Fej's RT4WD Wagon
Fej
Wagonist
I bought my '89 wagon a couple of weeks ago. Been posting some stuff on the forums, figured I should consolidate in one place. The wagon is stock, exterior is in pretty decent shape, paint was pretty faded, interior is decent, few little rust bubbles and a couple minor dents.
Had to replace the VC gaskets, plugs and plug wires. When I got the valve cover off the spark plug well gaskets were as hard as a rock. Might have had something to do with the Texas sized oil reserves in the spark plug wells
So far I'm absolutely in love with the car, runs like a champ.
Picture time...
After washing, buffing and waxing.
Naturally I wasn't paying attention while I was buffing and got rubbing compound on the trim in quite a few places. Have a can of trim paint, probably fix that right up.
Took my wagon out to the local off road park the other week and had some fun with it. Nothing to crazy, didn't really feel like hammering on it too hard. Did fine in the sand, made it all the way out to the beach with no problems. Only got stuck once, tried to turn around on the beach and lost momentum.
I prefer my rolling shots on the beach.
Wagon pwning the rubicon trail :roll:
Video: http://s961.photobucket.com/albums/ae94/FejB/?action=view¤t=100_0942.flv
Started to get bogged down a little in the sand in the video. Probably would've been better off in SL gear.
Sent a set of GSR Blades to the powder coater awhile back.
Color in the picture isn't quite right. In person they are somewhere in between gunmetal grey and a dark bronze.
Got the tires mounted and put them on the car.
Also, gave it some autocross "love" last weekend.
Word to the wise, the cable shifter in the RT wagons isn't the best set up for autocross
FedEx came by yesterday to drop of some presents for the wagon. I was as excited as a little kid on Christmas when I saw the truck pull up.
Before FedEx:
After FedEx & a little work:
Next project:
All purchased from Marc_EE9 last week. Got them shipped hella fast. I bought them on friday, he shipped them on monday & and they showed up this afternoon.
Got the transfer of title taken care of in purgator-, i mean the DMV, only paid $24
Also, I ordered a little something-something for the wagon while I was there...
Ordered a oem timing belt, timing belt tensioner, water pump, thermostat, couple of key blanks. Need to order a new center main bearing for the driveshaft and some bushings for the rear diff mounts.
Had to replace the VC gaskets, plugs and plug wires. When I got the valve cover off the spark plug well gaskets were as hard as a rock. Might have had something to do with the Texas sized oil reserves in the spark plug wells
So far I'm absolutely in love with the car, runs like a champ.
Picture time...
After washing, buffing and waxing.
Naturally I wasn't paying attention while I was buffing and got rubbing compound on the trim in quite a few places. Have a can of trim paint, probably fix that right up.
Took my wagon out to the local off road park the other week and had some fun with it. Nothing to crazy, didn't really feel like hammering on it too hard. Did fine in the sand, made it all the way out to the beach with no problems. Only got stuck once, tried to turn around on the beach and lost momentum.
I prefer my rolling shots on the beach.
Wagon pwning the rubicon trail :roll:
Video: http://s961.photobucket.com/albums/ae94/FejB/?action=view¤t=100_0942.flv
Started to get bogged down a little in the sand in the video. Probably would've been better off in SL gear.
Sent a set of GSR Blades to the powder coater awhile back.
Color in the picture isn't quite right. In person they are somewhere in between gunmetal grey and a dark bronze.
Got the tires mounted and put them on the car.
Also, gave it some autocross "love" last weekend.
Word to the wise, the cable shifter in the RT wagons isn't the best set up for autocross
FedEx came by yesterday to drop of some presents for the wagon. I was as excited as a little kid on Christmas when I saw the truck pull up.
Before FedEx:
After FedEx & a little work:
Next project:
All purchased from Marc_EE9 last week. Got them shipped hella fast. I bought them on friday, he shipped them on monday & and they showed up this afternoon.
Got the transfer of title taken care of in purgator-, i mean the DMV, only paid $24
Also, I ordered a little something-something for the wagon while I was there...
Ordered a oem timing belt, timing belt tensioner, water pump, thermostat, couple of key blanks. Need to order a new center main bearing for the driveshaft and some bushings for the rear diff mounts.
Comments
Spent the last couple nights working on swapping a CRX seat into the wagon. Seat pan swap was a bust, I ended up doing some minor modifications to the rails to get the wagon rails to bolt up to the CRX seats. Just a hair too narrow to bolt up all 4 to the car. Inside rail is bolted in, got the front outside bolt to bolt up but the seat doesn't like to slide. Gonna leave it like that till I get access to my friends welder to fab something up to get the rear bolt to fit, and get the seat level.
Stoked about the seat. SOOOOOOOOOO much more comfortable than the wagon seat, and it keeps me planted in the twisties 8)
so im waiting until i can bring it into the shop and just mig up some plates to allow it to bolt up more proper..still dont know what im going to do about the auto belts..might just zip the bolt location bracket to the side of the seat somewhere.
