HondaCivicForum.com - Finally starting my mods

I have a 97 civic hx coupe w/ 162k miles. I was either going to buy a new car or put some money in the civic and I decided to go with freshening up the civic. Its been a great car and it could use some tlc.

I've started purchasing/collecting all the body panels needed to do a facelift and got some great help on another thread ... thanks to all those that replied.

This weekend was to be a small start.....get the car re-tinted. I already removed the old tint from all the windows except the rear glass. It was a complete mess and I couldnt use a razor b/c of the defroster. I called a local shop and they told me it would be 100 bux more if they had to remove the tint from the glass.....so I decided to do it myself. I got some strong window cleaner b/c of its higher ammonia content (solvent) and some 0000 steel wool. The adhesive came off great. It took a couple of hours but was well worth the money saved. In order to get all the way down the glass, I had to remove the rear deck panel....then I removed the rear side panels.......then the back seat....then the panels on the pillars. Before long, I had 1/2 of the interior taken out and decided now would be the as good a time as any to start blacking out the interior. After starting that project, I realized my headliner was separating from the board and decided to redo it.

So my "get the car tinted" turned into cleaning/painting 8 panels, and redoing my headliner with a black faux suede. It turned out great..I'll post some pics.

I still have a ton of work in the interior to finish the black out but so far I'm off to a great start.

I have to tell this story as well because I think its a useful piece of info. I wanted to do the headliner in faux suede and that costs about 12-15 bux a yard...so in my wisdom I went up to Walmart and purchased a 54x84 curtain panel and some 3m adhesive spray...all in all about 20bux for all of it instead of dropping 50 or do dollars on just fabrc. Saved me roughly 40 dollars overall. Cheap mod and turned out great.

More to come!