Honda Civic '78, '65 Corvair and '88 Skoda Rapid.

[The Jackeria]

Apr 2, 2019 16:56:00 GMT Ginge said:

Excellent read! Where abouts are you based in Berkshire, I'm a Thatchamite, I'll have to keep a look out if you've taken it to Newbury Honda before

Ginge

We live pretty much central newbury, 10 minute walk from town though don't get out much in the car as it's not kept in Newbury but not far from, I think we might take it to the show in August at the college, we meant to do that last year but ended up doing something else non descript not sure how the public would greet it's paint job either, last time I went we heard a man berating a guy who's alpine a110 rally car was "just a Renault" but I suppose that comes with the territory.

[mrbounce]

Loving the Civic!. Orange cars rock (I know, I am biased!)

[Ginge]

Apr 2, 2019 17:51:59 GMT The Jackeria said:

Apr 2, 2019 16:56:00 GMT Ginge said:

Excellent read! Where abouts are you based in Berkshire, I'm a Thatchamite, I'll have to keep a look out if you've taken it to Newbury Honda before

Ginge

We live pretty much central newbury, 10 minute walk from town though don't get out much in the car as it's not kept in Newbury but not far from, I think we might take it to the show in August at the college, we meant to do that last year but ended up doing something else non descript not sure how the public would greet it's paint job either, last time I went we heard a man berating a guy who's alpine a110 rally car was "just a Renault" but I suppose that comes with the territory.

I'll have to pop to the college and check out the show if you are attending. Regarding the "just a renault" crowd, they are half of the fun when going to a car show, just listening to the idiots talking absolute waffle 

Ginge

[logicaluk]

Nice gen 1, I'm not sure if you are aware but it apperes you have a triumph acclaim engine and gearbox in there.
Dan

[The Jackeria]

Apr 3, 2019 8:09:26 GMT logicaluk said:

Nice gen 1, I'm not sure if you are aware but it apperes you have a triumph acclaim engine and gearbox in there.
Dan

That is exactly what it is think I mentioned that we've got the gauges from the acclaim to substantiate engine mileage.

[herusix]

I don't often post(but lurk alot) but that is a bloody nice civic, love the colour and just the general overall look.
Keep up the good work.

[keyring]

That is awesome!! Looks a seriously cool car! It suits the orange too! Would definitely own one!

[The Jackeria]

Some will note my mention of how Chloe has a habit of top trumping my cars... Well, EINGEHEND, IN DECKUNG!!!!!!!!!!

(I have no idea if that's the correct use of that but hey ho, see you tomorrow

[The Jackeria]

Hmm she looks familiar. As the Audi is too different to the civic I will start a thread.

[The Jackeria]

This past weekend a friend had asked if I wanted to visit a local kiting festival naturally I agreed as that can be quite fun sometimes, the weather was looking like there will definitely be wind, however on the day it turned out to be too much wind, imagine that. So we decided to find other things to do for the day, I knew about bicesters drive it day but had missed out on a ticket so I had a google to see if there were any other drive it days local and it turned out there was.

Initially I was thinking we'll just take the Audi as that's old enough to be interesting for other people but I thought the last time we drove the civic it went ok so... I set about fetching that from Chloes mum's house without telling her, it wasn't the easiest thing to do, bump start another car twice which meant I had to go back home to fetch the cables after I got there and then attempt to move it despite it's handbrake being stuck on then get the civic out and hope that too was still as good as before.

Well it was as good as before, a little choke and it fired right up.

Got it home, surprised chloe with it and filled the audi with a few essential classic car tools and spares before heading on our way to the West Berkshire Brewery roughly 20 mins away. I wished I had stopped a long the way and took some photos in the countryside but to be honest I was more focusing on how the civic was driving as we'd not driven it that far or for as long before.

That marked the first time we had taken the civic to a show of any kind and it went reasonably well.

















Unfortunately I didn't get round to doing any sipping in the brewery as the machinery outside was more to my taste, we're not big on the alcohol thing anyway and spend money on our cars as you can probably tell by how many we seem to have accumulated.

The A34 was shut when we were returning which meant central Newbury was pretty much a car park, the civic cooled itself well and the needle didn't go above the middle though I had noticed when putting it away it creates a white cloud on every startup when tested a few times. Best get the borescope out then and check the oil until next time

[The Jackeria]

After letting the car sit for pretty much a month since the last use, I popped down on Saturday to have a snoop down the plug holes with the borescope, I couldn't see any coolant or oil sitting on the pistons or for that matter clean pistons, they weren't super sooty either but the engine doesn't have that many miles on it, the oil appeared fine on quick inspection so I'll probably grab a compression tester as its a tool I don't currently have and test the car after it's been on a long drive.

