Rt4wd from Australia
JundaCoro
New Wagonist
Sup Civic Wagon!
Name's Jacob, I'm 26 and I'm a HD diesel mechanic.
Mmmmmmk, so, I purchased this humble little car out the back Perth Australia roughly 12 weeks ago now. It's a Australian delivered ee3 rt4wd wagon, only 100 were ever imported between 88-89, something like 20 are accountable for now and the twin carb was the only engine option here in Aus. Sat in a driveway for 4 years being raped by the elements, went and had a look at it, nil start, offered them $350, they said they'd call back. Didn't hear anything for like a week, started kicking myself I didn't offer more, then they called out of the blue and said I could take it. YUUSSSSSS!
Anywho picked it up, trailered it back to mine, bypassed the immobiliser, threw a battery at it, bit of brake cleaner in the intake, BOOM it started. One of the floats was sticking, dribbling fuel everywhere, couple of knocks with the hammered and it went away. Everything worked! Lights, wipers, washer jets, brakes, even the electric sunroof 8-)
Unfortunately there was an issue with the motor (probably why it was parked up originally) and plus I don't do carby motors, too young missed the boat, whatever.
Read a bunch of stuff on the internet that the d16a8 / zc swaps straight in, no mods, same mounts and the 4wd bell housing hangs off the motor no dramas. So that's all the info I needed, straight back on gummie to look for a broken down CRX, and sure enough a wretched one was on there, local for $1000.
Rung the guy (kid) said he crashed it, threw a kit on it, didn't care about any of that my only concern was the running gear and he assured me it was sound. Went and had a look and this thing was terrible, I felt so sorry for it. Engine was cranking not starting, harness had been tampered with and he wouldn't budge on the price. Said "**** it" and bought in anyway, trailered it back and got to work trying to diagnose it.
Spent FOOOORRREVVVAA trying to sus this car out, no spark no fuel, solid CEL.... checked everything! Checked fuses, every earth, relays, stuck a multimeter on just about everything and then finally discovered that ecu had no power
, back probed until I found the break, repaired it. So now I had spark, just no fuel.
Pump wasn't priming so just hardwired it to the battery, nothing dropped the tank to find this...
Looks, like it's been at the bottom of a cannel it's whole life, uuughhhh! Found a pump out of a DA teg, smashed that in and it finally fired! Super stoked so I now know the crx is fully functional, time to get balls deep in the swap!
So now the cool shit began....
Had a whole heap of hardrace stuff I ordered for an eg I was gonna build, and because Hondas are like lego all that saucy eg suspension swapped into the wagon, which is super handy because all the bushes were rooted.
[/SIZE]
So, now the wagon has all this adjustable and stiff hardrace bush goodness underneath it, which include. Toe arms, camber arms, lower control arms, rear trailing arm bushes and eg coilovers which dropped straight in with the eg civic front forks. Spun the coilovers right down to full swag loweredness (way too low will have it at a functional height when it's finished) and threw the 15x7s from the rex onto her. Results!
Name's Jacob, I'm 26 and I'm a HD diesel mechanic.
Mmmmmmk, so, I purchased this humble little car out the back Perth Australia roughly 12 weeks ago now. It's a Australian delivered ee3 rt4wd wagon, only 100 were ever imported between 88-89, something like 20 are accountable for now and the twin carb was the only engine option here in Aus. Sat in a driveway for 4 years being raped by the elements, went and had a look at it, nil start, offered them $350, they said they'd call back. Didn't hear anything for like a week, started kicking myself I didn't offer more, then they called out of the blue and said I could take it. YUUSSSSSS!
Anywho picked it up, trailered it back to mine, bypassed the immobiliser, threw a battery at it, bit of brake cleaner in the intake, BOOM it started. One of the floats was sticking, dribbling fuel everywhere, couple of knocks with the hammered and it went away. Everything worked! Lights, wipers, washer jets, brakes, even the electric sunroof 8-)
Unfortunately there was an issue with the motor (probably why it was parked up originally) and plus I don't do carby motors, too young missed the boat, whatever.
