01-0041

Original My ED7 Rebuild - USDM to US/JDM Dribble…

When starting this project I had many questions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the answers I was looking for. So, I started the above thread in the Honda CRX / EF Civic forum because I thought it would help others answer some their questions as I made progress through my project.

I’ve been working on my car since September and posting progress since January. It seems I was wrong as the same questions and posts keep coming up; hence my thought of reposting it here because there doesn't seem to be much interest in its original location.

We have a lot of good information here on Honda-Tech, but with the change in format it seems a lot of information is lost or hard to find. So, I’ll continue what I’m doing here instead of there.

Just a brief intro before I repost my thread:

I was hesitant to do this swap for years, but as the mounts and information got better and my unfortunate accident I figured why not as it gave me an excuse to do some of the stuff I wanted to do…

Thank you for looking as I take great pride in my work and I’m not afraid to give props to the people who help me.

Ben at 20•20 Motorsports - Paint
Guillaume aka: G-man at 20•20 Motorsports - bouncing thoughts by guy and consulting
Eric aka: .RTErnie - Welding / Fabrication
Adam aka: Baxter - Machine work


Note:

Please leave positive remarks only as I am my worst critic!!!!
If you have a lengthy question and it’s relevant to the project and its progress please post it. If it’s not IM me and I’ll get right back to you.

Posts are in chronological order…

01-0041

January 17, 2009


My ED7 Rebuild - USDM to US/JDM Dribble…


Main Entry:
1drib•ble
Pronunciation:
\ˈdri-bəl\
Function:
verb
Etymology:
frequentative of drib to dribble
Date:
circa 1589
transitive verb1: to issue sporadically and in small bits
intransitive verb3: to come or issue in piecemeal or desultory


Just to touch on some of the history with this car…

1990 Frost White Honda Civic Si with one accident.

My best friend in high school bought this car from the original owner and owned it up till I think ’03 when I purchased it from him. Long story short I kind of grew up with this car so I’m a bit attached to it.

Now to the fun part… well not really!

On September 11, 2008 there was an accident and subsequently a death on the road I travel to work - Chuckanut Drive. Due to the accident I had to turn around and take an alternate route to work. On my way to the freeway a silver Ford Taurus was doing roughly 15mph so I gave him a single quick light tap of the horn. At that moment he slammed on his breaks and I slid under him.

I know what you’re thinking and you’re correct; I was following too close. Regardless of my distance, conditions, and circumstances physics has a lot to do with life and that day I failed!

So begins the update of my daily driver or should I say new project car…







I was so mad after the accident I just wanted to take the bent and broken pieces off the car. I forgot to take pictures…

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January 17, 2009


So not to make one large post I thought I’d do this in stages. I don’t know why I want to do a rebuild thread, but here we are! I’m writing and for those who care or are bored: you’re reading.

This was the second and most gratifying part removal - the last of the bulkhead.





Bulkhead removed and ready for a new one - or so I thought.



I found a bit of rust from the first accident back in ’98.

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January 17, 2009


When I started this project I thought it would just be EF9 front so I could install my spare B16A…

What went from just a little rust repair and seam seal replacement…







went to this…

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January 17, 2009


…and now parts start showing up.







…then prep and primer

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January 17, 2009


Since the car has been in major down time. I thought I’d take the time to install DA trailing arms:
new indexed trailing arm bushings - that job sucked as the DA bushings are not round, but more of a slight oval.
Stock brakes from my ’94 Si
Fairly new: brembo rotors
Porterfield R4S pads
Stainless-steel brake lines



New DA e-brake cables

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January 17, 2009


I was just thinking about my engine and how I’m not happy with the way it looks.

Primer just waiting for sanding and seam sealer







Knowing I won’t be driving the ’90 for a while I was screwing around on Craigslist and found a black ’90 that needed the parts I just took out of my white ’90. hmm… good fit and new DD! No more driving the racecar on the street!!!!



