Interior Almost Finished

More work done today. I ran out of paint before I could finish. I will be picking up more paint to finish the job. I think it came out rather well. Here are some updated interior shots...






The new seat bracket that I made and welded on came out sweet...



A fancy photo that I doctored up...



After this I'm going to remove my intake manifold, massage the firewall for more clearance around my TPS then I will be ready to hit the track.

Getting There :)

I've been working on Project '88 as much as possible. Here are some progress pics. I'm going to finish up my small to do list and will be ready for the track. Great news about that. A friend has stepped up to let me use his truck and trailer to get me to the track. It's going to happen soon! Back to today's progress....

Random Pictures

My sister let me borrow one of her nice Canon cameras. I've been taking full advantage of this and took some shots of my engine today. Just taking these pictures and posting them up has motivated me to get some work done. I still have a few things to do before it's ready for the track.

Work Done Today :)

Hello there! I did some work to my Civic today. It's been awhile since I did any work to my rust bucket. I honestly became a little burned out with all of the side car work I have been doing to try and make it to the track. My wife and I had an opportunity to go to a three day punk rock music fest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We deemed this as a vacation and to celebrate our 7th year marriage anniversary. Here's a picture of us while at the event. It was a blast, so must stress relieved and now I have a clear head.



Nevertheless now that I am back home it felt really good to get out there and to improve my Civic.

Before I left for vacation, I did some work and paint to my interior. I know this may sound lame to some of you, but I have always wanted to be able to enter my Civic into a car show performance category. One day I will when my Civic is clean enough to be respected. In light of this, I have been working on cleaning up my interior to really give it that race car look. I've been working on the ass end and moving up towards the dash board. Here is what I have so far....




My seat rail brace broke which left my seat only bolted in at three locations. I had to fix this and have a fourth mounting point before I could pass tech at my local track. I created a bracket out of 1/8" flat stock and used my HF flux core welder to join the pieces together. It came out alright...



My plan is to drill a hole in the bottom portion and through the unibody then attach a bolt to secure the bracket. I plan to get this done tomorrow. This should be solid enough and pass tech. I will also be painting the bracket black and will sew a patch over where the fabric melted while I was welding. While I have the seat out I will finish removing the sound deadening material and will paint the driver's side floor.

Quick Update

Last Friday did not work out as planned. I ran into several snags that kept me from making some passes. There is a story to go along with this that I feel like sharing.

Rewind back to last Wednesday. I was getting all pumped up for making some quarter mile passes. I decided to go over my engine in detail to make sure all is good before I make the trek to the track. One of the things I like to do is wiggle my engine harness to make sure that I have good connectivity. With my older Civic I find that things can vibrate loose quite easily. My motor was running, sounding great, then I grabbed the engine harness and gave it a shake. Instantly my engine died. My jaw dropped. Great, just what I need before I go to the track, an electrical problem.

I managed to get my engine started and began tracing wires. I wiggled my map sensor wiring and that seemed to kill the engine. I went through the wires and traced, everything was fine. This lead me to look at my TPS. Sure enough, that was the culprit. I had smashed the TPS against my firewall once again and the case was broken. The case was cocked off making for a bad connection.

Now I am in the process of removing my intake manifold so that I can clearance the firewall even more for that darn TPS. It's been raining every afternoon since Wednesday which hasn't given me a chance to work on my toy. Hopefully I will get a chance today.

I seem to jinx myself everytime I set a track date. Now I am shooting for the next chance I get. Stay tuned!

Track Day Scheduled June 14th :)

Hello fellow Honda nerds! I bet you all thought I had forgotten about my project. To the nay sayers I say hell no! This project is still in full effect. I've been lazy about posting any updates due to the shitty camera that I have available to take pictures with. This doesn't mean that I haven't done work though!

Since my last post I have installed a front camber which did wonders for my handling and feel of my car. Unfortunately due to a unibody seam I cannot extend my camber out as much as I would like to. Still it is much better than what I had before.

I also cleaned up the interior holes and have painted most of it Krylon Classic Gray. I would share some pictures if they would have come out better than they did.

Anyhow all I need is an aligment and I am ready to hit the track. My sister's own a photography business. They are going to do a little photoshoot at the track. Soon I will have some awesome pictures to share!

Thanks for reading.

Sunday Update

I did some work this weekend. Lately I've been reading up on a lot of different air intake designs. I found a TBIRA intake that was unique and proved to be powerful on d series engines. There are only a hand full of these air intakes out in existence. I tried to contact the people involved with creating this air intake but it was to no avail. I wasn't able to find one for sale either.

In light of this, I came up with a longer air intake design with materials I could get my hands on. I put together what I call a "bumper sucker" air intake. It starts with a BPi flow stack below the front passenger blinker, 3" aluminum tubing, two 90* silicon couplers, a 45* aluminum bend, more 3" aluminum tubing to another 45* bend and a 3" to 2.5" silicon reducer. It came out nice.





I drove Project '88 for the first time in months. I haven't had a chance to test out my new LCAs, alignment and new air intake. I drove a short distance. In that distance I noticed an immediate improvement. My car went straight, didn't pull and felt like a normal car.

Lately I've been having dreams where my Civic can't burn out at the track. It's been a reoccurring dream. I had to put that dream to rest today. I lit the tires up for a few moments. I'm happy that I did! Not only did my tires light up with ease, my suspension felt nice and stable, smooth. It didn't pull oddly, it went straight and felt awesome.

Project '88 is almost ready for the track. I still need a few more key parts.