29 replies to this topic

[bobdragster]

Um, lets start with some back story..

In a search for a project car, I found a 1982 Honda Civic while searching the local craigslist.com listings.
I went to take a look at it, and, well... the story is here: The Story

Badpenny ended up letting me on his little secret of a 1g Prelude sitting in his driveway, ready to be bought up for $500. I ask for pics, he sends me pics, I confirm that I want it, and two days ago he brings me the car along with a LOT of extras!

Oh, and it's completely rust free, except for a few spots of surface rust, which will easily be sanded away and primed.

I didn't get any true "Before" pics but I got some before I got really far into the project. Also, here is a link to the 60+ pictures that badpenny sent me:
Link To 60+ Detailed Pics!

The current pics-
Here is a pic of it sitting in my driveway:





Here it is after I started tearing into it. I pulled out the front and back seats, the carpet, the center console, the door panels, and the trunk floor board for clean up, then whenever I can afford it I'll have them reupholstered. For now though, I'm just gonna clean it up and use my carpet cleaner on the stuff. Surprisingly though, all the leather/pleather (whatever its called) has fared pretty well through the years.

Outside -




Trunk -


Engine bay. This carburetor business... It has me a bit worried, and as you can see there are random vaccum hoses poking around in the engine bay. This will be my first experience dealing with a carb, so I'm glad badpenny gave me the FSM (along with a BUNCH of other stuff that I will list and picture later).







Interior shown in next post...

Edited by bobdragster, 24 March 2008 - 03:20 PM.

[bobdragster]

Cont'd

The Interior. Bare. Yes, that is a bag of sunflower seeds in the door... I'm pretty much addicted.








Now, for all the things badpenny gave me with this car... Pictures will come very soon (I love pictures in build threads, and there can never be enough, so I'm gonna have as many as I can).

Complete FSM for a 79 Honda Prelude (the only difference between '79 and '80 was that the color of my prelude was added to the line-up). 3 alternators, an extra distributor, a brake repair kit for all four brakes, a carb rebuild kit, two extra voltage regulators, an extra driver's side mirror assembly, and a few other things which I'll list later when I get a look at these boxes full of things...

Oh yeah, and a quite new looking (are they new, bp?) pair of Koni sport shocks for the front.

To be continued quite soon, tonight maybe, probably tomorrow.

Edited by bobdragster, 04 August 2007 - 10:57 PM.

[crxls]

looks great so far. now is a good time to lay all the wiring for that stereo system!

[bobdragster]

looks great so far. now is a good time to lay all the wiring for that stereo system!

The interior will be out for a while, but I'll get to it soon I hope!

I need a good battery first.... haha.

OH! I forgot to post my core plans...

Here:

Scenario A - A complete stock restoration. This will be very difficult due to the extreme lack of parts for the car, but there are ways to improvise things.
As far as the amount of time this option would take, I would give it a year and a half to two years.

Plans:
- Clean everything on the car. Pull it off, clean it, degrease it, armor-all it, and/or wash it (Where applicable for each).

- Paint job. It will take me a long time to decide on this... I may or may not keep the stock gold/cinnamon color. Other options would be the red/maroon color that was another stock option(R38M is the color code for that), the infamous black, and the final option would be dark blue of some sort. Start searching for replacement parts in junk yards, online,around town, wherever.

- Install all of these parts. The parts that could not be found will either be taken from the car and reconditioned, or (if possible) I will build myself, or have it built.

- Take a little break and save more money. If I am behind with stuff, then I'll just catch up in this time. At the end of this 3 months, it will have been a year since the start or the project. Um.... Texas meet at my house?

- Sound system. crxls, you're hookin me up man. I'll be saving for this setup, so it may actually come a lot sooner than this... I can only hope, but I'm being realistic. One 10" sub in the trunk, 1500 watt amp, 5.25" components(speakers and tweeters with their own sound "purifier"), and a good head unit for it all. Wiring and all that stuff for it is a given. I am going for awesome sound quality here, I don't care for rattling my car to death, and annoying others with ten 30" subs in my trunk. The 10" will provide quite sufficient bass, and the component speakers give awesome sound quality.

