Hey guys what's up, been a lurker on here for years checking out other peoples builds and how-to's but thought i would finally join up and start posting progress of my jdm SiR EF8 CRX build for people to see. i've got another ongoing build thread on crxaustralia.com but there's barely any traffic through there anymore so i'm not as motivated to post there. hope some of you will find this interesting like i do!

i'm from Adelaide, South Australia, and bought my crx as my very first car when i was 16, and i'm 23 years old now. I drove it as a daily to school, work, and university while doing a few basic mods, until a year ago when i bought my jdm Nissan S15 Silvia to take over daily duties and took my crx off the road to start the build.

from what i've been able to find, the car was imported and had 2 owners in Australia before I came across it. here is the crx some years before it came into my possession, found this on the wikicars crx page


basically standard engine bay after some cleaning and painting by me


some exterior shots



group shot with some of the crxaustralia guys (this was about the biggest turn out to a meet that we had, shows how few active members there were)


put in skunk2 coilovers+LCAs, and full 2.5" stainless exhaust and x-force 4-2-1 headers


here's the Silvia when i first bought it - Greddy Type S coilovers, Greddy FMIC, Splitfire coilpacks, genuine AVS Model 5 wheels. now has 3" Blitz Nur Spec RX catback exhaust system, de-cat pipe and HKS dump pipe, lowered a bit, new dimpled/slotted rotors and project mu pads, and installed rear camber kit - if anyone's interested i can post more pics, i know you guys dont get these s15's over in the states




now back on to the CRX... just over a year ago the car hit 200,000km (about 125,000 miles), so i took it off the road and pulled out the standard OBD0 B16a with plans to fully rebuild and turbo the motor. of course things escalated, so i then planned a wiretuck and respray of the engine bay too.

at the moment the engine has been built with forged internals (just need to get a new intake manifold and throttle body before test fitting the engine in the car to start on the wiring loom), and i have purchased many of the needed turbo parts like the hondata s300, obd0-obd1 conversion parts, fuel system, and Mamba td05h 18g .64 A/R turbo with 3" vband fittings. the engine bay and interior are stripped and the engine bay is in primer-sealer, ready for colour/clear coat.

the plan is to get the built motor run in and any issues sorted while NA. once that's all done i'll put on all the turbo parts and have it dyno tuned. all bodywork and full colour change respray inside and out will be done to finish it off.

currently the main thing holding me back is a lack of spare time. i'm doing all of the work on this car myself in my garage apart from the dyno tuning, and i've just started my final year of university studying mechanical engineering so there won't be too many new updates, although i have lots of progress pics to post up which i will do when i have a spare few minutes. also living in Australia everything car-related is expensive as hell, and mostly has to be shipped from the US, so that doesnt help due to our weak dollar at the moment

let me know if there's anything specific you guys want to see!

 

Nice car, will be following along.

 

thanks man, good to see some traffic on here

 

Going back a while with these next few photos.
removed power steering and a/c - including the condenser under the dashboard and any wiring that would no longer be needed, then got to pulling out the standard b16a. this thing was filthy from lots of oil leaks around the place, i had tried many times to tidy it up while it was still in the car but it needed a lot more work






half of the engine mounts fell to pieces when i unbolted them


just like the outside, the inside of the motor was filthy, although nothing was damaged at all, no scores or gouges anywhere which was good news





started cleaning up the bare engine block and head after fully disassembling everything. this took way too long but came out really well so i guess it was worth it. this is the block partly done to show a difference of what it was like before hitting it with a wire wheel and steel wool and soap


more time spent cleaning up all the other various parts that were being used again


masked off and sprayed the block and head with an aluminium coloured high temp enamel





measured the cylinder bores for clearances and out of round, then did a quick hone with a 3-stone hone tool on a drill


wiseco 9:1 pistons and eagle H-beam rods


measured bearing clearances, gapped the wiseco piston rings and assembled the bottom end using standard acl main and rod bearings as everything was within tolerances. new oil pump with added washers to boost oil pressure a bit, new water pump, new rear main seal, blocked oil-squirters, all new gaskets/o-rings, mls headgasket, painted thermostat housing and rear water pipe, new thermostat, retaining the standard oil cooler, PCV system blockoff plug and rear freeze-plug to -10AN adapters for catch can breather setup... could be forgetting some things, anyway that's probably good enough for now.





more updates soon

 

few pics of some new parts that will be going in when it all goes back together

 

removal of sound-deadening using dry ice pellets, a mallet and a chisel. it didnt help that this was done 2 months ago in the middle of summer. i chose to do it on one of the cooler days that week, but it was still pushing around 35 degrees Celsius or 95 fahrenheit which made the deadening material pretty sticky hard to deal with. this was done in the rear seat area too, but the spare tyre area hasnt been done yet as i ran out of pellets




cleaned up all the sticky residue with methylated spirits and got a nice finish



made up some custom brackets to adapt the standard seat rails to the evo 7 recaro seats. seats fit perfectly, still have room either side of the seat between the handbrake in the middle and the doors on the outer sides

 

Block and seats look good.

