time for a new DD (honda EK project)

The wifes current leased car is comming up due for turn in (november). We decided to cut down expenses by having her drive my leased truck as a daily driver and I will put something together to get me thru a few years. I dont want to subject the caballero to winter so I ended up picking up this 1999 honda civic LX from a friend for $600.
170k miles, manual transmission, power everything.
He used as his daily driver (went regularly to college and back 200miles each way) until a tow truck hauling a semi clipped him at an intersection.



I picked it up this last weekend and drove it home about 45 miles. asside from the alignment being messed up she drove perfectly fine. It looks to be a good solid running car just had alot of unforunate damage all over her asside from the accident damage she has alot of little dinks and dents all over. It looks like I got lucky on the accident damage as the inner fender/strut tower is bent however the frame rail looks to still be streight.

I also got lucky in that the CV shafts look brand new and it has a stainless tubular header.
The stock engine is a d16y7 which went translated means non vtec, single over head cam, OBD2. Not the slowest engine honda ever made but has some potential.

So, in short the goal here is to make it fun enough to not hate driving it daily but not to go so crazy that it becomes a target for theft, cops, or annoying kids that think every one wants to race them

what I love about these little cars is every thing is so swappable and performance parts are cheep
current parts on order:
-Flow master exhaust
-front fender
- rear fender patch panel
- energy suspension bushing set
- KYB struts
- eibach pro drop springs
- new radio (creature comforts and all)
- front wheel bearings
- rear wheel bearings
- front upper balljoints
- front lower balljoints
- performance rotors and pads all the way around
- front and rear caliper rebuild kits, pins, boot sets, and hardwear kits
- stainless braded brake lines
- adjustbile front and rear upper controle arms
- xenocron obd2b to obd1 conversion harness
- xenocron ecu chip set with vtec add on kit

Again this is what I love about these hondas; a few quick trips to the local junk yard resulted in some great performance upgrades on the cheep.
-Hood
-Gsr calipers and hangers
-Teg rear calipers and hangers
-40/40 prop valve
-15/16 master cylinder
-a pr4 ecu (just in case I want to b swap it one day)
-Integra rear sway bar (not pictured)
-integra rear ebrake cables (not pictured)


My buddy is setting me up with the rest of the fixins for a rear disc brake swap/ big brake front conversion.
Basically what this all means is I can assemble all of this and it will give me 1" larger diameter brakes in the front and rear disc brakes with a larger master cylinder and the proper metering to all 4 corners without having to cut weld or modify any thing, just bolt it all together.

Now, onto the ECU....
I scored this ECU at the junk yard.

It is from a mid 90s integra with the larger displacement dual overhead cam engine and an automatic transmission. The beauty of this ecu is that it is OBD1. The OBD1 ECUs by far are the easiest to modify and adapt so for about $180 I was able to order vtec adaptor, obd2b to obd1 plug and play conversion harness and a chip socket set with a base map chip for the engine and trans currently in the car. This will then in the future give me the ability to swap the head, fule system, and intake manifold to one off of a d16z6 or d16y8 and only have to swap a chip and run a few wires to make it work... The d16z6 and d16y8 engines are the vtec versions of the engine I currently have in the car and will give me about 30hp more.
Or
when I get sick of the SOHC engines and want to make some better power I can swap the engine, trans, wire harness and a few mounts to swap in the dual overhead cam B series honda engines like the 2.0l found in honda CRVs in junk yards everywhere (again, all i would have to do is email xenocron and have them burn me a new chip for the engine specs and just swap it over)

So the exterrior is Fed, all stuff I can manage on my own body reapair and re-paint wise. I was pleased to see how nice the intirror was and that it was complete with everything in usable condition, no cracks, warps, or ashy looking plastic. some of it was taken appart but everything was included.

however the carpet was an absolute mess and smelled real bad. Like baby, puke, and fat man funk bad!
so I think they carpet has seen its final days

This was confirmed after I lifted it out and the drivers side was totally saturated with water to the point where it was pooled on the floor boards

On the plus side, not a spot of rust on the floors.
I vaccumed up all the water and made sure all the windows and doors were shut tight. I think tonight we will get some rain so I can investigate where the water came from as I didn't see any obvious signs today..

liquidh8 said:

Nice, had to post so I can follow this build. I seen a few of your others.

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LMAO, thanks man...
yeah i forgot to mention that...
This is now my 5th honda.
The first one was an EG hatch that came to me stock and in less than a year I did the brake swap and suspension setup Im planning on doing to this one as well as a front end swap to an integra


and my second one was a delsol that had the vtec dohc engine that i basically did nothing to other than the body work a front end swap to a newer civic front added a chep turbo almost blew up the car and got rid of it! LOL


now that 5 years have passed and Im right back where I started, I regret getting rid of the hatch... I mean, the delsol was fun the but leaking top got bothersome..

at lunch today i ran down to the local wrecking yard and pulled a set of rear disc brake trailing arms, sway bar lower control arms to go along with the sway bar I pulled earlier.

hurst1979olds said:

I'm not an import guy at all. But I like that integra clip on that. It looks good and I never seen that done before.

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Thank you sir.
I wish I could say I thought of it, however, I saw it on a show car and loved how it made the car look lower and longer

Finished dissassembily, just need to get the engine hoist back from the neighbor to pull the engine and trans.


As I got ready to rebuild the rear suspension with my energy suspension kit I realized lower controle arm bushings, and rear shock bushings are not included....
Joy
Ah well, more parts on order I guess.