- Finish things up. Tie loose ends. Detail the car. Get rid of them old steelies and get me some 9.3 lb, 14" Kosei K1 TS wheels.

Scenario B - A complete restoration, with a motor swap. Everything from Scenario A, with a motor swap included. The motor swap... I'll go ahead and add 6 months to the time line. It may take more time than that... I don't doubt that it will, but, who knows.



EDIT: I decided to remove the 3 month time periods... Time constraints aren't going to work out here, I'm not gonna do something, then wait 2 months to do the next thing, I'm just not wired for waiting very well.

Edited by bobdragster, 19 June 2007 - 12:50 AM.

[SEEKERone]

post up anything special you may be wishing for from junkyard.
I go to a few different yards and on RARE occasions one of these vintage can be found.
The strange thing is that they are usually unmolested.

Steve <===(owns 2G Prelude in addition to a few CRXs)

[EuphoricBlue]

Do both. Try to do the engine swap in the least destructive manner possible. Then you can rebuild the stock engine... and when you want to restore the car back to original state for collector plates, just put the restored engine in and you're done

[bobdragster]

Do both. Try to do the engine swap in the least destructive manner possible. Then you can rebuild the stock engine... and when you want to restore the car back to original state for collector plates, just put the restored engine in and you're done

You know, I could pull out the stock harness, and get another to mate with an F22 harness....

BTW, the F22 is the engine of choice with this. They are dirt cheap, and great engines.

post up anything special you may be wishing for from junkyard.
I go to a few different yards and on RARE occasions one of these vintage can be found.
The strange thing is that they are usually unmolested.

Steve <===(owns 2G Prelude in addition to a few CRXs)

That would be REALLY nice if you could find me some good 1g parts man.

A few things you might want to keep an eye out for is a full wiring harness, clean chrome trim lines, a center console that doesn't have any dry rot, and I don't think they ever made this, but if you happen to cross a black interior, or grey, then let me know! Oh, but if you do happen to find any performance upgrade parts, that would be awesome! These cars came out, and like the 1g CRX, there were catalogs full of performance parts from Jackson racing, Koni, and a few others.

BTW, right now I don't have an money due to paying for the car and having to pay for the parts on my mom's Buick, but I will have spending money coming in again in less than a month hopefully. Thanks for the offer!

Edited by bobdragster, 19 June 2007 - 02:45 AM.

[badpenny]

Oh yeah, and a quite new looking (are they new, bp?) pair of Koni sport shocks for the front.

Yes, NOS (new old stock)

And the color of the car is Longbeam Gold Metallic.

[bobdragster]

Yes, NOS (new old stock)

And the color of the car is Longbeam Gold Metallic.

Awesome, I think I'm gonna repaint it the original body color. The interior will either be the cream white or black.

[eric87crx]

Hope ya go far with this man, i have only seen like one 1g prelude, and it sucked bawls...so lets see this one go to greatness..haha

[AndrewSi]

I know a site that I'm pretty sure that still has the rear koni's for you car. just thought i'd let you now.

[bobdragster]

PM'd


EDIT: As of June 22, 2007 at 12:56 PM, I officially have been hating the weather since the last update... Hopefully things will pass soon... I want to get back to this thing...

Edited by bobdragster, 22 June 2007 - 12:57 PM.

[bobdragster]

I may or may not be getting to do some work on this today. I hope it happens.

I have a question though...

There is a possibility of an 86 or 87 CRX Si in my near future, and that car would take care of my performance needs, so I think I'm gonna leave a swap out of the question for this and just do a really good restoration on the car and the engine. What do you folks think?

[badpenny]

brakes and battery

[bobdragster]

brakes and battery

Yep, I'll be buying a jack and a battery as soon as I get the cash.

And taking care of vacuum lines and the carb tuning.