For a little over a year, I’ve been working on my 96 hatchback and gradually trying to restore it to being a relatively clean car. When I bought the car, I was told the car had been hit in the front right side and was shown where repairs were done.
Today I tried putting on a AEM short ram intake on, and the passenger strut tower was like 3/8” off. I’d seen the middle bolt on the fender was off, but I assumed it was just a junk fender as it has a few dents in it and is missing the factory pinstripe.
My question is what are the dimensions in the engine bay? I’d love to get it straightened out and not have to scrap the car after all the work I’ve put into it (I know, probably should’ve looked at this before the suspension and brakes). Mainly, I would need to know the distance from strut tower to the firewall, radiator support, and the other strut tower. That way I can compare and hopefully get it straightened out.
Or if someone could direct me to a PDF of the Honda service manual to get a frame chart, that would be great too.

 

You need the body repair manual, and likely a tram gauge.

https://www.helminc.com/helm/product...331&itemtype=N

I have one for 92-95 Civics, it made it really easy to figure out exactly where/how my core support was tweaked.

 

So, I found the frame chart in the Helms manual. The only issue I’m seeing is the chart is extremely difficult to dissect.
Maybe I’m just not looking at it right, to me it looks like 34.6 inches from lower frame rail to rail. But I could be just stupid

 

It’s gonna be hard to read on a screen. It’s not much better on paper.

I checked on the techinfo site but the body repair manual only has the table of contents.

 

I may just see if I can find one in good shape somewhere I can take measurements from.
I mean, if it has no prior damage to the front, shouldn’t I be able to record measurements and compare to find what I need to realign?

 

 

That’s actually perfect, tech8
Thank you so much! Now for the fun part of pulling the frame to straighten it

 

Boom! Great snip, @tech8 !

 

hey! do u have 1992 civic 3DR frame chart ?
thanks

 

I had a similar problem when I was working on my car. I didn’t have a ruler around, so I ended up using an online cm ruler to measure some stuff in the engine bay. It worked surprisingly well for getting quick measurements when I needed them. I just set it to the right size and compared it with what I was working on. It’s not perfect, but it was a handy trick that saved me some hassle before getting into the more technical tools.