1984 honda civic - D16 swap

[Splitty456]

Hi all, here is a topic on my old honda as i've been meaning to do this for a while, just never got round to it! This is kind of a catch up post, as i'v had this car for 2 years now, but as its coming back on the road soon and will have a sexy new D series soon after that, i thought it would be a good time to start a thread

the story starts back in 2010, when i bought the civic as my first car. Got her for the princely sum of £342 with no tax but full service history and 12 months MOT. here she is after we had driven her back from worcester (about 60 miles, didnt miss a beat!)




she sat there a while as i passed my test and then i drover her around and not much happened (all my money had gone on insurance!). being a new driver, some accidents did happen...


and it ended up with a blue door and bonnet (that was already dented) at some point i bought some nice ronal R9s for £30 and it looked like this!



soon after the MOT was due and being a old honda it required some welding


to celebrate, me and my housemates lowered it on cheapo ebay coilovers




somewhere along the line i got a pair of mk2 CRX seats for free, and a grey carpet and set about changing up the interior. i also fitted a mk1 CRX valver steering wheel (and clocks).


Before

After



The hole in the carpet eventually got covered by a crx center console, but i have no pics of it and its still blue...

The final cosmetic addition to the car was a mk1 CRX 16v lip, which really finished the front end off i think





after a while of driving, i decided i wanted to put a better engine in the civic, and bought a curse word D15B2 without really knowing what it was, but hey, it was cheap! after abit of research i decided to mini me it and rebuilt a Y8 head and fitted that


a lil mockup of what i had planned!



painted the block up


rebuilt head ready to go on


all timed up and finished!


unfortunately, i soon realised that this swap was either going to be difficult or expensive, and probably both... and ridiculous insurance prices forced me to take the civic off the road for a year, and sell the mini me... (don't worry tho, i bought a wicked polo saloon and did this to it!)



after that was done (and bike carbs were out of my system!) i turned my attention back to the civic...

With the mini me gone, and the possibility of the civic coming back on the road, i decided to go ahead and do the swap i'd wanted to do all along - D16A1/ZC. i picked up what was listed as a complete swap for £120... when it arrived it was missing half the loom (chopped), the ECU, the dizzy cap and the HT leads. furthermore, it was in a terrible condition and had obviously sat for quite a while...




thankfully, however, all of the important bits were there and it turned over easily, and the box selected all gears so i wasnt too annoyed! i had been planning to strip the engine down and skim the head at least, but the lack of ECU and dizzy persuaded me to go with D16A9 (Blacktop ZC) ignition. i stripped the engine down and started making up a loom

yummy


grimey head


i did get alot further, stripped the bottom end and even made the A9 dizzy fit (kinda) but when i started stripping the head further i found this


this meant a set of valve springs and it worked out cheaper to buy an already skimmed head of CRX-UK, which just happened to come with a head gasket set and a set of ARP studs! This has yet to arrive so pics will be up when it does!

i have also bought an 11lbs flywheel, which i will upload pics of soon, but trust me, its beautiful, lol!

and thats about up to date on the engine front, the car has received a new EG rad and i've swapped to cut rear springs instead of the bouncy coilovers. i've also put the red bonnet back on, kinda fits in with all the other dents on the car, and gets rid of one odd panel!






how its sitting ATM... needs a good clean, its been sat for nearly a year!


this is kinda a brief skim over this cars past, heres a link to my photobucket account for those who want more pics/bits ive missed out!
s480.photobucket.com/user/splitty456/library/84%20civic?sort=3&page=1

sorry for the monster post!! hope you like it, should have some good updates in the near future!

[Deleted]

loving the different colour drivers door look

[BiAS]

Really like that, I had a set of those springs on the back of my '86 shuttle and they were miles too hard and bouncy too. looking forward to more updates. I built a minime for my girlfriends EG4, D15B2 bottom, D16Z6 head, inlet, exhaust and management and it's a great laugh. I look forward to seeing more updates.

Oh and BTW, no need to apologise for lots of pictures, we like pictures here

*eta - Don't suppose you could take a picture of the front antiroll bar set up (from underneath)? My AR Shuttle didn't have one and it needs one.

[79cord]

Looking forward to how it progresses, some interesting ideas. Tempting to upgrade the ignition on my 1g Integra to newer system... Haven't been able to investigate (rusty) 1g CR-X I agreed to buy yet...

