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Hi all. Just wanting to document my 1997 Acura Integra GS-R build.
Backstory To make a long story short I grew up on Japanese tuner cars, which I know isn't particularly unique. Always wanted one since I was younger but I didn't have the money to buy and build a project. The closest I got was an early 2000's Mustang I bought off a guy in Hialeah for around $1,000 and barely lasted me 6 months before it died on me. Eventually I'd pick up a family member's old Dodge Avenger as a hand me down. Super grateful to have had that car to get around through college, but an enthusiast car it is not. Remember looking through Regular Car Reviews and seeing his review touting it as one of the worst cars ever made. To be fair, it's not particularly interesting, it feels cheap, it's not fun to drive, but it's never given me issues and has been reliable through it's life.
I'm 25 now, and I have a job that makes me decent money. So it was only a matter of time before I finally picked up a project and fulfilled my hotboy dreams of having a manual transmission japanese sports car. I, like many others, wanted an S13. My dad had a 240sx as one of his first cars.
It's so vivid in my memories. And although I'd still love to own one, it just didn't seem practical at the time.Thinking about all the cars I liked growing up,I eventually set my eyes on getting an Integra, for a couple reasons. They were easy to work on, it's a Honda! They're relatively reliable if maintained well. They're fun to drive, inexpensive. They're unique. I don't see a lot of Integras where I am, and it feels cool to own, drive and maintain something that's different, especially when it shares parts with one of the most popular cars in America (Civic).
It took a lot of searching but I eventually bought a 97 GS-R off a guy on Facebook. It wasn't particularly clean. The paint was faded, seats were cracked and ripped, dash was cracked, no AC, 170k miles. But man, I got in the car and test drove that thing, an fell in love. That B18C1 is no joke and going through the Miami highway, hearing VTEC engage. It set me off. And so I did the dumb thing and just bought it.
At least it didn't have rust right?
Or so I thought. "****, I just bought ****box. This thing sucks. What am I doing? I should just sell this thing, I've never even owned a project car. I'm an idiot"
Yes! I am an idiot! But thank **** I didn't get rid of this car. My girl would be the one to convince me. It was always gonna be a project. Just ended up being a bigger project than initially anticipated. Also thankfully, no frame rust or body rust. Just major rust on the bottom of the door frame and the hatch which I'm replacing both.
So we set off restoring it, building it, and turning it to the car I wanted it to be, that I knew it could be.
6 months into owning it, it's still the funnest car I've ever driven. And I have no regrets having bought it, and working on it still feels so rewarding. I'll detail in the next post what we've been up to till this point, but if you made it this far, thanks for reading, looking forward to sharing the progress we make on this car.
First up, we want to get this car looking like new. So we're dying the interior, painting the exterior. Other plans we have include suspension rebuild, and K-swap. Stay tuned.
Eek. that rust is in a tough spot on the roof. Otherwise, looks like a great base to start with.
At first I thought so too. But fortunately it's just affecting the moonroof frame. Already bought another moonroof off Offer Up, painted it with an Epoxy paint to prevent it from rusting, cleaned it up and installed. Rust gone!
At first I thought so too. But fortunately it's just affecting the moonroof frame. Already bought another moonroof off Offer Up, painted it with an Epoxy paint to prevent it from rusting, cleaned it up and installed. Rust gone!
That worked out nicely! It was hard to tell if that was the frame or the actual structure of the car in the picture. Can't get easier than just swapping out one piece for another!
First Things First: Air Conditioning I live in South Florida. It gets VERY hot. So first, set off to fix the AC. Bought a new compressor and the bracket to attach it to the engine. Installation went smooth and air is ice cold. No pictures of install but hey, it got done!
Revamping the Interior
So then, we set off on revamping what was a pretty awful interior. I wasn't a huge fan of the tan interior, and it was pretty dirty and beat up tbh. The seats were also ripped open so they did and still do need replacing. I don't have any pictures of the interior before unfortunately, but here's a picture of the old seats to give you an idea.
We stripped the interior completely.
And deep cleaned all the cloth and carpet that we'd be putting back in.
And it was DIRTY. 24 years of dirt and grime entrenched in that carpet. I know I wanted a black interior, but not as a byproduct of dirt.
I saw on YouTube, a couple people recommend a product by Duplicolor meant for dying automotive fabrics and carpets. We bought A LOT of cans, and went through all of them. And to be honest, it rubs off kind of easy, probably as a result of me being kinda shoddy with the adhesion promoter you're supposed to apply prior. But at the end of the day, it actually came out pretty nice, it has a black interior, and I think as it cures, it'll get harder to accidentally knock off.
As a sidenote, I did try Rit Dye and it didn't work nearly as well. I know it's worked for others, did not work for me at all.
We also flocked the dash!
And then put it all back in, which was more challenging than I thought it would be, and a lesson in organizing your bolts and pieces, so you know where they go when you're putting them back.
my favorite position to be working in a car
If you're wondering why the floor looks silver, while we had everything out of the car, I removed any surface rust I could find with both a chemical solution and wire brush, and painted over the entire interior frame with silver rust bullet preventive paint. To do that, I had to remove the sound deadening as well, which I regret purely because of how tedious it was to remove. I tried the dry ice method but it didn't seem to work for me, left a lot of gunk and tar behind that just wouldn't come off, so it ended up being hours on hours of me just removing tar. Which sucked. A lot.
Overall pretty happy with how it came out. In person, it looks brand new.
So our first mission with the car, was a pretty big success. It feels so much better inside the car, and best of all, everything works, even after having stripped it down and put everything back in.