 

thanks mate

 

few random bits and pieces here.

here's the standard EF8 engine harness all laid out flat - not the most efficient design with large connecting plugs on both ends and 27 year old dirty and cracking insulation



here it is after stripping old tape and insulation off, cleaning off tape residue, and pulling it apart and rearranging it to get all the plugs at one end. in this pic none of the wiring has been cut or lengthened to tuck the harness, i've simply just taped it up certain intervals to keep it neat for the time being.



the plan from here is to use a Deutsch HDP20 series quick disconnect bulkhead plug in place of the multiple large plugs in the stock harness. i'll be passing them through the firewall in an existing hole where the oem injector wiring used to pass through, on the lower LHS of the firewall. i'll be deleting the obd0 injector box, so the lone plug in the bottom left of the pic above will be terminated. the rest of the wiring for the sensors and injectors etc will be tucked in the engine bay.
I'll be retaining my PC680 drycell battery in the engine bay, dropped down low to the frame rail ahead of the front wheels as it was before stripping the car, but the engine bay fusebox will be relocated to underneath the dash.


and just a quick clearing up of the headlights - pic below is after/before


still more posts to come!

 

Looks great!!!

 

thanks buddy, appreciate it

 

doing it right

 

thanks a lot mate

 

not doing anything crazy with the head at this stage. fully stripped down of all moving parts, cleaned out oil stains and build up on the inside of the head and then used a wire wheel on the dremel to clean all the carbon out from the exhaust ports, followed by polishing the exhaust ports as best i could. put back together with supertech valve stem seals and new LMAs



standard dual intake springs and single exhaust springs



put the rocker assemblies back on dropped it back on the block before torquing down the new ARP headstuds



cams and caps being reinstalled

 

Liking the work going into this mate!

 

Nothing like engine prep in your living room!

 

Great pics!

Good job so far! Looking forward to updates.

 

thanks a lot guys, i'm pretty lucky to have a big room with enough spare space to put all the bits and pieces from my cars

 

continued to strip the engine bay. it had been like this for a few months without any attention so i pulled off the hood, and got to removing all the remaining bits like suspension and brakes



at this point i found the only rust on the car (that i know of) apart from in the sunroof. i started grinding it back with the wirewheel and then died inside when it went straight through the whole piece of sheet metal and even made it's way through to the interior at the bottom of the A pillar, leaving a small hole where the firewall meets the windscreen. the thicker metal framing on the inside of the hole seemed ok so i wasnt too worried about the holes in regards to structural strength. the second pic is the area after being treated inside and out with rust killer/convertor - i made sure to cover the entire area inside frame with this stuff




after treating the rusted areas i made up some sheet metal plates to fit the holes and patch everything up. the small effected interior area not pictured as it was just a simple flat square plate. the pic below took a while to manipulate into the right shape with just hand tools as that whole area is really curved



managed to weld the new sheet pieces together in the right shape to fill the gaps, but had real troubles getting them welded to the existing thin sheet of the body in this area, so left it at just tacking it all in and then filled the rest of the gaps and smoothed it out with jb weld. this isnt the finished pic - i've since filled all the gaps and smoothed it more to blend the curves so you can't really notice now. this whole area will be pretty much covered by the cowl/hinge/body panels anyway

 

damnnn what a process. in for the final process!

 

thanks buddy. yes it really is a long process, and nowhere near finished yet

 

Yeah I can relate to that, that goes the same thing with my ed6 hatch lol

 

after fixing the rusted area i continued stripping the engine bay, grinding back studs from the firewall, removing all old seam sealer and filled a few small holes that were left behind from old brackets that were removed from the firewall and LHS shock tower.



cut a piece of thin mild steel sheet to size to fill the big hole in the t-bar that was left from removing the oem intake resonator snorkel. this giant hole was really ugly and had been annoying me for years so i was happy to finally fix it. jb welded the sheet in place as i didnt want to risk blowing through the material with the welder



got to work applying some body filler to some the most obvious areas that needed attention and then sanded it all down with a relatively rough grade (maybe 180 grit, cant remember exactly)




getting closer...

 

ohh nice! what color you're gonna paint engine bay?

 

it will be the same colour i decide to paint the rest of the car with eventually. havent chosen it yet, so it will just sit in primer-sealer for a while until i get around to buying the paint