Hey all!
I’m a longtime message boarder, but I just started to get into the local type boards, like this. Some of the boards I frequent are homemadeturbo.com, honda-tech.com, team-integra.net, 3geez.com, chevytalk.org, and tristatetuners.com. I hope to make this board into one of my regulars too.
My car interests have changed since I began driving. When I started out I had a 1975 Malibu Classic that I restored for years (way before I could even get my license) and put a ton of work into. This is basically the car that taught me how to work on cars. This became my high school cruiser/first car and was great for when I started driving and the gas was 99 cents a gallon. It got 8-12mpg, but even making minimum wage, I really didn’t care, and in fact, I did love it. After a year of driving this beast for a year, gas went up, and then I bought an '89 Honda Accord, which got me into the Honda scene.
I actually still have this car and even though I’ve put around $10k into restoring it, I MUST sell it. I simply can’t afford to drive it now and it really is ashame to see it go to waste just sitting. For the last few years (it was restored in 2003) I have been taking it to car shows off and on, but since I was away last summer, and now I’m leaving the country for probably a few years, it needs to be sold no matter how much of a loss I take. I know the nature of working on / modifying / restoring cars is that you always lose money when you sell them, so this is something I’ve got past long ago. The car is for sale for $5,200 (but ALL offers are considered). If anyone is SERIOUSLY interested, PM me, I’ll give you my cell, and we could talk.
The mod list on this car is kinda extensive…
1975 Malibu Classic 2dr
350 v8 / TH 350 w/LSD rear (original setup from factory)
Comp Cams Cam / Springs / Retainers / Rebuilt Heads / New Head gaskets
All Motor-related maintence parts replaced / upgraded
Edelbrock Performer IM / 4 bbl Holley 600 CFM / K @N Filter
“Afterburner” Headers / Dual exhaust / B@M shift kit / Aftermarket ignition system
Front swaybar w/poly bushings / Rear “cop car” sway bar installed
Wide tires on Chevy “old school” steel ralleye wheels w/caps and rings
The list could go on…
Some pics:
So yeah…
My next car was a 1989 Honda Accord Lx-i. These are cool “old school” Hondas, IMO, and the flip-up headlights are probably my favorite part of the cars. This was my first 5spd, my first Honda, and my first high mile car ever. I got it cheap, with 140k mi on it, and the car was well-worn. I drove it / beat the crap out of it for 2 years until the diff in the tranny went, warranting it being replaced with a used one. I got that replaced (I wasn’t sure I could work on an import, with this drastic of a job, at the time… :doh: ) along with the clutch and then I drove it for a few months more. Then one day the oil plug fell out while I was driving…yeah, wtf. Well I saw the oil light flash on, and my knee-jerk reaction was to turn the car off, and I saved the motor. 
After that I figured it was time to start looking for a new car (and b/c I heard the t/o bearing going bad a few months later too, I’m guessing the mechanic didn’t feel like replacing it, what a tard).
Looking back at some pictures on my computer, I now realized I did “mod” my accord a little bit. My first import mods! ( :gives:)
Short ram intake modded to fit it, and then a CAI modded to fit it (since this car had pretty much NO aftermarket support at all).
Thrush muffler (Oval style, not ricer-tastic) clamped onto the exhaust which sounded deep and factoryish. I actually only installed it since my muffler fell off when I was driving the car the one day, and it was the cheapest way ($20 total in parts, all new stuff too) to fix the car so I can drive it w/o it being loud as fuck.
16 in “RIMZZZZ” Pepboys quality. 
They didn’t look too bad, but they were damn heavy. I figured I’d see what this rim craze was all about, and I realized they really aren’t worth buying. The rims didn’t sell with the car, they got transfered to the next Honda in line.
Some Poly bushings (shifter/sway bars) and an adjustable short shifter (very cool part).
Stereo stuff. On this car I taught myself how to wire up a head unit, speakers, component speakers, and how to amplify everything. Once again, took it out b/f I sold it.
Ricer stuff. Such as wire covers, silver painted calipers and drums :doh: , LED underdash lighting, red painted tail lights that looked like shit (had to replace them with junkyard units they looked SO bad), window tinting. Thankfully I grew out of this phase as soon as I sold this car.
Here’s some pics of the Accord!:
Intakes! Sweet YO! :tool:
Walmart knob on my Pacesetter short shifter!
In winter form (I now realize it looks best like this…):
Eventually I sold the Accord w/180k on it, for $2100, $300 MORE than I bought it for! The KBB on this car was low, but I personally don’t believe in KBB value at all for Hondas in this region.
