Bought a 94 Civic LX sedan for $400 this week with the intention of making a reliable, safe daily for my fiance. Her current car (99 Accord) sucks, and I am tired of fixing it. The new sedan is camellia red pearl LX in need of a lot of love. The jagaloon I bought it from "fixed" the head gasket 18 months ago, only to have it never run again. The car is surprisingly clean of rust, but the previous owner decided to hock the fenders for beer money and slap some horrible condition red fenders on. Battery was also conspicuously absent. It came on two 14" and two 13" steelies with cord exposed in the tires, and a plethora of purple spray painted interior pieces.

Today was the first day I had to work on it. Looking at the motor, I realized that it had been swapped to a d16y7, which IMO is a massive upgrade to the b7. I set it to TDC, slipped the belt back on the cam, and SURPRISE, the distributor was no bueno and I flooded the engine with gas. I pulled the plugs, cleaned them off, dropped a capful of oil down the tubes, slapped a spare dizzy on, and she ran. Ran, but hardly. To my total lack of shock, the head gasket leaks oil on the cam side of the engine, and does not have a proper seal overall. I tore the motor down, removed the head, and had a beer.

After finding out the awesome condition that the motor is in, I popped on rockauto.com. Ordered a timing belt kit (belt, tensioner, pump), power steering and alternator belts, cam and crank seals, valve cover gasket set, and an intake manifold gasket. Total: $86.34. I love RockAuto!

Earlier in the day, I made a junkyard run. I picked up an intake, a set of 99 VW Cabrio wheels with very good tires, the missing door moulding, a like new set of Denso wires, and some misc bolts that were missing. Total: $140. Couldn't be happier.

I took some pics earlier and will take more tomorrow, and update the thread then. Won't be anything special, just a rebuild thread. Kid was going to send it to the crusher.

 

Pics from CL, Ill post the pics of the crappy parts tomorrow. Note some of the awesome purple paint.

 

Nice to see another restore, done the right way. Too many of these threads are just plain hack jobs. Good save....

 

Thanks! Plenty of work to do on this one, but still very worth saving. Pics:

Head gasket oil leak, 10 minutes running:


Awesome tires:


Fender:


Block:


Head off, going to machine shop Tuesday:


Wheels I scored from the junkyard (99 Cabrio)


Painted interior parts, will be meeting a can of Easy-Off this week:





Today, I pulled all the painted garbage out, put a radio and speakers in. Waiting on parts and machine work at this point.

 

Why ain't u done yet

 

^^^
you do realize the OP just picked up the car this week, right?

 

lol. progress works for me for a day and a half worth of working on it.

 

This .... made me giggle.

Subscribed!

 

/\ thanks. Did rob my parts room for speakers, a radio, a new battery, and a clean radiator. No other news.

 

giggled at "jugaloon."

Good luck saving that 5th gen!

 

Keep updates coming, love these kinds of build threads.

 

Funny how shiny the injectors are...

Good luck with the resto, hopefully it won't be too much of a hassle.

 

Why is the 99 accord not as good?

 

I wonder what we can infer from this statement?
This one is so good I'm going to use this as an example for inferencing when school starts back up.

 

Lol, in with the typical sunshine. The Accord, to answer your question, had 244k miles, a rotten front subframe, and leaking fuel and brake lines. The gas tank also leaked over half, and to remove the tank on the Accord, the rear subframe has to come down. Car needed too much PITA work to be worth my time. Sold for parts.

 

I lied about having the head machined Tuesday. I have been swamped with work this week, it'll be in tomorrow. I did have some spare time to clean up the block/ break down the head. May also order valve stem seals, doesn't need it, but can't hurt. Not very exciting, but here are pics:

Head broken down:


Rockers/Cam:


Block/IM cleaned up:


The tools:

The goal isn't to resurface the block or IM, but to remove all of the old gasket material/whatever else. 400 grit sandpaper isn't abrasive enough to cause scoring, but removes what the gasket scraper leaves behind. The gasket scraper works MUCH better than a razor, it is easier to control. Not pictured is carb cleaner, works great to loosen the grime up.

 

nice build/resto looks like u got it goin on

and a $400 car to boot

Bravo

 

Got parts in, head back, and found tons more hackjobbery. Water pump had only the alternator bolt and ONE of the 4 small bolts holding it in. Lower timing cover had ONE bolt holding it on, and as for the torque mount, just look.. lol.

Found warpage between cyl 2 and 3, cleaned up, resurfaced, pressure tested, and good to go. $78 bucks.

Clean again

New parts, HG not pictured. Don't hate on the Dayco stuff, water pump is way nicer than the crap included in the Gates kit.

Everything off, waiting for water pump hardware to reassemble

The reason you should always check your belt, especially when you don't know who did the work. Good condition OE Honda belt otherwise.

Lose part of your torque mount? No problem! Get yourself a coat hanger!

 

Started to reassemble the head tonight, only to find out I'd been shipped the wrong cam seal. I'm going to the dealership tomorrow for the missing hardware, so I will pick up OEM crank/cam seals while I'm there. Found and bought a JDM ZC (y7) and s40 trans this weekend for $250. Bought them as spares, but would have saved plenty of hassle if found a couple weeks ago. Oh well.