drummingpariah

After two years of successfully racing and daily driving my 1.6 NA Miata, I decided it was time to go back to my roots. I picked up a partially rusted 91 CRX DX/STD (a 1.5 dpfi CRX) that had the suspension ruined (slammed? stanced? whatever the kids call it these days) and maintenance had just been ignored. It was listed as this, but with plain old steel wheels on it.


In my humble opinion, that is one of the worst fates possible for a car. I decided I'd fix the suspension and call it an inexpensive replacement for the NA Miata. The goal is to keep this build as simple as possible so I can simply focus on the Datsun race car for 2016. The Miata is my daily until Dec 13 (which leaves me with one full weekend to work on the CRX), then I stop paying attention to the CRX around Jan 1 when the Datsun gets back from the chassis shop. So, here's what the driveway looks like:


In the garage sits most of a CRX, which had typical rocker rot under the plastic rocker covers:


The first time I pulled it back out of the driveway, I saw/smelled that it was leaking fuel.


The leaking area was easy to spot, but I could see exactly where the leak was coming from. I had to drop the tank.



A few lines were in rough condition, but the leak was pretty obvious when I started to look at it in the light.


I started the transfer of fuel from the tank into gas cans, then into other cars. A full tank is pretty heavy, and I couldn't get the car high enough to properly drain it while it was still in the car.


That night (Sunday), I ordered a few parts, and was surprised to find these on the doorstep today (Tuesday)



Unfortunately, the bushings are for a 1G, but the listing didn't say that anywhere. I'd had a long night of cross-referencing part numbers and now I have to pay for return shipping. Whoops! I would generally replace bushings on any car I pick up, but because this one was stanced, several bushings had just been destroyed outright. The rear-left tire, for instance, was wobbling around without any lower control arm bushing whatsoever. Totally loose back there. I can't believe I drove this home.


While not as awful as the missing bushings, it was missing a few wheel studs, and the lug nuts were horribly overtightened (all awaiting delivery).


I spent a little time on Sunday pulling the extra crap out of the car, like carpets. The seats were only held in with 3 bolts ... total. The driver's seat had one bolt holding it in place, and the passenger seat had two. They both had two sets of slider rails under them, and I'm just generally appalled that someone was allowed to mistreat such an undeserving car.


Budget
I'm not going to spend more than $3k on this build. It's my IDGAF build, and I really don't give a **** how it looks when I'm done. I want it to run reliably, and drive reasonably well. It's the opposite of a show car, isn't a race car, and I have nothing to prove here. It'll be nice to be able to fit an engine in the back, and I won't complain about the significantly improved fuel economy vs the Miata.

Now that your expectations are set for this, know that it's going to move quickly. I like to decide on a course of action and then kill it. I believe I know what I'm doing for tires (with winter coming up, I'll obviously be running snow tires), and this suspension has no business being in a car at all. If I have time, I'll do something about the sad little dpfi 1.5, but power has never been a thing that particularly excites me. As long as a vehicle is responsive and handles predictably, I can have a great time in it.

Stick around, leave a comment/suggestion, complain about how much I bash stance/hellaflush, or tell me my build is crap. Do whatever you like, because on this build ... I don't give a ****.

whited

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drummingpariah

I finally drained the fuel tank. Most of it went into the Miata, since that's the biggest tank I have. After that, I started cleaning the on-tank accessories to remove them, but when the temp dropped and I couldn't retreat into the garage I just gave up for the night. It's now 18F and the garage still smells like a fuel refinery.

With any luck, the fumes will clear by tomorrow and I can start cutting rust out. I still need fuel tank straps, fasteners (no idea if they come with the straps or not), and all new rubber lines before I can put that back in. I still need to test fit some of my seats to see what I can and can't use, then I'll weld together some mounts. Again, looking for minimal time/money to suit my IDGAF mentality.

The next real update will be Thursday night or Friday morning. Saturday is the awards banquet for this year's hillclimb season. I did well, winning my class and overall points (against MUCH faster drivers in MUCH faster cars).

Want to know what hillclimbs are like out here in New England? Here's one of the runs from our last event from the season, in my daily driver. It's the shortest hill we run, and it was well below freezing most of the event, making for a few particularly interesting sections.

EDIT
... sorry, video isn't posted any more. I'm working on re-editing them so I can get them all back online soon!

bigtimegambler

Wow, what a janky crx you picked up. Glad you saved it from the PO. Looking forward to seeing your rust fix and suspension replacement.

PS: all your cars are so cool! datsun... fc... miata... awesome.

drummingpariah

The PO isn't actually the problem. The PPO is the issue, then the PPPO started the modifications. I have a lot of receipts on what was purchased and when, and all the old registrations are still in it, so I know who owned it when that stuff was bought.