Read a bunch of stuff on the internet that the d16a8 / zc swaps straight in, no mods, same mounts and the 4wd bell housing hangs off the motor no dramas. So that's all the info I needed, straight back on gummie to look for a broken down CRX, and sure enough a wretched one was on there, local for $1000.
Rung the guy (kid) said he crashed it, threw a kit on it, didn't care about any of that my only concern was the running gear and he assured me it was sound. Went and had a look and this thing was terrible, I felt so sorry for it. Engine was cranking not starting, harness had been tampered with and he wouldn't budge on the price. Said "**** it" and bought in anyway, trailered it back and got to work trying to diagnose it.
Spent FOOOORRREVVVAA trying to sus this car out, no spark no fuel, solid CEL.... checked everything! Checked fuses, every earth, relays, stuck a multimeter on just about everything and then finally discovered that ecu had no power
, back probed until I found the break, repaired it. So now I had spark, just no fuel.Pump wasn't priming so just hardwired it to the battery, nothing dropped the tank to find this...
Looks, like it's been at the bottom of a cannel it's whole life, uuughhhh! Found a pump out of a DA teg, smashed that in and it finally fired! Super stoked so I now know the crx is fully functional, time to get balls deep in the swap!
So now the cool shit began....
Had a whole heap of hardrace stuff I ordered for an eg I was gonna build, and because Hondas are like lego all that saucy eg suspension swapped into the wagon, which is super handy because all the bushes were rooted.
[/SIZE]
So, now the wagon has all this adjustable and stiff hardrace bush goodness underneath it, which include. Toe arms, camber arms, lower control arms, rear trailing arm bushes and eg coilovers which dropped straight in with the eg civic front forks. Spun the coilovers right down to full swag loweredness (way too low will have it at a functional height when it's finished) and threw the 15x7s from the rex onto her. Results!
Comments
Made it easier with a few beers, haha.
And then the dash, harness and all the other interior related firewall shit on the Friday night to gear up for the Saturday.
Saturday was a biggen, Crx running gear out, box off, 4wd box onto the d16a8 and test fitted the whole shabang, win.
And that's pretty much where I'm at for now, just slowly doing small jobs here and there.
Bought some wheels for her, refurbishing them, a turbo mani if I later on boost it and some other bits and bobs. Thanks
The wheels I'm refurbishing atm.
ROH 3 piece 16x8 +32 ish....
I'll more than likely do another solid update on Sunday night. :thumbsup:
:cool:
Just a test fit. I purchased another d16a8 for a carton of becks, low compression so I'm probably just going to run the wagon n/a and rebuild that blown motor in the meantime.
Sorted the front subframe out today.
Refurbished everything, rack and pinon got an overhaul aswell, front knuckles have new balljoints now too and it all got a lick of paint.
The whole car now sports hardrace suspension from front to back minus the coilovers, tie rods and diff bushes which I've still gotta do, it will see some track days, can't spend all this money on sweet suspension and just be a hard parking fgt :thumbsup:
Named the surge tank this morning...
Another soild outing on the wagon, crx fuel lines come close so that's handy. The surge tank fits snug in the little compartment so that's also a win.
Gonna run the lines hard against the sill the whole way so the surge, 044 can all run series nice and neatly straight into the hard line...
The crx lift pump will be installed into the tank too, so it'll supply to the surge e.c.t, overkill but it'll never starve,If all of that makes sense
I penned in where the lines are gonna go in one of the pics provided
Donk and box received a wash on the weekend too
Picked up some adjustable cam gears as well, they were discontined 10 years ago, these are still brand new never used. I dunno what they'll offer in terms of performance but whatever thought they were cool.
Front adjustable arms and my headers arrived today.
Also grabbed an edm rocker cover which I'm super happy with and I think looks rad as.
Got stuck into the wheels today and 2 of them are 100% finished, the other 2 aren't too far away
And my engine mounts arrived today as well, super stoked, big weekend ahead!
