Bringing it back to life!

[Tony]

Oh let's see if I remember how to do all of this, it's been so long. Some of the OGs have me on Facebook, so you know some of this already.

For anyone else that pays attention in this place: my old hatchback had been through a lot, and I mean a lot. It was my second car and I had it for over a decade. We had our ups and downs. Back when this place was really moving, I made a trip in it from Oklahoma to Oregon. I made a few trips from Oklahoma to North Carolina when I moved out there. I even made it from Little Rock, AR, to Dallas, TX, with the water pump puking water out the entire way. I messed up trying to do a Mini-me swap and twisted a head bolt off in the D15B2 block and let it sit for awhile while I drove around my POS 95 240sx. Eventually I got a 90 Integra from the salvage yard and swapped everything to the hatch, engine, trans, suspension, brakes, anything that would fit. I used it to pull my 93 Civic and 87 CRX dirt track cars to the race track. After a lot of neglect, that Integra motor took a dump on me, so I swapped it with another. After a lot more neglect, which by the way, the car did better with neglect than it did being spoiled. Example: I was at the junkyard doing some shopping for some ignition parts for my 85 RX7, I spotted a full size radiator for the hatch, which the Mishimoto radiator I had in it had been leaking since I got it. As soon as I get back to the hatch with all the parts, a rod starts knocking. At this point, the car had been hit in the rear, needing some frame work and new quarter panels, I had zero interior in the car(2 seats, the gauge cluster and a custom "Climate(Blower)" panel) and I didn't have the time, money, or space to keep it around anymore. I took everything off of it that I could sell and sold it, gave some to some friends, took the time to clean out the garage and toss a bunch of junk in it, and had it hauled off to scrap. That was a sad day. The only thing I kept from it was the steering wheel. At the time I had no plans to really ever get back into an old Civic.

Fast forward a few years and one of my coworkers had a 91 Civic Sedan DX that is stock, but a little abused. After months of constantly bugging him about buying it, he finally gives me a price: $250. I drove it home and instantly started doing some work on it, nothing major, just some minor repairs and access the car and see what needs to be done. The battery was shot, and I'm not a fan of the battery taking up space under the hood, so a 600 Watt car audio battery went into the trunk and cables ran for it. During this I find bolts and screws either missing or not in the right places. I found a main fuse replaced with a piece of wire. I found parts just broken. My original plan was to keep the interior stock and clean, but after that, it will end up leaving. The A/C also didn't work, so all of those parts were removed and now the engine bay is where I like it, easy to get to what I need.

It did actually take me a bit to get the title from the owner, but I also wasn't too worried about it at the time. I knew and trusted I would get it, and wasn't ready to get it on the road. Plus we were getting ready to move from NC to Kansas, so as long as I got it before I was gone, I was good. I used my 17 Subaru Forester and haul the Civic from NC to one of my parents place in Arkansas, while we work out finding a job and a house in Kansas. A couple months later, I head back down and bring the Civic up to Kansas. I finally get the title actually changed over to my name and a tag for it last year, which I had to drive it twice to get it inspected, no issues. The weather was getting nice, the car has no A/C or heater, so not a bad time to drive it...it didn't want to start. Not wanting to waste that much time on the D15B2, I decided I'd just let it sit until I got a swap for it.

Well, I don't have a swap for it, but this past week was nice weather and I was doing some other projects around the house and decided to give it a quick go. I took the cover off the DPFI intake, pulled the throttle cable and noticed the butterfly didn't move. Okay, well lets see what happens when I use a screwdriver to hold it open and shoot a little brake clean down it. Car fired right up and throttle works fine.

It's time to remember what the Civic life was about!

[4G4D Store]

woot woot - another OG is back in an EF.

[Tony]

An OG trying to bring this dead place back to life also!

[4G4D Store]

I'd love to see a bunch of the OG peeps back in here chatting. Hoping to bring me sedan home this weekend and start tuning it.

[Tony]

Next project for it: Completely removing the auto seat belts and install pillar belts. I've got a line on a CRX set I'll be getting this weekend. Might also be able to get a new wiper switch so I don't have to deal with the wipers turning on while driving. I think the spring is broken on the current one.

[GTA]

woo. time to find a LX/SI cluster and get that tach lol

[Tony]

Originally Posted by GTA

woo. time to find a LX/SI cluster and get that tach lol

I've got an old Glowshift tach floating around here somewhere. It will get in the car soonish. I've got no dash lights, so may do it old school with the tach and just learn what RPM = what MPH.

[GTA]

Ok, then my normal first thing to do would be slam that thing haha.

[Tony]

Originally Posted by GTA

Ok, then my normal first thing to do would be slam that thing haha.