Have you seen this thread viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10842 ?
The Carnage:
Stopped driving it for awhile, got my hands on a cross member and have been driving it the last couple months without a muffler. I picked up a muffler awhile back and just finally got it welded and bolted on today. Also played around with the exhaust manifold heat shield and removed the other heat shields to get rid of some annoying rattles.
And today I ordered
Timing Belt
Timing Belt Tensioner
Timing Belt Tensioner Spring
Air Conditioner Belt
Power Steering Belt
Alternator Belt
2 Driveshaft Carrier Bearings
Rear Differential Bushing
Upper Radiator Hose
PCV Valve
Distributor Cap
Distributor Rotor
Oil Filter
Air Filter
Fuel Filter
Water Pump
Oil
Honda MTF
Rear Differential Fluid
Energy Suspension Radius Rod Bushings
Still need to pick up some ball joints for the front suspension.
Also, I Just bought another RT wagon; '89 Gold/Tan. Damn near stole the thing. 167,000 miles, excellent paint, everything and I mean EVERTHING works, mechanically solid, 9/10 interior, drivers seat isn't torn up, etc. Only bad things is a little bit of wheel arch rust(not cancer yet) and the front passenger fender & corner light are damaged. Oh, forgot to mention the best part. $1000
Only pic I've got right now.
The ad was posted on craigslist at 10:30pm, I called her at 7:45 the next morning and was looking at it at 8:25. She put her home and cell phone numbers in the ad and while I was there both of them were ringing off the hook. She had absolutely no idea what she had. We agreed on $1000 and then discussed smogging the car, she agreed to smog it later that week. I thought about it for a couple minutes and realized that it would have been a $2000 car by then. Said fuck it and told her I'd write her a check right then and smog it myself. Car was within 7 minutes of my house and I had to run home to get my checkbook, while I was gone she got a call from a guy who had driven to a nearby supermarket and had cash with him.
I expect the cops will show up any minute now to arrest me for auto theft
Gold: 001940
Red: 001944
I'm down to one wagon now, sold the gold wagon to one of my dads tenants a few months back.
I re-registered the car yesterday and got her back on the road today. Ended up having to do a little work on it, had some issues with the dizzy cap, temperature sender, a vacuum hose, wipers were shot and I discovered that the headgasket is slightly fuckered up. Luckily I have and extra D16A6 head in excellent shape (could eat off the inside) so I dropped that off with a machinist friend to make sure its ready to swap in when I get around to it.
Then I got bored and decided to strip the disgusting blue paint and repaint the valve cover off the spare head. I used brown/bronze hammered finish paint, pictures to follow later...
Ebay or the forum. They came in the JDM Beagles, pretty rare and not cheap.
I cleaned up the wheel (kinda dirty), bought a civic hub on ebay, pulled the vw hub off so I can sell it, and started working on the shift knob.
I have all the parts to do the headgasket and replace all the worn out bushings/ball joints/etc. in the front suspension, just haven't had time to do it yet.
Luckily the axle was under warranty and my new one will be here tomorrow. In the meantime I'll start working on replacing the front upper and lower control arms, ball joints and tension rod bushing.
I also got the shift knob sanded down and refinished. I applied several coats of a satin finish polyurethane/tung oil sealer. I think it turned out pretty damn great.
The cheapo ebay hub showed up for my wheel, I shelled out a few more bucks for one with the JDM novice driver tag on the horn button since it annoyed me less than the other options. I looked into modifying the buttons and found this thread on a porsche forum http://www.spyderclub.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12905. I was plesently surprised when I opened the box and found that it came with two buttons. I then set to work on taking them apart to 'improve' them. These will do for now, I'll probably print new versions off at rite-aid since my printer sucks...
Got a couple pictures of the wheel and shift knob installed in the car. Now I just need to get my Si seats installed again :P
Fun to get dirty, but it does clean up nice
I'll be keeping an eye on you sir.
sir i will say your ciVic wagon is HELLaFUNctional....
i cant wait til i can post a picture like this of Scrappy ....!!!
Thank you good sir.
Exactly. Plus I have this so I don't really need to lower the wagon even though It'd look awesome.
Indeed it is. The way Scrappy is looking you'll be putting me to shame.
Don't be such a stranger.
I'm trying not too, school and other hobbies keep interfering... :P
For example, I was planning on finishing up the front axle and suspension stuff this afternoon. I had just started working on it and barely got the axle installed when a buddy of mine called to see if I wanted go spearfishing. I've been dying to get my new speargun wet and bloody so I jumped at the opportunity. We kayaked out to a rock I'd been wanting to dive and stopped by a crab boat to see if we could tie the boats to their mooring while they dived. They ended up paying us $20 each to dive on their prop to see if it had been fouled by rope... Sadly the visibility was only 1 to 2 feet so all we could do was pull some rock scallops.
I found some cool little strawberry anemones and the only abalone I've seen in Trindad Bay.