1997 Civic - Journal

January 25, 1997

Wow, my/our first new car. The first car I bought myself was my Accord but it was not new. Buying the Civic was the coolest feeling. It was nice knowing that we were the only one's that have owned this car. Smells nice too!

February 1, 1997

Well it's a week later I guess it's time to lower it. I was able to use my Tokico shocks from the Accord and some cut Eibach springs from my 89 Civic on this car in the front. In the rear I had some OLD Bec-Techs (back when Tom Bec was still using the stock shocks to make them), and I used my stock cut rear Accord shocks. I figured since the Accord is heavier it would be the same as a lowered spring since the spring rate would be much higher. That it is, this car rides like shit! The back wasn't too bad it wasn't bouncy but it was a little bone jaring (springs were are too stiff). But in the front the springs are cut WAY too much for this car. I don't think they are doing anything since the shocks are completely bottomed out.

February 8, 1997

When we bought the car we worked out a deal that they would tint the windows and give us floor mats for free. We took it too the tint place and had it tinted. We had them do 20% all around and 35% on the sides (35% is the legal limit in AZ). Looks mucho better!

February 22, 1997

Went to Apex Motorsports and bought a Tenzo cone filter for $30, what a steal!!! Went home and removed the airbox, resonator, and all the pipes. The filter wouldn't just slide on the stock hose so we had to go to the Hardware store and by some PVP pipe and attatchments for it to work right. It narrowed the intake diameter. It sounds better, but I can't tell a different in performance so good enough for now.

March 15, 1997

What a pain in the ass to do clear lenses! It was worth it though since the ones you can buy are $275. We just did it ourselves. We had to take the headlights out. To do this we needed to take off the bumper first to get to them. From here it was just a lot of prying and tugging for 3 hours straight! After we finally pulled the covers from the headlights we were able to unscrew the orange covers over the bulbs and then silicon them back together. Total cost = $1.99 for a tube of silicon, very sore hands, and 5 hours of labor w/2 people working.

March 22, 1997

Went to change the oil and for the life of me I can't get the stinking oil filter off. I finally just said fuck it and changed just the oil but not the filter. I will try again next time.

April 5, 1997

Went to Supershops and bought an Ultraflow muffler and a 4" Brospeed non-resonated chrome tip. Went to "little" Roberts house to have it welded on. Very quite. Actually I'm kinda dissapointed in the sound. You can barely even hear it. I think once we have the piping redone from the cat to the muffler to 2.25" it will be better.

April 12, 1997

Went to "little" Robert's house to make some of my infamous Tage Techs. Shortened the shock rod and made some spring perches. Ahhhhhh, the ride is sooooo much better.

September 11, 1997

It's my girlfriend's B-Day tomorrow so I bought her some stock Integra GS-R wheels. I got them for only $220 but they need new tires on all of them. Still a good deal.

September 12, 1997

GF's B-day today, she was so excited. Went to supershops and had got the new BFG's for rubber. They are mucho better! Better tire wear, harder sidewalls, big step up in the handling department. The four 195/50/15's mounted and balanced came to $350. Not too bad, as long as the tires are in good condition we shouldn't have a problem selling them for $500 when we have the money for some nicer 16" wheels & tires. For now they make the car look a whole lot better!

September 16, 1997

Went to Phoenix paint today and had them color match the cars silver paint and put it in a spray can. I painted the license box. It looks pretty okay I guess. It's an enamel so it's not too durable. Maybe in a couple weeks when it's completely dry I will try to buff it out a little to get some gloss back into it. You can't tell it was rattle can'd from a distance. Also took the bumper off and put in mesh wire (basically chicken wire). It sounds much better saying it's a custom mesh grill, not chicken wire in the bumper. Looks awesome, I think.

September 17, 1997

Used the rest of that spray can on the mirrors. Looks pretty good. Better than before but not as good as it could. We will probably end up buying some professional paint, clear, and sealer and have it professionally done from a gun. We will have the mouldings, frame rails, mirrors, door handles, and license box done. Basically anything that is black. Materials will cost around $100 and "Grimmer" from our club said he would shoot it for us for a $100. Girlfriend took the car to Exxon and had the oil changed, they were having a special and I didn't feel like messing with that cursed oil filter. I guess the guy at the Exxon place had a bitch of a time getting the thing off also. He too couldn't get the damn thing off with his oil filter wrench because of where it was located you can't get a good angle on it. He ended up drilling a hole and sticking a screw driver in it and prying it off. At least next time will be easier!

