Another RT4WD project
t9wagon
New Wagonist
Been lurking around the site for awhile and finally decided to start a thread on all my wagons now that some things are coming together. I am in high school and lost my license, so between work and school I have been staying busy dismantling the wagons and trying to keep track of everything.
So I've got my hands full with two 1990 civic wagons; one 2wd and one rt. The 2wd I bought first and is brown with 260k on the clock
Came complete with 50$ ebay coilovers and completely blown shock struts. Scraping mud flaps all around town.
Without the need to drive I decided to try and rebuild the engine to keep myself interested in cars and to learn something from this inconvenient experience. Besides the valves being loud it was running well so this is being done educational purposes.
Here is my first pull getting a little sideways
Flywheel bolt that somebody stripped and didnt replace. I then tried drilling it out and tapping in a black and decker carbide easy out, which of course snapped. Doh!
After lots of hacking and sawing I got the flywheel off, and then the rest of the disassembly went fairly smooth. Never worked on cars before and havent had any help outside of dseries, hondatech, and this place. Much respect to RTINTRAC for the FSM, lol I really need to just buy one.
So the z6 the seller told me he put in turned out to be a SOHC zc non vtec, I believe. Its stamped zc and is a single cam, and also has the IM shaft holes tapped. Ive read this is the case only for non vtec zc blocks but my head is vtec so either the vtec zcs have the holes tapped or the head was swapped.
Heres some my block after being hot tanked and honed
Crankshaft and new king bearings on the main cap for the zc:
New gasket and oilpan, and the 2wd oil pickup put into the a6
At this point I bought a blue rt with 180,999 miles, single owner, completely stock rust free wagon. It has a brand new clutch and flywheel and drives well
So much wheel gap!
Besides worn carpet and usual driver seat tear the interior is mint!
Shifting into 3rd and downshifting into 1st grinds slightly which makes me unhappy. The first thing I did when I got home was check the tranny fluid which was very low. It was also caramel colored and fairly thin feeling, so Im wondering if it could be engine oil or is their any other tranny fluid that could be mistaken for engine oil?
I was very excited to come across a completely stock RT that hasnt been abused in good condition. The paint is faded but as long as the transmission is in ok shape I couldnt be more pleased. Took a good chunk out of my savings but Ill be keeping it around for awhile.
Other than that Im just trying to get the wagons running. The 2wd has been sitting for 6 months and is looking sad.
Here are some current pics of both the 2wd and 4wd.
a6 out of the RT
And into the 2wd
My plans for the cars are
-get the a6 running in the 2wd
-sell that bitch
-finish rebuilding the zc with npr rings and pistons, king bearings, and all new gaskets
-not spin a rod on startup
-2.5 in straight pipe, catless
- 1-2 in drop, not looking to put it on coilovers so I need to figure out what im going to do for an even setup
Will do my best to stay up to date. Thanks
So I've got my hands full with two 1990 civic wagons; one 2wd and one rt. The 2wd I bought first and is brown with 260k on the clock
Came complete with 50$ ebay coilovers and completely blown shock struts. Scraping mud flaps all around town.
Without the need to drive I decided to try and rebuild the engine to keep myself interested in cars and to learn something from this inconvenient experience. Besides the valves being loud it was running well so this is being done educational purposes.
Here is my first pull getting a little sideways
Flywheel bolt that somebody stripped and didnt replace. I then tried drilling it out and tapping in a black and decker carbide easy out, which of course snapped. Doh!
After lots of hacking and sawing I got the flywheel off, and then the rest of the disassembly went fairly smooth. Never worked on cars before and havent had any help outside of dseries, hondatech, and this place. Much respect to RTINTRAC for the FSM, lol I really need to just buy one.
So the z6 the seller told me he put in turned out to be a SOHC zc non vtec, I believe. Its stamped zc and is a single cam, and also has the IM shaft holes tapped. Ive read this is the case only for non vtec zc blocks but my head is vtec so either the vtec zcs have the holes tapped or the head was swapped.
Heres some my block after being hot tanked and honed
Crankshaft and new king bearings on the main cap for the zc:
New gasket and oilpan, and the 2wd oil pickup put into the a6
At this point I bought a blue rt with 180,999 miles, single owner, completely stock rust free wagon. It has a brand new clutch and flywheel and drives well
So much wheel gap!
Besides worn carpet and usual driver seat tear the interior is mint!
Shifting into 3rd and downshifting into 1st grinds slightly which makes me unhappy. The first thing I did when I got home was check the tranny fluid which was very low. It was also caramel colored and fairly thin feeling, so Im wondering if it could be engine oil or is their any other tranny fluid that could be mistaken for engine oil?
I was very excited to come across a completely stock RT that hasnt been abused in good condition. The paint is faded but as long as the transmission is in ok shape I couldnt be more pleased. Took a good chunk out of my savings but Ill be keeping it around for awhile.
