Extraction

we're not going to call it a heart transplant just yet, because even to this day (Beg-August 2012), my new engine isn't in yet.  It's ordered, but it's not in.  More on that later.

Anyways, I have a lovely Harbor Freight engine crane that I bought from my old roommate (thanks Gskoff, who's blog is linked at the bottom of this page).

Hook it all up with chains and high-tension eyelets (go to WalMart... in the Automotive section, there's a 5000 lb tow chain.  Buy that and cut out the center link, and now you have enough chain and two high-tension eyelets with which to extract the engine).

Go to Harbor Freight again and buy a load leveler.  Can you take an engine out of an engine bay without a load leveler?  Can you put an engine back in without a load leveler?  Yes.  But you'll save yourself more than 20 bucks worth of headaches.  Plus, it's my opinion that you should be building an arsenal of tools as you can afford them, and the Harbor Freight model shown here is reasonably good quality for the price.

Now, she's airborne.

In certain parts of the country, Ohio included, you have license to use the Redneck Engine Stand.  Tire shops will most likely dismount an old tire for free (tip the dudes at least).

...and you're left with this mess of an engine room.

My plan is to clean the engine bay without shooting new paint.  Honestly, there's nothing too bad beyond a little surface rust in here, and I'm sure if I painted, I'd just make it worse.  There's a lot of great examples of concourse-quality engine bays out there, and while I admire the work put into those, that's not what I'm going for with this little guy.

One thing I cannot stress enough is to buy and read the service manual.  Especially if you're doing this for the first time, that could be the difference between properly removing heavy things and breaking crap... or worse, hurting yourself.

and thanks for reading this build "thread".  As always, I'm skipping a majority of the steps taken, so feel free to ask technical questions in the comments or by email.

k thanks bye

-kwan

Prep for Engine Extraction

Got home from work, worked on the hatchback, watched olympics, and checked my blogger site.  And lo and behold, I got an bunch of views today (by my standards).  Thank you, and here's more updates.

The task at hand is obviously to take the engine out of the car.  You can start ripping crap out, or you can meticulously label things so you know what they were, in the case that you need them again.

Start at the front (front oxygen sensor) and work your way back.  It's a little easier to label the masking tape before you take it off the roll and put it around the couplers.

Let the pictures do the talking:

Also, take plenty of pictures.  In this day and age, when photographs don't need to be developed in a darkroom and are instead just a bunch of 1s and 0s, it's better to have more pictures than you need.

Notice also how extremely filthy my engine bay is.  That's getting fixed.

It's starting to look like progress.

Tell your friends.

the chef

The Calm Before the Storm

The blog is still a couple month out of date.  But we're getting closer.

Real Life: early August 2012.
This Post: backdated to January 10, 2012.

Between the summer of 2011 and "now" (Jan 2012), I put 1,000 miles on the suspension (with the ghetto alignment).  It drives great.  Minus the lack of power and the squishy all-season tires, the car is fantastic.

One day, I even had a flat tire on the way back from work.  In a properly stripped streetcar, you don't have a spare tire.  The nice police woman (ie ma'am... don't call female cops "officer", apparently) thought I stole the car.  But that's a different story.

With all the money in the brand-new parts, this sucker is NEVER seeing snow.  I parked it in the garage for good at the end of the fall, and basically left it there, completely ignoring it until now.  Word to the wise, never ask me to babysit your pets or children.

One beautiful January day, I decided to work on my Civic.

I put it on jack stands and called it a day.

As I'm doing this, my friend Andrew is restoring a Porsche 944, and he's making my progress look downright silly.  A link to his build website is somewhere towards the bottom of this page.  Please visit.

The next day:

gettin serious.
-kwan

Bushing Preload, FR Suspension

After you change your rideheight on your Civic (or any car with a similar suspension design), you should re-preload the bushings.  I know you don't want to half-@ss anything on your project car.

Step 1:
Loosen the Upper Control Arm bolts (the ones that go from the engine bay, through the upper control arms, and into weld-nut brackets on the inside of the wheel well).  Don't remove them, just loosen them.

