I took quite a lot of photos throughout this project so I thought I'd share. I ran into some issues(of course) so I'm hoping sharing this might save someone else some time. Let me know if any of this helps or if you have any input. This is my first time really sharing any projects like this, go easy on me if you disagree with something I've done. I'll also be posting this car for sale so if you have any interest, pm me.

Pretty much what she looked like when I picked her up.


Where the dents start in the rear on the passenger side.

 

 

 

Bought this pretty cheap for obvious reasons. The engine and trans are good. Just needed a clutch and a very good clean. I already had a y8 swap for this project from a donor car, along with a few other goodies to swap out. I'll probably rebuild and swap out the z6 block in my girlfriends coupe for the y7. Or sell the y7 swap... dunno

 

Donor car. Also needed a clutch and was being sold to pay for work on another car. Bought for $300. 160k on the chassis and vin matching swap. Used for the swap, power conversion and fenders. I've pulled most parts from this car that can be pulled. She'll be going to the yard soon. Terrible quality photo, sorry.

 

With the dash out, pulling the harness wasn't bad at all. Just some tight spaces pulling the clips for the harness by the door. Outside angle worked for me on the passenger side and inside angle for the driver side.

Floor harness from the EX donor


Clip location. Pain in the *** to slide off. I recommend using a clip removal tool and pulling the clip out of the chassis. I was just trying to save as many of the clips as possible without breaking them.


It's kind of hard to see where it is in the first two photos. Hope this helps.




Pulling the wiring from the hatch was much easier. The floor clips for the harness under the seats didn't quite line up though. One clip on each side was about 2-3 inches off. I wouldn't try moving the clip as it could damage the wires and the harness seems to stay in place well with only one clip under the seats.

 

likes

 

Swapping the interior and doors took about 8 hours or so of work by myself. I did it over 3 days. I think I could have spent less time on it if I had a whole day to commit it.

Next time I take apart the interior will be to install suede for the headliner, armrest and doors.

 

y7 is out. The cleaning begins

Gross

 

It wasn't fun cleaning these. If you have a die grinder and some wire brush attachments it will be much easier to clean something like this. I went through a lot of small attachments.

 

I replaced some things... and I cleaned a little bit.

 

I think this is my favorite photo


The purple cleaner started to take paint off in some areas so I used it very lightly and mostly used soapy water and microfiber towels.

 

These coil overs seem a little clunky but they're tight and I paid $250 for them. I thought I'd try them out. After riding on them, I can honestly say I'd rather buy a stock shock and some skunk 2 adjustable springs or equivalent.

Wired in the secondary o2 sensor and used the stock y7 header. I get a check engine light every once in a while because I'm pretty sure the 96-98 civic hatchbacks didn't come with the fuel tank pressure sensor and I didn't feel like pulling it out of the donor. I may still pull it out before I send it off, I'm just preoccupied with other things currently.

 

Thank you sir, glad to have you here. I've seen you drop some really good information on a lot of the threads I've been scrolling through.

 

It's in! The suede also came in for the interior. Time to take it back apart. I tried to push out a few dents while I was in there, no way I can fix it completely but it definitely looks better.

 

I had an issue with charging at this point. I held off on doing the interior for about a week until I figured that out. It ended up being a few things. The first thing I did was check and clean my grounds. A bracket on the trans that is wired to ground was loose at the mounting bolts and the top alternator bracket was a little loose as well letting the alternator push itself forward a little bit. Tightened everything up and cleaned all the grounds, it was good for a day. The next day, I tested the alternator then replaced it. It was good for a day. The next day, alternator wasn't charging the battery again so I tested the loom and re-wrapped the area that was causing the issue. I had a solid good day. After that, stopped charging again. My ELD went bad and fried my battery fuse but didn't blow it inside the fuse. It just ate through the mount at the screw and melted everything around it underneath so the fuse was testing as good. Replaced my whole engine bay fuse box. Next day car wouldn't start. Tested the battery, no good. New(er) battery, problem solved. The car now has the correct amount of battery power it needs. I took a day off and then started working on the interior.

 

My dog Baxter was helping me hold down the back seat. He's a little camera shy.


The armrest was two screws to pull off. I believe it's 6 screws to separate the two top pieces. This was the easiest part of the job in all aspects.

I was able to pull everything out without pulling the seats or rear plastics and it actually only took me maybe 30 minutes. If I have to do this again I wouldn't be upset about it.

 

I'm sad that I didn't get a photo of the headliner with suede before I installed it. Oh well...


These plastic rivets are pretty easy to drill out. If you do it well you'll have a nice mount for a screw to put back in it's place. Just be careful when your mounting it with screws, you don't want to push into the other side. Totally not comfy to have a screw poking your arm




Be careful installing the new liner on the door panels. It's not easy to keep wrinkles out. I'll probably end up pulling these back out to pull the wrinkles when I install speakers. I used a light duty bonding spray from Elmer's that supposed to have a permanent hold. We'll see. I've ordered some more heavy duty glue just in case.

 

doggo

 

Not the best job on the first sun visor. I've got 3 more to work with though so I'll figure out what works best for me and let you guys know.

 

A very big improvement over the original sagging headliner. I may have to take everything out to re-glue, re-position and or smooth out wrinkles. This wasn't a hard job and only cost me about $50.

 

There are 2 folds on both sides of the armrest that almost perfectly line up with each other. When/if I take this back apart I may put in some red stitching along those lines and down the side of the armrest. I have some extra material so I can play around with it a little bit.

 

I'm going to be restoring these and a set of spare headlights I have in a couple days.

The side molding on the door is flared out a little bit in this photo. I hadn't put the clip with the 10mm nut at the end in yet.



I'm going to attempt body work on this car. Bought a few tools to help push the dents out as much as possible. Hopefully I can get all the lines out with the new tools. I've already gone in and tried to remove as many dents as I could by hand. I could really only push them out a little bit but it made a pretty big difference.

If I can't push these dents out with the new tools I'm just going to lay bondo over them and paint.

 

I think just pushing dents out by hand makes a big difference. I'm looking forward to working on this again.

I have a lot more fun driving this than I thought I would. I'm thinking about putting the LS swap in this instead of my EG.

 

I dig it. It's looking good.