[Splitty456]

yeah those springs were alright but i just couldnt find any shocks to keep up with them! i did have a some koni reds off a maestro on there for a while which was better but still too bouncy!

umm the ARB sits atop the subframe, and bolts through to the lower arm... scroll down here and theres a pic
www.redpepperracing.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=47806

79cord - wow, you have a fair few hondas!! the ignition upgrade isnt as easy as i made out, and you can only get one dizzy bolt in without welding... if you can ally weld, then go for it! but the easiest option would probably be to get an A9 head, loom and ECU and swap everything over

[Splitty456]

Right, a couple of updates in my quest to get the civic road legal! some of you may remember the mahoosive 063 battery i squeezed into the original battery tray as my old battery was fubared... well, instead of buying a new battery, i picked up some cable from an E46 BMW and relocated the battery to the boot, freeing up some space in the already cramped engine bay

Battery mounted in the boot using the original stay, this will be painted black soon, honest! the mouldings in the floor were hammered flat to allow the battery to sit better.



Earth mounted by the chassis rail



the positive goes down under the carpet to a 250 amp inline fuse in the passengers footwell (where i think the ECU will end up eventually) and then out to the E46 jump lead point.



this then leads across the firewall to the starter motor, as it would in the BMW...



but with the addition of the main fusebox lead to provide power to the other electronics




i even got a new gearbox ground out of one of the cables! just needs covering in heatshrink :lol:



Next up was the exhaust issue... some time ago, when it was still on the road, the tail pipe literally rusted off the backbox :shock: naturally i left it like that :lol: but now its MOT time again and something needs to be done about the exhaust (or lack thereof). while browsing on ebay i stumbled upon an EK Ractive exhaust for £40 and went for it, how different could it be? well, as it turns out, very different!

here it is laid up against the side of the car, obviously its too long, but thats easy to fix




i had hoped that the 'S' bend would be okay along with the curve over the axel but both were way off unfortunately, with the s curve cutting across the corner of the fuel tank and the axel curve completely in the wrong place! out with the angle grinder then!! :twisted:



With the exhaust cut up into curves and lengths i was able to copy the standard one and got the S bend and the up kink to the backbox done




for the backbox, i used the old S curve and am going to use the old cat flange to join the two... thats about as far as i've got ATM, i may need to kink the backbox down abit to clear the rear floor and the bumper will gain a cutout :lol:




tomorrows job is finishing off the exhaust and then the car should be read for an MOT on monday!! just to add, its my nans funeral on saturday and then my anniversary on sunday... nothing like cutting it fine!! :lol:

[Splitty456]

Predictably, and despite my efforts, the civic failed the MOT on the drivers sill. i had tried to patch this up for the MOT but didnt make a very good job of it tbh :lol:

anyway, a short detour to malvern to visit cars2 yielded a shiny new drivers side sill panel for the civic, all i need to do is fit it...


and into the old sill (whats left of it...)






not looking to good really... started cleaning the area up with a knot brush on an angle grinder (new favourite tool)



starting on the inside and working out...
floor rust cut out and first panel made, trying to mimic the factory layout of the sill layers



I was originally planning on only using half the new sill panel, and only replacing the undersealed part of the sill, but that meant cutting 2 very long straight cuts with an angle grinder, and one very long straight weld... since i have the whole panel up to the door shut, i figure i might as well use it all, which reduces the visible weld to about a foot, the rest being plug welds hidden by the door or wing. it should also give me more room to move when making the inner sill panel.
i got the door shut spot welds drilled out before packing up for the day... not terribly productive but i've finished uni for the year now, so the car doesnt NEED to be on the road immediately and i can take my time


also started stripping the drivers door, ITS GOING RED AT LAST!!!!

[Splitty456]

heres the rest of the sill story, pretty much just a picture dump basically chop out rust, clean up, make patch, weld in, rinse, repeat :lol: made a total of 6 patches before i could get the new sill on... damn paper thin hondas!!!

started off cutting the old sill out, glad i decided to use the whole panel too, the front was looking abit worse for wear...



i also decided to tackle the footwell while i was cleaning up... looked abit nasty :shock:


but underneath all that there was a very solid patch


next big job was the seatbelt mounts...


chopped it out and used it as a template for a new panel


drilled out the old captive nuts and spreader plates (they were abit crusty but cleaned up good enough to use again :lol:) and used them to shape scallops in the new panel


after cutting out a few more patches and making more panels i set about fitting the outer skin


my initial cuts were pretty darn close!!


how it looked underneath after all the cutting :lol:


started welding patches of floor/inner sill in



and so on.... covered it in weld through primer


same story at the front, pics are in my photobucket if you're really that interested

finally got round to welding on the outer skin took abit of grinding and bending to get it to fit nicely but got there in the end
drilled plenty of plug weld holes in it!!

welded in!!