Other than that Im just trying to get the wagons running. The 2wd has been sitting for 6 months and is looking sad.
Here are some current pics of both the 2wd and 4wd.
a6 out of the RT
And into the 2wd
My plans for the cars are
-get the a6 running in the 2wd
-sell that bitch
-finish rebuilding the zc with npr rings and pistons, king bearings, and all new gaskets
-not spin a rod on startup
-2.5 in straight pipe, catless
- 1-2 in drop, not looking to put it on coilovers so I need to figure out what im going to do for an even setup
Will do my best to stay up to date. Thanks
Comments
Thankfully the previous owner converted to obd1 with a rywire harness and a p28 ecu. So I'll be unconverting the converted 2wd back to obd0 and will use the pm6 from the rt.
Will update with some more pics when she's back on the roads
With any luck I'll have a resistor box soldered in for my injectors and have the car running this week. I don't have any experience wiring so it could take longer. Well see how lucky I get
Flickr is a bit of a pain in the ass. You don't need to attach the images, you just need to use the right reference from Flickr. In your case you'd "Share" the image, select BBcode, and set the image size you want. Preferably the largest image size.
Doing so you get something like this:
You can delete the extra crap out as needed. Basically the second line of code that you'll see in there is pointless.
Anyways because of the converted obd1 injector harness being different I think I am going to cut all the injector wiring from the obd1 engine harness and use my obd1 injectors in the a6. The obd1 side has 13 wires running to the ecu but the obd0 side only has 7 or 8. Is this because the injectors are wired to the resistor box and dont go straight through to the ecu? If thats the case I think Ill just use the obd0 injectors and wire in the resistor box. Obviously i need to do more research
Ive been steadily building the ZC vtec engine that will be going into my rt4wd.
My original plan was to rebuild the bottom end, and resurface the head and put in new valve stem seals. This is my first time building an engine so Ive been trying to make it as cheap/stock as possible. I ended up having my machine shop hot tank the head, new stem seals, all new exhaust valve guides, and 3 angle valve job.
It wasnt cheap but if I get this engine running right it will be well worth it!
Ive made a lot of progress building the engine, the short block is fully built :encouragement:
Im moving out of my parents house at the end of the month to go to school in Reno, so I have less than a month to get the car running and break the engine in. Didnt take too many pics of the build, its nothing you guys havent seen before but here ya go
Crank sitting on the block
Pistons with fresh rings in place. I was surprised at how much friction was held between the rings and the cylinder wall! The rings hold the weight of the piston and rod easily
Minty fresh head from the machine shop. They snapped off my ECT sensor, and then charged me 15$ to drill it out! My fault for leaving it in the head but damn.
Heres the shortblock fully built, got my head torqued down on a MLS gasket, mechanical timing set, and valves adjusted. I didnt use any copper spray on the head and block mating surfaces because both were freshly surfaced, so Im hoping I wont encounter any leaks down the road.
Timing belt side
Instead of removing the crank pulley, the previous owner decided hacking through the tbelt cover to get at the mount bracket was a better idea. These are the types of things people dont mention on craigslist. lol
To remove the flywheel I had to cut the head off of a stripped bolt. So now Im waiting for a new bolt from the honda dealer. The single bolt was 20$ shipped
Not looking forward to the obd1 conversion I face installing the engine, but this time Im going to do all the wiring with the engine out of the bay so it shouldnt be as painful. And I have a rywire harness so that will help much of the headache.
Once Im up in Reno ill be working out the cosmetic issues, suspension, and exhaust. Will have more updates soon
That's exactly how I ended up doing it. The engine isn't sitting on the frame rail in that picture way up, I dropped it down on to some wood blocks on the ground to adjust the chain to angle the engine up and out. The FSM also shows a diagram of the engine nearly vertical being pulled out from the top
And I'm going to try to avoid using the head to hoist the engine in on this engine, I'd rather not put that stress on the head bolts. Should find a good place on the block
Blew the HG on first warm up so I pulled the head and replaced it. Got the engine running again and have since put 1000 miles on it! Put 250 miles on it in socal before making the 500 mile trip up to reno. Averaged 34 mpg! Even with making 4th and 5th gear pulls trying to break the engine in. From what Ive heard thats not bad at all for a rt4wd.
Stage 2 clutch and flywheel
And the first drive I took it on, over looking Mt. High
Im throwing code 8 and 14 (tdc and iacv) I have traced both sensors back to the ecu, the tdc sensor shows 450 ohms at the ecu which is in spec, and the iacv clicks when I jump the terminals. The engine doesnt like to idle cold though, so I have a feeling that the iacv is stuck closed. I notice no performance issues other than stalling cold so im just living with it for now. Updates soon to come.