Huge Storms rolled through on Saturday so it was a complete write off, didn't get a single thing done. Today was successful though, dropped the motor and box in with the new mounts, feels so solid, which is a good thing.
My neighbour saw me working on the car and came over with a bottle of wine and proceeded to give me a hand, super cool guy.
All the neighbours are hell into the build, it's nice, they never complain or anything ,but I fix their cars and offer them advice and shit when they run into trouble, so I guess they're happy to turn a blind eye if I pull the occasional late one.
My og clutch alignment tool.
Semi sorta big update I guess, work was pretty busy this week but I managed to sneak in a few jobs, anyway.
Threw a b18b tb on, the intake I bought with the car isn't the original one that came with the crx, I'm guessing it's off an eg d168 because the crx Ds have a different tb bolt pattern, no tps and some weird diaphragm thing. Regardless I went from 52mm to 60mm which is kinda cool I guess.
Ordered all new diff bushes too, lucky Honda is the ducks nuts because the wagons diff bushes and mounts share the same part no. as the gen1 crvs so that's suuuuuuper handy. Also dropped the diff and the Japanese were even kind enough to inform me what diff oil to use :thumbsup:
Sorted more of the fuel out. The fuel rail is aftermark as well, so another win I suppose. It had a damaged blank and thread on the end so I just drilled it out and tapped it. The walbro arrived and also picked up an fpr. Lines are being quoted as we speak and should have them done nek week sometime.
Yesterday I holesawed the wagon carby tank, drilled the holding pump bracket out the crx and tacked it on, so now the wagon is legit efi and made it as factory looking as possible. I do apologise about the spud pics, I was at work and had to sneak this job in.
Finally started mucking around with front fitment.
And that's it. Probably going to take this weekend off, need to do a bunch of stuff around the house. Enjoy
Righto, pretty productive week.
Jammed the whole front back together, all the other engine bay related accessories i.e wiring harness, fuel rail, speedo cables, cvs, modified an ek4 brake booster and master cylinder to fit. e.c.t.
Starting installing all my fuel lines, also got the 044 mounted and a sneaky install on the surge tank
Couple of action shots getting shit done
Drives really well, it's obviously not fast but hooks ups well and handles amazing. Crabs like a muthafuka but that's alignment. Took it to the car wash too, first tub in 4 years!
Wasn't happy with the colour choice of the wheels either, I like the colour just not with this car. Anyways, OG brown / bronze is the new choice
Pretty slow week.
My amber/ park corners arrived from the uk
Fit my wink mirror, made some brackets so I could keep my window visors.
And I used my mates wheels for a test fit so I could order mine. 15x8 +25s
Another slow af week, probably not even worth posting but I wanna keep this thread ticking over.
Mucked around with all my heights and cambers today and made the basket rack a permanent fixture.
Apart from that turned the fpr down a liland pretty much just sussing out a game plan to offload this crx shell so I can start pulling the wagon down again. Went for a good 40 minute drive late this afternoon, didn't overheat or do anything weird which I'm satisfied with.
So a quick run down of what I've done thus far.
Crx d16a8 with the d15b 4wd wagon sump
D16a8 flywheel with the d15b clutch kit to match the splines of the 4wd gearbox
Eg D16a8 intake manifold with b18b throttle body
Innovative engine mounts
Ek4 brake booster and master cylinder
Extractors
Bee R rev limiter
Complete crx wiring loom, re pinned the wagon plug onto the crx harness to fit the drivers side kick panel plug for the stop/taillights e.c.t.
Crx fuel lines modified to fit the wagon
Aftermarket fuel rail
Turbosmart 800 series fpr
Modified the carby tank to fit efi pump
Walbro 255 lift pump
Raceworks 1.5ltr surge tank
Bosch 044 fuel pump
Custom made speedflow lines for all of the above
Hardrace adjustable rear toe arms
Hardrace adjustable rear camber arms
Hardrace rear trailing arms
Oem spec rear diff bushes and mounts
Hardrace adjustable front camber arms
Rebushed the front cradle with Hardrace bushes
New inner and outter tie rods
New front knuckle balljoints
Adjustable coilovers
Bit of reading material for everyone. I understand the text might be a little disjointed in terms of dates because I just copied and pasted from my Ozhonda thread.
