons were all within .8g of each other and the wrist pins were within .3g. My Nippon turbo pistons for my other crx have a 2g variance between the pistons, it's surprising how long it takes to remove even half a gram from one piston but I figured this was just one small detail that might help both builds.


just noticed you can't see the weight with the pistons. They all measured out to 346.1g now. My Nippon turbo pistons are 303g for reference. I will also weigh the stock phk pistons once these are swapped over.



as for my fuel system, this car will be getting a custom built aluminum fuel cell up front behind the driver side bumper. I dropped the stock fuel tank yesterday as well as the inlet for it and all other brackets underneath the car. I have to remove the drivers side quarter glass and get the sealant all removed in preparation for the lexan.

also these pistons measured out to 84.5mm instead of the 85mm as they were listed so slight bummer there but oh well the block will have room to rebuid once more if anything scars it up.

Don't get me wrong I've definitely had that thought lol. I just installed a small 100 shot on a customers srt8 Jeep Grand Cherokee and it made a massive difference. I'd like to see what I can do on the motor for now. I know it's not all that easy working to get the most out of a p75 head but I can appreciate a challenge.

200hp all motor and non vtec? You’ve got your work cut out for you. In for this build!

Dropped the block and pistons off at the machine shop today to get sized. Also cut some more **** out of the car and got started on building the fuel cell which will sit just behind the bumper on the driver side. Went through the transmission and it all looked good besides 5th gear syncro, slider and shift fork. Got a new syncro from my buddy's pile of syncros he has laying around that's in much better shape just gotta locate a slider and shift fork for it now. Slowly but surely it's coming together.

Yeah it "was" in great shape lol. Doesn't look like much but this is what most of my day consisted of. The 90-91 Crx's have so much more **** in the back to cut out then my 88 did. Door bar still needs to come out and there's still quite a bit to get trimmed out by the hinges as well.


Started on building the fuel cell. Gonna have my buddy tony weld it up then make the top plate for it with a filler neck and weld a couple of spare an fittings on it and run a inline Walbro 255lph pump. Calculated the volume out to about 4 gallons which should be perfect for it.

Picked up this sweet b18a1 "type r" valve cover tonight lol. I think I'm gonna run it for a while, I really like how shitty these older valve covers look lol.

do you have any pictures you'd like to share? I'd love to see what you did and how it turned out. I was bored last night laying in bed and watched sp tunings video of him hacking up his dc and cutting up the b pillars. I didn't realize how many layers of metal are there. This car is gonna go on allot more of a diet.


on a side note for a front end for it mocked up, still need to cut all the under webbing of the hood out and pull everything back off to start painting the exterior. Had a super busy week tuning also which was good for money's but bad for my builds timeline.







Ran out of fuel past 8500 or it would have made allot more. 18lbs on a ford 7.3l turbo diesel turbo lol.

lol that's crazy! Did both the door bars yesterday and got the doors super light. Still have allot more trimming to do but I think I'll limit it to the passenger side b pillar and leave the driver side alone. I can easily pick the *** end of the car up to where both rear tires are 2-3' off the ground. I'm going to hole saw the rear trailing arms a little and brace them with a few small welded in pieces and see how much lighter they can get. Also plan on cutting the tray where the wiper arms sit normally. There's some thick pieces of metal there where the clean air vents come in. I was surprised how well drilling out the spot welds for the door bar worked. Only 4 per side, cut the door bar in half and used a bent sawzall blade to cut the sealer between that and the door skin. Going to cut the window channels short so they will support the lexan in there firmly and hopefully just get it to bolt in with 2 10mm bolts like the stock window does to the regulator but with small brackets welded to the door.

The stock hatch I have with out glass and trimmed up weighted 6.5lbs and 22lbs with full lexan in it. I don't imagine a fiberglass hatch weighing much less. All the weight is in the hardware and glass. I'm really interested to see what this car weighs when it's all done.