Project EF Civic Racecar: Dusting off the Cobwebs

In our last installment we introduced you to our newest racecar, a 1991 Honda Civic CX that had been turned into a racecar for SCCA Improved Touring class racing.  When we purchased the car we gathered it had not had any major maintenance done in a few years.  The seller mentioned it had only done a handful of events in 2023 and had been sitting since October of that year.  Before we break anything, especially ourselves, let’s go through the car bumper to bumper and make sure it’s safe to race.  If it’s as fast as the seller claimed, we can do a deeper dive over the winter and get it ready for a full season of use and abuse for 2025.

Valvoline Synthetic Oil & STP oil filter on sale from the local auto parts store
We’ll start our maintenance with the basics: an oil change for both the engine and transmission. We went to the local parts store and picked up the cheapest synthetic oil change they offered. Our first few events are going to be autocrosses only and we plan to flush the oil at the end of the season to make sure the engine is fully healthy. It makes zero sense to use some super high end oil that costs $20/quart if we’re going to flush it out in less than a hundred miles. One oddity about Civics of this age is they use motor oil in the engine and transmission. The transmission is supposed to use 10W-30 but we decided to be cheap and lazy for the first flush and use 5W-30 for both. We picked up 10 quarts of oil but we ended up needing only six.
Honda A100 Transmission Fill Plug location
Flushing the transmission was a bit tricky. The fill plug was rusted into the transmission case so we had to use some penetrating fluid and patience to free it without rounding the head. Honda also puts the fill plug right behind the lower control arm mount making filling especially difficult.
Jerry rigged funnel & hose to fill the Civic's transmission
The motor oil jug had a wide mouth that was too big for a pump. We just duct taped a piece of clear tubing to a funnel and very carefully filled the transmission a few ounces at a time until it was full.
The old oil filter dissected so we could look for debris. The paper pleats ripped when we examined them as the filter was pretty old
Since we had zero history on this engine we cut open the old oil filter after removing it. The pleats were heat hardened but clean of debris. Phew! This engine looked like it had run for quite a few events on the same oil so we’re pretty confident now the engine is in good health.
The leftover oil in the oil filter is old but clean
The oil in the bottom of the filter is old and gross but has zero debris. That’s a huge relief! We really didn’t want to be rebuilding an engine in the offseason.
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2 comments

  2. Glad you’re enjoying! There will be a lot more actual racecar content coming soon. I’ve driven the car, I love it, and now it’s time to give it the TLC it really deserves. I’ve got a big pile of parts that are starting to go in and you’ll be reading about that early next year. Thanks for reading.

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