Gandalf - My '91 Wagon
HeadBanger
Band Wagon
I purchased this car in May 2012. I've since done a thing or two to it. Here are some words and photos for your enjoyment 
Background
I bought the car from a guy who is now a friend in Ottawa.
The car has a CRX HF swap.
EG suspension on Neuspeed lowering springs
Custom roofrack - AKA scrap yard Ford Explorer salvage (lol it works)
The car went on a 15,000km road trip across the USA.
With sometimes 4 guys and fully loaded, this is the general trajectory of the trip: Ottawa - Key West, Florida - Las Vegas - Los Angeles - Tijuana, Mexico - Key West again - Boston - Ottawa
Miami
Vegas
New Mexico
Long Beach California
My Acquisition
Here are some photos the day after I picked it up.
Gandalf's first Montreal meet
Here's the engine bay. It's a little messy but it's got custom wiring and it works great. Notice how small the intake pipe is from the HF set up.
Came out of my friend's apartment to find a fellow wagon parked beside me
Work/Mods
The first thing I did to Gandalf was make my own JDM style front plate bracket. This was initially just a prototype to get measurements from, but I never got around to making a final one. It's on my to-do list for 2014 lol
At this point I've had the car for about a week and it needs a cleaning badly. 3 Months of being in the southern states made the interior full of dirt, sand, and nasty sweat.
A quick vacuum job obviously wouldn't do the trick, so I went over to my friend Joey's place to have him work some of his magic. Joey is one of the best - If not the best - detailer in Montreal. If you're in the Montreal area give him a shout and tell him Corey sent you
http://www.eleganceautodetailing.com/
We broke out the extractor which is a vacuum that sprays a cleaning solution and then sucks everything up.
Here's a 50/50 of the rear seat
After shot of the carpet
Seats before
Seats after
Now I don't want anybody to think the previous owner was a slob. But when you're on a four month road trip having a blast you might overlook cleaning a bit.
To give you an idea of how bad it was, this is bucket number three of what was picked up.
We could have kept going but decided it was good enough. Also, we ran out of solution lol
I'm really anal about having a clean and clear windshield. Part of that is having good wipers. Seeing the wiper arms with the paint chips was driving me nuts, so I gave them a paint job.
My security system. Anakin and in the background is Carl. Carl is actually a cat toy, don't ask.
It was time to get rid of the sticker-bombed wink mirror
Enter the moustaches
That's it for part one. This is a lot more time consuming than I thought lol.
In the words of the T-800, I'll be back.
Background
I bought the car from a guy who is now a friend in Ottawa.
The car has a CRX HF swap.
EG suspension on Neuspeed lowering springs
Custom roofrack - AKA scrap yard Ford Explorer salvage (lol it works)
The car went on a 15,000km road trip across the USA.
With sometimes 4 guys and fully loaded, this is the general trajectory of the trip: Ottawa - Key West, Florida - Las Vegas - Los Angeles - Tijuana, Mexico - Key West again - Boston - Ottawa
Miami
Vegas
New Mexico
Long Beach California
My Acquisition
Here are some photos the day after I picked it up.
Gandalf's first Montreal meet
Here's the engine bay. It's a little messy but it's got custom wiring and it works great. Notice how small the intake pipe is from the HF set up.
Came out of my friend's apartment to find a fellow wagon parked beside me
Work/Mods
The first thing I did to Gandalf was make my own JDM style front plate bracket. This was initially just a prototype to get measurements from, but I never got around to making a final one. It's on my to-do list for 2014 lol
At this point I've had the car for about a week and it needs a cleaning badly. 3 Months of being in the southern states made the interior full of dirt, sand, and nasty sweat.
A quick vacuum job obviously wouldn't do the trick, so I went over to my friend Joey's place to have him work some of his magic. Joey is one of the best - If not the best - detailer in Montreal. If you're in the Montreal area give him a shout and tell him Corey sent you
http://www.eleganceautodetailing.com/
We broke out the extractor which is a vacuum that sprays a cleaning solution and then sucks everything up.
Here's a 50/50 of the rear seat
After shot of the carpet
Seats before
Seats after
Now I don't want anybody to think the previous owner was a slob. But when you're on a four month road trip having a blast you might overlook cleaning a bit.
To give you an idea of how bad it was, this is bucket number three of what was picked up.
We could have kept going but decided it was good enough. Also, we ran out of solution lol
I'm really anal about having a clean and clear windshield. Part of that is having good wipers. Seeing the wiper arms with the paint chips was driving me nuts, so I gave them a paint job.
My security system. Anakin and in the background is Carl. Carl is actually a cat toy, don't ask.
It was time to get rid of the sticker-bombed wink mirror
Enter the moustaches
That's it for part one. This is a lot more time consuming than I thought lol.