Anyway, I received my Innovative Mounts kit the other day. Now that the black ’90 is the daily driver I can use the mounts of choice - well close second. Okay not even close - I wanted a front clip but the kid who was buying the engine flaked out on me. I was going to use OE Hard mounts from the clip, but these will work - had to get shore 75A so the looked correct in my eye. I know this car will only make me happy - I hope!!!!



Now that the mounts are in I need to finish building my transmission and mate it to the engine - happened a few days ago - to see how everything fits.







Sorry, the engine and transmission are still kind of dirty…



It’s a tight fit. Once the engine was bolted in the car I remembered why it took me so long to do this to my DD!

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January 21, 2009


Dribble for the day…

Finished the transmission last night - more of a fun shot of the internals ;-)



Ahh… the joys of wiring! I do love a good wiring harness. It’s kind of funny; over the years I’ve always wanted to find the distributor for Hondas electrical tape or should I say Sumitomo…

This is the start of my engine harness - only a few will notice what’s going on here



The harness at 95% - it only need a connector



Looking at my harnesses I guess Scotch tape will do since I’ve been using it for years. I just hate how shinny it is. On that note I wonder how long it’s going to take for someone to suggest shrink rapping etc. I’ll leave that for the racecar. When you think about it this is still going to be a street driven Civic.

More fun with the engine… I need to reinstall it one last time for fitment now that I have the proper alternator belt length - it was really short











The last few pictures are more for fun than anything else. Since the engine and transmission were spares for my racecar everything should be good to go.

The only additions to this engine were the JDM OBD0 intake and throttle body.

The nice thing is I received the cable transmission from a friend who lent it to a friend who ran it out of oil. I guess the nice thing is the case is in great shape except for the oxidation on the outside. I know it’s clean as I ran it twice in the heated parts washer. Long story short I swapped all of the internals from one of my hydraulic transmissions only after modifying the case to except the limited slip differential.

- I need to say thank you to Guillaume and Ben of 20•20 Motorsports for their help on this little project!

More to come soon:

- Seam sealer
- Weld on bulkhead
- Finish prepping the engine bay
- Pressure wash the front wheel arch, scrub, and prep
- Paint

Lots to do!!!!

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January 24, 2009


…just another night of working on the car!

I’ll call this step four of a six step process. I did most of the work a couple of days ago now, but here’s what it should look like when it goes in the car. I need to scuff it for the final coat of paint then reassemble for final installation - after the engine bay is painted of course.



Funny story of the day: wrecked car, engineer, and a factory bulkhead…

I now know I’m never going to make money doing bodywork! I’ve fit the bulkhead four times now and I think I’m finally happy with the result. ;-) If you look at the pictures below they only tell you half of the story. Let’s just say if it could be perfect this is as close as it’s going to get and yes, I did use the calipers!

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January 24, 2009


Today seems to be a feel good day as I took a few feel good pictures…

Not that any of what I’m posting today is exiting. I think it has been about four months since the car has been outside.









My progress for the day so far has been pressure washing the suspension and surrounding areas.

Just to add a bit to the front sub frame from the last post… Here are a couple pictures of it installed - mainly so I could roll the car outside!

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January 29, 2009


Random thoughts…

It’s funny how you get so exited about a project one moment and then not necessarily loose interest, but just not as exited about the process the next.

Anyways… The car has been sitting since Saturday - we went out for dinner and something didn’t agree with me.

Since all of the suppliers seam to be out of parts for the time being I was searching and found this front bumper assembly.







I’ve also been working on throttle body and intake manifold configurations. I thought I wanted to keep the OBD0 theme, but man it’s busy and even though I don’t like the hole tucking fad I do like a clean engine bay.

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February 1, 2009


Not much progress, but we did weld on the bulkhead yesterday.







Since I made a mess in the shop I thought today would be a good day for cleaning.

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February 2, 2009


Very late disclaimer: NOTHING I’M DOING HERE IS NEW! I just thought some of you would like to see the progress of my very slow ED7 rebuild. ;-)

I did most of this last night, but who cares we all love pictures!





