alacard

Alacard's 'Third time's a charm' build thread

I was hesitant to start this thread due to the insane amount of theft these days, but I didn't want to let that stop me. So this is my first build thread. This is, however, my third attempted build. Therefore, this project has been appropriately named: “Third time’s a charm.” I will lay out a few things for you guys before I get started. First of all, I work my *** off to pay for every single part on this car and I do all of the work myself. I never received any financial help and I would never dream of stealing. Second, this will not only be a build thread, but also a story of how I came to be where I am with this car. Third, I am not a professional—I am simply a kid who loved the idea of working on cars since the age of 12.

Once I turned 16 my parents agreed to purchase my first car. After months of searching we settled on a white 98 dx civic coupe for about $3,700:



I had no idea how to do anything to the car but put gas in it and maybe change the oil. I also had no clue how much love for Hondas this car would bring me. After months of not being able to find a job and months of searching online for info, I finally found a job and Honda-tech. Both a job and HT combined; kick started my work on Honda’s.
The coupe endured an Ebay cold air intake, the popular Koni/GC setup, black Rota Slipstreams, exhaust, 99-00 CTR front end, a carbon fiber hood, and other little goodies. The intake was later replaced with a nice new turbo . A few days before I was going to run the car for the first time at the local track, I crashed it.



This left me in search of a car again.


This time I wanted a hatch and I wanted to go bigger than a turbo d16. So I sold the turbo and got a b18c1. This, along with all the old parts from the coupe, were installed on the new hatch by me. After a while of driving with the b18, it was time for some more power. I started gathering all the parts I needed to turbo that bad boy. Unfortunately, a few days before I was going to get started on the install, someone rear-ended me and pushed me into the car in front of me.




After months of searching, yet again, for a new hatch, I finally came upon this one:






Once again, all the parts from my previous setups are going onto this one. Hopefully with some luck, I will be able to finish this project of mine and be happy with the final product. This thread will mostly be slow-moving but it will have some nice spurts of activity whenever I get the chance to go home and work on it.

Please give me any feedback--negative or positive. Thanks for reading, guys.

alacard

The weekend after I got it, I took it to my parent's garage to begin the part-swapping process.

First in line was, as always, the suspension:
Koni shocks, Ground Control springs, and Eibach coilovers. After doing this so many times, I got these on in no time at all. Unfortunately, I never took pictures of this.


As I was working...It started to rain outside..




In the middle of summer. I thought it was pretty random..

I also decided to throw my swaybar, ASR subframe brace, and LCAs on. This turned out to be a little more of a hassle than the shocks...
I discovered my newly acquired vehicle's dirty little secret. Somehow a previous owner had bent the subframe in a little. The rest of the car seems unscathed, so my guess is that they somehow sideswiped a curb with that rear wheel.

Because of this, my ASR brace would not bolt in. The holes didn't line up. I ended up doing the only thing I could think of...I bored out the hole in the subframe in order to make it fit. Any thoughts/advice/suggestions on this one?




After a day of working...here were my hands. I always seem to get more cuts than I can count..It's always worth it, though



Anyways, it's all in and working fine now. But my car squeaks sometimes when I go through a slight dip or up a driveway or something. It sounds like it is coming from the front shocks or the rear shocks, or maybe both. I never had this happen with my other two cars and the suspension was the same setup. Any ideas?

alacard

I also had my good friend help me swap my old 99 climate control into my new 98 hatch. WHAT A BITCH. I hate taking dashes out. We did this in the blazing 90+ degree sun. Also, we had to kind of learn as we worked to figure out what parts we needed to retrofit. I couldn't even tell you what parts I used in the end. I think it is all the 99-00 wiring, though. Everything finally went in smoothly. The only thing is that I LOST HEAT? I don't know what happened. I rarely use heat...but it is nice for defogging. Any ideas for troubleshooting?

iamthefollower

nice, sucks about the last two cars. Good luck on this one.

alacard

My hatch seemed to have a slight water leak, so I pulled off the tail lights and checked the gaskets.

They looked pretty damn bad, so I cut some new ones out of wal-mart craft foam and used some gasket maker to ensure there would be no leak. A how-to on this can be found here: https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...diy+hatch+leak

alacard

Thanks man, I intend to have some pretty detailed updates once I get going...but as of now, all the stuff I have done was just swapping parts over from the old car...so I didn't really spend too much time on photos and write-ups.

alacard

Much, much more to come. I still have that turbo setup ready to go on. I also have SIR bumpers I need to paint and throw on, CTR headlights, CTR grill, and a sir lip.

alacard

here's the bay:



PLENTY I need to do under here.
-mild wire tuck
-windshield wiper reservoir delete
-paint vc
-etc, etc.

Jonathannx2

Nice

Kuhniee

man talk about unlucky on those first two cars but thirds looking good.

alacard

Thanks guys,

818ek9

yo with the new climate control does the radio and cd player n stuff work

backyard_concepts

good progress, sucks about the last 2. subscribed to see more progress.

fastrxu

Niiice but I woulda searched for a 99-00 instead of swapping stuff out
Keep us posted

alacard

Yup. You just have to swap all the heater core and wiring over.

Thanks, man.

Nah...First of all when trying to find a CLEAN/stock car, you can't be very picky. It took me a month or two just to find this one. Second, I only swapped the 99-00 climate control..not the bumpers or anything. That is all going to be SIR.
Thanks, dude.

Ej8_KiD

I like where this is going! good luck man

coquieg6

dude. heads up. insure this baby.

Matt93eg

Props to you man, you keep bouncing back from unfortunate happenings and that shows determination. Keep it up, I like the direction your heading in.

keilynhonda92

Looking good! Good Luck!

dth0ng69

propz to bouncing back and getting another EK. I once lost my 4dr EK to a trade, but Ended up buying a Silver EK hatch few months later.

YesSIRII

Sh*% will buff out! g-luck

cyber702

Looks dope!

alacard

Thanks everyone! Hopefully I can get some updates soon.

FooFoo

gl on your third rebuild looking forward to see how it turns up at the end