Project Sissy

[SirNik84]

I've embarked into new automotive territory.
I find myself in a strange land of spark plugs, aluminum blocks, automatic transmissions, air conditioning and front wheel drive... I've entered... the Honda zone

This all started a few years back. When rebuilding my SD and in stalling the 4 speed and all that jazz I talked about here.
Installing a new engine and manual transmission in my SD

Prolog:

My step sister started having some cooling problems with her car. A 2000 Honda Civic EX coupe. I ran every test I could think of (pressure test cooling system, compression test engine, engine leak down test. ect) to find why it would be loosing water. When that failed I gave her some water, told her to check her fluids and sent her on her way. About a year later she calls me complaining about her cooling system again and how the car was running hot. Once a again no problems could be found. She was upset and talking of a new car. Having just spent a lot of time and energy on the SD I thought. "hmm a second car I could commute to work in, with AC might be nice." Jokingly lowballed her and told her, I'll give you 1500 for the civic. She was not amused. I flushed her cooling system installed a trans cooler. gave her more water and sent her on her way again. A year goes by, another summer, and another flush of the cooling system and search for the mystery leak, nothing. She was due for a timing belt, and I wasn't going to do that for her, so we sent her to a shop and had them do the belt. After the belt she was happy cause the car was running cooler. Talking to my dad, we agreed that maybe there was an issue with the water pump and having the timing belt done, the new water pump must have solved it. Summer comes this year and yet another call about the cooling system... DAMN IT, where is this LEAK! Another flush and send her off with a jug of water.

Act 1:

This brings us to 2 weeks ago. Call from sister "My car overheated and there coolant and black plastic on the ground" hmmm, "Whats your plan?" Sister, "take it to dad's mechanic and have him look at it." me, "call me and tells me what he finds."

Mechanic found that the water pump had died. He said it looks like it had been leaking for a long time. Looks like the pump stopped that overheated the engine which then over pressurized the cooling system and blew the bottom tank off the radiator. Now, this is dad's mechanic, not the fellow who did the timing belt. My dad and the mechanic have a talk and figure that considering the cars history, who ever did the timing belt didn't notice the leaking pump and didn't change it when they did the belt.

Car is now dead. My sister asks me if I want the car, she happy to see it go as my step mom just gave my sister her daily driver, an 06 Acura TSX. Told her I'd give her 500 for the car now that the engine is done. She reluctantly agrees.

Did some research on the car and found a replacement engine is San Jose for $1000. Made a plan with my dad to barrow his truck to get the engine and then the car back to my house. Looks like I paid 1500 for the car after all Got up early that weekend and drove to San Jose, picked up the engine.

Here you can see the engine in the truck and the car that donated the engine.



Picked the engine up from a place called American Imports. Looked like they specialized in Mercedes dismantling as their "show room" type area was filled with MB parts. The guy who owned the place seemed nice and was pretty fair on the price. Other dismantlers quoted me 1k for the engine plust a 200 core, for engines with over 100k miles. This place was 800 +100 core +tax, under 1k out the door. And only 90k on the engine. Seem fair enough to me I suppose. I had thought an engine for a Honda would be cheaper, but it is what it is.

Left San Jose, and dove 4 hours to my dads. My best friend still live up near my dad, so the next morning my friend and I when to repo the car from the mechanics shop. This is the only picuter of the car I've taken so far.



After repoing the car, my dad repoed his truck. That threw a wrench into my plans, I was no longer coming home with the car. Made arrangements with my friend to do the engine swap at his house in 2 weeks. We then loaded the new engine into my Toyota Tercel and I hauled it back to my house.

Side note: to get the engine to my dads in an F450 cost me $160 for fuel, to get it home in a Tercel (approximately 1/3 the distance traveled by the F450) cost me less the 20 suppose I should have taken the Tercel to start with. Oh well.



Yesterday I got the engine on the stand with the help of iwrock.
Today I got her washed.







As for the name of this thread, fugued since it was my sisters car, and its the girliest car in existence, outside of maybe a VW beetle, its the sissy mobile

[Stretch]

Well this should be fun - spark plugs and Japanese!

Good luck with the project.

[TheDon]

The mechanic that did the timing belt job is an idiot. standard procedure for any timing belt job is to do the water pump.

[Simpler=Better]

Originally Posted by TheDon

The mechanic that did the timing belt job is an idiot. standard procedure for any timing belt job is to do the water pump.

Yarp.

Now that you have the new engine on a stand, I'd just do every external gasket. With an aluminum head, super fine high temp never sieze is your friend on those plugs (just a dab)


Oh yeah, and replace the water pump just in case.

[P.C.]

Seems like a nice car! If you're all in for under $2K, you've done well.

[Air&Road]

Good show Nik!