ground (mostly) flat and primered, just needs a skim of filler and paint to finish it off, but unfortunately the rain came in force today


inbetween all this, i've decided on a colour scheme for the civic!! i've been thinking about two toning it for a while, and i was gonna go for red and silver, like the JDM 25i... but having seen a few pics of the iron face DR30 skyline and its red/black paint, red and black it had to be


also gave me an excuse to use honda nighthawk black, which is a really nice pearl black



door is red!!!!


it is, unfortunately, the wrong red... its rover nightfire red, which it pretty close to unfaded claret red. my car has faded for 29 years however, and makes the door look just a tad bright! And due to the rain thats as far as painting got, the MOT is booked for tuesday, so it'll have to stay in primer untill after then i think...

i've also made a short shifter quickly while waiting for paint to dry etc...
cut my gear lever in half and added a shot section of hollow bar, i've only extended the throw by about 15mm, as i didnt want too short a shift, just not the truck like action it used to have!

i've also turned the lever in relation to the lower joint, pointing the gearknob closer to the driver


speaking of gearknobs, i've got a shiny new one

its a cheapo Skunk2 copy, but its bloody heavy! combined with the short shift its made the gearchange feel much slicker still plenty of slop tho.. this will be fixed when the engines out with a kakabox-esque steering UJ in place of the standard one...

i think thats about it for now, just a couple of things to do for the mot (adjust the exhaust mainly, and make a better rad bracket)

[/img][/quote]

[Splitty456]

The civic is now road legal but due to a dodgy carb gasket refuses to run properly... :-L

anyway, onto more interesting things! i've bought a new steering wheel. i would say to celebrate the civic's return to legality, but really its just because it was cheap :lol: after a clean up its turned out pretty good tho


not sure whether to run it with or without the centre pad... i think it'll suit the civic more without... what do you think?


my shells and rings have arrived from the states, so the bottom end can start going together


i started by taking the pistons out and cleaning them up




got stumped by this barsteward of a compression ring


i tried heating it, freezing it, soaking it in coke, WD40, Carb cleaner, a hammer and eventually got it free by prying at the ends with a pen knife :lol: i think the hammer and WD did most of the work however...
all 4 nice and clean


I'm also looking at a different rear suspension setup. It used to have coilover converters and koni reds (from a montego, no less) but a quick search on the bay of E turned up a set of R33 GTST Tein HA's for £40... it was hard to say no :lol:


obviously the springs are gonna be way to stiff/long for the little civic, but its the adjustable shocks i'm after


i think the front pair will end up on the rear of my housemates E30, and the unused springs will find a use somewhere :lol: i really jut need to turn a bush for the bottom bolt and find a suitable spring...

In a spare half hour i also set about cleaning up my injectors



no real purpose i spose, but its nice to work with clean parts

there we are, i think that about brings us up to date

[nofrills]

nice read dude... look forward to seeing more progress

[ukteg]

loving the work - the wheel you have is a Nardi wheel from the 93 Subaru Impreza RA

can i ask if you still have the mk1 crx wheel - been looking for one for my G1 Integra

[Splitty456]

May 21, 2013 17:05:34 GMT ukteg said:

loving the work - the wheel you have is a Nardi wheel from the 93 Subaru Impreza RA

can I ask if you still have the mk1 crx wheel - been looking for one for my G1 Integra

haha fair enough, is that the only car they came from? i've seen a few on MX-5s before, but i guess they could have come off imprezas...

and yeah, its still on the car atm, i'm waiting for the allen bolts to arrive so i can bolt the steering wheel to the boss... you're welcome to the valver wheel when it comes off its missing the badge from the centre however...

[79cord]

Wow that's quite an update. Glad to see the progress & rust removal, & that you were able to get at spots you might not have found if only intent upon a 'quick' job.
New wheel looks good with or without cover, though guess it has to be seen in context with the dash.
I'll admit to having developed a weakness for the cheap Ebuy simple tulip shaped g/knobs too, having got a rough cast alloy 'Type-R' style one for 2g CRX, shiny for the Accord hatch, & 'Carbon-fiber' for the 1g Integra so far...Bit cold in winter though (amazing how much warmer the stippled 'cast' finish makes the alloy seem), miss old leather one 'cord had for a while but that's the price of style.
Was surprised to read the 2g Accords actually fitted proper bearings in the base of g/stick instead of the usual plastic bushes, & some aftermarket ones do too. I have a butchered Integra g/stick so will have to have a go modifying it similarly.
Looking forward to seeing the DOHC filling the engine bay properly but more fun just to be able to use it regardless of engine.

