looks like someone was living that stance life. These cars seem to go into negative camber on the back pretty easily when you start lowering them. My buddy's 89 SI had extreme rear camber after swapping coilovers before it was aligned, and still had to dial some negative camber in to minimize tire rub.
In reply to minivan_racer:
It's hard to get a picture but the rails under the floor pan are ground flat. This thing was stupid low.
I looked around for extra parts
For interior stuff all I have left is the coin tray, center vents with clock, unbroken HVAC controls and the center console piece around the shifter and e-brake.
For underhood, I have a near new OBD0 distributor with near new plug wires, along with a used one, a complete 89si MPFI engine wiring harness with the correct injectors (no resistor box). The only ECU I still have is a VTEC conversion one wire Zdyne.
In reply to Sonic:
I may be interested in that distributor.
Got my tires and found E-brake cables along with a unbroken glove box. It's from a 90 and it looks like they changed the latch mechanism from the earlier car. I grabbed the latch and tested that it would swap over on one at the yard. Everything lines up so I'm good to go I think.
That lack of rust is amazing. The Florida truck I'm working on is world's better than what can be found in Ohio, but it looks like a rustbucket compared to your Civic.
Great project. You are lucky to find any parts at the junkyards, those cars long disappeared over here.
The yard had three of the correct generation Integra. The first two had full interiors and complete drive trains. The third was a gutted shell with no interior and the brakes were gone as well, but it did have the cables still in place. I took the easy way out and grabbed those as the yard was a muddy mess. I went back to one of the others and grabbed the clips that hold the cable to the brackets behind the rotors and the clevis pins and cotter pins for the attachment points.
Both sets of cable side by side.
The yard also had three of the correct generation Civic. Two sedans and a Wagon. While cool as all hell, the wagon was useless for parts. The first one I got to was a '90, the interior was pretty mint and I grabbed the glove box out of it. I then got to an '88 and noticed the glove boxes where a different design. The '90 was more contoured where as the '88 was flat like mine. The '88 was red and pretty disgusting in the interior. I decided to see if the glove box would fit. Dimensionally they were identical at the mounting points and it physically fit in the hole. However it used a different latch and had a damper which slowed the opening of the glove box. I went back to the '90 and grabbed the latch then swapped everything over to the '88 to make sure that it would fit my car. Everything looked good so I went ahead and grabbed it. I would have to drill a couple holes in the metal bracket behind the glove box for the damper to attach to. Turned out nicely. Feels much higher quality than the original. The hinges are metal instead of plastic and the damper and felt lining make a huge difference in perception of quality.
Old and new glove boxes side by side.
Different latch designs.
Glove box damper.
Holes drilled. (Yes the drill bit went through the HVAC box, but I bodged it with RTV. Couldn't find my black RTV so I used red.)
All cleaned up and installed.
I couldn't find a rear sway bar on any of the civics. I also realized my LCAs did not have the bosses to accept a sway bar. That stuff is for later anyway. I did grab the glove box but it was only six bucks. The main point was the E-brake cables.
I also got my new rear tires mounted and balanced. They are black and round and will pass inspection.
Once home I finished removing my old cables and installed the new ones. Pretty straight forward. I did have to loosen the fuel tank and move it a little to have enough access to reinstall one bolt for the new cables. While on the inside I decided to go ahead and clean up the gazillion stereo wires that were ran everywhere under the carpet. I also removed that excruciatingly terrible stereo. To do that I had to remove the seats as the wires were pinched under the seat tracks. With the seats out I gave it a quick vacuuming.
Crappy stereo and mess of wires removed.
Before and after a quick vacuuming of the carpet.
I also gave the seat a quick vacuum before reinstalling them. They will have to come back out again because they are missing two bolts each where they attach to the sliders. I didn't have time to mess with them tonight.
With the E-brake and tires addressed all that's left prior to inspection is removing the tint on the front windows. I'll tend to that tomorrow.
I found some nuts to fit the wink mirror and tightened everything down. Took it for a spin around the block and it's still a rattly bitch. I may go back and grab the rearview and sun visors out of the '90 and remove it. Also lot's of rattles from the rear and the passenger door. I'll be tracking those down in the next couple of days.
Also my car does not have the 40 40 proportioning valve. I'll address that later on as well.