As it's bank holiday weekend there's usually a show on somewhere, this time it turned out to be the locallest of locals, not 2 minutes up the road. Would you believe we were the only Japanese car there?





We took doggo too, he liked the civic as it had this handy head holding place.



After a while he was doing some inspecting of his own, checking the bolts for the seat are stamped and to spec.

[Deleted]

Loving "pco". Sweet little car in a very fetching colour. Very 70's. Well done for all your efforts so far. I'd be proud of yourselves for all your hard work. Really shows.

[retrolegends]

There’s a red ‘78 S Civic on eBay at the mo, it’s on at a shade under £13000, looks like your other half has an eye for an investment 👍

[The Jackeria]

We've been watching them all as they come up, there's another silver JDM import for sale too, that red one's been listed for a month or two now, was at £20k when it first went up. I dunno that they'll ever fetch that much but it's nice to see people try for sure.

[The Jackeria]

Apologies for the "new" civic content, I always browse FB marketplace when I've got a moment or two and this time around saw some LED taillights and a centre console that had cupholders which I simply had to have... Trundled off in the Audi to pick them up and bring them back, the LED taillights were a bit grubby on the inside, a bit of algae growing and generally dusty.





I thought I'd be able to just split them down after a little heat gun action but I don't think the glue used in manufacture was that kind of glue as the lens started to crack and simply wasn't budging. After a quick walk outside to look at the standard lights and a hmmmmm... This happened. Butchered the clear lenses to get the leds out and heated up the standards.





I had to cut a bit out of the reflector face to get it in but they fit well. Resealed and back on.



The cupholder was a simple affair, six screws to get the centre console out and four to remove the old cubby







It's the little things, the led taillights look ok compared to the clear lenses they were in.

[The Jackeria]

And a short video of the results. I realise I'm making this thing a tad more chav everytime I work on it xD

[The Jackeria]

What have we been doing during lockdown and in the year since I last posted here? Same as you... "not much" however, I have both an update here on the 1G and EJ9 as well as the Audi thread.

The EJ9 got very sidelined when I "accidentally" bought an NB mx5 in September last year for a quick bit of fun, I'd always wanted to have a go in one. At that point I was never really sure what I wanted to do with the civic, just knew that I didn't want to sell it so it sat on the driveway until March this year when my brother sent me a message that there was a rover 216 for sale for very little money locally. I knew those and these civics were pretty similar so asked him for a few more details. 1.6 D series... rear disc brakes... hmmm.

A quick ebay and facebay browse later revealed I'd be getting a whole car with MOT for the price the rear disc conversions go for on their own, at this point it was a done deal and I now had something to do during lockdown.

A couple of week's on and hard lockdown had eased a bit allowing me to go and fetch the Rover site unseen beside low Mpeg photos. To say it was every bit of a £200 car was an understatement, smelly, dirty, front suspension shot, there a hideous exhaust leak and I noticed smoke rising from the bonnet whilst at traffic lights, it didn't start very well when i stopped to get £5 of petrol... what had I bought, I thought as I pootled home.

Well... this :







Where the cat used to be, some vacuum/hoover pipe and exhaust heat wrap doing absolutely nothing because it was noisy/smelly and I guess it was the wrap that was causing the smoke, yes, that's an ignition wire just coiled down into the hole minus the plugs they usually have. Ahh well, at least I knew it ran.

Over the next few weekends - as I wasn't furloughed - saw the engine removed, auto gearbox split off and replaced with the manual the 1.4 in the civic came with, a new clutch and the 1.6 then put into the civic.





Chloe and I spent the best part of a whole day stripping the dashboard out of the rover to extract the wiring loom in full before I then decided... screw the EFI, I have a better idea...

It was at that moment, I probably should have bought parts for the Datsun sitting in the garage.

Woops - someone had a manifold on ebay for R1 4xv carbs for a D series no less...







...Straight in my basket.

Well, if you're going to start refreshing the suspension components, there's no point leaving out the suspension itself is there?



I'm skipping a lot here given the rover was actually in great shape underneath, all the bolts came out without drama, the civic on the other hand was not so keen on letting me take it apart. It was probably saying to me "I'm reliable, leave me alone!"

Something I wasn't keenly aware of straight away was that the rear LCAs are a different length on the EJ civic to the rover which is closer to the MB civics anyway, glad I bought Hardrace ones then, didn't really want gold but black was out of stock and I couldn't keep the civic on stands for long.

