Hello Honda-tech
I've had this car for a little over a year and I'm just starting to build it. It's a 82 Civic 1300 HB. The car did have a 4spd, but when I bought the car it came with an 83 EK1/5spd Weber carb setup.

For being swapped the car is a pretty big letdown power-wise. Does anybody else have this setup? It feels so underpowered, and bogged down. It runs great, everything seems fine. Maybe I'm just expecting too much?
I'm doing the bodywork one panel at a time, and single staging it pretty close to the same color. It's a daily driver so I'm not too picky about it. I just want a generically clean antique to tool around in and hit up the meets occasionally. My plans for the car are to install a tach, drop it, continue the bodywork and paint, then clean up the engine bay. Whoever did the swap seems to have done a sloppy job. There's wires and plugs and crap everywhere.

So, questions: Has anybody installed a tach on this thing? What'd you do? where'd you put it? 2nd, Suspension, I don't want to cut the springs yet I don't want to spend an arm and a leg here. This is definately a budget build. 3rd, more power? how? then last, engine bay clean up. I'm not looking to do a full tuck, but I don't want to pop my hood and have it clearly look like a jenky-*** swap. What can I get rid of and what do I need? I'm no electrician so this is a first.

Here's some pics of what I got.











3 panels done, shaved moldings, rhinolined rockers, recoated bumpers (they're dirty)

 

Love these old Civics. Subscribed.

 

This is my EL1, similar but without the CVCC and less displacement but this is as far as I can go with hiding my wires and stuffs in my engine bay in my 81 Accord



As for yours, you should start with cleaning/repainting the bay itself, then get a proper loom or something for your choke wires, or maybe go ahead and tuck the whole bay harness!

At least your Weber already got rid of bunch of vacuum lines in there!

 

That bay is gorgeous. Should I just take a test light to everything and if its dead take it out? If its hot what do I do?

 

Haha thanks but I'm not sure if taking out random wires is a good idea unless you are 100% certain that you're not gonna need them. But you could start by tidying those red wires, delete the charcoal canister and that AC idle up solenoid(?) since they're not hooked to anything. Relocate your horn to someplace else, hidden out of sight. Looks like your AC condenser is still there in front of your radiator too. And you can also get that little AC condenser off since you doesn't have an AC anymore.

A respray would be nice too. And clean/repaint any dirty parts as well, that should get the bay looking 10000x nicer!

 

Well there's a ton of dangling wires connected to nothing coming out of the firewall. And a bunch of random plugs down the sides of the engine bay that connected to god knows what. None in which make the engine run. I'm thinking a tuck is in order but I really don't know how to go about removing the plugs

 

Bump

 

just start picking at the engine bay.
tidy up parts and wires that are easiest first. then see how far you want to go with it.

And I do not recommend hacking off parts of the harness that you can't identify. That could really screw up your day. Just routing everything nice and neat will make a huge difference tho. and clean and/or respray little parts that can be easily dealt with.

 

Here's some pictures to show you guys what I'm talking about.

I've removed the washer bottle and lines, and AC stuff. Also removed the horn for now, but plan on getting a bigger louder one. but after that I'm sort of at a loss. Cus it's just plugs plugs and plugs.

Current engine bay


Plugs

 

How do you know that it's an EK1? Have you ran the head casting #s? Even if it is you are talking about an engine that outputs 78 HP so it's not going to be a screamer. I'm betting your weber is not set up properly if you are really having sluggish performance.

Nice looking civic! I'll take your EK1 if you really don't want it.

 

I see what you mean now, If the car runs fine with them unplugged right now then I don't see any reason why you can't just take them off or at least tuck the plugs someplace out of sight.

They're probably needed for your old engine/AC/or something else that is already disconnected right now.

 

Took out an entire harness today. I disconnected it from the fusible and the car ran better. All the nasty homemade stuff was on that harness it looked like they tried to rewire the car for AC. Car runs better the lights are brighter and its comforting to know that hot wires aren't dangling in the midst of my cooling fan and everything else. Degreased and hosed down everything. Pics up soon. Going to reroute the alternator and left headlight harness behind fender. That should totally tuck everything on that side of the bay

 

Nice, can't wait to see the pics. You might wanna upgrade or at least clean the factory grounds while you're at it. Adding a new wire from the alt to the fuse box won't hurt either.

This is what my alternator power wires looked like back then ><

 

My plugs are a little rough but they aren't in bad shape. Pretty happy with everything so far.

 

So much cleaner!! I'd use some kind of grommet for the holes though. You don't want the sharp metal edges to cut through the wires though but good job so far!

Oh and this is how I run the whole engine bay harness from the cabin:


I'm RHD though so yours gonna be the other way around obviously :p

 

Yeah I'm going to smooth out the edges with a dremel and try to find something to fit in there. That looks clean! How did you lower your car?

 

subscribed. i excited to see what becomes of this.

 

Good find, and great work so far!

 

In for updates

 

Cut springs as for now. Saving up for a set of custom made coilovers