File this one under "things I never thought I'd do to a car I bought brand new..." Since it seems everyone else on the board is busy ruining perfectly good automobiles, here's a status update on mine. Basically everything is out except the sunroof, I'll do that after dinner. Some observations on gutting a car...

1. Some parts of the sound tar seem impossible to remove. Try ice..air chisel...cursing... it just doesn't seem to matter. So I kind of resigned myself to leave some of it in there (most notably on the sides of the center hump near the shifter).

2. Removing a bolt-in cage that's been in the car for three years is *not* an easy thing to do.

3. Honda REALLY doesn't want you removing the airbags. Just getting the wiring out took me two hours

4. How the hell do you get the "SRS" light to turn off now that all that airbag crap is in your closet?

5. Hitting your head on the door frame after you've removed all the rubber padded things hurts a lot more than you think

6. Air chisels, hammers and such tend to ghetto up the tub of the car. I've sworn (on this board even) that my days of a ghetto-looking race car are over, so I am painting the floor and the hatch. This part, other than some places I missed (and running out of paint) is actually going well. I just need to stop running out of paint.

Pictures...

Edit: forgot to include this one. This is how it looked last weekend and without paint.


I didn't even get any paint on the quarter window. Some paint is drying now, once it's dry I'll reattach the wires and stuff to their clippy things.


Getting this thing out of the car was NOT fun. I touched up its paint while it was out. Investment Hint: buy stock in Rustoleum tomorrow.


This side is actually dry now. I made sure to cover up the top of the shocks, and most of the nuts/bolts elsewhere, so I didn't paint them too:


I *thought* this part was done until I saw this picture. Hey, that's a fine looking Suburban in the background.


Lots of black paint. Observation: it's amazing how dirty a car can get sitting in a garage...



[Modified by krshultz, 6:39 PM 1/27/2002]

 

Hahaha! I spent 20 minutes staring at the driver's side wiring thinking "What the fawk?!!!" to myself. The eventual remedy was taking a pair of tin snips to the ribbon/wire and saying "hasta lavista, baby!"

 

looks clean!

 

Take the SRS light bulb out.

Warren

 

At a shop once, i saw a civic shell being prepared for life as an IT car...they were removing the stock dynamat stuff by hitting the floor with hammers to break it up. Granted, there were 3 people in the car going at once...

 

That's effectively what I've done. But there are areas - around some of the seam sealer in particular - that are impervious to even my air hammer.

 

The seam sealer stuff is a real beeotch. Just keep working at it.

I have a piece of black tape over the SRS light. Works fine, easy fix.

 

you lazy bum drew....it's easy!!! just follow the wire back and take it out of the clips!! duhhhh

 

Check the wiring diagrams in the shop manual. I'm sure you can just either jump something or put in some resistors to fool the system into thinking there's an airbag there.

This page says what to do for an NSX.
http://www.centralcoastweb.com/nsxb/pages/m22.html

That's only for the steering wheel though (no passenger airbag). I'm sure something similar would/should work for the integra, though.

-Mike

 

dry ice is actually supposed to make taking the sound deadening tar out relatively easy...

 

Yeah you think its hard for a HatchY???? Try doing it to a four door. Ha!! Theres a lot more stuff to take off in one of those. I mean I took out EverythinG!!! Granted i had my friend help me along with the dry ice but it takes along time, especially when youve been driving around without carpet for the past 6 months. Oh and the middle tar stuff near the shifter is a real bizatch!! I just left that alone, cuz it wouldnt come off with anything!!

Oh and as far as the air bag goes that was pretty easy...to me at least and i say the easiest way is to take off the SRS light bulb in back of the speedo!!


[Modified by MrPimpon, 7:54 AM 1/28/2002]

 

Well...I finally got most of the goop around the seam sealer out. The trick was actually several things:

1. Take the dry ice and crumble it into little pieces
2. Spread it around the affected areas
3. Drink a beer
4. Come back and wail on car with hammer and chisel

What ended up happening in most cases was that the little metal plugs in the tub of the car came out. They're in the freezer right now so when I get home from work I can chip off the goo and put them back in the car. Assuming I didn't mangle them too badly with the chisel.

The one area that I think I'm gonna just give up on is on the sides of the tunnel. This stuff is made of different material and isn't coming up in big pieces. I realized that it probably weights a total of 50 grams so I guess I'll just paint over it.

 

Hmm. In my car, the insulation on the sides of the tunnel are styrofoam, not the tar-goo. Found this out last night while chasing down the wire for the cd changer...
Oh, and I had several chunks just chip off while pulling the cable off of that gunk. One piece is like 2 inches square. This without using cold at all. Stuck just fine to the changer cable, but not to the tub.

Chris- who is going to go find the guy who put that cd changer in my trunk and have a talk with him about worksmanship...

 

Agree.

 

If you haven't tried it already, a heat gun works great to get the tar out. Just heat up a small patch of the tar and use a paint scraper to remove the tar. This worked great on my friend's 98 240SX. Lools like crap until you get somekind of solvent to get the remaining tar off though.

 

Money's car is tiZZiTe y0.


[Modified by the-sKiLLS-MasTA, 8:51 PM 1/28/2002]

 

what do you do with the wiring to the tail lights, and what ever runs along the inside sideboards?

 

LOL

I took out my airbags this weekend in prep for the new wheel on Tuesday. My hand has like a million cuts and scrapes now. Gotta take out the light too.

Chris

 

fire works well to remove the tar and undercoating. found this out the hard way while doing some of the cage work in the corolla. I burned about 25% of the under coating outa the driver side fender well, desided to strip it out before continuing.

 

Black interior? Won't that make it steaming hot in summer? Sitting on grid in a hot car sucks when your bundled head to toe in Nomex.

 

Get your priorities straight man.
Black on black (with a little "shultz blue") makes for a bad *** race car.

And honestly, at CMP in August it makes no damned difference. Unbearably hot regardless of color.

 

Igot all my sound deadening crap out one night when it was about 40 degrees out. It cam eoff in big 4-6 inch squares. Maybe it was easier since my car is a 95? But i used a big *** screwdriver and a hammer and a smaller screwdriver for some tight areas.

 

Chris - yeah my hands are real cut up now too, funny you mention that.

Smokin rubber: The wires remain. If you look at the pictures they're still there. I just moved them out of their clips so I wouldn't get much paint on them. Some of the wires can be cut down and capped - and things like the power antenna lead can be tossed completely.

Al and Scott: The inside of the car was black when it was upholstered, so it might get a little worse, but not by much. Plus, I have a fitted car cover for downtime if needed. And as RoadRacer said...the most important thing here is to have a race car that the car look badass. And...it's starting to look pretty badass.

Now this is a good idea I hadn't thought of. Well, I did, kind of - but thought it'd be messy. Now that I'm down to just a little bit of the stuff it should be managable.

To remove the remnants...will laquer thinner do the trick, or do I need something more caustic like acetone?

Good idea.

 

Laquer thinner will attack and weaken most adhesive-type sealers. Or, go to a hardware store and get yourself a 3M rust/paint remover wheel, chucks up to a power drill. Might take up some of that paint you just put on, but I guarantee it will get rid of that sealer, assuming you can get it in where you need to. It worked for taking out the remainder of my stock LCA bushings, which I found out were vulcanized in place at the factory, when switching over to poly bushings.

 

why don't you have the car "Dunked"
they do this for restores....
they put it in this huge tank... it removes all the paint and poo poo... and leaves you with bare metal!

or have it sandblasted