the project hit an enormous snag.. the car sat again until 2013 while I planned what to do next. I continued selling off parts that I figured I would no longer need. at that point, I got the opportunity to move into my buddies house, and pay some rent. this is the house that has the enormous garage with a lift in it.. I was pretty fucking excited about that. since my rusty ass car was sitting there, I decided to start tearing it down, and possibly sell off the good parts
a few months later, I got a "lucky" break.. ill tell you why its in quotes later. a guy from the rpr website that I frequent, was selling his whole stockpile of cars and parts. one of the cars he had was in my price range. it was shipped over from Arizona to him in jersey. I contacted him immediately, and we began exchanging info. he was asking a little much for it, so I talked him down a bit. the car is an 87 crx si.. RUST FREE!
we made arrangements for him to drop it off for me, since I didn't have access to the trailer at the time. the day finally came that he delivered it.. but as he pulled twisted rad support.. what the fuck? really?? after a bit of arguing, I ended up keeping the car. after all, it was still a rust free car, and I had enough parts to build one good one
... oh wait, I almost forgot..
I rolled it into the garage, and started to build one good car out of two. I started I pile of spare parts.
once again, I had to tear out the fucking d16a1 converted wiring harness, front to back..
I picked up a few more parts along the way too, and started bolting as many existing and new parts onto the new car as I could. these include rare monkeyztek coilovers (made specifically for 84-87 Hondas), some kyb gr2's all around, a walbro pump, new upgrade motoring torsion bars, adjustable panhard rod, a full energy suspension bushing kit and some new old school shoes
torsion bars. top is stock, and bottom is the 27.5mm. these are definitely needed with a motor swap. it bottoms out like crazy withought them
finally, after getting all of the main body panels moved, it was time to drop out the old motor. that's when we found a nice little gift the previous owner left us.. this fucktard cut a hole in the drivers side frame rail so that he could access the crank pulley bolt.. he cut all the way through so that you could see straight through the fender well.. can anyone see it in pic 2? yea, its not small.. we also found out that the twisted rad support also twisted some of the front frame rail and mounting points for the body panels.. probably because the rail was weakened by the hole.. ugh.. another snag.
first things first, we had to straighten the rail, and replace the whole front support. my old car was a perfect candidate for this, since it will be made into scrap at some point anyways.
the sawzall is a magical tool. im keeping the old car around in case there are any other parts I have to liberate from it. on the new car, I gave the engine bay a nice power washing to get a full idea of the damage I was working with:
old car
new car after power wash.. look how it shines
while we were planning on how to straighten out everything, I started working on other shit that needed to get done. I started with power washing the wheel wells, and underneath the car.. I love having a lift! after it dried, I went and bought a case of undercoating, and got to work
I also read on rpr that people were trying to find different rear sway bars that fit.. one guy went to the junk yard, and found out that theres a grand caravan that has the same measurements. I went and picked one up for $11, bought new end links for it, and made some mounts out of angle iron.. this shit is beefy!
we finally decided what to do about the front support.. it wasn't going to be easy, but it had to be done
to be continued