September 28, 1997

Finally replaced the ol' O.G. Bec-Techs for some newer Tage Techs in the rear. These ride mucho better! They have 2" more suspension travel than the O.G. Bec-Techs and these gas shocks are in much better condition. Still using my stock Accord cut rear springs. They still squeak. I will need to replace these with some stock cut Civic springs.

September 1, 1997

Last night I re-did the intake tube. The PVC pipe just wasn't happening (too small diameter). I drained all the propane from a nearly empty container. I then took a hack saw and very slowly and carefully cut one end off. There was still a slight amount of propane left in it but it all leaked out once I cut into it. After I had one end cut off I was able to just use a power saw to cut the other end off. Why use a propane bottle? Well if you've ever tried to find any kind of pipe 2 5/8" in diamemter it's not easy! So this worked and it only cost $1.99 (a full bottle new) plus it was almost empty and I was going to throw it away anyhow. Once both ends were off I just slid it in the stock location and hose clamped it secure. It's much louder now again and slightly faster in the high RPMs.

October 6, 1997

People really piss me off! This weekend someone spit on our car. I'm sure it wasn't anything personal but just the fact, we probably had a nicer car than them so they had to do that. What is this world coming to? I always try to take care of my stuff especially my vehicles so I park only inches away from a wall on the passengers side at work (no door dings). Well some asshole that obviously doesn't care about his/her car parks right next to me. They were at least 8 inches over the line on MY side. Then the passenger opened their door right into my mirror chiping the paint off a little. I didn't see it until I got home since I was looking at the door for a ding not the mirror. Lucky for them since I am a firm believer in, "Do unto others as they do unto you". Only I do it much harder back.

October 13, 1997

I modified the control arms this weekend. I made them 1" longer and bent the ends of them to reduce some of the stress on the ball joint. "Little" Robert let me get a taste of welding for the first time. It's pretty easy, you just have to be really steady. Robert did most of it, but I did some. I will have to practice a little each time I go over there so I can get good and just start doing everything myself. I also did an alignment. I've always done it with two flat pieces of wood and a tape measure but "little" Robert was telling me that Kurt (President of Severed ties - and he is the alignment guy at the Honda dealership) just does it by eye. I tried it and it actually works pretty good. It's pretty easy, just eye up the front tires and make sure they point directly to the rear tires. They were off sooooo far. Both tires were totally pointing outwards. Now it is mucho better. I bet I increased the tire life by 4 fold this weekend.

October 27, 1997

Not my B-day yet but I got my present from my gf already. It's a G-Tech meter. This thing is bad to the bone!!! It does everything that the add says it does. I haven't done the lateral G's, braking, or HP because I really don't care about them. I just use it for the 0-60 and QM times. I'll probably do the lateral G's and braking once so I can see what it does but the HP I know will be off because I don't know the exact weight of the car. The car got a 16.7@81 mph at the track with just the airbox cover removed. The best I could get with the G-Tech was an 8.8 0-60 and a 16.8@85mph. Not sure how accurate it is. It says .1 sec on the QM and 0-60 but who knows. There's lots of things that can come into play and mess that up. The mph went up 4 mph which shows the car has higher HP but I'm not sure why the ET is slower. Maybe I will try G-Teching it again with the stock wheels on. Now it has heavier 15" GSR wheels, Cone filter, and Ultra Flow muffler. The biggest thing keeping the car from going faster is the clutch. It's either not that great or it's toasted already. I try to ease into the start by feathering the clutch but then it won't grab because it's too hot and it just slips. But if I just pop it out too quick then it will bog the motor down because the final drive is way to high. I think like mid 3's?

This weekend Brent let me put his 17" Momo Arrows from his Civic on mine to see what it looked like. It was insane!!! The tire was completely tucked and the rim was right at the fender. In the front. The rear would have been tucking the rim easily but they wouldn't fit. The offset is much greater than the GSR's and since I pushed the camber out quite a bit they hit the fenders before they could tuck. Guess I have to do a little cutting before aftermarket wheels go on there.

December 11, 1997

Man, I can't believe how nice this Civic rides, and quite! After driving my Integra for a few days now I forgot what the Civic was like. The seats are crappy the that damn transmission's final drive is way to high geared. But it rides so much better than my GSR even though the GSR is still stock! Also, that sound deadening material must have really worked too since it's about 2 or three times quiter driving down the road.

