I came across a post today on another site where a guy was thinking about modding a civic to be an offroad type vehicle. I wonder how difficult that would actually be to do. I would never think about doing it to my baby, but if one could find a Civic cheap enough I think it would make a cool project. To me the 92 to 95 models would make a pretty good base because they are fairly flat underneath with nothing really sticking down to catch on stuff. With some sort of lift I would think the ground clearance would be pretty respectable. The other generation Civics may be the same, but I've never really paid much attention.

Anyway, I just wanted to see what my fellow H-T'ers thought. I mean hey they did it to the Volkswagen Beetle, right?

 

It has been done many times before as far as rally type racing. Would be pretty retarded for rock climbing. One of the problems for civics is that they are fairly heavy in the front and also fairly soft in the front too.

 

Yea I've seen several rally Civics before too. I wouldn't really expect it to be a hardcore rock crawler, but I do think it might not do too bad with at least a little more ground clearance.

 

Oh and also I would say solid front axle/LSD/locker would be a necessity too. That and maybe some weight reduction. I would think other than that so long as you played it fairly safe and chose good lines you could get through a lot of stuff.

The Toyota Tacoma Prerunners are sort of the same principle. They are only 2wd with a locker and are supposed to do pretty well off road traction wise. Of course, the Civic wouldn't be quite that rugged, but still, some ghetto skid plates would go a long way I would think.

 

This can be done using the engine ( or at least a B series, but id go b20 for the trq) and drivline, somewhat modified, from the honda CRV. Ive seen AWD integra's before, its pretty sick, and a really awsome concept, the only drawbacks are that the cars themself were not designed to be AWD car's, which means the power is not spread evenly due to the cars shape and weight distribution. I beleive there is an older superstreet article, if i can remember, about some guy from Cali that made an AWD teggy GSR, but the power split was uneven, being 70% front and 30% rear. I remember the pics tho, him sliding thru the dirt\sand with an integra GSR, its pricless.

 

You mean a B20 and CRV driveline transplanted into a Civic? That's actually not a bad idea. I wouldn't assume it would be too difficult given that the CRV is based off of the Civic anyway. Nice food for thought.

 

That is correct, the frame of a civic is the same as a CRV, but raised obviosuly. Some modifications are required tho to allow the driveshft and rear differential to fit correctly. This means cutting away some of the bottom of the car, and cuting out parts of the subframe. Its soemthing you do when you have lots of free time, patience, B20 and trans parts, lol. Power tools help too

There was actually an Ad run back in early 2000\2001 in import car mags for a company that made the pre-cut legnth drive-line and axle parts for the 94-01 GSR. Im going to go dig up my old pile and see if i can find it, if i do, im definatly scanning it in and posting it on this thread

 

Too bad to have something that's willing to put down any power you have to custom fab in a beefy rear differential, because the CR-V won't be able to handle any sort of power beyond the stock B20, and honestly can't handle any sort of off-road punishment. Also, the transmission wouldn't be able to take much punishment, and even if you replaced the gearing, I'm not sure how the transfer case would hold up either. For that matter, I'm not sure if the driveshaft could take offroading either.

The fabrication for this sort of project would be insane. I had a friend who was working on doing a B20VTEC AWD hatch with a zero-mile brand new ITR head, and he quit after fabbing up a custom rear crossmember and and an RX-7 rear diff. He said it was too much work for too little gain.

 

Sweet. I'll be eager to see that. If I get the time and find the right car I might attempt doing this. Finding Civics seems to be fairly hard around these parts though (I think because everyone hangs on to them forever once they buy them), but I'm sure I'll come up with something. One of my buddies who is a Jeep fanatic would crap himself if I actually got this thing built and took it out offroading.

 

You make some good points, but I have seen some stuff on CRVs doing some pretty decent offroading. I think there's a post here on H-T about that actually. Even without doing the CRV driveline swap, though, I think with an LSD on the front and some custom fabbing of some skidplates to protect the undercarriage it could take some abuse.

 

When FWD mini's first came into the rally scene they dominated left and right.

There's no problem rallying a fwd car, just don't get stupid and rally a RWD car

A guy posted here before about rallying his eg against some imprezas and other awd cars, he placed 3rd overall that day and it was his first time.

 

my driveshaft takes the abuse haha autozone liftetime warranty takes ALL the abuse lol

 

That's awesome. Keep the ideas and opinions coming guys. If I do end up doing this I will definitely keep you posted. Anyone who's in the southwest Missouri area can come to check it out too.

 

very plausibl rallye car, infact there are ven 3-4 guys on here rallying type-r integra's

 

You in Springfield?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by maynards_ek &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">You in Springfield?</TD></TR></TABLE>


dunnn duh duunah na nananana

 

No Joplin.