Hasport EKK2 Mounts

Santa came and left a package on my doorstep.  And it's the middle of the summer.

He left me Hasport EKK2 mounts (the ones you use with the EG/DC subframe and steering rack, which I've had on my car for awhile) and Hasport Axles.

Open the box and I'm greeted with an instruction manual that was printed from a printer with no ink.  Fortunately, Hasport publishes their manuals on their website, but I don't have my computer in the garage, and I don't have a printer.  Regardless, I'll let this slide.

Here's the mounts.  They're veritable works of art.

Except for this little guy.  That's a weld bead that is running onto the mating surface (where mount mates to body).  DO NOT INSTALL THE MOUNT IN THE CAR LIKE THIS.  Your local contact pressure is gonna be through the roof; the weld bead may yeild a little, and once that happens, that bolt is as good as gone.  Now you've got two bolt points and the mount bracket grenades itself due to vibration.  Now your engine's supported by the trans mount and the rear mount.  That won't last long.  Let's say I were an automotive OEM.  If I got a part like this from a supplier, they'd be making new ones.

But I'm not an automotive OEM.  I'm just a joe schmoe working out of my garage.

Clamp it in a vice, use a Makita 4" grinder (in hindsight, a sanding disc would have been adequate).

Mask it off, shoot some paint, and voila, your mount is ready to install.  But not so fast.

The Hasport mount interferes with the body sealer.  Take a dremel with a nylon brush attachment, and brush away the section that the mount touches.

Once you're done with that, the mount is really ready to install.  Go ahead and bolt it up.

Hasport basically is the industry standard for mounts.  However, I'd be very interested to see how the Hybrid Racing ones stack up against these.

<3

jkwan.  that's not my real name by the way.

Degreasing.

I was dreading this step, and I was debating calling it "good enough" without cleaning the bay.  With the number of people telling me I should shoot paint in the engine room, I figured I'd at least clean it up a little.

Step 1: Take pictures of stays (ie brackets) and bolts so you remember where the hardware goes.

Step 2: Take some good "before" shots.  Like every good jenny craig or proactiv commercial, having a good "before" picture is half the battle.

Step 3: Buy Simple Green (you don't even need the "industrial" or "automotive" stuff... the regular bottle works great).  As the bottle tells you, spray it on, scrub a little, and then follow it up with a damp cloth... a microfiber one helps prevent scratching the pristine paintwork.

Here's what it looks like after the damp cloth:

And here's some good Before and After shots:

Front:

Rear

And the engine room... from Halfway done, to Done.  It's a pain in the butt getting behind some of those hard lines without taking them off though:

And finally the denouement, the jenny craig Before and After shots:

Definitely worth it.

As a side benefit, your garage smells like one of those smelly, yet delightful, green Mr Sketch markers you had as a kid.

please enjoy.

-J

HVAC. Part I

All along, it was my plan to remove the AC, because I just didn't want to deal with it, and this car is never going to be a daily driver.

I had planned to keep the heater because, in my head, if I got stuck in the rain on the way back from a track day or what-have-you, I could blow some warm air on the window to keep it from fogging up too badly.

I did plan on removing the heater valve, however.  Modern Hondas don't have heater valves, so surely my 1998 doesn't need one either.

I went to take off the hose from the heater core.  When you're working with steel joints, you can put a pair of pliers over the hose and twist it until it un-bonds itself from the joint.  Then it pulls off pretty easily.

In a pretty epic brain-fart, I forgot the heater core has aluminum joints.  For the non-metallurgist types following along, aluminum joints are weak.

Pic 1 shows the heater valve that I had planned to remove:

Pic 2 shows my handiwork on the heater core joint.

I tried to re-round the joint, but it will never seal again... and honestly, it's just the reason I was looking for to take the heater core out.

More on that later.

-J

Interior... Part I

I've ignored it long enough, so time to take a break from engine room stuff and move on to the interior... ie unnecessary weight.

Take out the center consoles, take some pictures of stuff, and bam, the carpet is out.  Like magic.

The carpet has a mildewy smell.  Partially the fault of a leaky trunk, and partially my fault, when I forgot a bag of ice in the passenger's side during a summer day.  The carpet was destined for the trash heap from then.

Here's what you're left with.  From what I was able to gather from the Carfax back in 2009 (god i've had this car forever), the car spent time in NY, NJ, and OH... all states that have snow and road salt.  I'm very pleased that, besides dirt and some grime, it's pretty immaculate under the carpet, rust-wise.  I'm going to leave the melt-sheet in place, mostly because spending time to remove it will probably amount in very little.

Engine Room Cleanup

If you've gone this far, you might as well take some time to clean out the engine room.  This is a process, and whether you're painting or just cleaning up, you're going to need to remove a lot of stuff.  Take pictures!  This way, you can (a) show your friends how nasty your engine room is, and (b) show yourself where to put things back later.  In this series of slides, I am taking pictures of the harnesses and AC pipes, since those are coming out...

The AC isn't going back in.  AC compressors are heavy, and with the K-series, I don't want to mess with hooking up all new lines and stuff.  Plus, this is a toy car, that will ideally only come out on beautiful days.

Obviously, most of the harnesses will still go back in (except the AC sub-harness and the washer tank harness).

Pics:

Beween the pic above and the one below, the AC lines were removed.  They won't work for a K-swapped Civic as far as I know.  They will come out in one piece, but it's like one of those impossible puzzles you get from a museum.

At this point, I'm ready to pull the cabin harness out of the car, when I realize that the hood pull cable is routed through the harness.  While thusfar, HCM has done an impeccable job assembling this car, I feel like this wasn't entirely intentional.

Before deciding to remove the harness the right way, I was debating just cutting it out of there.  But no short-cuts... mark the position of the hood lock, pull it out, detach the cable from the hood lock, and pull the hood release cable back through the harness.  Then put the cable right back where you pulled it from.

this website is almost up to date.
-J