Can you guess what will go where?



It looks stock … ohh, but it’s not!



This is from my OBD0 manifold…



This is the selection process…



This is a combination of the two…



This is the final product.



More fun with the intake manifold…





Fun fact of the day: other than the fact both throttle bodies are from a GSR what’s different about them?

Answer: there are some obvious differences, but the one I find interesting - having never worked with an OBD0 B16A TB or even paid attention for that matter - was how Honda went away from a circular throttle cam to an elliptical throttle cam.

As some of you know an elliptical throttle cam is better for throttle application - if you don’t IM me and I’ll give a bit of insight. :-)

As one of the drivers for WWU’s FSAE team. We were playing with different throttle cam styles. I guess this is why I find it interesting - slight tangent as this is going on my racecar and has nothing to do with the white ’90. Well, other than I took the throttle body from that car for the ’90 as it’s more era correct…



Since I’ve neglected showing you the wiring; here’s a quick shot of my little dood - Jay



I know what you’re thinking: what does that dog have to do with the car rebuild? Nothing he’s there to guilt trip me into playing with him instead of working on my wiring harnesses.

I think it’s rather humorous if you look at the time and research I’ve put into the wiring and you’ll never get to see it, but who cares? I just want to be done with the car so I can drive it!

So, I press on… I hope to have - at minimum - the engine bay painted this weekend!

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February 6, 2009


Update for today…

Not much to update, but I received my EF9 bumper Wednesday. I was pleasantly surprised when I unpackaged it! Very few scratches, OE paint, and the indicators are flawless! I post up some of my own pictures this weekend after I clean it up.

I played with my intake manifold a bit the last few days. Some of you might have noticed it’s from a broad range of years.



I had to change my mind on the throttle cam as when I went to install the above configuration on my racecar the throttle cable was just a tad bit short. Since I have more options with the ’90 I thought I’d mess with the circular throttle cam there.

Here’s a quick shot of “my” Rywire OBD0 to OBD1. As many of you know Rywire does excellent work, but I had other ideas in mind for my ’90 than the typical user… If this continues I might just delete the conversion harness and convert to OBD1 plugs. One might say I’m just a bit lazy when it comes to this for now…



…as for getting the engine bay painted this weekend it looks like it might be a few more weeks as I’ve decided to do the whole car. The sweet part of this is the car only has one small dent that most people wouldn’t see - easy fix! :-)

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February 9, 2009


Not much new just a lot of cleaning, fitting, and frustration. ;-)

I did the initial teardown of the front bumper… ohh that was fun.

Here’s the after…







Here was the “not so much” fun part…









Looks like it was bad camera day - or user!

Here’s a parting shot for the day.

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February 10, 2009


Not much of an update, but here we go!

Like most people who do the JDM front conversion I purchased the wrong t-bar. I’m upset because - even though it may not look like it - I’m on a very tight budget for this project! On the up side I found the correct one on eBay, well I found two of them but missed out on one of them. I’d have to say this was the best eBay buy ever! I bought it Friday night from a guy in Japan. As I was leaving for work this afternoon I received a call from the front door - I love secure buildings - and it was my correct t-bar.

I’ll post pictures this evening and later I’ll show the ED7, EF7, and EF9

I found this a month or so ago…



I need to clean it up and either change the motor or change the connector. The JDM connector is a semi rectangle with vertical / horizontal pins whereas the factory US is round with parallel pins, but who knows I have the cabin harness at home on the counter so that would be just as easy.

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February 11, 2009


I thought some of you might get a kick out of this…

Here’s the cleaned up version of my black ‘90s dash harness that’s about to go under the knife.

I didn’t feel like modifying a good stock harness so I used the one from the black ’90 for the white ’90s JDM dash harness - I had a spare harness for the black ’90 that was from a CRX HF that wasn’t bad, just needed the proper opaque plug and three wires fixed on the stereo plug.