Step 2:
Drive the car onto Rhino Ramps or equivalent.  If you can't operate your car, you may be able to set your car, on the wheels, on some cinder blocks.  Use your prudent judgment when doing this because I'm not your mom and I can't make sure you're doing it safely.

Step 3: Loosen the Lower A-Arm front bolts (1/side), rear nuts (1/side), and shock fork lower bolts (1/side).

Step 4: Get out from under the car, compress the front suspension a little and let it decompress itself (push on each shock tower or on the front core support).  This lets the suspension bushings settle in their neutral state.

Step 5: Re-tighten everything you just loosened.  That's four upper A-arm bolts, two lower A-arm bolts, two lower A-arm nuts, and two shock fork lower bolts.

Drive it off the ramps and into the sunset.

two pics:

As always, if you have technical questions or comments, don't be shy.

yours truly.
Kwan.

Extended Tophats... Slightly technical

Lowering your car is totally cool.  Everyone's doing it.  People have done everything from wrapping chains around suspension arms to cutting springs.  If you're lowering your car properly by using some sort of matched spring/damper kit (called cup kits commonly) to coilovers, pat yourself on the back... suspensions are things you don't want to skimp on.

Like em or hate em, the Ground Control / Koni Yellow combo is one of the most popular and widely used in the Honda Civic aftermarket world.  I got a great deal on Koni Yellows (Sport shocks with adjustable damping) and decided to throw on a Ground Control kit, since it comes with a fantastic warranty and Eibach springs.

Even when you think something's a sure-thing, whenever you modify a critical/safety part on a car, always check your work and make sure what you're doing makes sense.

Which, in a long-winded fashion, brings me to my point... Ground Control tells you to cut the bump stops (also known as secondary springs), and I wanted to know why.

After the car was on the ground and the ride-height was set to a point that made me happy, I wanted to see how much suspension travel and clearance I had.  Doing a visual check, my shock had about 10-15mm clearance to the bump stop, which made me think I was riding on them at some points.

As a reference, see the below pictures.

My *desired* rideheight, an old-man-safe 2.5-finger gap.

At my desired rideheight, clearance from shock to bumpstop / secondary spring... about 25mm.

Keep in mind, from the previous post, that I was riding a sh*t-ton lower than the 2.5-finger gap that I had pre-loaded the bushings at.... and so my shock-bumpstop gap was also much less.

STEPS:
(1) Jack up the front of the car (using the pad on the core support) and wrap a brightly-colored ziptie around the shock shaft.  The shafts are hardened steel, so a plastic zip tie isn't going to scratch it.

(2) Aggressively drive around (of course obeying traffic laws).  This step is less work and more fun than the rest.

(3) Check how far the zip tie is from the bump stop.  For me, the zip tie was buried in the bump stop and I had to jack the car up to see it and then remove it from the shaft.

(4) If your zip tie has clearance from the bump stop, you're free to go.  If, however, your ziptie is buried in the bump stop, deeply consider how to fix the situation.  For me, the zip tie was buried in the bump stop.

(5) Jack the car up (you can't fit your hand in the wheel well because you just slammed your car, remember?) and cut off the zip tie with any implement that won't scratch the shock shaft.




NOW WHAT?
Going back to Step (4) and deeply considering how to fix it, I went back to the Ground Control website and ordered the Extended Top Hats.  This car is nickle-and-diming me a couple hundred dollars at a time.

Let me explain how these work, since my internet research has shown that there is a lot of confusion about these.

On your coil-over, briefly consider the spring and damper as independent entities.  The spring exerts a force, and the damper exerts a resistance to motion.

