For those of you who did not read my introduction last week, let me recap a bit. I recently bought a 89 Civic LX Sedan. I bought it to save in car payments/insurance and increase my gas mileage. I have no desire to make any major modifications unless it helps increase my gas mileage any further.

That being said, I am also trying to restore the car so it looks new. I took my first trip to a junkyard and found a few civics with parts that match my interior and a few that I can probably use to gank under the hood parts if I need to. I walked away with two head rests for the back seats and a speaker cover as the one that came with the car was broken.

I looked for a hood but only found a 89 Accord hood in good shape. Will a hood made for an 89 accord fit my 89 four door civic? If not I might just try to peel the paint and sand off the rust myself.

Concerning engines. I know that Honda made a HF CRX in the late 80s and early 90s. Is it possible/advisable to swap my engine (38 mpg) for a CRX HF engine? I know it's a smaller engine and would probably reduce my HP a bit. Would it make a major dent in gas mileage? Could I look for something in the mid 40's?

After looking at a few 88, 89, and 90s civics and accords I've decided that it's going to be impossible to find mint condition seats for this car. What seats will fit in using the same bolts and where can I get them? Remember, the point is to make the car look new, not like a race car. Could I get seats from a 00 civic and would they fit?

What are some easy ways for me to increase my gas mileage? I'm going to install the good air filter this week, and I'm also going to look into simple weight reduction (like getting a lighter battery, etc). I will not be removing the A/C or other creature comforts. I will also not install lighter bumper mounts that might hurt my chances of surviving an accident.

Oh, what the hell goes between the sun visors on the ceiling of the car? I just have three bolt holes and have no idea what goes there.

Thanks for any advice you guys can offer. I've been enjoying the forum the last few days and am amazed at the pictures/ideas I've seen here.

 

The 89 accord hood will not fit.

I highly advise against swapping the hf engine into your lx.

First you will have to do an mpfi swap.

Second the 70 hp hf engine will make the lx a real dog. The lx is much heavier than the hf and will really suffer with only 70 hp.

For seats look for aftermarket or 88-89 civic/crx seats.

 

Thanks for the info. I don't want to slow down the car too much, so it looks like I'll stick with the stock engine for now. Perhaps in the future I'll get a HF and play with that all by itself. The real trick is finding one that hasn't been modified.

But for now, I'm fixing up the LX.

Any recommended sites for aftermarket 89 civic seats?

 

If you're removing all that stuff, why'd you get an LX? I could possibly understand wanting painted bumpers, but honestly, you could find them for the same price as selling all those spare power option parts. And fyi, AC system donesn't weigh much, and only affects gas milage while activated (pully spins freely normally).

The LX is about a human heavier than the DX, which would've helped gas milage if you'd got the DX. The hatch is lighter still. The other options are to get larger diameter tires that are as narrow as the 13's on it now (like reducing final drive ratio) or get a CRX HF tranny. There is a point where lower HP/gearing results in diminishing MPG gains. Honstly though, theres not much you can do to increase gas milage without wasting all the future savings on parts & elbow grease in the present.


As for seats, I'd say GSR leathers since its not a performance car...and its an LX

 

I have seen good MPG fuel increases from mpfi swap and intakes or better air filters. Having more power helps fuel milage when you have to floor the lx to get it up to speed, when more power does it easier. My b16a 92 gs-r got 3-5 MPG more than my wifes 89 lx auto.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by HiProfile &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If you're removing all that stuff, why'd you get an LX? I could possibly understand wanting painted bumpers, but honestly, you could find them for the same price as selling all those spare power option parts. And fyi, AC system donesn't weigh much, and only affects gas milage while activated (pully spins freely normally).

...

As for seats, I'd say GSR leathers since its not a performance car...and its an LX </TD></TR></TABLE>

I didn't think about weight when I bought it. I was actually just looking for a honda at a good price. It gets 38 mpg on the street and in the mid 40s on the highway. Not too bad.

remember, I'm not removing anything. I want to keep it creature friendly. I'll keep the AC and everything else. I didn't mention that it's a manual transmission, so I'm not sure if swapping out the tranny from a CRX will have much of a benefit.

The LX is nice. It has a nice ride and will eventually have all of the goodies I want. I'm also hoping to install cruise control sometime after the body work is done. I will look into getting bigger wheels to increase the diameter of the tire.

leather sounds nice

 

why not just reupholster the seats?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by michaelOlson &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">why not just reupholster the seats?</TD></TR></TABLE>

I may end up doing this if I can't find something in the junkyard. I found 2 mint civics of the same year and model today, but they were the wrong color. My seats are blue, the seats I found were tan. I did get some other goodies from those cars though.

I managed to get a new hood, four rims (the old stock Honda ones) some trim and a rear view mirror (apparantly THAT's the thing with the three bolts I was wondering about).

 

Does your LX have a manual transmission? If so, you can look into swapping some gears around in the transmission (usually the final drive ring gear and/or the 5th gearsets); that opens up a whole new world of fuel efficiency potential.

My '91 CRX DX underwent such surgery about 20 months ago. We yanked the 92hp DX engine (D15B2) and its underwhelming transmission, and dropped in a 108hp Si engine (D16A6) from my wife's recently-deceased '89 Civic Si hatchback. Coupled to that, we built up a "hybrid" transmission, using some close-ratio gears from a Japanese-market gearbox (the ZC transmission), the final drive from the Si gearbox, and the 5th gearsets from an HF gearbox. What that all boils down to is a transmission that will accelerate faster than a stock ZC or Si tranny, AND will get better gas mileage on the highway, due to the "cruiser" HF 5th.

Around town, my fuel economy suffered; I average around 30mpg in the city these days. That's okay; I expected that. Remember, this one was built for speed, not economy, at least up through 4th gear, and I tend to NOT take it easy on the car around town...

The big surprise came on my first few road trips. The week after we did all the work, two of us dogged the car from Austin TX to Orlando FL for a big CRX Meet there. It performed flawlessly, but the amazing thing was, with two big guys (250 pounds plus, each of us), all our crap, a couple spare tires, a toolbox, AND a spare transmission we were delivering to a guy along the way, we were able to run consistently around 80-85mph, usually with the A/C on, and the car still averaged 44-46mpg on that run!

For my money, I'd rather have a more-powerful engine, and work it less, than a less-powerful engine that you constantly have to flog just to get it out of its own way. Often as not, the bigger engine can return superior mileage just by dint of the fact that it doesn't need to work half as hard to go twice as fast. Of course, HAVING the power also brings the risk that you'll constantly give in to temptation, too...

Start thinking about transmissions, tires (a skinnier tire section, such as a 70-series, will dramatically cut rolling resistance, and will even cut the aerodynamic drag a li'l bit...), and so on, and better mileage is yours for the taking. I'd keep the A/C, though.

Mike