jmo19d

Just wanted to share my journey bringing her back to life as it progresses. Well a month or so ago I picked up a 2000 EM1 for 3 grand.It has 200k miles but the motor was rebuilt at 160k and it is still numbers matching motor and tranny. I knew the car had problems and it was apparent right off the bat that I had my work cut out for me. Driving home the car would shake and I noticed two of the rims were bent badly. Got a pair of cheap rims for 100 bucks and they will work fine for now. Next was the horribly sh#tty ride quality... shocks/struts were done for so I picked up Koni STR.T and Tein H tech springs with MPC tophats. I got the fronts installed and what do you know the previous owner put POS ebay LCAs on and only managed to put one of them on. The bushings on the one side are now destroyed. So now im at a standstill with the rear shocks until I get my F7 LCAs shipped. The car would also have a horrible noise when I let off the gas... kind of like the axle or wheel bearing was bad. Turns out both of the lower torque mounts were completely blown out so I got some new billet ones installed and BOOM the problem was gone! Ok I feel like im writing a novel here so this is a list of what ive done and a few things to coming up.

Done-
Oil pan gasket
New wheels
Billet torque mounts
New headlights
Painted a horribly nasty trunk
Painted A/C and rad brackets
Front Shocks/struts
Poly shifter bushings
Royal Purple oil change and Honda MTF fluid

On deck-
Spoon rear lower trailing arm bushings (maybe Mugen not sure?)
Function 7 LCAs (already ordered)
Install rear shocks/struts and tophats
Spoon strut bars front and rear
New valve cover, gasket, cam seal
Plugs and wires (wish I could be baller and afford the Spoons!)
Rust repair

A few pictures

After a wash with the knock off rims


Before and after of headlights



Rad and AC bracket


Koni and Tein


Trunk before and after

JoshTheJerk

Looking good!

Brice.Hayden

iTrader: (15)

Nice work so far.

StreetLethaleg6

def in for this, LOVE EM1's

kcarroll491

damn.. body is in ALOT better shape than I originally imagined reading the post at first. nice pick up! love to see one of these be brought back from the dead

joey1320

Nice work.
Better take care of the rust on the quarter panels quickly. If you wait, you'll end up with a lot more problems.

jmo19d

Thanks guys! Joey1320 I covered the rust with rust eating primer to slow its spread but I know thats just a bandaid on a gunshot wound. I have plans to cut it out and get it all repainted but thats a costly endeavor. Gonna take care of the suspension and brakes first. Nice part is this car is my second (got a Juke Nismo... I know some people think they are ugly as sin) so it can be in the garage during the bad months or during any repairs. Got an update coming this weekend and early next week.

joey1320

As far as rust repair, use POR15. Its a great product and it stops rust from spreading by encapsulating the area and not letting any more moisture in.

Since you do have rust on the quarters, better pull off the side trunk panels and even the back seat side panels and do a thorough inspection.

These cars are starting to show major signs of problems like all Hondas and with only 5k made per year, they are getting harder to find in clean condition.

Also while looking for rust, might as well pull off the door panels and clean, spray and POR the inner door areas. Water males it past the glass seals and it pools on the bottom of the doors, creating another rust area.

Best of luck bro.
If you need some cash, I'll buy the left fender from you and give you mine. Mine is painted and I want all OEM paint.

jmo19d

Thanks for the info joey! I definitely had leakage on the drivers side door that leaked down inside and started a small amount of rust on the bottom of the door. It is pretty minor and I did my best to stop it. I will have to take the panel off and get at the inside so im sure it doesnt get worse. While the panel is off I can redo the fabric on the arm rest... just have to find OEM cloth because im not down with any funky colors there.

jmo19d

Got another s#it-tastic update. Got my F7 LCAs and finally had everything to put them on. I installed one side without any major problems and then started to tackle the passenger side. Well I pulled a noob mistake and didn't heat anything or use any kind of penetrating oil or spray beside a bit of WD40 and broke the rusted on bolts right the f@ck off. Its my own fault so now I get to fix them. I attached a pic of what an Ebay LCA will do for all the people that wonder about buying quality parts. This contol arm bent, blew out all bushings, and didn't have the right size bushings so the strut actually bent when the bolt was taken off... also bending the bolt making it impossible to take off. What a crap day.... but I'm not losing any faith, I will make this car nice again!

All the new parts ready to go on.



Top shot of the bent LCA.



What happens to s#itty bushings.



One side installed. Don't worry about the rusty crusty sway bar. ASR is on the way.



How the day ended. Boo frickin hoo.

joey1320

Nice parts.
When doing suspension work on these cars you gotta use a torche on pretty much everything. At work we call it the "hot wrench" and it makes everything super easy.

Now please tell me you used anti seize or a quality grease on the bolts you reinstalled, and you torqued them down to spec.

