As always I'm looking for a good deal on hondas and even the best examples tend to have little problems. If you saw my last mechanical rebuild of a $400 1998 civic lx this is the follow up. I invested $658 roughly into a $400 car and sold it for $1500, this hx I bought for $1300 blindly after the seller accepted my low ball offer of cash today.

To meet my criteria of a good car a civic must:
Have no quarter panel damage. (Fenders, hoods, doors, bumpers can be easily replace, but not the quarter panels)

Must have 5 speed manual. Easier to predict future costs and maintain (also personal preference)

All systems intact; meaning no missing ac compressors or ac components. (Replacement compressors are costly)

MUST be within 15 miles of my house. I will not travel to see a car that ends up being a POS and wasting a day

So onto the red HX I will refer to as tooter. I don't specifically search to find the hx model, however I am far away from the city and typically suburb commuters used these cars in my area. I found my car by specifically searching for the year and the car in craigslist, this hit was from "1997 civic". In the Dallas fort worth area this search will find about 30 results

The owner re posted the car twice in a week showing he was ready to sell. Having already known the civic ac system very well from my last civic I wasn't too worried about a poor ac system, and the faded red paint was not going to hide any hidden wrecks or damage.

A quick text and the seller agreed to meet me at a local target. Once there I was plesently suprised to see it as pictured, but the rear bumper is pretty much bright pink from all of the sun fade. It has a fancy Clifford alarm, a really nice head unit, and the owner is very honest about its history. The car spent it's life in California, then in arizona, and now texas. The check engine light from the egr system is easily fixed with a write up (that I wrote lol) on ecomodder website. We exchange title for cash and I'm on my way.



After some highway driving the ac system is functioning normally, the car is buttery smooth and the shifting is flawless no grinds or scratches. I stop at a hoa meeting with the car that night and find that the Clifford remote has atleast a 500ft range, I'm impressed

Inspecting the paint, the roof and trunk have been wet sanded with I'm guessing a 400 grit paper, I can see individual scratch marks, like some one tried to wet sand and buff the bad spots and just made it worse. You can see the front bumper is faded so badly it is revealing the urethane bumpers original black color.

 

So I get in to leave the home owners meeting and turn the car on in the dark and I can see the dim flicker of the battery light. A quick trip to the autoparts store and it's confirmed, the alternator is only putting out 12.8 volts and is most likely the reason the ac fan and system don't operate very well at idle. Well I knew there would be some work involved in a sub $2k car, best to just get it out of the way. I haven't done it yet, the core is $65 so I'm putting it off for now



In the mean time I am a dressing the paint. A little clay bar and my wool pad and I'm able to make some progress, it's going to take some time but atleast it won't cost me much money to correct the paint



So it's starting to come back, the bumpers may not be save able paint wise, but it's not going to be a full respray





Good grief the bumpers.... you can see the sanding marks on the trunk


Digging around under the hood a little bit searching for anything interesting I find the cars name and a little bit of its history.



It was made in October of 1996 and I find a little stamp that says "TOOT" next to the strut tower where the fender bolts to the frame rail. Interestingly enough I've never seen that before, and I love quirky stuff like that. So the name tooter is born, and no its not tootie

 

1001

 

Nice! Been waiting for this thread to come up, can't wait to see it progress from a gem to a jewel

 

I'm in.. to follow this thread!

 

Lol you're not wrong, it's most likely chassis stamp date 10/01/96 and since it looks like TOOT the car has named itself. First car I've ever named actually and I've had about 35 different used cars at one point in time. I've only found these stampings on 1996 model cars, but it's only recently I've been looking. The alarm system kind of makes a muffled tooting noise so the name fits!

 

Should've named it "red neck".

 

Pink neck would be better, it's pretty faded. That was my second choice for thread title, the faded hx thread

 

In for the rebuild.

 

yep my 96 has those stampings on the shock towers. It's definitely a date. You probably see two different dates, one on the left and one on the right shock tower. But mine has the complete six digits. Interesting how later they just use four. Well 96 was first year production, but october should've been a 1997 model, since I think production starts in September for the new model year. Which yours is a 97.. Not to get too far off-topic but I wonder if the other years from 96-2000 have those dates stamped into the shock towers.

but it does look like TOOT.. hahaha.. what a name!

