Nate's 91 Civic Hatch

[CleanGSR]

Okay....here's a thread for me to track the progress of the car.

 

I'm hoping to upgrade to the JDM or SI front and rear seats (cloth with horizontal stripes) down the road. I also hope to get a center console.....this one doesn't have one so I don't even have a cup holder or arm rest or anything. This thing cracks me up.....it's so stripped down. Here's a list of things it doesn't have that you wouldn't even think of.

 

No factory Radio or speakers (has them now)

No Cigarette Lighter/socket (what the heck......but it has an ash tray, lol)

No antenna obviously

No center console (just carpeted)

No clock

No side compartments in the door panels

Obviously no a/c, power steering (or anything else).

 

I washed it in the garage last night and started buffing the paint out. Took me an hour and a half of buffing to get one door and one rear quarter done.....starting to look much better though. There are a few key marks or possibly from tree branches on the driver's side and one on the passenger side. The paint buffed out pretty nicely but the big scratches were too far through. I'm going to get help on my detailing forum and try to use touch up paint, then wetsand, then buff and try and get rid of them. I'll post process and results.

 

Regarding my suspension decisions. The Progress Series II coilovers are backed up for a good 2 1/2 months. They are testing out a new company for the shocks in that kit so it will be awhile. I already ordered them from tunertoys.com and am waiting to see if they will refund my money. If so, I'll be ordering the PIC Apex coilovers (top quality crap there) which I can get for 730 + shipping. I can get them with 8k front and 6k rear spring rates so it should have a pretty decent ride for the daily grind.

 

 

I may have to wait for awhile on the wheels, but that's fine. I also had to have a new muffler welded on today (77 bucks) and still have about 250 to pay off the difference on the accord. So......the car will look killer eventually. I've seen a car identical to mine, dropped a few inches and on 15" slipstreams. Probably my favorite one I've seen and the best I've ever seen slips look so I might just save and try to get a used set of slips in the spring instead of HX's.

[lastresort576]

sounds like a good plan dude, and yea i meant to tell you about the PIC's you can get w/e custom spring rates that you desire. good luck, oh and btw get some pix on up!

[C92hatchX]

sounds fun man i can wait to see how it turns out, and pics would be sweet to

[CleanGSR]

Pictures will come in the next day or two. It's dark by the time I get home from work so it's hard to take pictures. I'll get some taken Saturday sometime.

[..SSR..]

MF LSD, 1st, and close gear set sounds good... Less LSD if its just a daily budget car.

[CleanGSR]

MF LSD, 1st, and close gear set sounds good... Less LSD if its just a daily budget car.

 

Why would I do that to an 18-19 second car that has like 80 horsepower? I'll keep it stock or possibly swap an HF tranny for fuel economy. Then swap and boost it down the road.

[..SSR..]

Cause you'll turn that 18-19 second car into a 16 second car without touching the engine.

 

And you'll get better mileage with it than you will with the HF trans.

[CleanGSR]

Cause you'll turn that 18-19 second car into a 16 second car without touching the engine.

 

And you'll get better mileage with it than you will with the HF trans.

 

I don't see how a 16 second car is much better than an 18 second car. It's so slow regardless that I'll never drive the thing hard either way.

[..SSR..]

Auto 96-00 EX's run high 18's low 19's. If your car more fun to drive than one of those? If so, thats why its better. Now make it more fun and its even better. Now put an A6 in it and you have a 15-14 second car. Now put some bolt ons and a drop in cam in it with some dr's and you have a low 14 high 13 second car for the same price as a swap. Get tired of it, build the engine and you have a mid-high 12 second car for less than good bolt ons for a swap would have cost you.

[adamEj6]

..ssr.. = god

[Kastigir]

..ssr.. = god

Essentially, if only he knew DSMs.

[Ben.]

God doesn't even know DSM's.

[adamEj6]

DSM doesnt know God.

[Ben.]

God doesn't WANT to know DSM.

[CleanGSR]

Auto 96-00 EX's run high 18's low 19's. If your car more fun to drive than one of those? If so, thats why its better. Now make it more fun and its even better. Now put an A6 in it and you have a 15-14 second car. Now put some bolt ons and a drop in cam in it with some dr's and you have a low 14 high 13 second car for the same price as a swap. Get tired of it, build the engine and you have a mid-high 12 second car for less than good bolt ons for a swap would have cost you.

 

Okay, you've sparked my interest because I'd like to get into some auto-x with this car. So a D16a6 swap with bolt on's, cams and DR's would run low 14's to high 13's. Is this with the stock a6 tranny or with custom gearing? This is definitely something I"ll consider as this sounds like it would be an awesome street setup if it could run that quick n/a.

[Kastigir]

Okay, you've sparked my interest because I'd like to get into some auto-x with this car. So a D16a6 swap with bolt on's, cams and DR's would run low 14's to high 13's. Is this with the stock a6 tranny or with custom gearing? This is definitely something I"ll consider as this sounds like it would be an awesome street setup if it could run that quick n/a.

