Rva rt
Saavedro88
Band Wagon
Well hello there folks.
Quick intro, My name is Pierce, and last night I picked up this 1989 RT AWD. The body is in pretty good shape, surprisingly. It's got a relatively new paint job (looks like a Maaco or something by all of the overspray...) and I didn't see much rust from what little I saw of it in the dark last night. It is leaking coolant like WOAH out of the water pump, so I'm going to try to take care of that this weekend. Before driving it home I didn't notice the oil filler cap wasn't screwed on, and a bunch of oil ended up coming out onto the valve cover, and now nothing is on the dipstick, hopefully that won't turn into a problem. *fingers crossed*
The car is USELESSLY low. You'd never guess it, seeing how high the side is off the ground, but the front subframe scrapes on EVERYTHING. The car bounces like a ping-pong ball over every little bump too. I was able to see that it has lower control arms and some brand of coil-overs, but didn't see much else in the dark. The tires are sitting on the inner fender liner, and it makes a terrible noise when driving.
All told though, I'm pretty pleased with it. I had an 88 hatch way back in the day, and I hated it when I had it, but have always regretted selling it. Hopefully this will fill that spot for me.
As far as a long term plan, Don't really have one. This is going to be my daily driver, so it'll probably mainly be repairs in this thread. Don't expect it to move to much, lol.
Only picture I have right now, it was dark last night, and today we are having freezing rain. I'll get some more eventually.
I do have some questions, is the suspension on this car relatively the same as the Hatch and Sedan? Could I use stock components for those cars on this one? (Obviously, besides the rear drive-line components...) And also, does anyone know how many manual tranny RT-AWD cars were made? Like actual production numbers?
Tidbit: I just thought this was cool, but the VIN on this one ends in 000007. That makes it the seventh ever made for the 89 model year, right?
Quick intro, My name is Pierce, and last night I picked up this 1989 RT AWD. The body is in pretty good shape, surprisingly. It's got a relatively new paint job (looks like a Maaco or something by all of the overspray...) and I didn't see much rust from what little I saw of it in the dark last night. It is leaking coolant like WOAH out of the water pump, so I'm going to try to take care of that this weekend. Before driving it home I didn't notice the oil filler cap wasn't screwed on, and a bunch of oil ended up coming out onto the valve cover, and now nothing is on the dipstick, hopefully that won't turn into a problem. *fingers crossed*
The car is USELESSLY low. You'd never guess it, seeing how high the side is off the ground, but the front subframe scrapes on EVERYTHING. The car bounces like a ping-pong ball over every little bump too. I was able to see that it has lower control arms and some brand of coil-overs, but didn't see much else in the dark. The tires are sitting on the inner fender liner, and it makes a terrible noise when driving.
All told though, I'm pretty pleased with it. I had an 88 hatch way back in the day, and I hated it when I had it, but have always regretted selling it. Hopefully this will fill that spot for me.
As far as a long term plan, Don't really have one. This is going to be my daily driver, so it'll probably mainly be repairs in this thread. Don't expect it to move to much, lol.
Only picture I have right now, it was dark last night, and today we are having freezing rain. I'll get some more eventually.
I do have some questions, is the suspension on this car relatively the same as the Hatch and Sedan? Could I use stock components for those cars on this one? (Obviously, besides the rear drive-line components...) And also, does anyone know how many manual tranny RT-AWD cars were made? Like actual production numbers?
Tidbit: I just thought this was cool, but the VIN on this one ends in 000007. That makes it the seventh ever made for the 89 model year, right?
Comments
no idea about the VIN.
Lifting, yes, but only as much as to not scrape over everything, not nearly as much as the wagon in your avatar image, lol.
I'll explain, the fronts are almost identical but the rears are different, not in the way one would think... see, the suspension is the same height but the spring is longer and the bottom mount on the strut is lower to give the wagons rear end more suspension travel and increase its ability to haul. You will see this if you lay the rear wagon strut and spring beside a regular sedan, hatch or crx spring and strut.
Also, you should be able to swap suspension components between honda models to a point, meaning... I had intergra front and rear struts and springs, but of course, also had to have the front forks as the civic models are too small to fit the strut, keep that in mind and even though they fit and came from a sportier car it raised the wagon, late 90s and early 2000 civic si suspension will also lift a wagon a 1/2 over stock all the while making the suspension stiffer since these are lighter cars.
I had crx front and rear suspension on the wagon for a moment in time, the front felt the same but the rear felt softer if that makes sense, it's been a while.
I also had form function one's on the wagon for a number of months then moved them to the my crx I had at the time. I think they felt better on the wagon than the crx. Just decided I didn't like my wagon lowered.
Hope this helps, nice looking wagon, enjoy.
I'm pretty sure you're right about the coil-overs. I had a chance to get it up on my rhino ramps today, and there's definitely a coil sleeve and height-adjustment collar, but the shock tops in the mounts looks very OEM.
Yeah, the paint looks great from about 20 feet. We had some sun today so I got to look it over really well... Man... It's really bad. Lol.
But thank you for the kind words!
dude, at least you got a wagon! And it's an RT!!! Good find! How much did you pay?
If it was running perfectly it might have been worth it, but I don't think it was worth it with the issues it has.
I also realized today that my tires are different sizes from front to rear. Would this have caused damage to my center diff at all? I don't exactly know how this system works, I have some experience with Subaru's and Audi Quattro, and for both of those, different size tires is a HUGE nono. The driveshaft is out of it right now, he removed it "because someone was going to come tow it." Could he have been masking some issue with it that I'll only discover when I put the driveshaft back in?
They come in 15 and 16 x 8 inches, both at +20 and +0 offsets. I'm planning to go 16 inches with whatever I buy, but 8 inches is excessively wide for a daily driver, in my mind. Anyone else running wheels this wide? At what offset? And how does it look?
#1: Fuck you, Wagovan starter.
#2: Never underestimate the value of a good jack.
I also discovered I need a couple of parts, the intake tube and a battery tie down bolt-thingy. Can I use any EF chassis intake tube or does it need to be wagon specific?