In the words of the T-800, I'll be back.
Comments
Keep the updates coming
Ergonomically I find the car is great. Everything you need is very easily accessible. The only thing I personally didn't like was the shifter. The wagon is the type of car where you're sitting higher up, as opposed to sitting in it like a sports car. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm short and my arms aren't long, but it was as though when in 1st, 3rd, and 5th gears I needed to reach for the shifter. It's not the end of the world but it bothered me, and I like to be different.
So I did this with a friend.
Custom shifter extension
The only other thing that really bothered me was the steering wheel. It was huge. I don't have power steering so the bigger wheel was kinda nice at low speeds, but I couldn't get in or out of the car without hitting the wheel since I'm not exactly skinny. I had this old Momo wheel that was given to me by a buddy when he changed wheels in his Skyline. I guess I added some EDM-JDMness to the car this way. All I know is I'd have a smaller diameter wheel, and feel even more like a racecar driver with my three spoke wheel and 20 year old leather.
I wasn't so sure how the new wheel would be for getting in and out of the car. As a result I ordered the eBay special hub kit, as well as a quick release adapter.
Let's just say I now have a two-piece paperweight lol. I highly suggest saving your $10 + shipping and not buying the eBay quick release. I must have reduced my life span by 6-7 hours due to all the frustration of trying to make it work.
At this time I was also looking for wheels since the 13" rusty steelies just weren't cutting it anymore.
I wanted something old school or at least period correct. It seemed everything I found was either the wrong bolt pattern or a really bad offset for a Civic. I finally settled on some 15" Rota Slipstreams.
Yes, I know. Rotas. But the car is a DD and the price was right.
One thing that was really bad about Gandalf was the cargo area. The carpet was full of oil/grease/whothehellknowswhat stains and there was so much sand we couldn't remove it all with the extractor. Being the kind of guy who can appreciate all kinds of cars I drew inspiration from the VW community.
Wood flooring
I used the carpet as my template. I guess 20 years of putting stuff in the back really warped the carpet and I struggled a lot fitting the wood in properly. Partly due to the fact of not having all the right wood working tools. I finally finished about 4 hours later than I had anticipated, but most of the time I was just using a hand saw to cut the wood lol
I got fed up and went and borrowed a jigsaw to get it done.
As you can see it's kinda crappy. Actually it's what you might call "broken" now due to putting something kinda heavy in the back, which you'll see later.
For the rest of the summer I more or less was just living life, enjoying the car as much as I could, and making use of the convenience of a wagon
Which of these things is not like the other?
In some good company at my friend's shop. 400+whp CRX, GSR EF sedan, Ottawa's first turbo BRZ, and a Civic with some sort of engine swap lol
The wagon really brings out the best in my friends and I.
P.S. Don't leave your fancy camera unattended around me
I can take some pretty decent photos too though
Next update might need to wait until spring so I can get into my shed to take some pics of certain things. Unless I get motivated to shovel lol
Cleaning out the seats really is a dirty job but worth every drop of sweat if you see how much dirt/fartdust and other shit is coming out of them and how they look afterwards.
And the shifter thing, I'm 190cm and I had to reach to 1st 3th and 5th too, the shift extender makes it feel like easy truckin'.
It's slower than cold honey and it's very hard on gas due to the gearing and speeds I drive at
Here's a little tease
Had to do some shovelling since I blew my rad and had the DA rad sitting around for my swap.
DA rad into an EF (well EE anyways) write up - This is meant to be humorous:
Tools needed:
10mm socket or wrench if you have too much time on your hands
Ratchet/drill/impact
Drain pan for the coolant which will fall out - We didn't have a pan handy so we yelled YOLO as the coolant fell on the shop floor
Pliers or flat head screwdriver/socket for the rad hose clamps
Lots of muscles - trust me, you'll need them
Heat gun
Certified Mechanic to do a good chunk of the work for you - I used my friend whom is a Mazda tech
OEM Mazda tow hook - MUST BE A MAZDA TOW HOOK
Parts needed:
Rad hose clamps - The screw kind because the stock clamp ones will be too small for the larger DA rad fittings
Steps
1- Remove coolant in rad. Mine had none so I got to skip this step
2- Disconnect fan by un-clipping the clip
3- Disconnect rad hoses and yell YOLO as the coolant falls on the ground, or into your pan (YOLO yelling not necessary, but may help with the frustration of your screwed up rad)
4- Remove your coolant reservoir cap (or disconnect the hose from rad first, your choice. I don't care how you do it)
5- Use your 10mm to remove the rad support brackets
6- Not so carefully remove your old broken rad and throw it on the ground. Be careful not to damage your fan if you don't already have one on your DA rad. I did, so I yelled YOLO and tossed it.
