- Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:05 pm
#358961
Hey guys, new around here, but I've been in the shadows picking though the forum over the years. I'm from Australia so you might have to excuse me when it comes to some of the terminology.
Anyways, this is my first civic which I picked up quite a few years ago and it's been through a bit in it's life, this is kind of a running project for me, where I'm using the car to learn how to do shit myself. In saying that, if anyone has suggestions or helpful tips, feel free to let me know. Any help is appreciated!
I picked up the car in stock condition from a blonde girl my age who seemed like she didn't abuse it too much. The blonde was pretty tidy herself... back to the car... I don't have any images in it's fully stock form but here's one of how it looked after I stuck some lowering spring in it:
Pretty much a fully stock civic eg running a d15b7. After the springs I got a set of a 15x7 Lenso D1R's.
Then I did the whole super lowered can't get over anything thing... purchased some shitty ebay sleeves (I don't recommend ever doing that... Although I've had quite a few wins from ebay). Along with those I got a type r replica front lip and a carbon duckbill spoiler. Oh, and a hoodbra.
It looked alright, rode like crap.
After a few months like that and a couple of tickets for being too low, I got invited out for a track day. That made me realize how truly bad my suspension setup was, so I ended up going back to the lowered springs, and I put some proper tyres on it as well and stuck a racing seat in for good measure:
After a few track days I ended up grabbing a set of slotted rotors and some high temp pads, along with some Federal 595's. That actually cut my lap times by about 2 seconds... I ended up doing 15 or so track days over 2 years, apart from blowing a radiator (which was replaced with an all aluminium one), the car has never skipped a beat. after about 3 years of owning it, the civic took a back seat to a new honda in my life...
And that's where it stayed for about 2 years.. up until about 6 months ago. I've always wanted a turbo car, and I've always wanted to learn how do things myself so I said fuck it, and purchased an Ebay turbo kit. I've had a few mates who've had pretty good luck running low boost, so don't shoot me! I've been reading up and I'm from what I can see there really aren't any internal mods (pistons and rods) for the d15b7. The solution is to buy a d16 and build that from scratch, which is the plan in the long run. The d15b7 should be able to handle low boost, and the kit should hopefully bolt onto the d16 in the future...
Anyways... Turbo kit time:
Sorry for the tiny ass image.. That's all I have. The ebay kit seems alright, the manifold is cast iron, the turbo has very little play, no forward/backward play, only side to side, and thats very minor. I've had a mate of mine who builds turbo bikes check it out (he's guiding me through this slowly) and he says it'll be fine at low boost. I can't really boost high anyways form what I hear, so that's not going to be an issue. The aim is 8 pounds. Get that working then buy a d16 and do it properly...
So after sitting in a corner for 2 years, the civic was finally getting some love. I decided to clean it up a bit and spray a rising sun under the bonnet. Cause you know, that's what all the cool kids are doing:
Shiny!
Then I put it back in the corner and started pulling it apart:
Please note, that when it says bolt on... THAT IS NEVER THE DAMN CASE!... I pretty much ended up replacing all the oil lines, and modifying a crap load of the piping, had to get the down pipe cut and rewelded to fit... Good fun though, some new experiences for me. I also picked up a Sard Fuel pressure regulator and a walboro 255 fuel pump. I'm still running the stock injectors, but I've had people tell me they're good up to 11psi... same with the o2 sensor. Feel free to share input on this if you have some!
While waiting on parts I decided to change it up a bit... This is about two months ago now. I've always been a fan of the old school 80's and 90's motul liveries and especially this one:
I'm not the best vinyl wrapper in the world but I've got access to all the equipment and I've done a couple of workshop on it so I though I bought some vinyl, cut some stickers and proceeded to wrap it... This was the plan:
And it begins:
Took me about a week on and off to get it all done.. still have a few more stickers to go, but it's now looking kind of complete finally... Also had some new wheels arrive and picked up some coilovers for fairly cheap...brand unknown but they seem alright, we'll see how they go once the car is running. Ordered black wheels, got orange... go figure. Although they're growing on me 16x8's so a little bit bigger and wider... and had the exhaust arrive, another ebay special, probably going to get a new muffler welded on it.
Anyways, this is how it sits as of this moment, still haven't started her up. Probably won't do that until I get a hondata:
To do list:
Install arp headstuds (have them already)
Connect downpipe to exhaust and get dump welded in as well while i'm there
Get hondata
Maybe grab some injectors
Do gaskets
Install boost guage and manual boost controller. (have these already)
Get tune.
Once I'm that far, and if it survives, I'll be looking for a clean d16. Hopefully the d15 doesn't blow till then. There's always the bike if it does though.
Well that's it for now... I'll start taking more detailed images as I update this thread, didn't really think I'd do a build thread so you'll have to excuse me for that! I'll also do up a full list of mods soon.