Still heaps to do and I'll keep everything up to date from now on.
Also I love the old blue and grey graphics on the side of this wagon!
And finally great wheel color and choice (the gold ones). Wagon is looking good!
Hey dude, the headlight covers were all cracked and basically turned to dust went I tocuhed them, the 40c summers will do that I suppose.
I'm digging the graphics too, they've grown on me.
Funny you say that I bought a brand new set of wheels today haha
Also took the wagon to its first meet on the weekend, 80km round trip, got some pics just waiting for the uploads to come through, but here's a teaser
I had seriously considered relocating from the States to Perth. But the re-accreditation process would have been too time intensive as I work with US government regulatory agencies.
Well, if I ever travel over there for vacation, i'll hit you up and buy you a beer. Well done on that car!!
Perth is okay, I moved here 4 years ago from Queensland, the othere side of Australia, drove across in my bunny ek1, like a 5000km trip or something it was.
Man, I've sunk so many man hours into it already, still heaps to do aswell but it keeps me busy.
Yeah for sure, lemme know and you can come check it out and we'll grab a bevvie
Will do, got them on late last night, it was too dark to take any decent pics
Thanks mate :encouragement:
Also wheels are on, need to limp to the shop for an alignment because dailing in all that camber has exaggerated the fact I haven't had an alignment since building it. So I'll get that done and post up some nicer pics.
Thanks for the love mate
And finally departing with the crx this week so I can start stripping the wagon down again and get stuck into this rust
-5 degrees camber up front and -3 degrees in the rear. Probably gonna get the guard roller out so I can dial that back a bit.
Keep up the good work!
Shit's about to get real very soon, full tear down again and tackle all this rust.
Never used energy tbh, but this hardrace stuff is on point. Great product thus far, the car is a rocket through corners, even without a rear sway bar and bulk camber it's so flat through the bends. It's pretty much point and shoot.
Hold off for a bit and hopefully I'll have a track video soonish, because that's the first place it's heading after the rust is repaired
Modified the down pipe off the headers.
2 1/4 cat back
Lil hot dog
Rear muffler
And the tip
Sounds really nice, super quiet at idle and good clean note when you give it some hurtz, goes harder too.
I'll post up a video soon.
Car smells like fuel, probably didn't seal the tank / pump well enough so I found a key spot for the air freshener
Annnd I cased the front lip trying to get up the driveway at work, the fuker is proper steep, decent repair tho.
Bloody hailed here too.
Weather was average today but some of the locals still came out.
Blew the motor mid run too, cylinder 1 let go, and now the block has 2 holes in it.
Canned that idea, rang a tow truck and dropped the chains off to old mate Rick.
Towy came, car was dropped off at mine round half 5. Grabbed a feed and some beers with my mate, and ripped in at around 7. By 930 it was out and stripped, good carnage.
Looks like the cap nut on the big end came loose on cly 1 because it was completely seperated. For the record I just dropped this motor in, always had a gut feeling it was gonna be a lemon but whatever, it's all about the smiles not the miles.
Plan now it to swap the other D I've got sitting there, give this one a good once over, put the wagon back together and start collecting turbo parts.
Already sourced another D for 70 bucks, got a few chashies lined up and we'll be good to go.
Bit of abstract art on a Sunday morning
Couple of positive notes though, the wagon handles so damn good, it was reeling in worked dc2s in the bends and stuff so that was a good feeling. Runs out legs really quick and lacks the torque to drag it out of the bends so another reason why I'm keen to boost
DA knuckles
V6 Accord calipers
Teg type R pads
And some 07 mini cooper rotors.
Cost me about 300 bucks, and they just clear my 15s so happy days.