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Started in November, 21, 2015 when i bought my first car.
Wanted an EK civic hatch since I was 13, when my little brother got me a model car for my birthday- change the parts on it, tires, engine, doors, spoilers, etc- it was a dark green CTR
Obviously it all started with the model car, and racecar games, like NFS and forza
STORY TIME:
November 21th, 2015 I call up my pal and ask if he's willing to help me buy my first car from Virginia- i live across state lines. asked if he could help me check it out and work a haggle.
We get to an advance auto parking lot in some town, and there she sits in her glory- my poorly maintained ride that I was about to purchase.
After a diagnosis of the problems, we settle and sign the title over for an exchange of 1500 cash. Not bad for a stock hatchie!
After I drive the previous owner home, I pay for insurance over the telly, and drive straight to a tag and title or my trucks plates, about 35 minutes away. 300 more dollars later, I get my new plates, and take her home. I find out the car has no ABS brakes, because I had to slam it for a red light and landed halfway into the intersection. Scary stuff.
Town driving for a few hours, leads me to find out there's coolant pouring all over the place, so new hoses happen, and the problem still remains.
Within the next few days, I take the car out onto the highway, and break down and lose all power on the i70 ramp. Awesome.
Grab a tow back to the house, and come to find out its got a dead battery and I can't get the car to start.
Nowhere to look, with no car experience, I go to YouTube and learn all kinds of new lingo. I go to check the distributor, pull it apart, and find a -SNAPPED IN HALF IGNITION COIL-... Literally snapped in half. Replaced the battery and coil, plugs, wires and do an oilchange and she kicks right up.
Oddly enough, the car died at 169999 miles btw
Still, with my car leaking fluid, I fill her up and beat her around town, to find a new problem.. The damn Check engine light goes on for a P0420 code.. Bad catalytic converter, after some technical troubleshooting.
Replacement parts, and a new diagnostic tool (the BAFX -LIFESAVER $20-) later, I buy new exhaust headers / catalytic converter and replace it the DAY OF my emissions and safety inspection.. Sweet it's taken care of, but I'm still leaking mad fluid!
My DAD and I go to diagnose the issue head on, by replacing the thermostat, fan switch and another hose or two. To prevail, no change-
my uncle Tom and I, on a cold frigid night, replace a coolant temp sensor and he diagnoses that my radiator is cracked at the top... Awesome.
A new Radiator put in, with my pops assistance, solves the leak issue, and the fan starts working again (cracked radiators can't build pressure and won't activate because of leaking air. Tell your friends. Hondatech didn't help with that)
In the time, I had decided to give the transmission some new blood, loaded her up with some automatic transmission seafoam and found that the transmission was NEVER once serviced. The drain bolt required nearly 300 pounds of torque, which was me actually jumping/stomping on an extended breaker bar to pop it loose. The transmission fluid ran out in pitch black, fondue consistency and smelled burnt to ****. I replaced the fluid with the new AT fluid which was synthetic DW1 which replaced traditional OEM fluid in the early 2000's
I ran the car for 5 mins, heard some sloshing and within 10 seconds of driving, the acceleration jumped and performed 20x better than before.
In those last 5000 miles, ive replaced the fluid 2 more times to actually rid the old fluid completely and the transmission takes so much of a beating, but holds strong through it all.
Despite my car still heating past comfort levels, I head to a junkyard to find a scrapped civic and pull it's instrument cluster and use its tachometer and new Fuel gauge. Fits like a glove, and looks pretty, too. I got to even keep my original milage.
Keeping my overheating issues in hindsight, a rattle starts happening in the car and I know things start going bad. I decide to take a mid day trip to the heart of DC on a sweltering day to buy refinished wheels with brand new tires. Got them for one hell of a steal and overheated in DC at least 3 times.
After some speculation and testing, back home, ive (and others) have agreed that my car had a blown headgasket. I gather all of the new parts (belt, pump, gasket, tensioner) and start tackling the massive driveway project to pull the head and replace some stuff by myself (keep in mind, I don't know **** about cars)
Everything was going A-okay, until a SINGLE bolt on the intake manifold halted all progress for precisely 31 days. It was the center bolt, ans was stripped to a circle
Multiple mechanics flake on the assistance and I end up getting a friend back over with his friend, And the engine head is pulled. In the process, something blew a coolant sensor and I was jerryrigging a fan switch for a few weeks, knowing the hazard that electrocution is possible. Literally just stuck a wire in the ground and 12v so the fan would stay on. Thankfully that worked, but the switch was replaced and there she goes again.