Got the tint removed this morning. I watched a video where the guy sprayed the tint with something containing ammonia, covered it with a black trash bag and let it sit in the sun for a while. When he peeled the tint it left no adhesive residue behind. Decided to give that a try, only it was 60 and we were having continous 40pmh winds, So I decided to use my heat gun from the outside to heat the window up.
What I didn't realize was there was actually two layers of tint on the windows. I think that may have been the reason why the adhesive residue remained behind. That came off easily enough keeping the window soaked with Windex and using a razor blade.
Trash bag, and heat gun for about 15-20 minutes.
Two layers of tint.
Clean clear windows.
Nice tip on the tint.. I am not a fan of it either
In reply to Billy_Bottle_Caps:
That guy made it look easy. I still had a lot of residue to clean off. But like I said it had two layers on it.
I spent the rest of the day chasing rattles. The little panel that goes between the tail lights on the hatch was only held on with two nuts. It was making a lot of noise. Temporarily I stuck some Velcro in there until I can locate some clips. That quitted things down a ton. The passenger door has a bunch of racket coming from it too, I'll address it when I pull it apart to replace the window regulator.
It made a yuge difference riding around the neighborhood.
Nice car. For the rear sway bar i dont even think the SI came with sway bars. If i remember correctly, the lower arms from an 90-93 integra will swap along with the sway bar.
In reply to physician:
I'll have to look into that. I think I read the Integra arms are a little longer and it messes with the toe. I'll also have to fab some mounts on the chassis.
Yes the Si models had a rear sway, I have one. You can use one from any 88-91 Civic (only Si had it stock) or any 90-93 Integra though the brackets are different, you need the Civic brackets. I'm actually about to take my stock bar off to replace it with this:
https://www.amazon.com/ST-Suspension-51140-Anti-Sway-Honda/dp/B000AUSW6O
The lower control arms are all identical dimensions for all integral from 90-01, Civics from 88-00. The bushings can be different thicknesses, but that's it. I'm running some aftermarket LCAs meant for a 92-95 hatch on my 89.
I guess my question is does the car not work at all without a rear sway? I haven't really driven it aggressively yet but it's very flat going around bends in the road.
It works well enough, if you get enough spring under the back end, but it will never work as well as with the rear sway bar, it really makes a difference in getting rid of the inherent understeer. Getting these to handle on track has been well figured out by mow and a 22mm rear sway bar is a big part of getting these to rotate.
In reply to Sonic:
The one you linked to apparently comes with mounts. I may just go that route when I get there.
Still thinking about how I want to set up the suspension. With these short springs on it at it's current ride height the coil overs are adjusted almost to the top of the sleeve. I'm thinking of getting longer springs and possibly the taller top hats to gain some shock travel.
You can fit any 2.5" ID spring on those perches. I have 7s now but will be moving to 6's to get the rate I want on closeout from Speedway, and my car is track only and very low, you want to be higher for rallycross. Extended top hats are nice to get you more travel, but you might not want that for rallycross as you lose droop travel and ground clearance. I made my own extended top hats by cutting up stock hats and welding in a piece of exhaust tubing that was the right size, they are holding up well after 5 years of endurance racing, about 18k race miles.
I'm leaning towards Koni Sports but have read that they are 1/2" shorter than other shocks. I hadn't thought about the extended top hats limiting droop but now that I think about that it would. And with the shorter shocks it would be somewhere around a full inch less droop travel.
I've got a long way to go until I'm playing with suspension though.
The droop travel vs. bump travel thing is going to depend almost entirely on what your rallyX venue is like and how the suspension preload is- if you can be at the ride height you want without much preload on the springs you may actually be just fine trading some droop for bump, especially if the courses you run on don't get choppy.
I ran Koni sports on a relatively low car ('91 MR2) for rallycross and they were excellent on smooth courses. For rough stuff I'd say run Bilstein HDs or something cheap with really good bumpstops. Actually, I'd run big progressive foam bumpstops no matter what, typically the junkyards don't charge for them anyway.
In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:
I'll have to defer to mazdeuces experience on the venue. From the several years old videos I've seen it looks hard packed and fast.
In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:
In that case I'm going to bet that you can take your autocross setup w/ Konis (as long as the ride height is stockish), disconnect the front sway bar, and be just fine.
Great car!
RE motor mounts, I wasn't sure on my car either, so I recorded video with the phone propped up on the fender and went in and loaded the clutch against the brakes in both directions, then checked the video to see if the enginew as rocking too much.
Not very scientific, but it helped me confirm that my motor mounts were still mounting my motor.
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