If you didn't, might as well pull them out and do so now and not have to fight with them in the future.

jmo19d

I did not but decided to order new bolts from Honda, so they will be coming out anyways. That is a good call on the anti-seize.... we use it on the wind turbines I work on all the time but I didn't think about using it on my suspension.

jmo19d

Have been doing the waiting game on more parts. Got Hardrace trailing arm bushings instead of the Spoon ones because they were half the price and most likely just as good. Just waiting on the bushing tool and the ASR brace and 24mm sway bar and then the rear suspension will be lookin pretty solid. Got the first portion of my new brake system in as well.... Stop tech braided lines and Stoptech/Centric rear rotors. In the meantime here is what I did today. I was under the car and noticed the rear bumper was rusted as $hit so I took the bumper cover off to see what I could do. Found a previous owner had shoved a damn rag in the bumper cover to make it fit better! Lol for some peoples quality of work... I mean just.... wow! Took the bumper off and ended up shaving off about 2-3 pounds of rust and other crap. It may only be a 3 mph bumper after all the $hit I took off of there. It didn't look like there were any structural problems though so I got to rust proofing and painting it... and then replaced the four bolts holding it on while I had them out.

Nice rag bumper spacer job!



The end product. I forgot to take a pic of what it looked like when I took it out, but it was really jacked up.



A portion of the crap that came off of it.

Brice.Hayden

iTrader: (15)

Gross. Nice clean up!

joey1320

Nice job. I noticed my rear crash bar has the same rust, so I'll be doing the same thing.
Keep up the good work bro!

jmo19d

Got the Hardrace trailing arm bushings installed and it went alright I suppose. Some of the bolts haven't been taken off in 15 years so there was a few problems as expected. The passenger side bushing fell apart as I took it out and the drivers side wasn't much better. I also found some shitty rust and an awesome patch of destruction from a previous owner. Someone down the line needed to get better access to the toe adjustment and f#cking cut the support to get that access! I don't think this is a huge stress area in the suspension (someone correct me if i'm wrong please) but I know I need to get it fixed as soon as possible. The picture of this point also shows some pretty nastily rusted brackets which I will be taking off this weekend and cleaning up cause I can't stand the look of them.

Passenger side when I pulled it out



Passenger side pushed in. Yeh I know... the Hardrace sticker will fall off!



The drivers side bushing in comparison to the Hardrace. You can see how much more solid they are than stock.



The hole I found where the drivers side toe adjustment is. It was clearly hacked into. Whoever did this I want to punch right in the babymaker!

Scott.

iTrader: (1)

so many EM1 resto's right meow. I love it! Also that hack job.....yuck!

danteisme

iTrader: (2)

I actually had to do the same thing to my teg. the stupid nut that the adjustment bolt goes into got seized and it actually spun out of the little channel it rests in inside that spot. only way to get at it was to cut a hole out in the bottom. i bet the same thing happened to the previous owner of the car.

jmo19d

Yeh danteisme... I figured they had to do it just kind of pissed me off that they didn't try and fix it at least. You know if there is any structural issue with this? I am thinking the trailing arm bushing is taking the majority of the load and punishment but don't wanna push the thing too hard and make it worse.

danteisme

iTrader: (2)

shouldnt be anything structural. granted, i didnt rip mine open that much, and at the time i didnt know a whole ton about cars. i actually left mine tlike that and sold it that way. i just bought the car back last year and it was still that way lol. i'm going to fix it this time around, but i never noticed any issues with the car though the entire time i had it.

jmo19d

Another update.

Finally after 10 days waiting for a part that was advertised as being two hours away from me... my ASR subframe brace and swaybar arrived. First off it is top quality craftsmanship, I will say that. That being said the bolts that came with the end links DO NOT fit the Function 7 LCAs. I posted a picture below showing how even with the 5mm spacer on the end link it didn't come close to being long enough. Had to go buy another 10.9 bolt that was long enough to make it work. Its a little frustrating when you paid so much for a kit and it isn't directly plug and play. Everything else went well and besides the need for an alignment the car is driving better than it probably has in 10 years.

Shiny new parts



The bolt that came with the ASR endlinks.



The bolt that made it work.



Just after I set it down on the ground again. The car settled a bit lower after I drove it but I think it looks pretty damn good but functions even better.

joey1320

Nice work on the rear suspension.

jmo19d

Thanks man! Yours is looking nice as well. I've got a number of bushings to replace still and am nowhere near as far along as you on the body.

I don't know what to do about the engine and trans though. It still has the original motor and trans so I feel like I should keep it in there and just rebuild. The go fast part of me wants to get to at least 200hp maybe more and an LSD trans. Decisions decisions!

Brice.Hayden

iTrader: (15)

Great part selection

joey1320

Well I think you know which way I'm gonna side here. I say keep it stock and just rebuild if needed. I would continue doing what you have done with the suspension and then work on the body.

If it wasn't an em1 I would say do whatever, but there were only 10k cars of each color sold here in the states, and they keep getting stolen, crashed, stanced, rolled fenders and all the other **** that will make em even harder to find in good shape and mostly og condition.

I say treat this as a nice weekend cruiser and enjoy it for what Honda wanted it to be.