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This thread will chronicle the story of my Honda, starting in 2004. Enjoy!
Date: Sometime in fall of 2004
Location: Western New York
I had just started the second year of my undergraduate work, but was determined to get into the Honda scene. I was looking for a 93-95 Civic EX Coupe, because at the time everyone was building hatches and I wanted to be different. It seemed hard to find any of this type, especially with a 5-speed manual transmission so I looked for awhile. Finally one popped up- it was a single owner car, but at the time I didn't know much about Carfax and vehicle histories in general on these mid 90's cars were not as robust as they are today with all the computerized tracking. My dad was the only vetting that I did. He test drove the car, and bought it on my behalf with around $3,000 of my money I had saved. The car had about 95,000 miles on it and was pretty well spec'd from the factory with all options except A/C:
Power steering
Power windows
Power locks
Power sunroof
Cruise control
D16Z6 SOHC VTEC engine
Trunk spoiler
Mud guards
5-speed manual transmission
4 wheel disk brakes with ABS
Here's some photos from my 35mm (FILM!) camera when I brought it home (sorry for the blurriness):
More to come soon!
Last edited by wxman94ej1; Dec 6, 2016 at 08:59 AM.
Oh, sweet! I always liked the purple ones. Gee, 2004 ... my first Civic that I bought was in 2002. Drove it stock as-is -- a Canadian Civic CX Hatch -- until 2007, when I put in an OEM trunk light. Then things kinda snowballed from there.
Oh, sweet! I always liked the purple ones. Gee, 2004 ... my first Civic that I bought was in 2002. Drove it stock as-is -- a Canadian Civic CX Hatch -- until 2007, when I put in an OEM trunk light. Then things kinda snowballed from there.
Wow! As a long-time lurker and follower of this forum, I am honored that you have chimed in and find this interesting! I have thoroughly enjoyed all of your DIY's, and other contributions as I've soaked up knowledge here. Also your list of tools for the pull apart yard has been helpful too. Thanks for commenting, I'll provide more updates on this soon but obviously we have 12 years to cover (I still have and drive the car today, but it looks much different!).
Crigey, you're the first person to admit to having used my list o' tools. Other than my Dad, of course. Any cool finds over the years of junkyard hunting?
Crigey, you're the first person to admit to having used my list o' tools. Other than my Dad, of course. Any cool finds over the years of junkyard hunting?
Ha, I will admit it as well. I enjoy lots of your posts!
Crigey, you're the first person to admit to having used my list o' tools. Other than my Dad, of course. Any cool finds over the years of junkyard hunting?
Not that I can remember...lots of change but no big coins like you have! I've scored some parts I've been lucky to find because these yards are very popular around where I live, but nothing super random or valuable/rare.
Originally Posted by mrnicolas
I am interested in following this as I just secured a 93 purple ex coupe myself.
Nice!
Originally Posted by 94 Civic Si
Sweet! You gotta love those '94 D16s + 5 spd...
I personally love the hatch, as I had 2 big dogs when I got mine (in 1997), but the coupes are sweet as well!
I can't wait to follow your story.
The hatch has grown on me over the years, mainly because a lot of them have been just trashed by "tuners" over the years. As I promised in your thread I finally started my own. Thanks for the motivation
The hatch has grown on me over the years, mainly because a lot of them have been just trashed by "tuners" over the years. As I promised in your thread I finally started my own. Thanks for the motivation
In the spring of 2004 the first things on my agenda with the car was to lower it and get and exhaust and an intake. I picked up an AEM short ram intake (and my buddy colored the valve cover with a paint pen). I installed the intake myself and at the time removed all of the resonator from behind the front bumper. The intake didn't install as cleanly as I would have liked because I have ABS, but I cobbed it up to look OK at the time.
Audio upgrades were pretty popular at the time as well. At this point I had two cars and my other car had a "system" in the trunk, so I made some upgrades to the Honda in the form of a Pioneer head unit and some Alpine Type-S rear deck speakers (still have today). This was the first time I did audio work by myself, and I used the instructions from Crutchfield and it wasn't too hard.
