Hovecraft

Hi there, I’ve owned this rig for about 2 1/2 years now, and I think I’m about to sell it, but I wanted to document my ownership, since when I bought it, it was kind of a mystery. I believe this was an early modified first gen, originally swapped by an H-T member in Boise, Idaho. I live in Corvallis, OR, and was looking for a CRV on Craigslist. When I spotted this lowered, GSR swapped ’98 for sale in Boise I knew I wanted it, but I had a newborn, so I flew my buddy out to Boise to drive the car back. When he took the rig for a test drive he immediately noticed it wasn’t running right, in fact it was running on 3 cylinders, and also grinding into first gear. After talking about it over the phone we decided to buy it anyway. My buddy slept in the CRV overnight in Boise in order to get a trip permit at the DMV the next day, and try some basic maintenance (including picking up some injector clips at a local wreckers), but ended up driving back to Corvallis on 3 cylinders. Upon inspection we found that a resistor box was hooked up when it didn’t need to be. We pulled the resistor box, found 4 new injectors (that came with a Skunk2 manifold), and cleaned up the wiring, and it was running better, but it needed one more thing – a new ECU. The B18C1 was running off the B20 ECU. After picking up an OBD1 P72 at the local wreckers it was running great, but there was another problem, it needed a rear driveshaft. I bought a brand new driveshaft, bolted it in, and the rear end was clunking like crazy. So I did a little research, found a 2011 Element rear end on Ebay, and put that sucker in – worked great. Suspension needed to be addressed (had a cracked coil over sleeve and blown struts) so I found some old Yellow Speed non-adjustable coilovers, but stacked on some nice 2 inch spacers for an almost stock height. Also gave it two new CV axles. Then I addressed the exhaust. I got rid of the Raptor muffler and replaced it with a Magnaflow, and replaced the test pipe with a nice cat. The CRV came with a 1320 header, but of course that needed to come off for the turbo. I picked up an AC and PS compatible ramhorn with a 44mm Tial that came with a T70 with a chipped fin, but the T70 was too big for me, so I found a cheap blown T3/T4 with a 75mm compressor wheel and rebuilt it with the T70 internals. By this time the OBD 1 P72 ECU somehow got fried, so I was running an OBD2b P72 that I immobilized with Apexi Neo and 440 injectors, but that was short lived and I decided to go AEM V1, since my buddy had just tuned his supercharged Vibe GT with AEM. Injectors got swapped out again for 550 grams, and map sensor goes to SF 4bar. I’m currently running about 12 psi. That’s pretty much the story. It still needs a new steering rack and first gear grinds, but not sure if I’m going to be able to get to that any time soon, with too many cars in the world that need love, and so little time. Thanks for reading the story, and if you have any information on this car from the time it was in Boise let me know.

-Hove