The passenger side lens was broken in half. This seems to have been a victim of the crash that wrinkled the passenger side door and fenders. We found a replacement on eBay. The socket and wiring were also smashed up. I had some screws in my toolbox that fit the holes so we were able to secure the new turn signal housings correctly.These old D-Series engines use solid lifters which need to be checked and adjusted regularly. We pulled the valve and timing belt covers and adjusted the lash. We also checked the timing belt and confirmed it was nearly new. While we had the valve cover off we replaced all of the gaskets with a kit from Felpro. We had noticed oil in the spark plug wells and checking the valve lash gave us a good excuse to stop the oil leaks at the same time. The oil leak, combined with the previous owner using anti-seize on the spark plug threads, gave me a hell of a fright. You can imagine my terror when I saw oily plugs covered in aluminum paste!The Civic came with a set of very old, split Yokohama A048 tires in 185-60/13 that no longer held air. We replaced these totally dead tires with a set of Toyo R888Rs in 205-60/13. We decided on the R888R for a few reasons. 13” tires are getting hard to find and Toyo offers this tire in a few 13” sizes so we can experiment with sizing. We could have gone with the RR model DOT slick, but we only wanted to buy one set of tires for this year and knowing my luck if I bought a slick it would rain every damn weekend I wanted to take the Civic out! So a mixed use tire seems like the smarter choice for our first set.One downside is that the 205 tire is a lot taller than the 185 and that’s going to affect our final drive. They are also a good deal wider and our Civic is pretty low so getting them to fit might be a bit tricky.When we bought the Civic, the owner threw in a set of loose wheels he had sitting around which turned out to be from a MK1 VW Rabbit. The Rabbit wheels are also 13” and share the same 4×100 bolt pattern. However they are 5.5” wide wheels as opposed to the old Honda wheels that are only 5” wide. This is a much better fit for our wider 205 tires which you can see here. I originally mounted the new tires to the Honda wheels and then discovered the Rabbit wheels were wider. Measure twice, pay for mounting/balancing once kids.You may have noticed that my garage is both tiny and full of tools/parts/workbenches/yard stuff and there is no room to store cars. This Civic will have to live in the driveway year round including the winter where the R888Rs will split from the cold. That means it will need storage tires so we can move the car around when needed. I picked up the cheapest 13” tire I could find online and slapped them on the 5” wide Honda wheels. They are comically tiny. These tires will also be useful for dolly towing the Civic.
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.
2 comments
Really enjoy this content! Looking forward to see how the car progresses.
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.