I like projects
And I’m the kind of person that can’t leave a car alone. My civic is a 1993 DX hatch that I picked up off a friend of a friend 3 years ago. When I first bought it, it was an automatic and 100% stock. Cut to today and it’s totally different, it’s gone through rust repair, a paint job, and currently another motor swap. If your interested in it’s full history check out my build thread on D-Series.org. Currently however it looks like this:
Why? Because I’m in the process of swapping in a B20B that my girlfriend and I drove down to New York to pick up. I’m mating it to a B18B1 (ls) transmission since it’s a highway commuter and I don’t want to be revving past 4k at 70mph.
The previous motor was a D15B7 mini me with a Y8 head mated to an EX transmission for the shorter gears. It wasn’t bad but it was slow.
When I first got the B20B it looked pretty gross.
But after some elbow grease it turned out great. I did all the typical maintenance (timing belt, gaskets, plugs, etc) and went the extra mile to get all name brand parts. While it may not be the most stellar motor out there it should be a damn reliable one.
I’m currently in the midst of shaving the engine bay. (Which I somewhat regret due to how much time it’s taken so far) But it’s too late to stop now. Today was the first warm day in awhile and I had the chance to go to town with the die grinder. I honestly made more progress today than I did in the past month.
I finished the day off by throwing a coat of All metal body filler over the grinds / welds. It’s suppose to be water resistant unlike regular bondo, and add some structural support as well.
At the same time I’ve been working on finishing up restoring the transmission. I purchased this from Vermont and again my Girlfriend and I took a road trip to get it.
Not wanting to put such a dirty transmission in the car I started cleaning it up.
Then I started wire wheeling it once most of the grease was off it.
Nearly done!
And of course the shifter linkage pin was stuck. These pins are already notorious for being difficult to remove, but when you add in the fact it spent most of it’s life in New England it’s even worse. I decided the best course of action was to use the dremel to cut off the bracket.
Here’s how it looked after cutting off the part of the old shifter linkage.
Then after finally cutting the end piece off with a hacksaw, I was able to split it into 2 pieces via the dremel.
Finally!
With the nice weather coming up I should be ready to paint it pretty shortly. Stay tuned!