Painting is a lot harder than I thought it would be, and to be honest that's mostly my own fault. But it's getting done and that's what matters.
Originally I wanted to get the car painted, but options seemed way out of my price range, especially for my first project car. And I was okay with getting an imperfect result, especially if it was something that could be corrected like orange peel. I looked to Maaco for a budget option but the prices quoted were actually pretty expensive for what you were getting. The other thing that bugged me was that it was a one stage paint job, which led to me wondering how long it would actually last. And since I'd be having to do the prep work for the Maaco job anyways, I figured I might as well just paint the car myself.
I opted going with Urechem, which is a decent budget paint supplier. I can vouch for them, they've been nothing but great. They ship quickly, price their products reasonably, and the actual paint is of great quality, as far as I can tell.
For color, I chose Midnight Envy, which was a dark metallic green that almost looks black in the dark but then shines a dark hued green when light hits it. I went with green to try to keep it as close to the original color as possible. It was pretty, but ever since buying into that color, I had my doubts. I've always been an indecisive person, and a part of kept looking at pictures of midori green hondas, even after I put my order in. This will come into play later.
I spend a TON of time watching Youtube tutorials (s/o Paint Society on YouTube) on prepping, painting, detailing car to get my process on point. I buy a bunch of grits of Sandpaper, a DA air sander, a 30 gallon air compressor, and a bunch of other miscellaneous bits and tools that I'll need. Harbor Freight has become a second home for me by this point. I'm justifying these costs because they're things that will be useful for other things I'll be doing with the car.
The paint arrives and I'm stoked. But if I'm going to go through the process of painting the car, I'm gonna try to go all in. And the idea of having the car painted one color, and then having the door jambs and other hidden parts of the car painted a different color would wreck my OCD.
So we disassembled the car (as much as we could). Doors, hatch, hood, fenders, front and rear bumper, headlights, tailights, bash bars all come off. We'd try to paint these off the car first, then paint the body of the car.
Sanded with 80 grit to remove any surface corrosion, 120, 180, 220, and then 320. On every piece. I hate sanding.
Time for primer. I wanted to use an epoxy primer first, to have a good clean slate for the paint, and also have some protection against corrosion. I didn't buy epoxy primer from Urechem and instead bought the U-Pol branded Raptor Epoxy Primer.
The issue with this primer however, which I didn't realize until after I sprayed it, was that it was meant for truck bedliners, and so it sprayed on really rough. At first I thought this was due to user error, but after reading reviews for the paint, it's just a quality of the product itself. Don't be stupid like me, buy the same brand primer as your paint.
Eventually I'd get around to spraying two coats of Urechem primer surfacer, which went on great using the Harbor Freight purple gun, which does a pretty decent job for around $15. Sanded this down with 220, followed by 320 and 400. Final coat of primer surfacer making sure my body lines were as straight as I could get them. Sanded again, this time until 600. Time for basecoat.
So I work freelance, in the entertainment industry. I got called up for a travel gig that would go on for two weeks, and feeling pressed for time, we were kinda rushed in spraying basecoat and clear on the parts we took off the car. And this would lead to problems.
Base coat was pretty easy to apply, three coats of base coat, two coats of clear. I never realized how sticky clear coat is until overspray gets on the tarp you're spraying over and your shoes feel like you stepped in honey and squeak on every step you take. This is where the purple gun's inefficiencies really show. You need a pretty high PSI to get good atomization of the clear, but this leads to a ton of overspray. Our painting space was pretty well protected, but damn it was annoying.
Anyways, we finish painting these parts, move them back in the garage, down a celebratory beer and call it a night. I leave on my trip thinking, "all we have left is the body of the car, which should be a lot easier since we don't have to move pieces back and forth from our makeshift booth".
I get back and some of the pieces are kind of dull. And I quickly realize that because we were rushed, it was dark due to it being night, we didn't spray enough clear. I try to sand with 2000 grit sandpaper to see if I could get a better shine out of some of the pieces that seemed as if they had gotten enough clear, and it just burns through. I look at my girlfriend. "We didn't spray enough clear on these."
****.
Time to respray. I'm not going to lie to you, at this point, I was pretty bummed out. We spent so much time painting and trying to get it right and messed it up on the final portion. But you know what? That's car stuff. It's all a learning experience. And it's not my daily, so I have time to do it again the right way.
So we decided to sand the pieces down and repaint them the right way. No bobo epoxy primer not meant for the car. And we'd be using a Urechem brand sealer after primer as well this time. And most importantly, to make me feel better about having to repaint all these pieces, we'd do it MIDORI - MF'IN - GREEN.
Urechem sells Midori green and it looks so sick!! Already sprayed it on the new pieces and I can't wait to share how they came out, because after using what we learned from our first run through, it came out awesome and we're currently working on painting the body of the car, which has it's own ups and downs, which I'll share in my next update.
But I'll leave ya'll with this garage pic of all the pieces laid out in a sleek midori green.
Also bought some RPF1's on some Toyo tires which will be coming in at the end of the month. So stoked to have it back together and on some nice wheels. Takes time, but damn, I'm so stoked.
Last edited by ChrisCampa__; Jul 13, 2022 at 06:25 AM.
Reason: Resized pictures.
Chris' 1997 Acura Integra Build
The issue with this primer however, which I didn't realize until after I sprayed it, was that it was meant for truck bedliners, and so it sprayed on really rough. At first I thought this was due to user error, but after reading reviews for the paint, it's just a quality of the product itself. Don't be stupid like me, buy the same brand primer as your paint.