The rust fix is going to be boring. I may even just use the flux core welder, because I don't want to clean properly for the TIG welders, and don't want to refill my MIG bottle. Basically, IDGAF if there's spatter all over the place, I just want it all done quickly.

drummingpariah

Tonight wasn't quite as productive as I had hoped. The garage still smells a bit like fuel, so I'm going to give it another day before I do grinding and welding. Instead, I did some test fitting of one of my spare seats. They're pretty wide, and definitely didn't fit in the Miata at all. The Datsun's shoulder area is too narrow for them, and the FC just barely fit them. The ED has PLENTY of room because the tunnel only needs to have room for exhaust, no driveline or transmission in there. Now I need to decide if I'm going to install harnesses or not, as OEM 3-point belts aren't very effective with bolstered fixed-back seats. They sure are comfy, though.

bigtimegambler

How is the fixed back for daily driving?

jonGSR

Interested in the progress! Good luck!

drummingpariah

You should be able to fall asleep in a good fixed back seat. There are definitely disadvantages though.

Harnesses are a pain and aren't generally dot tested. Fitting seats is a long fiddly process. It generally requires a quick release or flip up steering wheel. The get-in-the-car process takes a lot longer with fixed back seats, but I generally just use that as the engine warmup period.

Certainly not for everybody, but I really dislike how heavy and unsupportive OEM seats are. The benefits outweigh the diownsides for me.

drummingpariah

Still lots to do on the body, but I'm starting to get my good parts together now. I'll assemble complete installation instructions as I put them in, but it was well worth the drive up to Gilford. It's always fun to see the guys up at ISC, and now they have a dedicated warehouse space. No more shared workshop and warehouse!


The rockers and quarters are still top priority, but that heavily depends on fuel fumes having completely dissipated. I'll install suspension now, if I have to. At least then I'll be able to fit the jack under the car a bit better.

drummingpariah

While I'm excited to take off this pathetic suspension and get a functional ride height, other problems need to be addressed instead.


I'm not surprised to find some previous (failed, if you ask me) repair attempts on the front of the rear quarters.


The actual quarters themselves look like original metal and OEM body filler caked on. I don't give a something-something here, just mark with sharpie and CHOP CHOP CHOP!


The 90's were a very special time, where OEM's just dumped body filler on like it was free. It's pretty easy to pick out what Honda did vs what previous owners did. PO fixes fall off with nothing more than a scraper and a hammer, in big chunks. OEM body filler is much higher quality and is actually cured.


The only really disappointing news in all of this is that my air pump appears to have died, so I can't pump these tires up. One more thing to order!

Pro-SeriesFab

Love it.

Definitely worth saving . . . these cars have already started coming back up in value in my area

drummingpariah

I've always liked the CRX a lot, but I'm not convinced that any automotive project is financially responsible. If I'm valuing my time at all, I'd have to be able to sell this for $7k or so to break-even, and that would have to happen without an interior, fresh paint, or anything cosmetic happening. If I added anything cosmetic into the mix, that break-even price would continue to rise. Making money is never the point though, I just want to drive a good CRX, and that doesn't seem to be a thing that can be bought any more.

Update
The more I dig, the more amazed I am that I survived the drive home.

This is what happens when you start correcting suspension on one side before the other. There's nothing under the car, and this is after rolling it around a bit to settle the suspension.



Horrifying discovery #287

The front coilovers were not secured at the bottom, at all. The OEM bottom fork is designed to clamp onto the bottom of the coilover housing, and coilovers are meant to fit the exact same way. The bolt that secures the clamp in this particular car had been cut, presumably because it was rusted in place. Just a complete hack job, and in an extremely dangerous place.

Self-induced problems
I also found that the valve stem on one of my winter wheels had failed (just a cheap set of 14x5 4x100 BBS wheels I bought for $25), leaving me with a flat tire. I wasn't sure if they'd even fit under the wheelwells, but I had some race wheels/tires left over from the Miata (again, 4x100 but 15x8.5") that should work well enough to hold the car up. I'm probably going to have to leave those on the car for now, since I'll need the winter tires when I drop the Miata off anyway.



I still have three more corners to wrap up, and then I get to start looking at suspension geometry and getting seats installed.

slowDB7

Glad to see another crx being saved

drummingpariah

Anyone interested in an update? I'm going to bash 'stance' some more, but there isn't anything exciting to announce yet.

Suspension Timesink
The front passenger side was even worse off than the driver's side. The fork was completely destroyed, and had actually slid all the way up onto the brake line collar, dropping the ride height on that side even more and giving even more opportunity for the thing to just FALL OFF when going over a bump.