December 15, 1997

The car was starting to pull to the right slightly so I rotated the tires and it fixed it. Also bought the factory CD player for this car this weekend off of Brent. $120, what a bargan! He's got a 96 Civic EX 4dr and we did the swap this weekend. Kind of a bitch to do it. Simple just kinda time consuming. Took about an hour to swap both of them and put the cars back to normal. That was with both of us working on the cars.

January 20, 1998

I redid the mesh grill this weekend. The old one was getting bent and some of the fishing line wires were messed up. I got the approval from Dina to cut out the factory black plastic mesh. She wanted to avoid cutting as much as possible to keep it somewhat stock but after she saw mine she said fuck it and told me to cut it all out so it would look good like mine. Looks much better and it's a lot more durable because I used zip ties on the inside of the bumper instead of fishing wire.

February 24, 1998

I bought some Kenwood 3 way coaxial speakers for $40 used from a friend. Kinda disappointing though after I installed them. I thought they would sound much better than they did. I think the OEM speakers actually had better bass and the high end sounded real close. I figure this is due to the other speakers not handling as much power so they were more sensitive. The advantage is these will handle much more power and they go louder. BUT now I need to buy an amp if I want to take advantage of their potential. I've got some brand new Pioneer 6x9's I aquirred some time ago that I could throw in the back. Then all I would need is a little amp and a small sub for a decent little system. I've got tons of passive crossovers that I could use and I could wire the amp for stereo/mono and run everything off of it. Now all I need is like one 8" or 10" 4 ohm sub and a 50-200 watt amp for cheap. Anyone out there?

March 2, 1998

Well it was a pain in the ass to get those 6x9's in the car but I got them in. Believe it or not I actually had to remove the back seat to remove the side panels to be able to remove the rear deck to gain access to the speaker screws. I also found a little 70w Alpine amp and JL Audio 10 sub for cheap. They are a friends and I haven't paid him yet. Doing a little "try before you buy" type deal. I told him like a $100 for both. Hooked up the amp and it sound good with just the 4 speakers. I still have to put everything back together and add the sub.

March 17, 1998

Slight change in plans. I didn't like the Kenwood coaxials so I traded those back for some Soundstream separates. They are 5.25" mid's with a 1" tweeter and crossover. I gave him the Kenwoods, some Boston Acoustic plates and $75 to pay for the Soundstreams and the Alpine amp. It sounds magnificent!!! I still need to get anther amp and a sub. Hopefully I will get this Kenwood amp for $50. It will do 80w x 1 I think. That should be plenty for one or two 10's. I'm not looking for slamming bass. Just something nice sounding. Since one thing leads to anther, now I suppose I will need an electronic X-over. The only thing that currently needs to be tweeked is the rear speakers are too a little bit too loud. I already put a 2 ohm ceramic resistor in series and that helped a lot but I think one more in series again would be perfect.

Hey I just got back from Pacesetter. Wow that place is big!!! Anyway, Erik showed me around the place and we dug through the trash and we found a complete header! It doesn't have a hole for the O2 sensor but that can be put on later. The only problem is the fitment. We're not sure if it's the right flange or even if it will fit. :( I took it anyway an I will try it out.

April 15, 1998

Well that header turned out to be for a GSR but I am hesitant to put it on the Integra cuz I'm not exactly sure it will give me any more HP. I don't mind if it gives me the same as it looks better than a stock manifold and heat shield. Well to get everyone up to date, I now have 2 JL10W1's, an MTX 2 way electronic crossover, and a Kenwood KAC 625 sitting in my garage. I'm still kinda unsure of how I want the install to look. I'm thinking of doing a false floor with a sealed hatch so I can keep the spare tire in the stock location.

April 20, 1998

Well it turns out the woman doesn't want to lose any trunk space. Also she says her stereo is plenty loud as is so she said I could put all the stereo equipment in the Integra. WAHOO!!!

May 11, 1998

J.R. (guy I met from the net) came by the house this weekend and showed me his wheels for sale. I tried mounting them on the Integra and they fit but they rubed REAL bad on the fenders (because of the camber alignment. So we put them on the Civic and they fit much better after I raised the suspension up about 2". They are very large but once you get used to them they look awesome. They are Gewalt Mesh 17x7's with Nitto 205/40ZR17 rubber. The tires are over 50% worn but they should still last a little while (I hope, since they are ZR rated and have a tread wear of only 160!). Picked them up for $800. Not to bad, especially since I knew of a couple people that would take the old wheels for $500 but it wasn't a sure thing. The funny thing was about 2 hours later JR and his friend came back and asked if I wanted to sell the wheels. I told him $450 and it was a done deal. So realistically the wheels only cost $350. But the tires on the GSR's had more tread. Oh well!