After it being this long driving something like this, I already feel like it's slammed.

[Tony]

Today I found a guy about an hour north that has about 15 EFs in his graveyard. I made the trip to get a new wiper switch, wiper transmission, and pillar mounted seat belts. I was able to at least get the wipers fixed so they don't turn on on their own and now return to where they should.

I'll probably end up doing a video on removing the auto should belts and replacing it all with pillar mounts. I've been able to find a few posts and videos about it, but they still seem vague on how to do it. I'm comfortable with my welding to be able to do what needs to be done. I'm not worried about the panels myself, but hopefully someone can figure that part out on their own.

[Tony]

So this past weekend I didn't get to get as much done as I was hoping. I currently don't have much space to work, so I've been mixing my time between cleaning out the shed and getting a work bench and space there, and doing some work on the sedan.

I did get the battery back out of it. I had already relocated it to the trunk shortly after I got it. I'm in the process of using an old battery box I built close to 10 years ago now, which was meant for a full size battery, to house 2 600 Watt Car audio batteries, along with an inline fuse, battery cutoff, distribution block, and a Battery Tender harness. I've been running it off a single 600 Watt battery, and it works as long as it's not cold, but it does drag. I've got the second one ordered now, along with some more connectors. The goal is to be able to drop this complete box back into the trunk, mount it and connect the main cable to the distribution block, and the ground to a splice connector.

[Stealthee]

I had to double check and make sure I didn't post the first two sentences. Lol

I also don't have a garage and just reorganized my shed the other day so I can get more work done to my 3000gt project.

[Tony]

So it's been a couple of weeks since I last worked on the car. I've got a second battery here for it and a most of the parts to finish my battery project. Right now I'm waiting on more 1/0 connectors to finish it up. Amazon claims they were delivered, but no go. Waiting until tomorrow before contacting them about it.

[Tony]

Long post warning!!

Back around 2009-2010 I went to school at Nascar Technical Institute, wasn't worth the money unless you know absolutely nothing about cars, then maybe. What sold me on it was the fabrication classes. During those, I actually made a full size battery box, meant more for like a Group 34 battery, not a Honda Battery. I've never put it to use until now. With this being a project, there will be many times when I'll need to disconnect the battery, so I thought maybe I should put in a battery cutoff switch, plus it's not a bad addition with the battery being in the trunk. I also wanted to get a fuse installed that could handle the load from the starter. Lastly, I also wanted to have wiring for a battery tender for when the car will be parked for extended periods of time. All of these things I could install in, or on, that battery box I made ages ago.

I found the box, knocked the dust off of it, gave it a quick paint job(Never do a quick paint job), botched the paint job, sanded it down some, raided the sticker stash, and started covering it with stickers. After doing all that, I checked out how I was going to mount this single battery. This box is massive vs the size of the battery and I could actually fit it sideways in the box.



I can fit 2 batteries in this thing! That would solve the hesitation on start. I ordered another battery off of Amazon, along with ring terminals and a couple other parts. The one part that wasn't Amazon Prime arrived in a couple of days, everything else took a bit longer. The battery finally showed up but I was still waiting on the ring terminals, which said they were delivered but no sign of them anywhere . After several days, someone finally delivered them, after opening the package and I'm assuming realizing it wasn't helpful to them.


I still need to actually find a way to tie down the 2 batteries within the box, mount the box so it doesn't slide around, and find a better solution for a ground. Everything works as of now though. The current setup has the 2 batteries ran in parallel to a battery cutoff switch. From there it runs through a 200 AMP fuse and then to a distribution block. I did have to use a 1/0 to 4AWG adapter going into the fuse block. All of the positive wiring is 1/0, I'm sure I could have ran smaller within the box with 1/0 running up to the engine bay. The ground wiring in the box is "4"AWG(had to use 6 AWG ring terminals to hold the wire, 4AWG was too large), and then 1/0 from one of the batteries to the vehicle. Current ground is through a small bolt that I ran through the chassis, eventually I'll probably weld a stud in somewhere to ground to.

Current setup:

[Tony]

Life happened again and I got away from here for a bit. My appendix decided it was done with me a couple of weeks ago, but I caught it early so no complications getting it removed.

Update on the battery box: since I didn't actually mount the box, it slid around and pulled the ground cable. Ive parked it since but plan to weld up a tray to hold the box and will weld in a stud for a better ground. On a positive note I got my welder updated with gas and got the shed cleaned out so I can work in there better.

I also just scored a set of DC2 front seats with no tears. They need to be cleaned and possibly some extra padding and I'm not sure if I want to keep the tan color.