Of all the weird coincidences...while browsing UTube for videos on swapping a Civic Si engine...I Found The Car That I'm Buying On Sunday:
Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc4kLNhMjDg
Same location, model, color, paint issues, and an explanation of why it's missing the engine and trans.
The Internet is weird...
Heading home with me booty! Arrgh!
Made it home in about 6 hours. Pretty smooth for a tow dolly. Now the Donor and the Receiver are parked side by side.
The sunburnt redhead needs paint, trim, as well as an engine and trans, but it turns out the Donor has most of what I need ! The redhead's interior is coming out for some serious cleaning...it's a little nasty. The fronts will go into my autox Dx right after cleaning...the rears after the transplant.
We made some more progress unshrouding the engine from the crushed passenger fender and supports. Unfortunately the starter and AC compressor are not the only damaged parts. The mounts for the AC comp are badly smashed...all the way up into the water pump mounting bracket. I'll need to replace both. Still happy with the situation!
Here's a picture, with the remainder of the passenger side bumper mount gone and the front passenger subframe bolt removed. A little more cutting on the driver's side and removing the 
suspension and we can drop the engine and subframe out. The ECU and it's wiring will come out first though.
Went from one civic to three. Awesome. Did the red one come with parts in the trunk to replace what's broken?
In reply to OHSCrifle :
It came with a couple of items like the radiator, fans and shroud, ecu, wiring, and top of the radiator support.
I'm going to replace a number of wear items, belts, hoses, waterpunp in addition to the AC compressor and mounts and probably the alternator.
To be clear (because 3 Civics of the same year can be confusing), the red car gets the goodies from the white car (which is unrepairable), and the black Dx will eventually be sold off. Wife is annoyed at the number of cars in the driveway and the garage!
The front seats from the Redhead Si are now cleaned and installed in my Dx autocrosser. They were pretty nasty, and I think I ate a layer of skin off my hands after scrubbing the seats with upholstery cleaner for 4 hours. Wear gloves, kids!
The Redhead will get the much better condition interior from the to-be-scrapped white car, but they will need a good cleaning too.
Oddly enough...the Dx and Si seats are exactly the same except for the approx 1 inch taller bolstering and the more grippy fabric.
I ran my first autocross in the Dx with the Si seats last weekend. The Si seats are sooo much grippier! Unfortunately the car is just as slow.
My daughter co drove with me and was within a second on a 50 second course. I may need to learn to drive better!
Apparently driving the Dx harder does not make it faster. I need to increase rear tire pressure some more to get the car to rotate more, and experiment with corner entry angle and speed. Also need some 200 tread wear tires. The compromise 300 TW tires I bought are giving up to early.
Meanwhile parts are coming in for the Si-to-Si engine swap. Between projects around the house and family plans, I hope to have it running by the end of the year.
Not huge progress on either car, but some...
Redhead pulled the console and some trim so that I can get the nasty carpet out for cleaning.
The Donor (white) car has had a few more parts removed to make the engine/ trans easier to remove. I need to start removing the interior and cleaning it so it can go in the Redhead.
Unfortunately, my black DX autocrosser needs front brakes ( MC, calipers and fluid change) and it has developed a front suspension 'clunk' over big bumps, so I have a bunch of work to do on it before next weekend's autox.
Not huge progress on the project, but I did get the MC replaced on the Dx and the braking was much improved at the November Autox.
Unfortunately, the Dx has developed a 'rattle' in the front left suspension, and it really can't be driven again until I figure out what it is. It's not a wheel bearing (this time), or the ball joint, so it may be the inner tie rod.
I co-drove with my daughter again, and this time she beat my fastest time by a couple tenths of a second! The last 2 turns were 180's and they got to me. I carried too much speed through the first and was out of position for the second on almost all of my runs.
The interior is completely out of the red Si, and mostly out of the white Si. Once the smelly insides of the red car are cleaned, and the upholstery from the white car is clean, we will do a transplant.
Then the engine/trans and the rest of the usable parts will be removed from the white car and the shell will be scrapped. I have a bunch of maintenance parts to throw at the white Si engine before the swap.
The Si's are across town, but I take a long lunch a couple of times a week and get some minor things done. Slowly but surely...
I didn't get the engine swap before the end of the year, and it's either cold or wet (or both) recently, so no major progress is likely to happen for the next 30 days.
I did get the interior mostly out of the white Si, and mostly cleaned. The carpet took 2 passes with a shop vac and one pass with carpet cleaner and the garden hose before it was passable. The driver's seat needed a replacement pre-tensioner as the original fired with the air bags. The driver's seat outside bolster is also damaged with crushed foam, so I have some very firm upholstery foam on order. A quick pass with cleaning the floor of the red Si and the repair of the driver's seat and I can start reassembling the interior.
Replacement vs fired original.
Wash day.
I swapped the inner and outer tierods on both sides of the Dx, but still have a rattle in the left front suspension.
And now a more serious problem...I hit a tree lying across the road during the test drive after replacing the tierods! The road was damp and I made one pass down the road and turned around and made a second pass...and there was a tree blocking the road! I locked up and slid into it at about 5 mph. Damage was light considering the weight of the tree (I couldn't budge it), but I have a bunch of plastic to replace, and eventually the AC condenser. It could have been worse...if I had been 60 seconds faster I probably would have had a tree on me!
In the better news dept...
I have been working on cleaning and repairing the seats from the donor. The driver's seat left bolster was crushed from people getting in and out, although the covers looked OK.
I watched a bunch of UTube vids and decided I could tackle it if I could get the foam. In the end I could not find the super-dense foam that Honda used, but I ordered some extra-firm foam and it looks and feels OK. The Honda foam is so dense that it's difficult to compress with your hands. The extra firm foam is more compressible, but it still fills out the cover on the bolster. The cover is still wrinkled, but I think steaming will fix that.
Damaged bolster:
Damaged foam:
Cutting out the damaged foam:
Rough cut replacement foam:
This knife is perfect for making smooth cuts while shaping:
Then things got ugly (building the shape you need is not pretty). Cover the foam with some heavy fabric to reinforce:
When the cover fits on tight and the foam requires compression to pull the cover on you are done.
In this pic you can see that there are still wrinkles...they are in the cover not the foam and I will try to steam them out.
That pre-tensioner on the driver's side seat was fired in the donor's accident, and was replaced also.
If I had to do this again, I would probably look for a good used passenger seat and just swap the bottom foams. If the covers need swapped, that would require hog ring removal, some small amount of additional foam to be added, etc.
Honda's parts system still shows seat foams and covers (separately) for about $250 each.
And Finally...the donor engine and trans is out!
The engine compartment and subframe are a mess with all kinds of hidden damage...engine mount bolts bent, EPAS housing broken, etc.
The engine started and ran, and the transmission went through all the gears, so hopefully I'm good.
Probably a month before I do anything but minor cleanup as I need to get some more good parts off of the donor and send it away.
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