He's talking about a custom transmission build.

[Pballer2005]

subscribed

 

and i looked up some stuff on youtube and found a video of a stock ek9 and one with a 4.9 final drive and there was a very noticable difference in acceleration so i'm wishing i could afford the trans work.

[..SSR..]

Nate. If you want to autocross take a look at the classes and lmk which you want to run in. What you can do varies a lot by the class. If its just for fun and not trying to be competitive on a nationals level you can just run in SM which allows about anything under the sun.

 

Was talking built trans btw.

 

Z6 trans with HASport conversion.

 

Z6 due to stronger shift forks and availability of forks (cable shift forks are no longer made or available).

 

MF 3.083 first gear

MF close gear set

MF LSD

 

Engine wise (without building the engine)

D16A6 or D16Z6

RM cam

Edelbrock Performer-X IM

SMSP header

Hondata (s100 or s300)

good DR's (Hoosier, BGF, M&H, etc).

 

The above would get you into the 14's. Could probably dip into the 13's if you went with a bigger cam and valve train along with headwork (port, valve job, extreme mill). It'd be high compression without touching the bottom end.

[C92hatchX]

any pics yet?

[CleanGSR]

Very intersting SSR. For now I"m only wanting to run auto-x for fun. I'm almost positive though that with only suspension and tires I can still run a pretty moderate class. I may try to do that some this year since those will be my only two mods. I'll have to give some thought to want kind of drivetrain setup I'll want to run but that stuff you posted looks pretty nice.

 

 

Pics coming in about 10 minutes.

[CleanGSR]

Okay. I finally got to detail the car today. Where to begin....? Honestly, this paint is in rough shape (even after the detail). There are quite a few areas that are starting to have clearcoat failure and many other's that are even closer now that I removed paint during the detail....I actually burned through and edge for the first time and it took about 10 seconds, with a moderate aggressiveness and 0 pressure on the pad. Luckily it's not noticable unless under the halogen lights. Some areas of paint were ridiculously thin.

 

Some areas seemed like single stage and others seemed like bc/cc. I don't know if there were some repaint areas or what....if so, they were repainted a LONG time ago because the wear and tear on the paint was pretty equal throughout. I did have red on my pads and it seemed like some panels caused this (single stage) while others didn't (possibly base coat/clear coat?) Who knows.

 

Before's

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a picture of some of the clearcoat beginning to fail. This was the worst spot by far, but there were various area with the same type of stuff going on. Luckily none of it is actually peeling yet so hopefully I can get a year or two out of the paint before needing a re-spray.

 

 

There are quite a few various deep scratches like these. I improved on them a lot, but they are still noticeable. I'm debating on whether to use touch up paint, then wetsand and buff on these or whether to just leave them. Not sure which I'll do yet. (Both of these pictures are before buffing....sorry, no direct afters)

 

 

 

A couple shots of the fender (Before). All the paint was this bad or worse.

 

 

 

Here's a couple of 50/50 shots. Before obviously on left with After on the right.

 

 

And here's the entire fender after

 

 

The hood was beat up pretty bad. I removed a lot of swirls and junk from the paint. There were a lot of etchings from bird droppings and hard water spots that couldn't be removed. The hood was really thin on clear or paint and it looked like I borderline removed too much clear. I'm going to have to be careful to not re-swirl the paint because another buffing session is probably not an option for this paint.

 

Before on bottom, After on top

 

After

 

Passenger Fender After

\\

 

Here's a 50/50 of the spoiler

 

 

And here's the afters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not going to lie. The paint is FAR from perfect and I don't know if I'm happy or bothered. Clearly it's in better condition than your run of the mill 91 hatch, but I think I'm still setting my standards at the level my Integra was. Oh well, away from the halogne lights it looks about 85-90 percent perfect (paint wise....there are some annoying dings throughout). I'll probably just live with the condition and do a re-paint once the paint/clear starts to actually peal.

[Ben.]

Unfair to set your standards high and expect something ten years older to be the same..LOL.

[CleanGSR]

Unfair to set your standards high and expect something ten years older to be the same..LOL.

 

Well, it's more of the fact that I was expecting to be able to get it back to a better level than I did. I knew it would be in worse condition. If the paint hadn't been so thin and so close to failure I could have gotten it to the level of the integra.

 

You are right though, I was being un-realistic with my hopes of getting it to that level. It still turned out well though and hopefully I'll get used to it and be happy.

[Ben.]

By all means, it's in excellent shape for a 91.. Red just doesn't age well, at all.

[wannaBstuntin]

At first I was looking at those pictures thinking "It looks good, but I know Nate could've done a better job."

 

Then I realized those were the 'before' pics.

 

It looks fantastic now for a car that old. And that's coming from someone who despises red cars.

 

EDIT: red matching bumpers would make it 10X better too IMO.