Some of my prep work for the JDM cluster install.

If anyone is interested I did a bit of documenting while building the dash harness where some of these pictures can be seen there in larger format: http://trever.mcdermott.googlepages.com/jdmef9cluster












I have two EF8/9 clusters to work with. My first, I bought locally - very nice condition. The one I bought on eBay was very dirty and missing bulbs. I didn’t take any before pictures of the dirty cluster, but the local one is pictured assembled whereas the eBay one is disassembled after cleaning.

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February 21, 2009


Not much of an update, but some progress…

I had a minor setback today, but nothing money can’t fix; I guess.

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February 25, 2009


Progress report for the past few days… I now know how much prepping the engine bay sucks! It’s a lot of work with very little return just to be covered up with a hood and get dirty.



The passenger side is waiting for seam sealer, but other than that it’s done…



…as well as the fire wall, it may need a tad bit more prepping…



…the driver’s side is almost done as I need to work from the front of the shock tower forward.

Not that anything goes according to plan, but if they do and I’m able to keep making progress the chassis should be ready for paint next weekend - I’m not holding my breath!

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March 1, 2009


Just another update…

I’ve been picking away at the frontend and seem to be getting close.





I ran out of supplies for the day so I thought I’d refinish my brake booster.
Before:



After:





The pictures don’t do it justice, but I need to redo it anyways because when you look at the top of it it’s a bit dry

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March 1, 2009


…this is more of an inner battle than anything.

Do I keep the wheel that came out of the white ’90 in the white ’90 - MOMO Sport - or do I…



…use the wheel that came with the black ’90 - MOMO Tuner.



I guess we’ll all find out when I put the interior back in!

Last photo of the weekend…

Here’s a shot of the assembly I’ll be using on my front upper a-arm…



It’s nothing special, but I don’t know where the original ones are. I have a bad feeling that when I was in a rush to install my front camber kit from the ’94 into the white ’90 the ’94 received the parts from the white ’90. Long story short; I need to align one car and currently don’t feel like doing both because I don’t have access to the rack anymore. :-(

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March 4, 2009


Progress report…

It hasn’t really been an exciting week so far.

I had the windshield removed yesterday. Unfortunately I found more of a certain something than I was expecting!



What’s one to do but move on and not be too worried about something they don’t have control over? Seriously I should listen to myself one of these days. ;-)

As you can see I cleaned up what I could. Ben of 20•20 Motorsports said he has a fix for it - not that it ever goes away; we all should know that. But on that note it can be slowed and that’s what he’s going to do. ;-)

I digress…

I finished the prep work on the primered areas…











I still need to do some work around the shock mount holes, but that won’t take more than ten minutes.

Just a quick picture of the sparse interior… ;-)



Since the prep work was done and I just happen to have the seam sealer in house I thought I’d start the process.













I know what you’re thinking…

Why would I put all that work into removing the seam sealer just to reapply it? Well, at the end of the day or should I say project it’s still a car and may see rain. I don’t like the idea if rust and as I know many of us fear it if we like/love our cars. So, I look at it like this; I want to maintain a more or less factory look while cleaning things up.

So here you go - a quick recap of the process to include pictures from this update…

What I started with



Most of the seam sealer removed



All of the seam sealer removed - or as much as I wanted to remove



Primer



Prep work done



Final product



What I hope some of you can appreciate is the more straight forward approach to weather proofing. I could have taken the car to a blasting company - might have been easier - but I’m not making a show car. ;-)

Here’s a shot of the windshield opening all cleaned up - sort of. I still need to do a bit of work, but not much.



The closing picture for this update.

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March 15, 2009


Not much of an update, but here we are…

Pictures of the car getting ready for paint - finish work and masking.





Redid some of the factory seam sealer…





We should be in paint by the end of the week.

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March 16, 2009


More boring pictures. :-)

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March 17, 2009


Just a few pictures for today…

Before going into the paint booth.





Almost ready for paint! Ben’s the man!