Around this time my friend took me for a ride in his 89 civic hatchback that had an LS swap (1.8 L from an Integra) and a custom turbo kit. I was blown away. It made my Malibu feel SOOO slow, but yet got double the mileage, and was SO cheap to put together. That single ride hooked me on buying a better Honda. I looked and looked and found a killer deal on a 1995 Integra LS for a dirty cheap $3200 (128k mi on it at the time, and at this time the KBB on the car $5500 for private sale!).
The Integra was kinda beat when I bought it, but I love a challenge!
The bad stuff when I bought the car included…
A broken coilover in the front.
Way too big tires on the front, and it was slammed about 4 inches with a factory rear suspension.
The car was stolen two owners b/f me, but was recovered and never reported. From that it had a dent in the fuel tank and the mismatched suspension (they only stole the rear Teins and the catback off of it, and I think the interior too, but when I bought the car, it had an interior). It has a 100% CLEAN carfaX! :wtf:
Blue glow-face gauges and a broken fuel gauge.
Ripped driver’s seats, and door panel.
VERY dirty/stained interior that took years to get clean and smoke-free smelling.
Leaky trunk (never really figured it out).
Cracked rear bumper.
Terribly cracked motor mounts.
Bad master cylinders (clutch and brake).
I wish I would have taken a picture the day I bought it, because it looked really terrible. I remember showing it to my parents, and they were like, “you’re retarded for buying that.” Whatever. It ended up being awesome.
First pics I took of it… (Had my accord wheels on it, since they were the only wheels I owned at the time that fit a Honda.)
I then began the long process of fixing everything on this car. Started off by lowering it evenly on some dropzone coilovers (as seen in previous pix). Installed a different cluster so I could tell when I should run out of gas, traded the ricer rims for some 2001 LS Integra wheels, removed all the purple tint on the sides of the car, installed motor mount inserts which do work fine with ripped/broken mounts, and all kinds of other stuff.
After the wheels, I installed some amber corners, and made my interior lights red (looked so nice, can’t wait to do it to my current ride).
Pic from a team-integra.net meet: (three of the cars in that pic have since been stolen)
First winter form (these cars rock in the snow):
…and the second form:
About this time I installed some new plug wires and a front/rear functional strut bar setup (pretty useless, stupid purchase).
And then I thought I was going to turbo it, so I bought a lot of the stuff, including gauges, but I eventually realized I’d rather travel instead, so I sold it all off. The gauges were pretty cool looking (minus having white faces), and the bezel made them fit pretty sweetly.
My one “JDM” mod I installed was some oem projector fogs. They were sweet.
In order to make some money, at this time I also bought a second 3rd gen integra. I found it on Honda-tech.com for $1000 obo, and he took my $600 offer for it. It wasnt running when I bought it and I soon found that it had an improperly tensioned timing belt to blame for it. It was also hit in the front, but the frame was fine, so I knew I could fix it. This was the first timing belt I did on a car, and it was really easy, minus the bitch of a fucking bolt that holds on the crank pulley…:mad:
Day it came home off the flat bed thanks to free AAA towing (2 hr drive!
Front damage:
210k miles of non-running beauty :eek4dance
Leather interior (very dirty, never cleaned it actually)
Rust free! :wtf:
Timing belt that came off the car.
The running car after I installed the new one. It was a snowy winter and it was nice to have a cheap car to beat on for it. (I commuted to college 5 days a week, about an hour each way with this beast.)
After winter before I sold the beater.
After I fixed the front with a 2X4 to pry it out, a free hood, and duct tape to hold together the crushed headlight.
I then cleaned up the outside, shined up the dirty interior, and it sold to the first person who saw it.
So yeah. Bought the car for $600, put about $100 into it (through free parts and ebay parts), beat the shit out of it all winter on some snow tires, and then I sold it for $1900 to fund my summer at the beach in Ocean City, Maryland.
I still search for deals like this to come up, but they pretty much never do.
Around this time I helped my friend swap a B18 into his CRX. And then we slammed it on koni/gcs I found used for him for $250 for the set (sucha good deal).
Pics from a Honda-tech meet in April of last year in my area:
Working on this CRX pretty much taught me swapping Hondas is SO easy.
So we then went to Cecil County Drag Strip in Maryland to check out what these cars can run against eachother. I stripped out the interior of my car for this trip, and I think it helped my car out a bit. I beat him the first run, but the second two, he beat me. This was my first time ever racing a front wheel drive car, so it was a huge challenge for me.
The staging lanes were SO long, and his car ended up overheating after the last run due to a crack in the rad and a blown fan relay. It was around 80 degrees and 100% humidity when we were at this track. Luckily his car made it fine the 2.5hrs home, as did mine (no surprise).
My car’s best run was a 15.5 and my friend’s CRX ran a best of a 14.8. Pretty good times I thought for some newbies to the drag strip. I know he rolled through the lights once, and he rolled through the water box instead of around it at least twice. 
