Haha, yeah it's kind of ugly, but I know I'm going to love driving it. Hell, my other car's an '87 civic. It's just as boxy. I love driving tiny, lightweight cars.

What's a crab? I like the idea of using fiberglass to reinforce the fenders. I'll look into it, thanks for the suggestion!

 

So my progress has slowed a bit. Having too many interests means that I can't put too much time into any one thing.

Last week, I spent a couple of days cleaning off the valves. There were some heavy carbon deposits on the exhaust valves, especially on the valve face. I cleaned them off by locking them into my drill and spinning them while i pressed the face against a screwdriver. Afterwards, I stripped off the black material with sandpaper. I'm actually not sure if that black material is high-temp paint or some kind of treatment. Anyone know? I figured that I can make the valves a lot smoother than they were, though...I thought I read online a while ago that smoothing the valve faces can protect the engine against detonation. I can't find where, though...can anyone confirm? After my valves are all smoothed with another application of sandpaper, I'll use lapping compound to mate the contact surfaces with the valve seals in the head.

After this, I'll probably change my oil pan gasket, check the tolerances of the oil pump and maybe replace it (the block is around 220k miles) and then start putting this baby back together. Hopefully I can have this running in another week or two, with the 4-8 hours I'm putting in each week.

Here's some before-and-after pics of the valve surface cleaning. Pay no attention to that chipped valve. That's an old valve that I've replaced with another (used) exhaust valve from a d15a2.


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Reviving an old thread...

I lapped the valves and ended up not getting the head milled--my parents rushed me to finish up so that I could clear up some garage space. I threw everything back on, then had to take a few parts off to replace leaking coolant lines going to the fast idle sensor. After that, I took off and reinstalled the timing belt 4 times because I couldn't get the marks aligned right. It turns out I got it right the first time. I think one of the previous freaking owners changed the crankshaft pulley. I'm supposed to set the engine timing to 12 degrees btdc, but the marks are for 16 +/- 2 btdc. I was able to get it to 12 with my adjustable timing light, I just thought that maybe I was doing something wrong. Ugh.

The radiator fan wasn't spinning up, so I replaced the thermostat and radiator temp sensor, but the parts I pulled out looked pretty new. The last owner said he recently changed them, but I was in doubt about their condition, so I wanted to be sure. The last owner shorted the radiator temp sensor wires to always have the radiator fan on. This part of the wiring harness got damaged when I was driving it around testing the motor, since the shorted part got scraped on the ground...bleh, anyways, now instead of 2 plugs to connect to the radiator temp sensor, I have a plug and a wire. My cheap solution was to crimp some copper on the loose wire using pliers.

The ECU kept throwing a problem code with the TDC/CYL sensor, so I replaced the distributor. When I later checked the old distributor with a multimeter, it was within spec. More ugh.

Yesterday (4/21), I smogged the car to complete the transfer of ownership. The car failed smog!!! Too many hydrocarbons (hc) and carbon monoxide particles (CO). I'm reeeeeeeeeeeeaaally hoping that this is an o2 sensor issue. Tomorrow I'm going to run the o2 sensor test in Chilton's (which is the same as in the helms service manual). I'm crossing my fingers that the o2 sensor falls out of spec--I know some of you would rather just change the o2 sensor, but after swapping a few parts that looked like they were still good, I want to be sure. I really don't want the problem to be with the catalytic converter. If that's the case...my backup plan is to swap it from crx 2--I bought a second one for some body parts.

I'll post up some pics during my down time at work later today. Anyone have any experience with treating smog fail cars? I'll probably have to take this to a smog garage, but I'm hoping that the problem might be something small that I can test first, like the o2 sensor or map sensor.

 

Some pics of the car's interior

I replaced the hatch lifters since the hatch barely stayed up on its own. Now it'll clock someone in the chin if they're not careful.


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The carpet is nearly gone. I've been keeping my eye on craigslist for spare parts and parts cars (RSS is my friend). It looks like the car had rugs stock that are gone now. I got some **** carpeting that my friend's parents were throwing away. I'm going to give it a once-over with a carpet shampoo-er that I have and then fit it to the back. I guess this isn't quite going to be a stock car, since it'll have fuzzy carpetting on the inside . I'll want to eventually replace these deteriorated boards. Once I'm done in the engine bay, I'm going to go to home depot to get some generic board and cut it to fit.

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The inside door panels are just hideous. They're some sort of off white, but rubbed away in some parts. I have a hard time believing the stock panels were this color. I think one of the last owners tried to paint this with cheap paint. I'll probably swap these panels with another 1st gen CRX.

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More pics of the cleaned up engine and engine bay, the transmission was coated in a 1-2 mm thick layer of grease when I first looked at it.



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The dangling connector down below was supposed to connect to a fuse box on the left...which connects the alternator to the battery I didn't connect this or realize I forgot to wire it up until I was on the road and the car was driving sluggish.

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New hatch lifters installed

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My 3 1986-7 Hondas. The Civic is my DD, the far CRX is a parts car. I bought it mostly for body panels and splash shields.

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Side/rear views...things I'd like to address in these pictures (who knows if I'll get to them all)

1. missing CRX si spoiler (unfortunately, it's different from the spoiler for other CRX's)

2. bad tint job on the 2 rear windows

3. scratched up rear window defroster lines (the hatch on CRX 2 is amazingly immaculate, but it doesn't have a wiper or upper brake light )

4. moonroof that won't open (the motor sounds like it works, but the moonroof won't go up)

5. bad paint job on the front bumper, upper lip (I think that's what it's called--the piece in front of the hood), hood and moonroof

6. cracked front fenders


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For 5: I'll probably swap the front bumper from the other CRX and then swap the underbody so it'll match. I've been having second thoughts about this though. It seems like it'd look tacky. What do you think? I was also thinking of getting an HVLP gun and repainting the car myself. The underbody doesn't seem repaintable though (not in a way that looks good).

For 6: I might take the suggestion to fix the cracks, scuff up the underside and add fiberglass. If I could find a way to make these thin enough, I wouldn't mind using them as the core to make my own carbon fiber fenders

 

Last picture post for today--the bad paint job on the front bumper. The last owner might've used a spray can. Cracking, blobs, overspray and running are his style.

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ya i would pull the fenders off and clean and ruff sand the inside ruffly clean again and fiberglass/matt/resin over them... those things break so easily! at least if you resin/glass the insides of them if they crack they will be held inplace instead of shattering the whole fender! then you can fix them easily enough by just filling cracks with some plastic bondo....

and the crx in the middle didnt have a SI spoiler... im pretty sure thats the DX spoiler. im pretty sure the one on the left is a HF or SI spoiler... i would just swap hatches and drill holes for the wiper motor if you want to keep it.... most people delete the rear wiper tho. IMO i wish mine had one.

and most likely the sunroof is siliconed shut.... very common bad leaking area!!!!

 

If I wanted to keep the spoiler from the other hatch, I'd have to do what you said and then make the rear wiper thinner at the base somehow, because it doesn't fit under the spoiler.

Oh yeah, and I'd be giving up the upper brake light if I swap hatches. There's no way I could make this work short of drilling holes in the glass of the new hatch, since the light is mounted through the glass (unless I'm missing something here)

Edit: oh ya, thanks for the tip about the moonroof...maybe I'll try using a knife to cut the silicone...

I found a few pics of some 1st gen CRX's, some have the SI badge and have the rear spoiler and some don't have any spoiler or badge (which I assume is the dx) So I think it's possible that this is the stock SI hatch

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