That corner is stuck dangling until replacement coilover forks come in.


The rear passenger lower control arm had the wrong bushing in it, meaning that the damper wasn't entirely secured.


That isn't necessarily a massive issue, it just means that the rear suspension would make a lot of noise during weight transitions, and would eat through bushings more quickly. The truly horrifying part is that the rear coilovers were secured to the control arms with carriage bolts. Carriage bolts are intended to hold timber in place. They're designed to have some stretch and give, and aren't intended to take any kind of shock whatsoever. The suspension of a car is pretty much the last place you could possibly want to use these.


I'm going to dig around through the parts catalog to see if I can get a part number, or just see if I have some used grade10 or grade12 bolts that will fit there. I also adjusted the adjustable rear upper control arms back out to OEM length, which should give me much more reasonable camber. At the very least, it'll be good enough to get me to an alignment shop without killing me.

bheinen74

someone is lucky this car has not killed them just driving on a bumpy street let alone bumpy highway. previous owners have NO business owning any car, heck surprised they used carriage bolts, if they would have used plastic thro-away straws for connecting some stuff i would not be surprised...

drummingpariah

I've decided to start a video series of this build, and spent a little time on Sunday sorting out the footage I have so far. If I can refine my workflow on videos a bit more, I could make this a semi-regular thing. The real question is whether or not anyone would want to watch it.

Uploaded to Youtube:

and to Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/148100281

jonGSR

Subscribed! I prefer the YouTube updates over this thread! Very nice!

Northernlightz

Respect for restoring the car, but your video could do without the hipster music and that over dramatized effect. You're just restoring a car. There is no need for that.

drummingpariah

Thanks! They're going to have to stay a bit behind the build thread, because it takes a bit more work to put them together into videos, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for the amount of time I invested.

Trust me when I say that it's just godawful boring without those things. The music and overall presentation are just covering up my shoddy work and boring repairs. I'd love to be able to make something watch-able without having to lean on crutches like that, but I can't. At least not yet.

So consider your feedback appreciated, and duly noted ... but I'm going to have to file this one under 'will not fix' for now.

Bently_Coop

Interesting build. What a **** show to have fix. Have you used the ISC suspension before? Where is it made?

drummingpariah

It's moving quickly, and I should be able to wrap everything up on Saturday, as long as all my parts arrive.

As for ISC, a friend uses ISC on his FC3s race car, and after seeing how stable his car was, I planned to do the same on mine. However, I ran into some issues while caging it and haven't circled back yet. My Miata already had a really stable Bilstein damper set that I was really happy with, so I didn't go changing what already worked. The CRX suspension ... needs ... fixing. They really specialize in Subaru suspension, and have control arms, bumpsteer kits, etc available, but they have a handful of well-developed Honda solutions as well. There just aren't as many Honda folks who want good suspension as there are Subaru folks who think they need adjustable suspension.

I'm pretty sure ISC is centered in the Philippines, if it matters. Based on what I've seen, their designs are straightforward, machining is consistently good quality, and with reasonably durable coatings (don't expect that paint/anodization to last forever, it's still subject to basic physics).

Shipping/support is out of New Hampshire, a little North of me. They're a fantastic group of guys and girls. If you have specific valving you'd like, they have a spring and damper dyno on-site to tune to your specifications. When you place an order through them, specify the spring rate you'd like or tell them what your intended use is and they'll outfit them accordingly.

kp

Excellent video, nice work with the editing and narration too. Don't change what you're doing at all.

drummingpariah

Thanks KP. It's definitely going to change, but there's only so much I can do at once, so I have to keep my expectations realistic. The next video is close to finished, but all these suspension surprises have held up filming. The plan is to have an episode about suspension, then fuel, then rust, then a surprise episode ... but I don't quite have enough footage to wrap up the suspension bit yet. This filming thing is hard, it turns out. Luckily, that's given me time to start editing the footage I have for the other episodes, so I should be able to crank them out reasonably quickly after the suspension one is done.

Finally, a progress update!



Front suspension components came in, so I installed them. I've been wrestling with ebrake cables and rear toe links since I got out of work today, and only one has been successful so far. I'm still waiting on a few parts to proceed, and USPS has been less than helpful (today's the 15th, the rear trailing arm bushings were scheduled to be delivered the 12th, and the last update to the tracking # was the 9th). Despite that, the rest of the car is getting just a little less horrifying every day. I can't wait to get the rear suspension put back together.

JDMKAY

Interesting choice for suspension to be honest I never heard of that brand and after seeing you post about it I checked their website out.
Might have to look into a set in the near future...aside from that interested to see this crx restored and drivable!