New Headgasket, new timing, and the car is working wonders again! Turns out, the timing was off on the car by about 10 degrees and was rattling. Went away immediately!
Then comes the next project.
Replacing the rusted and broken suspension, and blown shock absorbers. Two shocks were blown, and one spring was rusted and broken through.
I happen to find a great deal on Koni shocks and Eibach pro racing springs in a manufacturer sale. Couldn't help it, and spent the money.
End up going to my pal Jon who used to be a Honda/Accra specialist.
By his amazing graciousness, time and good friendsmanship, we had replaced the suspension with a stomach full of bagels, beer and good music ("Lord knows I could go for some tacobell") in about 6 hours or so. I feel confident enough to do them myself at this time.
Over the past month or so, I've replaced the fuel filter which had hardly any flow whatsoever, and went to full synthetic performance oil. I've found my performance was going down severely, and found that my gas milage was getting less than 100 miles a tank, so I pulled the plugs, and found oil, halfway up my sparkplugs in each cylinder. Turns out my O rings were split in half on all 4 cylinders! Bought a new valve cover from a junk yard.
Soaked out the oil, and did a valve adjustment with minut knowledge on how to do so.
Turned the car on, genuinely thought I blew up my engine because it was clanking VERY loudly and found out the car needs to be dead cold to perform the adjustment. Knocked it out again, in 25 minutes the next morning and holy mother of God, it felt like a brand new car.
I'm now getting over 300 miles a tank, while launching from stops, and driving 90-100+ down the highway.
With that being said, this is basically the first year of having my car in a nutshell.
Even though there has been constant hassle (and I still need new tierods), all of the knowledge, and breakdowns have gave me a dream to make this car my project car. I won't finish building this car, and boy oh boy, I can't WAIT for these tax Returns to build an engine that's pretty much never been done.
My goals were to put a GSR automatic into the car... dreamed of it for months and months and months.... to no prevail, and because some people on HT are just ******** when it comes to automatics, im deciding to go with a manual conversion....
-Shaggy / Hatch Man
Pics above are the day it was brought home
Last edited by Hatch Man; 07-10-2017 at 07:00 PM.
Reason: added tldr
so i bought a rebuilt b20b high compression block, and a set of 12:1 arias pistons. (*not sure if im going to put those in yet*)
I also bought an 89 Si pr3-3 b16 head. GSC stage 2 cams, AEM cam gears, super-tech retainers, springs, and stock valves. mild intake porting.
To go with it, i got a rebuilt LS trans, with new synchros and new sleeves.
also a spare set of gsr cams
ive got a GSR harness, a p72 ecu and i think a chipped p32? ive got a jumper, a set of 4-1 headers, some megan racing LCA's, a distributor and a Skunk2 pro series b16 intake
today i took my trans to a friend of a friend, who builds racing transmissions- he took the welded diff out of the rebuilt LS i bought, and swapped it for a mint OEM diff. Its road worthy!
1320 motor mounts came!
HIGHLY impressed. Heavy weight, 65a polyurethane, billet aluminum, NO visible flaws, and extremely well made... Far exceeded my expectations. They cost 150 from ebay- didn't want to cheap out, but couldn't afford hasports and I bet these are exactly the same.
Comes in either 3 post or 2 post- same price. Comes with bolts and bracket too.
not the exact same as hasport. those are counterfeit hasport mounts from china. they just happen to have 1320 engraved on them.
remember the old saying you get what you pay for. well that holds true in this sense.
Well guys, I told myself i wouldnt spend more money to fit the 12:1 pistons, but i got a good deal
GSR eagle rods, ARP 2000 rod bolts, new box of ACL GSR bearings, Arias 12:1 84mm pistons, a polished GSR crank and i got my chipped p72 tuned with a safe tune to run the bigger cams and arias pistons!!!!!
I forgot to mention that the motor IS indeed inside of the car and is running!
I however need to get my cluster working, and figure out how to get the third plug for the ECU jumper, which will allow vtec, and I have to do the reverse lights still, as well....
If you are running an obd1 ecu with a jumper harness i found the easiest way to wire in vtec is to splice into the jumper harness.. Looks like a sweet build, you have any particular goals in mind?
Dude, take the 15 minutes and swap that brake pedal so it doesn't look like a hack job. This can be done with some very, very basic hand tools in your driveway in about 15 minutes with no real experience.
06-04-2017, 06:27 AM
My DAP EK Hatch build!
Re: My DAP EK Hatch build!