Many people think that the extended top hats might change your ride height by 1", since that's how much the tophats are extended.  This is not true.  The ride height is controlled by (1) where the spring is fixed to the body, and (2) where the spring is fixed to the wheel / knuckle / a-arm / etc.  The threaded Ground Control Sleeve adjusts the spring's relationship to the lower A-arm, and that's how you set the ride height.  The Extended Top Hat doesn't change the spring's relationship to the body (well, maybe by a negligible amount), so it won't change your ride height.  The top hat does change the relationship between the shock shaft and the body... by 1".  So, essentially, you have an additional 1" before you bottom out on the bump stop.



Back to checking your work... you need to be sure that your newly-extended shock shafts won't hit anything that sits above them... namely the hood.

Using the body, measure the base shock shaft height:

Create some extension (in this case, a socket adapter with masking tape stacked to reach 1")

Mark the top of the extender with red Sharpie Paint Marker.  I know you have like 5 of these because I already told you to go to Joanne's fabrics to buy some.

Gently close the hood and check the driver's side clearance.

No red marks above, so no clearance issues.

Now check the passenger's side

See the red mark?  That's where you need to cut a relief in the hood frame (that's what it's called in the biz).

Use a center-punch to mark corners, and drill a small hole at each corner.  Connect the corners using a Dremel with a metal-cutting wheel.  To prevent rust, shoot it with a little paint, or never drive the car in the snow or rain.

I don't think that I took any pictures of the hood frame, but I may update later.

On the ground / recap

I've been working on my car very sporadically, but the only thing I do less of than work on my Civc is update this blog.  Still I apparently get plenty of views, so thank you.  I have a few pics of my car on the ground.

It looks good, even with the stock bodywork that seems to have more city miles than the odometer would indicate.  The things that bug me the most are the crappy steelies and narrow tires.

You can barely see the black lower control arms and subframe brace, which honestly was the idea behind choosing black.

Obviously I've put a lot of new parts on this car.  You can do what I'm doing for cheaper.  I have a unique opportunity to get Honda parts at a good price, and since I'm already spending money and time on this thing, it was more worthwhile to me to spend the extra money on the top-quality, zero-mile parts and hopefully have a car that drives better than it would have when it rolled off the assembly line at Honda of Canada... when I was in middle school.

Here's a glimpse of the volume of new OEM and aftermarket crap I've thrown at this car.

... one more post tonight before the grind restarts early in the morning.  maybe not.

-kwan

Off the Jackstands

First, I'm aweful at keeping this thing updated.  In reality, it's April 2012 and the car is off the road again.  But in make-believe-land, it's early June 2011 and I'm getting ready for the car show at the place where I work.  Which is sweet, because I work at a place that hosts a car show for its employees.

I also know what people want to see.  Mostly pictures, light on words.  In the last year, I've been surprised that this blog is getting more hits than I had imagined, and I'm also thrilled to see that IP addresses from all over the world have stumbled on my humble little website.

On that note, for anyone doing this or similar work that may have questions, email me at jkwan.the.clown@gmail.com.  I'm ridiculously busy in general, but I will try to answer at some point!

Now onto the pictures

Here she is in the air, with all of the final assembly completed save for the front tire mounting.

Note that my garage is full of crap and I use my civic's roof for storage.
Also check out the Black Function7 Rear Lower Subframe Brace.  JHP USA came through and shipped it to me pretty quickly.  Not cheap though, but c'est la vie.

Remember, for those of you with crappy short-term memories like myself, use a sharpie paint marker to indicate when you have torqued a bolt to spec.  This is what we do in "the biz", so to speak.

I debated grabbing a bottle of champagne (ie, a 40) and christening my Civic, but Honda didn't use really heavy gauge steel and the bodywork's bad enough already.

AND SHE'S ON THE GROUND.  Look at that stance.  Honestly, it's too low for a man of my years (27) but I admit it looks tight.

Any time you lower a car, especially if you have rebuild every part of the suspension, you need to align it.  This was my attempt at a ghettoalignment.  I got the toe-in within spec, but in retrospect, I should have driven it to a shop and have them do it.

This last shot shows not only how to measure the toe, but also a juxtaposition of beautiful expensive suspension components and janky rusty wheels with all-season tires. 

xoxo

the chef