That leaves me with one more cheap FB find - carbon bonnet



At this point my wallet was getting a lawyer ready to take me down for GBH. I thought to myself, what good is a manifold with no carbs? Carbs on their own? Pffff, these ones come with a turbo manifold too, I probably wont use it but... ahh who knows. Why should I keep the engine looking that tatty? Looking back I wish I had cleaned off and painted the gearbox too but there's still time. Jets - yes we need those, gaskets, oh go on then, new r1 carb boots and clamps, low pressure in-tank pump and filter king pressure regulator. *click click click*

A few more weeks pass and we're here :





I still haven't quite worked out what I'm going to use for the ignition system but for getting it leak proof and started at least the factory 1.4 stuff will do as it doesn't seem to throw a code for no injectors being plugged in. Megajolt or an older D series Carb dist and coil will be sourced similar to that used on the 1G for actual driving.

Now I'm a bit of a nut when it comes to new cars, if there's something semi interesting coming out, I like to stalk the dealerships in an effort to being the first person to see a car as soon as it's off the truck. Which means I visit as often as I can at gone closing time so I don't get harassed to buy anything, the security guys have probably got me pegged as someone to watch.

When I was in the to's and throws of buying the datsun, the UP GTI was due any moment and we bagged very early viewing and test drive as a result, interestinly the UP we drove was registered a year before its release, we drove it prior to most of the youtube reviews being released too.

This time round the Honda E. Special to us for obvious reasons given we have a 1G. We go shopping on Wednesdays and the dealers right next door so we always do a loop to have a peak, no E. I went to work on the EJ9 on the Thursday and on the way home - guess what... an E.







Unbeknownst to chloe, my plan the following day was to take the 1G and her to be the first people to view the E fresh out of the box. As you can see by the photos above, that's exactly what we did. When we popped in, same as last time, the 1G generated a lot of interest from the guys who worked at the dealership - understandably, the E is such a lovely car, so much bigger than I expected, a tad heavier, pricier and not great range puts me off but I would without a doubt have one, if things like what I've just been doing (poor wallet) didn't happen. That was over a month ago now and I've been meaning to book a test drive given the E was registered on the 25th so is now usable. Covid played her hand and I ended up selling the mx5 and acquiring this fiesta which... hopefully will lead to another retro car in my possession in the not too distant future as I'm not overly keen on it (you want it? wanna trade?)



The next update will, fingers crossed be a video of the EJ9 starting - until next time.

[The Jackeria]

I forgot to mention, the rover got filled to the roof with old scrap and went on it's merry way, every panel was rusty, scratched, dented and the interior doesn't bare thinking about. Sorry to those out there who like those rovers. I must say as well that it wasn't a straight swap from the rover to the civic a lot of small things between the two were different, namely cambelt side engine mount and PAS assembly. Oh and yes a B or K series would be better but - everyone does that, this is what was at hand.

[shyam]

Wow 1G is gorgeous colour scheme even if not original...it's fine. Atleast you can be more creative with it now.

[The Jackeria]

I got the civic running on the carbs a while back now, I have the mixtures at 2 3/4 turns out, 165 mains, I have some 180s I could throw in but I'll get everything else sorted before faffing with the carbs again, everything else standard r14xv. The ignition for now is a bit backwards in that I had all the sensors and the original throttle body plugged into the factory loom but just placed aside everything (not fitted) this allowed for no check engine light however meant the car had no idea what was really going on. The revs hang after a quick blip and plugs are black as night, I was having light burps of fuel coming back out which was timing related as opposed to valve wear, no surprise given I'd swapped dizzy from 1.4 onto the 1.6 and there are no timing marks on it, moving the dizzy round a bit has since resolved that. I haven't been running it long, 20 seconds at a time or so, just long enough to check and adjust fuel pressure when priming and running, set throttle cable so idle is around 8/900 - well aware this will need resetting later on when the car is properly warm and check the flow is balanced with air flow meter, I'll get a timing light too so I can get that sorted properly.

http://instagram.com/p/CEz498QnGJ1

I since managed to find a vac advance dizzy from an EF dual carb civic, 2 wire.



I need to read into why there's two vac lines (cold vs warm?) and how to wire it up, at a guess, if it's anything like the more modern dizzy the blue wire is for the tach and the other one, black/yellow presumably is 12v from ignition. If you know anything about these, do drop some knowledge

I also need to figure out what to do with the coolant lines, now I don't have coolant going through the manifold I have a few lines that either need blocking off or re-routing. More research in this area is also needed, will probably just loop the line from next to the intake runner down to the thermostat housing, I'm sure there's another line that needs something doing with it but can't remember.

I had planned on fixing brake lines too but found I only had female connections not male, oh well another day, it's the small stuff that takes the most time, plenty to get on with.