 

1996 models had tons of markings on the suspension pieces, and Barcode stickers on rear lower control arms. My old hx had markings under the hood as well. See if yours has any similar marks

https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-...kings-3240645/

 

thanks for that link! I didn't see that before. But yup, my 96 has all those markings you showed! Yup the barcode is still there and readable after 20 years! and the upper control arm did have the "96" on it as well. Gas tank did have the A in a circle, but since replacing it (rusted out) nope.. interesting stuff!

oh but under the hood there is no yellow colored pen writing.

 

Alright so I put her first coat of wax on the other day and the old toot shined up pretty well. It needs a full paint correction and I just haven't had the time yet. Literally the day after this picture they did street sweeping in front of my store and it looks like it was caught in a dust storm



So tonight I decided to tackle the egr and the silicon hoses. The first step in the egr cleaning is to remove the fuel rail which isn't too complicated.

Here you can see the egr port plate on the intake manifold



After removing the plate you can inspect the gasket and clean it and re use it. The plate needs to be scraped in the passage ways, I use a drill bit for that as well



Next up are the 4 port holes that go into the intake manifold. They are always clogged and the best method is to use a drill bit with your hand and thread it into the soot, nasty




And then I also installed the hose kit and cleaned the engine bay. Tomorrow I tackle the alternator

 

You'll probably wanna clean the egr itself..

 

Previous owner replaced egr valve himself, when it didn't fix the problem he tapped out on the car. All of my previous HX models have had the egr code and the owners were kind of hands tied with the $200 egr valve and shops wanting to charge rediculous money to replace the egr plate

Before I deleted the check engine light codes, I saw a cylinder 3 and cylinder 4 mis fire. Going to be proactive and order some plug wires. Preferably red

 

Ok...gonna be like the other guy ....

 

I edited my post a couple times, but I think I'm the only guy who actually works on a y5

Heater hoses are the biggest struggle. Cut them off is the easiest way. The U shaped one behind the thermostat is always the mushiest and leaks, same with this car, it was super spongy and I'm sure would have caused problems later. Silicon hoses are suppose to be lifetime hoses, these are the fifth set that I've used on my imports all with great quality

Part of my sale is I actually care about the car staying on the road in the long run. You pop the hood and see the hoses in the future 3 owners from now and hopefully think the car is worth investment

 

My literal thoughts.

Good luck with the build! I love HX's

 

There was a guy, in the past, who had a y5. He had egr cel codes. I explained to him that the egr ports needed to be clean even the one where the egr sits on top of. Guess what, he complained that he did. 1 month or so later guess what the fix was?

 

You're correct, but the contamination wasn't as extreme as I have seen on other cars. But Look how nasty my fuel injectors were on the red car




One of these days I'll actually remove the y5 manifold and sand blast the inside of it because the whole thing has to be nasty after all these miles

Just for reference here is how I cleaned the valve itself on the black car before I had to shop vac the intake manifold ports

civic hx egr valve deep clean - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com

 

That alternator wasn't as easy as I expected. I think on a non vtec car it would have been easier, but I had to remove the master cylinder to get enough clearance to pull out the alternator. I was going to replace the drier today too, but I found that when I put a fan in front of the condensor the temperatures got cold quickly like they should have been doing, I went ahead and swapped the condensor fan relay and that appears to have cured my ac issues for now atleast. Previous owner put a new condensor fan in it, and I can see a tyc logo so that's new. Anyways..




New alternator is on atleast

 

i like where this thread is going

 

ahh a tyc condensor for the a/c? Yup, same one I have on mine, been working fine for 3 years now! You should be good with that one. And wow look at all that carbon! what a mess, I know I have to clean mine out every couple of years. And the fuel injectors, might need to be cleaned! lol

what happened with the alternator? I just came up from underneath to replace it. But glad you got it fixed.. and yes the a/c condensor fan relay was also bad on mine. It's amazing to me that all of us HX's have the same exact issues.

 

Very nice! Keep up the good work!

 

Power steering hoses were in the way, and the fuel rail was blocking stuff up. There was no way it could come out without removing the fuel rail or moving the master cylinder.

All hondas suffer the same problems once they reach a certain age. Tooter has 242k miles, and a like new interior. For $1300 and an alternator I'm still very happy

however the old toot does need a new oil pan gasket and perhaps a valve adjustment and a new cv boot. I might to a timing belt and water pump, but I have already received several offers for her already.

The valves are just a little noisy compared to my old beater sedan so that may be my next picture posting adventure