Hey all! I'm new to this forum. My name's Eric and I'm from Los Angeles, CA (actually San Fernando Valley for those familiar with the area). I've been driving my '87 Civic 1.5 hand-me-down for about 8 years and I've slowly been learning more and more routine maintenance. About a month ago, I snapped a spark plug in the cylinder head, and so began this project that I'm in now...

I had to take out at least the radiator and exhaust mani in order to get enough visibility to try to use a bolt-extractor drill bit on that spark plug. While removing the exhaust mani, two bolts snapped, one in the mani and one in the head. I said screw it, it's time to learn more about cars and I proceeded to do everything necessary to remove the head.

My car's a beater car, sort of. It's my only ride, but my family and I have been treating it pretty badly since we've all said "it's an old car". I'd list out the details of my car, but it's just an '87 civic 1.5 stock with a carbureted D15A2, 178k miles.

I've already asked a couple of questions on the engines section, and many thanks for the people who've already helped me out. Here's some (external) pics of my progress. I'll set up a photo gallery on this site when I have more time to resize my pics (facebook does it automatically)

I started taking pictures after removing the radiator and exhaust mani. There's some pretty detailed pics in phase 3 and 4 of my cylinder head.

I took a good amount out of my engine bay so far, since so many random things needed replacing or just degreasing. Most of my cooling hoses were ancient and bulging and I think my thermostat was long due for a change. I'm just trying to get my car back in working order, maybe further down the line I'll think of getting rid of some of the stock parts. I'm glad at what I've done so far--I'm sure it'd help out if I do want to do any swapping. Comments welcome!

Part 1
http://uci.facebook.com/album.php?ai...amp;id=6028791

Part 2
http://uci.facebook.com/album.php?ai...amp;id=6028791

Part 3
http://uci.facebook.com/album.php?ai...amp;id=6028791

Part 4
http://uci.facebook.com/album.php?ai...amp;id=6028791

 

Looking good, 3 valves per cylinder..crazy. Hope it works out, welcome.