So this is the first car I have ever modded. We bought this car from some teen about 2 hours away for $1300. The car came with a blown head gasket on the original D15b2 and a handful of other issues due to age and lack of proper maintenance. However, the deal also included a pulled D16z6 with an s20 trans (which my man believes came from a 92-95 civic.) Anyway, with his help, we plan on pulling apart the D16z6 and getting it out to a machine shop to be rebuilt with newer, but pretty much OEM parts. The D16 and s20 will hopefully be swapped into the civic by the start of spring. Looking forward to it!



First step was to remove the ridiculous stickers on the rear windshield and remove the wiper back there...



there....all better!

 

The other day we brainstormed a lot on ideas. What we plan on doing isn't anything too crazy on HP. 150 to 160 is a good range, but we do plan on making it stick to turns like it gets payed to do it. We came up with some color ideas and interior plans, as well as an attack plan on this restoration. I will need the car for work in the next few weeks, so we are going to fix the d15 so I have it while the d16 is getting worked. anyway, we made more progress with the easy things to do. We removed all the interior panels and scuffed them down. We then spray painted them a satin black, which is an exact OEM match to this color. The rear trunk panel was the worst.

before


after


Looks good huh? We plan on doing all the panels in the car and slowly pulling apart the dashboard to re paint it all. We snatched a can of "chalkboard" paint to paint the grey vinyl pieces. I am excited, because then I can use chalk on it

 

So list of things to do:

Repair head gasket and replace various other gaskets on the D15
Troubleshoot and repair steering system -feels like it is fighting me
Get new tires
Strip down and send out D16 engine
send out S20 trans for machine work
Strip dashboard and repaint everything
Replace cheapo steering wheel with a locking/removable hub wheel
New rims
Refit RSX seats -Currently mounted in a way so the front of the seat sits high
Rear disc brake conversion -so far, we have figured out the parts...sort of.
Seal up leaks in the rear of car -currently coming from both sides of the rear
Fabricate a "floor" to level out the trunk for a clean look
Figure out why outside lock doesn't work -do these cars have separate keys for the door?
Replace roof seals -IDK what they're called, but the rails that go down the sides
Fix various window trim and weather stripping
Wrap cloth inserts on door panels with color matched fabric
Get a dark purple carpet
Coilover suspension
front and rear strut bars
4 point roll cage with harness bar
Get stitching in RSX seats as purple or replace with racing seats
Paint car with some sort of solid dark purple color -unsure on this so far
Smoke exterior lights
Swap in D16 after it is fully prepped -this will involve painting the engine bay too

 

Things done by me or otherwise:

RSX seat swap
Aftermarket (autozone) steering wheel
HID lights
Rear seat removal
Rear windshield wiper delete
Weighted shift **** (unknown weight) with shift engraving
RSX shift boot

 

Steering fighting you may be an alignment issue

No. The car has 1 key for ign and doors and trunk

If it doesn't work, the ignition switch was changed before.

I would also push that muffler in an inch or so. Pops out too much IMO.
Good platform

 

Pretty solid plans, I'm in for this!!!

 

your taillights are probably the culprit for leaking in the rear.

 

Specifically the foam gaskets.

 

when you do the rear disc conversion do you need to upgrade the booster, master cylinder and proportioning valve??

 

putting a D16z6 with OBD1 is a great upgrade in a ef, im sure you'll like it.

 

Thanks for your interest. We suspected that it was the taillights that were leaking. We ran some water down the back to try and pinpoint the source but couldn't find exactly where it was coming from. When we popped the trunk we noticed two areas where the plastic had disconnected from the metal and patched it together with silicon.

I also got my head gasket set in for the D15 engine that's currently in there, and we started working on putting that in today. We discovered that the bottom nut for the intake manifold was missing, just another awesome thing the previous owner decided to leave me with.

I also spray painted the grey part of one of my panels with chalkboard paint and am hoping that works out. It looks like it bonded pretty well but won't be able to test it out until later after it dries.

 

Hey guys. Another update :D

So we repaired the head gasket and replaced the intake/exhaust manifold gaskets too. The car is running fine, but we think the timing is slightly off. No serious issue, it just runs like an old small block haha. Now we are preparing the D16 for strip down. The boy found a top quality machine shop in the area and we will be dropping the engine off to them hopefully next week. Also, the chalkboard paint came back great

So, we have a few questions, hopefully you guys can touch down on this a bit. We got new tires on the car and double checked the alignment...the steering is slightly better, but it is still horrible. Does this car come stock with power steering? We have seen pictures with it and we are assuming the kid before thought he would gain more HP by removing it.

Also, are there any problem areas we should look into for suspension? He will be lifting the car soon and showing me how to inspect bushings and would like to know if any are common problems. Thanks guys keep reading! we will be posting pictures very soon

 

D16 is fully stripped and loks great. We are shipping it out to a machine shop this week and will be doing other minor things in a bit. We are going to make up interior door panels out of something for that shaved clean look. We will also be shopping around for some carpeting to match my color scheme!

 

Horrible how? Hard to turn when stopped, wanders while driving, etc?

 

Another for the list--get rid of the fart can on the exhaust.