After my Dad sold his business in '83 he started going to the auction and buying Honda's in all different condition. He was kind of smitten with the little things.

I was over at his place a number of different times over the years when he was doing all sort of different work to them. Me being someone who abhor's engines with timing belts, I challenged him about them several times. He went through a belt change once when I was over there just to show me how easy it was. This was on a Civic as I recall, but might have been an Accord.

To peer down in there where the belt is, it appears to be a witch of a job, but he sailed through it in short order just to show me. So, don't let that job fall out of your control next time.

I suppose it is a blasphemous thing to say on this forum, but I actually like Honda's quite a bit. From time to time you see things on them that kind of make you think those folks have some nutty engineers, but for the most part, they are reasonably well thought out vehicles, easy to maintain, long lived and reliable.

I think you're going to enjoy the project AND the car after you're finished with it.

Thanks for the write up and pictorial, and keep us informed.

[JB3]

ditch the automatic transmission and find a manual donor gearbox before you reinstall the engine. A two door honda civic coupe is wasted potential with an automatic

[MTI]

Nothing wrong with a Honda motor



when it's in a McLaren driven by . . .

[SirNik84]

Tonight I'm installing a new timing belt and water pump on the new engine. Should be cake walk and give me 90k of trouble free driving. My dad did the belt on his Accord and wanted to help me do it on sisters Civic, but I live 2 hrs away from my folks. At the end of the day we though it was best to just let a shop do it. I'd say we learned our lesson, but my sister is one of those people who dive their car as if it were a washing machine. I can see her having problems like this again in the future.

Its kind of a sore spot for my dad. Hes a mechanical engineer, and I love cars obviously, and even my "real" sister lovers cars and works on them. But he has never succeeded in teaching my step sister anything. Obviously my sister and I got his engineering brain, but sadly the step sister wants nothing to do with it. And she still lives at home, so hes confronted with these issues all the time. I kind of feel sorry for him, he'd love to teach her. oh well.

What is funny, my dad and I never liked Hondas. My dad always drove a truck, his mom is the one who originally purchased my SD and his brother, my uncle, owns a CD. So if anything the foreign cars in our family are MBs, but when he married my step mom she was driving an Accord. When she bought her Acura, the Accord just sat there, and after a few years he started driving it for the gas mileage. It was suppose to be my step sisters car, but she refused to learn to drive a manual trans. So they got her the Civic. And now I have my very own hand-me-down Honda

I thought about swapping in a manual trans into the car. Every other car I own is a manual, so its going to feel weird to drive an auto. But I think thats why I'm not going to change it. I really have no intention of having fun while driving the Civic, its just going to be cheap transportation. And there are people in my life who just don't drive manuals, so if I'm going to have an extra car kicking around I figure it might as well be an auto.

Maybe if for some reason I get really into this Civic I may change it out later. But I don't see that happening.

[Stretch]

You mean you're not going to go for the bright purple paint and lamborghini countach door conversion?

[Skippy]

Honda, like BMW, makes good cars. However, they both make better motorcycles than they do cars.

[MBeige]

I'm curious why you didn't go with a DOHC engine instead since you'll be swapping the engine? I'm familiar with some of the B16/D16 mods of these vintage Civics but that was for the overseas market. Not sure if the local market here in the US have the same engine sizes.

[JB3]

I hear all you reasoning on keeping the automatic, and it seems logical and appears to make sense.
My counter argument will be-

Chicken, cluck cluck cluck.

Moving on from that disapointment, I'm with stretch here on body mods. Have you selected your drop kit, neon color for underneath lighting, NOS system, and vinyl graphics?

[SirNik84]

Budge was the main reason I didn't go B16. Secondary reason was simplicity. I'm really not looking for another project car, I wanted to get the civic back on the road ASAP, and figured it would be simplest to replace the engine in kind. Locally the B16 was an extra $500 minimum.
If I hadn't wanted to get the car back on the road ASAP I could haves spent the time to find a deal on an engine, but that not what I wanted.
First body mods will be to remove all the stickers my sister had plastered on the car. remove everything even the license plate frame. I can't stand that tacky stuff.

[JB3]

Originally Posted by SirNik84

Budge was the main reason I didn't go B16. Secondary reason was simplicity. I'm really not looking for another project car, I wanted to get the civic back on the road ASAP, and figured it would be simplest to replace the engine in kind. Locally the B16 was an extra $500 minimum.
If I hadn't wanted to get the car back on the road ASAP I could haves spent the time to find a deal on an engine, but that not what I wanted.
First body mods will be to remove all the stickers my sister had plastered on the car. remove everything even the license plate frame. I can't stand that tacky stuff.

good move, this will allow room for a 9 foot long coiled serpent eating a human baby on either side. Previous graphics really interfere with the artistic vision when decorating.