7- Lay the DA rad down on the ground with the inlet and outlet facing up.
8- Remove one of your rad hoses from the engine, remember how it should be angled
9- Use all your muscles and force the rad hose onto the rad.
10 -LOL jokes on you because it doesn't fit at all.
11- Take your heat gun and heat up the end of your hose a bit. You can insert something in the end to stretch it a bit if you like - no, not your penis. It's too small anyways
12- With your warmed up rad hose force the sucker onto the rad. It should fit after screwing around with it a bit. This is where laying it down on the ground helps. Trust me. We tried for 20 minutes to do it with the rad hoses attached to the motor.
13- Take your other rad hose and do the same process.
14- At this point you can put your clamps onto the rad hoses
15- If your rad doesn't have a fan, you should probably put one on now
16- Gently (or not so gently, I don't care) lower your rad back into the car putting your lower rad hose in the general region where it lives.
17- Put your hoses back onto the motor and clamp em up real good
18- Plug fan in if you have one
19- Put coolant reservoir hose onto rad if it doesn't already have one. Mine had one but the hose was cracked. Let me tell you, those little clamps on the hose are a pain in your mechanic's ass. Your job here is to provide moral support to your mechanic since you were too dumb to do it yourself.
20- Fill rad with desired fluid. We chose Red Bull to give the car wings.
21- Start car and let run for a few minutes with the rad cap off to let air in the system bubble out.
22- Once you're content with bubbling add your desired fluid into your reservoir if you don't have enough in it.
23- Cap reservoir.
24- Hi-5 your mechanic with your filthy hands - or gloves if you're a little pussy.
25- Close hood and drive off into the sunset.
26- TOO SOON JUNIOR! If you have the same rad as me (stock DA rad I pulled from a junkyard) your hood will no longer close.
27- Spend the next 10-15 minutes trying to figure out why it wont close, or just red my next point.
28- Your rad is too big to close your hood - see photo below.
If you look on the right side of the rad beside the upper rad hose you'll notice a rectanglar thingy majigger of sorts. BTW sorry for the crappy small photo, but it's way too cold for me to go take one right now. This rectangular thingy majigger of sorts is the cause of your problem!
30- Now, Take your OEM Mazda tow hook and start bashing your hood where it comes into contact with the rectangular thingy majigger of sorts (RTM from now on).
31- Close the hood.
32- If it does not latch, keep beating the hood with your OEM Mazda tow hook where it comes into contact with the RTM.
33- Close hood.
34- If the RTM is still coming into contact with the hood you can keep beating the hood with your OEM Mazda tow hook, beat it with a hammer, or use any tool your little heart desires to cut a hole into the hood so that you can close it. Hopefully by now your car hasn't overheated or run out of gas.
35- Try and figure out why there's no step 29
36- If your car is overheating repeat steps 1 through 25 with new radiator and/or fan
37- Have your mechanic clean up the mess of coolant on the ground as you pull your car out of the garage.
38- Hi-5 your mechanic again
39- Go eat supper since it's now nearly 7pm
40- if you've read all this before attempting the work take some photos of you guys having a hard time. I didn't because my hands were dirty since I'm not a glove wearing pussy.
41- Let me know if this write up was helpful, or at least gave you a small chuckle.
Once it warms up I'll take out the grinder or dremel out and make a hole. It's just on the reinforcement part of the hood so it's not bad. Maybe about a 1.5" x 3" rectangle. Honestly when the hood didn't close I felt like giving up on the car. Luckily it's nothing major though and was "fixed" quickly. I wouldn't set out to do this mod on purpose, but if ever I was in the same situation where there was a DA rad laying around or was the only thing quickly available I'd gladly help somebody out.
I wish! IT's the previous owner who did all the travelling.
Currently no budget for EDM/JDM tails, so I figured I'd go all red.
Before I get any comments about it my reverse lights don't work anyways.
The lighting's not the best and they're just iPhone pics, sorry.
At this point we're at 4 coats of red. You can't tell much in the photos, but I found there was too much amber and white coming through, so I added a thin coat of black.
HUGE mistake. Now I find they're too dark. This is a thin coat of black with another coat of red on top.
I'll see tomorrow what they look like outside back on the car, but I think I need to re-do them. There's tons of over spray and dust in them anyways and as a former painter this really bothers me and I'd likely do it again regardless.
I was wondering what you guys thought?
It almost looks the same as the front, which I also have no idea what it comes from. I think I saw on somebody else's build that they had the same lip (looked close at least) and they said it was from a DA.
Judging by this photo they seem rather similar
IMO too dark. I'm not a big fan of dark tinted tails, however I do think it kind of works with the license plate surround. The issue is I don't think the lights are visible enough. Going to restart next weekend and do the job properly - and stay red lol.