May 13, 1998

I changed the springs out in the rear. Instead of stock cut rear coils, there's now stock cut front coils out of a hatchback Civic. Result? A much higher spring rate but not too high that it rides bad. I also raised the front a little. Damn this car brakes and handles AWESOME!!! The front springs are still way to soft. I would like to put something stiffer up front and put them in the rear of my Integra.

May 28, 1998

I raised the car up about an 1" all the way around. Basically because the woman and I are sick of driving it so low. Everywhere you go and everytime you turn the tires were constantly rubbing on the fenders. Now it barely rubs and it handles loads better!

June 18, 1998

We had this guy come over to try swaping wheels. We want to get rid of the 17's for some 16's to gain a little lost power back as well as have the abiltiy to go a little lower without rubbing. Well it turns out that he had 45 series tires and the O.D. was identical to the 17's with 40 series. They were 5 Zigen Div 3 rims which were nicer in my opinion so we swapped to see what they would look like. They didn't look as good so we swapped back.

December 27, 1999

Boy, it's been a while since an update huh? Anyway, I have entered the wonderfull world of painting, sorta. In other words I bought a paint gun and I started painting the mouldings myself on this car. The thing that got me started was the car was keyed while parked at the mall in front of Dillards. A couple pricks ran their keys all along both sides of the car. We got a decent settlement from insurance but I'd still rather it not have happened at all. Painting of the mouldings went rather smooth. Very time consuming but they came out real well. The key to painting is clean each part extremely well, sand and prep seach part extremely well, and a lot of patience. The actual painting part is somewhat easy and fun. For some reason though when I went to paint the body panels where the scratch marks went to the metal it turned out the wrong color? I've heard silver is a difficult color to paint but this was WAY off. I'm going to get another pint of silver, only this time I'm going to take the gas filler door off and have them custom color match it this time. This way I won't need to blend the paint either. I can just paint the entire panel. It SHOULD be easier. We'll see.

January 6, 2000

Happy new year! Well I still haven't had a chance to get the new paint yet. I have the gas filler door off and it's in my car. I just can't seem to get off work in time to make it to the paint store before it closes. I should have time in the morning though. BTW, I forgot to mention that I'm storing some corner weight scales for my auto-x club (SCCA). They didn't have room in the packed equipment truck and wanted someone reliable and close to the track to keep them in their garage. NO PROBLEM I said! So I got to weight in the Civic, my friends Civic as well as my Integra. The results of it was 2448 lbs with tons of my wifes crap in it plus all the extra tools I keep in the trunk, 3/4 tank of gas, etc. etc. That's right about what it should be I figure. The front was 1461 lbs and the rear was 987 lbs. That would make the F/R ratio 60/40 which is really good. A lot better than my Integra. The left front was 767, right front 694, left rear 467, and right rear 520. My friends Civic HX was a bit lighter just a hair below 2400 lbs when he removed all the easily accessable stuff.

January 19, 2000

I finally finished painting the car. I'm happy that it's done but now I'm kinda pissed because I think I need to redue it. People aren't kidding when they say silver is a very hard color to paint! The clear coat has a little orange peel and a couple runs. That's not the big deal though since I can wet sand and buff that stuff out. The problem is you can still see where the scratch was. Apparently I sanded down so far to get the scratch to the point where you couldn't feel it anymore that you can see the dip in some places. Also I was having a hard time with getting the silver paint to cover up the primer so I sprayed over that area a little more than others and you can tell now that it's dry. Doh! I guess 3rd times a charm? At least each time it gets better. I'm probably being too critical of my own work but on a scale from 1-10 I would give this job a 5. For reference sake most factory paint jobs I would give an 8.

September 16, 2000

Well I never ended up repainting the car because we sold it. We are moving to Rockford, IL which is near Chicago and wanted to get something that could handle the roads and weather there a little better. We have wanted an SUV for a while now anyway so on Aug 9th, 2000 we ended up replacing it with a 97 Ford Expedition. This will now be my tow vehicle for my Integra. Although it's not sporty at all, I do enjoy driving it and it's pretty cool to be up high off the ground. BTW, this will be my last journal entry for the Civic.