Thanks for reading.
Anyways, this is my first civic which I picked up quite a few years ago and it's been through a bit in it's life, this is kind of a running project for me, where I'm using the car to learn how to do shit myself. In saying that, if anyone has suggestions or helpful tips, feel free to let me know. Any help is appreciated!
I picked up the car in stock condition from a blonde girl my age who seemed like she didn't abuse it too much. The blonde was pretty tidy herself... back to the car... I don't have any images in it's fully stock form but here's one of how it looked after I stuck some lowering spring in it:
Pretty much a fully stock civic eg running a d15b7. After the springs I got a set of a 15x7 Lenso D1R's.
Then I did the whole super lowered can't get over anything thing... purchased some shitty ebay sleeves (I don't recommend ever doing that... Although I've had quite a few wins from ebay). Along with those I got a type r replica front lip and a carbon duckbill spoiler. Oh, and a hoodbra.
It looked alright, rode like crap.
After a few months like that and a couple of tickets for being too low, I got invited out for a track day. That made me realize how truly bad my suspension setup was, so I ended up going back to the lowered springs, and I put some proper tyres on it as well and stuck a racing seat in for good measure:
After a few track days I ended up grabbing a set of slotted rotors and some high temp pads, along with some Federal 595's. That actually cut my lap times by about 2 seconds... I ended up doing 15 or so track days over 2 years, apart from blowing a radiator (which was replaced with an all aluminium one), the car has never skipped a beat. after about 3 years of owning it, the civic took a back seat to a new honda in my life...
And that's where it stayed for about 2 years.. up until about 6 months ago. I've always wanted a turbo car, and I've always wanted to learn how do things myself so I said fuck it, and purchased an Ebay turbo kit. I've had a few mates who've had pretty good luck running low boost, so don't shoot me! I've been reading up and I'm from what I can see there really aren't any internal mods (pistons and rods) for the d15b7. The solution is to buy a d16 and build that from scratch, which is the plan in the long run. The d15b7 should be able to handle low boost, and the kit should hopefully bolt onto the d16 in the future...
Anyways... Turbo kit time:
Sorry for the tiny ass image.. That's all I have. The ebay kit seems alright, the manifold is cast iron, the turbo has very little play, no forward/backward play, only side to side, and thats very minor. I've had a mate of mine who builds turbo bikes check it out (he's guiding me through this slowly) and he says it'll be fine at low boost. I can't really boost high anyways form what I hear, so that's not going to be an issue. The aim is 8 pounds. Get that working then buy a d16 and do it properly...
So after sitting in a corner for 2 years, the civic was finally getting some love. I decided to clean it up a bit and spray a rising sun under the bonnet. Cause you know, that's what all the cool kids are doing:
Shiny!
Then I put it back in the corner and started pulling it apart:
Please note, that when it says bolt on... THAT IS NEVER THE DAMN CASE!... I pretty much ended up replacing all the oil lines, and modifying a crap load of the piping, had to get the down pipe cut and rewelded to fit... Good fun though, some new experiences for me. I also picked up a Sard Fuel pressure regulator and a walboro 255 fuel pump. I'm still running the stock injectors, but I've had people tell me they're good up to 11psi... same with the o2 sensor. Feel free to share input on this if you have some!
While waiting on parts I decided to change it up a bit... This is about two months ago now. I've always been a fan of the old school 80's and 90's motul liveries and especially this one:
I'm not the best vinyl wrapper in the world but I've got access to all the equipment and I've done a couple of workshop on it so I though I bought some vinyl, cut some stickers and proceeded to wrap it... This was the plan:
And it begins:
Took me about a week on and off to get it all done.. still have a few more stickers to go, but it's now looking kind of complete finally... Also had some new wheels arrive and picked up some coilovers for fairly cheap...brand unknown but they seem alright, we'll see how they go once the car is running. Ordered black wheels, got orange... go figure. Although they're growing on me 16x8's so a little bit bigger and wider... and had the exhaust arrive, another ebay special, probably going to get a new muffler welded on it.
Anyways, this is how it sits as of this moment, still haven't started her up. Probably won't do that until I get a hondata:
To do list:
Install arp headstuds (have them already)
Connect downpipe to exhaust and get dump welded in as well while i'm there
Get hondata
Maybe grab some injectors
Do gaskets
Install boost guage and manual boost controller. (have these already)
Get tune.
Once I'm that far, and if it survives, I'll be looking for a clean d16. Hopefully the d15 doesn't blow till then. There's always the bike if it does though.
Well that's it for now... I'll start taking more detailed images as I update this thread, didn't really think I'd do a build thread so you'll have to excuse me for that! I'll also do up a full list of mods soon.
Thanks for reading.