[Splitty456]

yeah it did get abit in depth... i did try just patching it first but the sill was just too bad. glad i decided to use the whole new sill in the end, its amazing how much underseal hides!! the other side is probably in a similar state, i've noticed a new rust bubble halfway along the sill, but that can wait untill i have more time haha

i've decided on no cover for the wheel, it doesnt suit the squarness of the dash really. also the boss is abit long (from a 3g accord i think) but i can live with it for now, i'll probably get used to it and not bother changing it knowing me!

i was quite impressed with the gearknob, considering it only cost me about £6. it's obviously very cheap though, and i don't expect the black chrome finish to last long... i like the sound of the rough cast one

and yeah, its good to have her on the road again it handles alot better than i remember, and the ride is very much improved on the cut springs and new dampers. i almost don't want to back to coilovers haha. when i've moved out of my uni house i'll have abit more free time and i can get the engine in, just have to hope the corn flakes box carb gasket lasts that long!!

[ukteg]

May 21, 2013 21:26:54 GMT Splitty456 said:

May 21, 2013 17:05:34 GMT ukteg said:

loving the work - the wheel you have is a Nardi wheel from the 93 Subaru Impreza RA

can I ask if you still have the mk1 crx wheel - been looking for one for my G1 Integra

haha fair enough, is that the only car they came from? I've seen a few on MX-5s before, but I guess they could have come off imprezas...

and yeah, its still on the car atm, I'm waiting for the allen bolts to arrive so I can bolt the steering wheel to the boss... you're welcome to the valver wheel when it comes off its missing the badge from the centre however...

that would be great cheers

[Splitty456]

bit of a long post to bring us up to date with the civic, currently its sitting on axel stands with no engine or front suspension, looking rather sorry for itself...

a couple of weeks ago i started assembling the head, after abit of fettling with the dremmel to remove the worst of the core shift and casting imperfections, and got the valves and springs in...

only really have a during picture of the fettling, but you can see the lip before the valve seats that i was removing


new genuine honda stem seals


valves in



next i got the block honed and assembled the bottom end (i wanted to clean the block while i was at it, but some idiot had filled the parts washer with water :roll:, so carb cleaner and WD had to do...) i also shaved the radius off the crank girdle (supposedly helps the crank shed oil, dunno how much of a difference it will make, but i had some time spare and it doesnt cost anything! :lol:)



block honed


new mains


piston rings fitted



started fitting the pistons into the block (with minimal bloodshed)


and torqued up the big ends (with new bearing, of course)


followed by the crank girdle


and finally the pickup pipe and sump


then there was abit of a break from engines as i had to move out of my uni house, and get my polo on the road, but last week i had a couple of days free and the wether was good so i started the swap!
started by stripping things out of the bay to make room, it was surprisingly easy, and after a few house everything was disconnected! (gotta love carby engines! :lol:)


i got stumped for a while by the hub nuts, one came out fine, but the other had been removed previously, and the skirt had been split, meaning it wouldnt come undone... after breaking a t-bar, i realised that since i have new hubs, knuckles, shafts and breaks, i may as well just remove the lot!


next i installed the flywheel and clutch



and yes, i did do this with the block in the footwell!


then dragged the engine out of the bottom




sometime next week i plan to start getting the new engine in and built up, just gotta swap the gear linkage over... thinking of grinding out the uj pins and replacing them with a bolt, rather than battling the curse word pin anymore!

[TS]

Looks good so far.

[01reeva]

Nice to see someone using a d series rather than jumping straight to a b series, i much prefer the d engines, and they seem to take a turbo quite well!

[79cord]

Glad to see the progress after such signifigant distractions. I must get around to an engine rebuild one day, still haven't got around to assembling my Honda 90 engines though!
Definitely easier to undo a nut & bolt than those stubborn roll-pins! Driveshaft hub nuts invariably impossibly tight too.
Really enjoyed the D16 in my Integra, lovely & elastic; mightn't have the top-end power rush of the B16 but feels much more consistent, balanced & light, so looking forward to it again.

[Splitty456]

thanks for the comments guys

yeah i like the D series engines, i dunno, they seem abit more usable than b series ones, more torque focused than power focused. also, this D series drops straight into this chassis, whereas a B would requires expensive mounts and probably custom shafts... so far this has probably set me back around £350, which is about the cost of just the mounts for a B series conversion!

and yeah it was nice to make progress! the polo is serving as daily very well (birds keep shitting on it though...) and i had hoped i could get the swap done before the polo goes up for sale (and in time to take it on holiday in august). its not looking good tho, currently waiting for a correct tensioner to arrive, as well as my water pump... then i have to find a solution for my head stud situation... ideally i need a 7 inch ARP stud for the longer bolt behind the water pump, but that will take over 4 weeks to arrive... no good. i'm gonna see if the 6.76 inch ones i have for the rest will work, or if i could borrow a stud from the 1.3. wish me luck!!