For this Throwback Thursday I’m not going back too far, in fact, I’m only going back to my last car. I made the tough choice to give it up and buy a “sensible” car back in January but I regret it so much. It’s my favourite car and like someone said in the video I posted yesterday, from looking at the car many people weren’t aware of how much work I put into it. There was so much work going on that I’m going to have to split this into two or more posts. So here’s the story behind me pride and joy;

Back in early 2010 I was getting a bit bored of the Audi A3 I owned. It was a nice car but it just didn’t feel like my car. I made a choice to sell it and get another Civic and after a quick search ended up buying another Frost White EG. I’d owned two 1.5 LSi’s before so this time I wanted a step up. The VTi would have been a killer on insurance so the only other choice was a 1.6 ESi. The one I found was an early spec, an early 1992 model. It came with all the electrics and even the optional air conditioning system. The bodywork didn’t look too bad but it had the awful grey interior. For £820 it seemed like a good buy.

The original plan for it was to keep it to a OEM standard. Find all the optional extras I could, keep it comfy and enjoy it. I wasn’t planning on doing anything crazy with it. The brakes would be upgraded to VTi spec, and the suspension would be rebushed but that’s about as far as I planned to go… and I stuck to that plan… for about a year.

The first thing I did when I got the car was visit a local scrapyard to scavenge for parts. I was in luck as I came across two late spec EGs with black interiors. It came me a chance to get rid of the elephant skin grey interior mine came with. In two trips I managed to pick up the entire collection of interior plastics, carpet and seatbelts. The only thing I was missing were the seats. The ones in the scrapyard were ruined, I couldn’t use them, and I didn’t want to shell out for a full Recaro Integra Type R interior. I found another option though. The Integra Si had the perfect seats for the interior in my car and the front seats bolted straight in. The rear seats were a bit more challenging to fit but I ended up stretching the Si fabric over my original seats foam base and the job was done. I had pretty quickly put together a comfy interior for next to nothing.

While all that interior assembly was going on I had managed to fit an alarm system myself and wire up the front and rear light conversions that come hand in hand with owning a UK Honda. The alarm was a bit of a challenge to install. It took hours of research and labelling to find the right wires but my patience paid off and it worked without any issues. The lights; simple. UK Civic’s are made slightly different to those in Japan, only the outer rear clusters light up on our car so with a bit of tinkering you can convert the clusters to the full width “JDM” lights. The front’s can be converted to a US style too, by wiring up the indicators to function both as sidelights and their intended use. They’re both small jobs but really add to the style of the car.

Next on the job list was to remove the air conditioning system and power steering. The AC didn’t work and it’s just a personal preference of mine to remove the PAS. The AC was an easy job, I just had to follow the parts back from the front of the engine bay to the firewall removing the bolts as I went. Inside the car I removed the AC condenser and replaced it with the standard channel that non AC cars have. A dead simple job. I could have always got it recharged but I didn’t feel the need for it, plus it was a way of removing weight and strain from the engine. Removing the PAS is a bit more a job with the engine in place. It’s all straight forward when you’re unbolting everything from the front of the engine but the lines loop behind the engine and steering rack so getting at them is pretty awkward. Once all the lines were free I used a bit of the spare pipe to loop the outlets on the rack and that was that. Even less strain on the engine and more road feedback.

With the simple jobs out of the way I started on the suspension and brakes. My car came with shockingly bad, tiny, 242mm front and rear discs brakes. The pads were cheap and worn and stopping felt like a game of chance. Keeping with the OEM theme I decided to buy a set of VTi hubs. They’re only slightly bigger front brakes (262mm) and the rears are exactly the same but I didn’t have the need for anything bigger. It was a lot of work using a grinder to take all the hubs back to bare metal so they could be repainted but it was worth it. I wanted everything to be brand new underneath so I even bought new bearings and balljoints for all the hubs. The calipers were stripped too, a job I’d never done before. It was pretty tricky to do the rears but the fronts were easy, or so I thought. It turned out I’d actually been sold the wrong calipers with the hubs so after refurbishing them they wouldn’t fit. I ended up having to shell out an outrageous amount of money to buy brand new calipers for the whole car. I guess it was worth it for piece of mind though. It wasn’t only the hubs that were treated to new parts. I removed all the front suspension too, burning out the bushes and replacing them with brand new Energy Suspension bushes. The rear control arms were replaced with a pair of brand new Function 7 control arms. The re-bush was complete.

Fitting all the new gear went relatively well. The front control arms, anti roll bars and track rod ends went right on, no problem at all. The hubs and brakes went on fairly easily too. I had to do all the work at my Dad’s house on his sloping drive. The front brakes were simple to change, even cracking the hub nut was fairly straight forward. The rear brakes were a pain though. After getting the rear of the car in the air I realised the old handbrake cables were rusted into the calipers completely. There wasn’t any way we could have got them off. It wasn’t something I’d for so when we had to cut the hand brake cable off, it left me in an awkward situation. I had nothing to stop the car rolling away. The shops weren’t able to get the parts in till the week after either so for those few days, I was car less. With the handbrake cables cut I could switch the rear arms over and continue fitting the new brakes. I’d also decided to upgrade the rubber hoses to braided lines and swap out the master cylinder and servo for a larger DC2 model. Bleeding the brakes went well so finally I had some good brakes but before I’d even got the car off the drive the lack of hand brake cable came back to bite me. When lowering the car to the ground, an axle stand tipped and the car missed the wheel blocks. It ended up rolling a couple of meters down the drive before the wing caught on a wall and stopped the car. Fitting new brakes was awesome but having the car roll into a wall took the shine off the good job…

After getting all that out of the way I was planning on just enjoying the car. I’d bought a roof rack to carry my snowboard and bike and I was starting to collect some exterior optional extras. A set of wind deflectors was one of my first buys, followed by a JDM tailgate and rear wiper delete. Nothing to add performance but little things to add a bit of style to the car (ignoring the fact that the tailgate was red). One of my favourite buys was a set of Genuine Stanley fog lights. These things are rare as rocking horse shit and I’d managed to bag a set. They needed a bit of work, the loom was incomplete and the brackets were pretty rusty but after a little research and a bit of rewiring they were working. I wanted them on the car so much I braved the fresh snow to fit them, loosing most of the sensation in my hands but it was worth it. I’d used eBay replicas on my old Civic but they were useless. These OEM foglights were in a whole other league. They worked perfectly and actually lit up the road so if you want foglights for your Civic… hold out for a OEM set! And this is pretty much how the car stayed for a while. I bought a set of EK4 “Jordan” wheels and that was that. I drove the car and enjoyed it.

Until I noticed how sick the engine seemed… I was becoming aware of how much white smoke it would puff out the back and how underpowered it felt. I would have to drop a gear or two on the motorway to make it up a relatively steep hill maintaining the speed limit. Something had to be done about it. I could have spent the time and effort rebuilding the engine but after a bit of thought I decided there was only one way to go; B Series. One morning I got up early and headed down south to meet Stew. He had a conversion for sale but also offered to give me a hand fitting it as I didn’t really have anywhere to do the job. Being a mechanic he had access to all the tools and a lift so within a couple of hours the old engine was out and the new heart in. I had my first B Series. A B16A2 that was complete with a lightweight Fidanza flywheel and a stainless 4-2-1 manifold. It felt great. A healthy engine, more power but suddenly I was forming new plans…. Bigger plans… More expensive plans