Civic-EG.com Forum 3.3.1

- Thu Aug 30, 2012 8:03 pm #314627 Welcome to my build thread, if you could call it that? Progress is pretty slow, I seem to do more research and planning than I do actual work either for money or on the car, heh. Here's my newly acquired and first car, a stock '94 DX Hatchback.







The interior is all there and in great condition, and the stock d15b7 with 130k on it. The body needs some major work which isn't shown in these dark photos. The car at some point was in a front-end collision, which bent up the core support nicely.

The drivers side had some half-assembled truck mirror on it, so that got replaced right away.

Didn't have my license yet so I spent a week cleaning the interior. Steam cleaned the seats, carpet. Cleaned up the center console / shift boot. So the car smells crisply neutral now and I pulled about 5 gallons of filthy water from the seats and carpet.


Took out the middle seat belt in the back, a simple change but I think it makes the interior look a lot more elegant without it. Probably not an uncommon change.

Check out the front end damage... the bolt holes for the bumper were ripped open, they had the bumper suspended by coathanger wires near the inside of each headlight.

Nothing I could do to line those holes back up easily, so I just replaced the wires with thick zipties. Much cleaner. The headlights and panels don't line up right of course, and the driver side corner light is also held in by coathanger wire... the old license plate was held on by wires too! Ziptied that as well until I get hardware for it.

The bolts that hold the bumper to the fender were all jacked up, varying sizes on each side, fixed all that up and got the fitment nice and flush.

I also wrapped the jack, tools, jumpers, etc in the spare tire area with some old t-shirts so they wouldn't make any noise clanging around.

Upcoming changes are cleaning the engine bay with Simple Green. I'm going to change my shift boot material. I'll paint the steelies a new silver since they're getting rust spots. My friend's dad is going to help me with body work and most likely I'll have the car resprayed the same color, Phantom Grey Pearl. I would also like to put a new cluster in, one that has a tachometer followed by new shift and ebrake knobs.

Thanks for reading I look forward to sticking around, maybe I can find some Colorado people to kick it with.

Last edited by Virux on Sun Sep 22, 2013 8:46 pm, edited 4 times in total.

[Apexracing]

- Fri Aug 31, 2012 4:07 am #314670 Not a bad start, Gotta replace that core support though, and the bumper support. I'd start there as far as body work goes.

- Fri Aug 31, 2012 3:52 pm #314700

Not a bad start, Gotta replace that core support though, and the bumper support. I'd start there as far as body work goes.

Ah, I thought that top bar just bolted off from the rest of the assembly. Good to know that's all one piece. I'll have to get a new bumper to go along with it too. I'm thinking about just piling up new parts over the winter.

* Edit- yeah seems like core supports are welded in. Replacing the bumper support soon, but I'm just going to try and bend the core support back into acceptable shape if I can.

Last edited by Virux on Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

- Sun Sep 22, 2013 12:15 am #336949 Huh, it's been a while. Been meaning to post some updates. I'm actually going to go in a different direction- plan on making a custom blog site for my car where I can more easily track my progress and share with people. I'll definitely update with news on that.

Anyways, some light things I've done with the car over the year.
- Four brand new all-season tires and alignment
- Fixed my driver's speaker shorting out randomly
- Fixed the hatch arm using a hardware setup
- Removed the 19-year-old dealer emblem
- Fixed passenger front signal shorting randomly
- Ordered Ebay amber corners (love amber corners, baby)
- Ordered antenna block-off plate
- Fixed muffler rattling (removed, heh. But it's got a resonator. All good.)
- Ordered Magnaflow offset oval muffler
- Learned how to drive like a professional(rev matching and not being a scrub aye?). Wouldn't even know it's 85whp.
- Ordered Energy Suspension shifter bushings (black = graphite = happy)

Also my hood, passenger door, and drivers quarter panel have had bodywork clay and primer on them since November 2012. My drivers door still has a rusting dent in it. I will manage to repair all of this over the next 10 years. Most of my interior is stripped out until I get the bodywork finished.

So that's Phantom's progress so far, it's been pretty slow. I've done hundreds of hours of research to get up to speed on everything. Planning on a new job soon so I can speed things up.

Shooting for a Beast7 setup and a maintenance overhaul next.

Hit up the graveyard on the 24th and picked up a new window crank assembly to get my passenger door card back on, and a new glove box handle assembly. Feels good.