A while back I tried to post some picture of my civic hatchback, but I had some technical difficulties. Well here they are. I am taking a year off from school next year to save up money for some mods, b16, etc... I am planning on keeping it the same color and stuff cause the paint job is still beautiful. Working on repainting the interior because the current brown is awful. So here is a picture of the car and the new dash. It is an 89 DX Hatch. 192000 miles.





Tell me what you think!

 

nice car to start fixing up

 

very nice!

 

I got a crap load of work ahead though. As you can see from the pic it is an automatic *blah* and that will definetely have to go. Right now I work on the interior in my free time (since I don't have money for any performance stuff) but that will all change next year. Looking at good suspension stuff and all those goodies.

 

Looks nice. If I were you I would repaint the trim and bumper moulding with Krylon bumper paint. It'll make your trim look brand new. I painted my front lip and moulding with it.

 

Wow... Doesn't the texture the the bumper take the paint weird? I was thinking about doing that, but the texture is like kind of scratchy or bumpy so I didn't know if it would look right. I always see newer hatches (91 or whatever) with the matching bumpers and stuff, but the plastic on those bumpers seems different, a lot smoother. But if it worked for you (and it seems to look great) maybe that can be my next cheap project. Does the paint seem to last long and stuff? Do you need to touch up often? Thanks again.

 

The paint lasts very long indeed! Use a scouring pad or very fine sand paper and paint will stick nicely.
Clean and scuff.

Mask.

Paint.

 

Ok, so just rough it up a little and then paint away. Sounds simple? When I painted my dash I wiped it down with paint thinner first and then soap and water to get rid of all the oils... Did you do that too? Or something similar? Because I noticed in parts where I didn't do that, the paint bubbled a little from oils being on the plastic (which could be finger oils, armor-all oils, and all that other good plastic health oils that I had previously cleaned my dash with). I have used Meguiers Next Generation cleanser stuff on my bumper to get them black again but that only lasted a week. So possibly that stuff could cause a problem for the paint. Thanks so much for all your help, this is something I have been really wanting to do!

 

I used acetone to clean all of the surfaces proir to painting.

 

Looks like a good start. I dont think I would take off a year of school to work on it though. Not worth it in my opinion.

Yager-

 

I dont think his sole purpose of taking a year off of school to work on his EF was his initial plan. I think that it just happend that way. He was going to take a year off. And he probly said " Hey what the hell, I found this cheap car, why not fix it up since i have a lot of free time now."

Well I don't know. Lol

Good luck man, It's a nice start

Cheers

 

Yeah... There are multiple reasons I am taking a year off. Planning on saving up for a lot of stuff. In a band, so I want to get that moving along nicely and it is hard to do that if you are super busy (I know from other friends who have to deal with that). And while I am not in school and most likely making money I figured that was the time I was going to fix up the Civic. I w as going to do it last summer but that would have involved me spendying ZERO money all sumer and working a whole bunch with like no free time and that didn't seem worth it to me when I could just wait a year and get everything done really quickly.