For suspension, I ended up deciding on a set of Skunk2 adjustable coilovers with Tokico blue shocks and an SPC front and rear camber kit. I have the receipt for all of this still, amazingly. I wasn't too mechanically adept at this time, so I had one of my friends do the suspension work for me.
This is pretty much how the car would sit from spring of 2004 until summer of 2005. I never did end up getting an exhaust during this time period. It was still fun hitting VTEC with the stock exhaust and short ram intake though! More to come in the next post!
Nice! How do you like the Tokico Blues? Do you still have them in place?
They were decent. I think with some better springs I would have liked them more however the Skunk2 springs were too stiff for me. I've swapped out twice since that setup, and I'll be detailing that a little later. More info coming on the next stage of the car soon.
They were decent. I think with some better springs I would have liked them more however the Skunk2 springs were too stiff for me. I've swapped out twice since that setup, and I'll be detailing that a little later. More info coming on the next stage of the car soon.
Over the winter of 2004-2005, I debated a lot on what to do with the car. At the time, I really wanted a yellow "JDM" style build. My friend worked at a body shop and also painted so I was going to have him do the work. The problem was that a complete color change was a ton of work and $$. So I debated different options, such as a black with a purple "chameleon" type color, changing as the sunlight hit the car. However none of those ideas I really liked very much compared to doing it yellow. I was also debating a body kit, because in 2004 and 2005, that was all the rage. It wasn't a big body kit, just a "lip kit". In fact, it's still for sale today and it's the Wings West 2Dr "Racing Series" 4 piece kit. Here's a picture of what I almost got (pictures taken from: 1992-1995 Honda Civic 2Dr Racing Series 4Pc Complete Kit Loaded Commerce):
If I would have went with that lip kit, it would have been a black-purple "chameleon" style paint job with the engine bay remaining the factory color which is technically "Camellia Red Pearl Clearcoat", code R-86P. This was obviously the cheaper route because the engine wouldn't have been removed but ultimately I decided against it.
Next I had my heart set on painting the car S2000 yellow. Once I found out how expensive that paint is, which has metal flake in it, I backed off on that idea as well. Finally I settled on paint code Y56, or "Phoenix Yellow". In hindsight, it might have been interesting to just respray the car in it's factory color (R-86P) but I have no regrets to this day.
In the late spring of 2005, the teardown began, and the transition to Y56 Phoenix Yellow began:
First step of course was to dive into the body work. This was a New York car, so rust was already a problem on the rear quarters and at the bottom-front of the rear wheel wells. Here are some pictures of what we'd be fixing:
Passenger rear quarter:
Driver rear quarter:
Driver rear wheel well (front):
We also had to do work in the same area on the passenger side, but I don't have any "before shots" of that spot.
Now in this post we're toward the end of June 2005. I was on break from college for the summer so I was hoping we could just finish it before I went back to school. My friend was doing about 95% of the work while I helped where I could.
The rust ended up being pretty bad and we had to cut and weld from a donor car to do the job right. We also found some paint bubbling on the lower driver side windshield pillar.
Donor car which was used for many parts including a terrible exhaust. You can see we've already swapped trunks. In the photo we were attempting to get the driver door open for some reason:
Make sure to feather the paint out before repainting or you'll notice the seam. About an inch width for each layer of feathering will be enough to step it down and obscure the patching. POR-15 on the inside will encapsulate anything you may have missed.
Make sure to feather the paint out before repainting or you'll notice the seam. About an inch width for each layer of feathering will be enough to step it down and obscure the patching. POR-15 on the inside will encapsulate anything you may have missed.
Nice work.
Thanks man. This thread is new, but those photos I am posting are from 2005 haha. I am just finally starting a build thread, albeit a little late. More updates coming!
Last edited by wxman94ej1; Apr 14, 2017 at 08:35 AM.
Wxman's 1994 EX ABS Coupe Build Thread