Yeah, we looked dumb.
The last mod I did on the Integra was some Ksport full coilovers. They were amazing for me. I drove them about 10k miles. In fact the one trip was from DE to NC (Western region) in one night. The long-term reactions to these coilovers seem to be bad on honda-tech.com (people say they leak and blow out every year), but considering my car was full of people, and I drove them 10k miles, slammed, I had a great experience with them.
The coilovers installed:
At this height:
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b222/danronian/S3020093.jpg1
I got my car home from the summer of beating on it at the beach and then the shit hit the fan. Within a month my clutch went out (a part of the disk broke off and messed up with it disengaging) and then my head gasket blew. The car never left me stranded, and I fixed it all myself.
It was kind of a self-made dare on doing the clutch job myself. But me with a case of beer, a whole night to work, and motivation, is unstoppable. I only took one pic that night of the clutch when it was on the motor. It was all shaky, but the clutch worked fine. It was a exedy stg 1 clutch I found for dirty cheap new and semi-local that was a great clutch.
The headgasket was an easy job on the integra, but I did have my one friend to help me with that just b/c there is SO many parts to tighten on these heads when doing that job.
At the end of the summer I got a ticket. This seriously changed my whole viewpoint on driving, cops and my car. I realized the cops see my car, and they assume I’m being an ass when I’m driving, and that is what happened to me. A cop stuck me with an agressive driving ticket (in Delaware, a state cop), which was a four-prong citation. I eventually hired a lawyer and got most of it dropped. There was no question I was profiled based on my car in this instance, and basically, it pissed me off so much that I sold every aftermarket part on the car.
I installed a factory axle back, factory suspension, and a factory air box. I sold the teal Integra for $3800 about a month ago. $600 more than I bought it for and I ended up driving it for two years. :hs:
How the car looked when it was sold:
I also came across a free car from my cousin. Stupid me saw free and jumped on it. I thought I could get it running, but it ended up being a wiring problem, and I just said fuck it. It’s an 89 Jetta that is still sitting in my driveway, ready to be towed away this weekend to the junkyard!
This car deserves no more words than I have already given it. :reloading
My current daily driver is a 1995 Honda Civic Vx. Picked it up for $2000.
I bought it basically b/c I love the color (same teal as my integra), and since it has shiney paint. The bodywork underneath the paint is shit, but I figure since it’s a daily beater, I dont care. It gets 40-50 mpg, and is actually still fun to drive. It’s a 5spd with a vtec-e, d15z1 motor. Very cool techonology is in this thing. It has a lean-burn mode where it runs at around 25:1 A/F ratio by utilizing a self-tuning ECU that watches the ratio with a factory wide-band O2 sensor. The car also weighs in at 2000lbs, has 8lb factory wheels, two air bags, but no factory a/c, radio, antenna, cruise, or power steering. This motor and car has 240k miles on it, but I picked up all new engine tune-up parts, a 100k mile motor/tranny, and a new clutch to install in it in the next week. I’m leaving the country for a few years to teach, so I figured I’d leave it here for my family and sister to drive, and since I know these high mile parts won’t last forever, I’m just replacing it all now so they’ll have a fun car that gets great mileage to drive for the time I’m gone.
Day I got it:(it was dirty inside from it just being painted)
(I actually drove 3.5hrs to pick this car up. Yeah, I’m crazy. :eek2: )
Engine bay has since been cleaned a bit, and it will be detailed when the new swap goes into it:
Lowered it a little bit more: (the coilover/strut combo produces a great ride, better than any lowered honda I’ve ever rode in)
The “new” engine:
Mods:
Exedy clutch, stg 1, factory performance style (not installed)
Apexi World Sport 2 exhaust (quiter than the factory integra muffler)
Short ram intake and K@N filter
Skunk2 short shifter (the factory one was shot, and this one I found local for $30)
KYB AGX struts w/Aerospeed coilovers (one rear strut is 100% blown :doh: )
Factory dash clock and armrest.
Amber corners (ones that came on it were shot)
The only future mod on this car will be possibly the factory EX/Si lip.
Well that is it for now!
I’ll update with pics from the “swap” in some other section probably. Maybe I’ll even make up a how-to if I’m bored. I’ll be installing a timing belt, water pump, tensioner, clutch, engine, tranny, and a new rad and some hoses all at once. It’ll be quite the weekend project! :hsdance:
Most of you will probably see me selling Honda parts the most often. I sell lots of stuff online to support my hobby and so that I don’t have to have a normal job. I buy stuff locally to sell, sometimes part out cars, and other times search junkyards. I don’t rip people off and I have perfect feedback everywhere I sell! (honda-tech, homemadeturbo, and ebay, all under the same name)
Thanks for reading about me! :stick:
