Author Topic: Cheap and Fun Honda Si Project - New Engine Time (part deux)  (Read 19738 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Rathburn

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 4829
  • Pork chop sandwiches
  • Location: Calgary, AB
  • Ride: Generic SUV
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #50 on: June 27, 2015, 11:01:32 pm »
Same problems we ran into with Ginger, life does get in the way.  We ended up having to pay to get a good majority of it done in time for the season.

Is illmotion's sunday school where you learn about how Stance Jesus scraped for your sins?
Roxanne - 2015 WRX Ginger - 1990 Civic Si
Avatar courtesy of Wong Photography

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #51 on: June 29, 2015, 10:51:42 am »
Pics of garage?

There were no pictures of the detached garage in the MLS website. Ill have to snap some pics when we take possession.

Well, it official.
House is ours.  ;D

House is located in the Bonnie Doon neighborhood (been trying to buy in this neighborhood for years).

Back on topic, I hope to get some wrench time this weekend and hopefully fire up the civic.

Things to do:
- Body work. Wont pass inspection with current rust holes. Need to treat the rust, bondo, paint and reattach removed panels.
- Tap and die two bolts that were stripped (alternator mount and passenger side motor mount). Nice surprises we found upon possession of car :(
- Flush ALL fluids (Coolant, engine oil, trans oil, break fluid, power steering)
- Buy and install new battery
- Fix seized parking / E-brake
- Replace front windshield
FIRE HER UP!!!
Get her inspected.
Get me some seat time.

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #52 on: September 23, 2015, 06:21:25 pm »
Well, guess I should update this... Considering its been months.

Funny how priorities change.

Anyhow, was able to get a couple evenings this week to work on the car.

While zac tackled body work, I tackled the last few loose ends to get the engine fired up.
-double check all the hoses. Button everything up.
- tap stripped bolt for passenger side engine mount. DONE
- Tap bolt holding alternator mount on engine. DONE.
- flush coolant. Change oil. Replace clutch fluid... By accident. Lol. Add clutch bleed to job
- BLEED clutch
- buy new battery and install. DONE
- SWAP ECU. DONE.
- tighten alternator and power steering belts.DONE
 Make a note to buy new ones as these are done.

Everything looks good. Alright, fire it up.
Give me the keys zac says.
 :sarcasm:
Where the uckfay did I put the keys... Been months and ... Oh... Probably on a box at the new house.
Find keys.
Start the car.
Well, sortof. Engine cranks over. But it wont start.
Call it a night.

No pics as I was giving'er as I have limited time to work on her

But I do have pics of zac's rust repair.








Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #53 on: September 23, 2015, 06:24:15 pm »
Going to work on it tonite again. Zac to keep up the good'n'uff body work. And ill try to figure out why it wont fire up. Fuel, air, spark.

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #54 on: September 24, 2015, 08:39:25 am »
After another good evenings work on it, got it fired up. Yay!!! But it wont idle or stay running. It immediately stalls.
Then I think we must have flooded it because it didn't start for the rest of the night.  :(

-At first we thought it must have an immobilizer so we swapped the ECU back. Didn't work.
-Battery is new.
-Checked spark plugs. They are getting fuel.  How consistently, no sure, but the plugs did smell like fuel.
-Hard to hear if the fuel pump primes because its such a faint sound, but if the plugs smell of fuel, it must mean it works. Oh, also, we have a loose fuel line and the first time we fired her up it was pissing fuel, so i'm pretty sure the pump is not the issue.

AJ told me that on these honda's, if your ever having any issues, its probably the distributor. lol.
So we took it off, inspected everything. Double checked the order of the coils and lines and everything. Everything is good.
The engine AJ gave me didnt have a Dizzy so I pulled it from the original engine and slapped it on this one. Maybe this is the issue?
Either way, its not a bad thing to have a spare dizzy lying around so we'll buy one, new plugs, belts and stuff, and see if that helps.

Any other suggestions?


Also, Zac did a bit more body work to the car yesterday. Starting to look good.

Offline seat safety switch

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 6044
  • Snowmen with fezzes are ardent rally fans.
    • seat safety switch
  • Location: Calgary
  • Ride: Junk
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #55 on: September 24, 2015, 09:07:34 am »
I'd check the fuel pressure at the rails, but if it's "pissing fuel" you're probably okay. If you really want to be sure, remove an injector, stick it into a glass jar and see how fast it takes to shoot out the other end and start a fire.

You can check for spark more or less the same way, pull out one of the plugs, put it on the end of the wire and hold it near something metal without getting your hands zapped. If you see a big strong spark leap the gap you're good to go on that cylinder.

The distributor sounds like a reasonable assumption to me. Is the cap set properly? Is the distributor shaft turning smoothly? If it's cheap enough I would get a fresh one, fresh plug wires (wires go bad more easily than plugs in my experience) and change one variable at a time until you know what the deal is.

Since this is an Si, are there extra crazy sensors for cam position or something?

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #56 on: September 24, 2015, 09:14:53 am »
Since this is an Si, are there extra crazy sensors for cam position or something?

You know what, wouldn't be a bad idea to double check all the sensors. Thanks

Offline RedndWhite

  • Vendor
  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *
  • Posts: 2848
  • Classing up the Joint since 2018
  • Location: Calgary
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #57 on: September 24, 2015, 03:18:47 pm »
Hey now, cheap car means cheap body work!

Although I am very excited to see the finished results of Zac's work.
Photos and Stuff

Al-Tessa;
Beat'm'up
Life is too short to be stock and drive boring cars.

Offline Zac

  • Vendor
  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *
  • Posts: 1778
  • I liek stuff
  • Ride: 05 LGT Wagon, 08 Jeep WK CRD
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #58 on: September 24, 2015, 06:22:15 pm »
Hey now, cheap car means cheap body work!

Although I am very excited to see the finished results of Zac's work.

I'm quite impressed with what I did underneath the bondo and how solid it turned out to be  >:D

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #59 on: September 25, 2015, 03:46:31 pm »
I'm quite impressed with what I did underneath the bondo and how solid it turned out to be  >:D

Haha. Very creative, true to the good'nuff moto, and sonofagun... so far it looks great AND solid. Who would have thought.

So I hope to go work on the car again tonite and diagnose this problem with the car not being able to idle and stalling.

I think I have a theory about why the car kept stalling. When I bought the engine from AJ, he advised me that there were a few things deleted on the engine that will need to be looked at.
I caught most of them when we dropped the engine in, but it just dawned on me this morning, the fast idle valve was defeated on AJ's engine and I’ll have to look into this. Just need to research whether keeping it defeated does anything to the classing of the car and if yes, I’ll have to transfer over the fast idle valve from the old engine to this one.
Having it defeated typically causes low idle and stalling issues until engine is properly warmed up.

I’m hoping that it is simply this.
If not, it may be an array of sensors that could be causing it to stall.
Things I need to check:
MAP sensor.
Knock Sensor.
Grounds.
Could be the distributor. I really hope it isn’t because it’s not a cheap part.


 

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #60 on: October 15, 2015, 12:40:24 pm »
SHE's ALIVE!!!

Got her running.

I'm so relieved.

Turns out, all she needed was for us to fiddle with the dizzy (adding / removing timing) and she sparked up as if she had ran yesterday. uckfay I LOVE HONDAS. Not even a SINGLE CEL. hahaha. Vac leaks everywhere and the damn thing runs as if nothing could ever phase her.
She sounds great too.
Now I just need un-seize the parking brake and will be moving it to my other garage soon.

Speaking of which, that means I have a double detached garage (NOT heated) that will be free soon to rent if anyone is interested. Gonna throw some type of add up soon.

Anyhow, we bought new spark plugs because the ones on there were Canadian Tire brand and installed them the other day. We will also be replacing the rotors in the near future and we need to figure something out about the exhaust/muffler. Its rotted through and will need replacing or fixing if we want to pass inspection.
Once the car is moved back into my heated garage (Mmmmmmm), we'll get back to doing body work.

Definetly had fun revving her up the other day and enjoying that sweet sweet honda sound.

I have really enjoyed working on this car and cannot wait to get her on the road/track.

Offline seat safety switch

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 6044
  • Snowmen with fezzes are ardent rally fans.
    • seat safety switch
  • Location: Calgary
  • Ride: Junk
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #61 on: October 15, 2015, 12:41:31 pm »
Yeah, the only part of these cars that ever breaks is the dizzy. Now buy new plug wires.

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #62 on: October 15, 2015, 12:46:31 pm »
Yeah, the only part of these cars that ever breaks is the dizzy. Now buy new plug wires.

I have like 4 sets to choose from.

Car AND spare engine came with spare sets. lol

Offline A.J.

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 1190
  • Location: Edmonton
  • Ride: 2019 Audi RS3
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #63 on: October 16, 2015, 06:30:33 am »
Awesome! Glad to hear you got it all sorted out and running!

If you kept the fast idle valve blocked off and you want it to idle better cold you can pull off one of the vacuum lines(or plugs) from the intake manifold to let extra air in and it should idle a lot higher.
If you want a WSC License plate frame, PM me. Now available in black with white lettering!

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #64 on: October 16, 2015, 07:59:05 am »
Ok, yeah right now it idles at like 300-400 rpm.  Very low. Ill experiment a bit and see which hose / plug will help it idle higher.

Offline A.J.

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 1190
  • Location: Edmonton
  • Ride: 2019 Audi RS3
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #65 on: October 16, 2015, 10:23:09 am »
There is also a screw on the throttle body to adjust idle. Once it's warmed up adjust it to about 650-800 rpm.
If you want a WSC License plate frame, PM me. Now available in black with white lettering!

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #66 on: October 16, 2015, 11:00:32 am »
Ok, sounds good. Ill fiddle with that too.

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #67 on: October 19, 2015, 01:55:25 pm »
Tried to get this thing moved this weekend, but there is a pretty bad coolant leak (found and extremely dried and cracked coolant hose. Also found out the two rear calipers are completely seized.
Nothing worked to de-(un?)-seize them.

Since this thing will be used for autocross, rather than dink around we will just purchase new calipers.
$100 per side.
hahaha. uckfay I love honda's. Cheap cheap.

Anyhow, got a tow booked for Saturday. Then it will live in my heated and insulated garage at my new place. Gonna be so great working on this thing in a heated garage.
Over the winter, probably gonna tinker on her here and there whenever I feel like it.

Offline Rathburn

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 4829
  • Pork chop sandwiches
  • Location: Calgary, AB
  • Ride: Generic SUV
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #68 on: October 19, 2015, 02:46:29 pm »
Since this thing will be used for autocross, rather than dink around we will just purchase new calipers.
$100 per side.
hahaha. uckfay I love honda's. Cheap cheap.

That's what we found too. Easier to replace stuff like that since it's so cheap. It adds up, but man, it's so worth it.
Is illmotion's sunday school where you learn about how Stance Jesus scraped for your sins?
Roxanne - 2015 WRX Ginger - 1990 Civic Si
Avatar courtesy of Wong Photography

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #69 on: October 24, 2015, 04:08:07 pm »
Well, got the Honda towed to my new place this morning.
 

It's now sitting comfortably in my toasty garage. :)


Pick of the exhaust we need to replace.


Offline A.J.

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 1190
  • Location: Edmonton
  • Ride: 2019 Audi RS3
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #70 on: October 24, 2015, 08:29:03 pm »
I might be able to help you out with that.

Are you just looking for a stock replacement?
If you want a WSC License plate frame, PM me. Now available in black with white lettering!

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #71 on: October 25, 2015, 09:20:47 am »
Yep. Just anything to pass inspection. What you got?

Offline A.J.

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 1190
  • Location: Edmonton
  • Ride: 2019 Audi RS3
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #72 on: October 25, 2015, 11:56:16 am »
Stock exhaust from my civic is sitting at a buddies place. I thought he would have recycled it long ago, but I checked and its still sitting there.
If you want a WSC License plate frame, PM me. Now available in black with white lettering!

Offline YvanF

  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *****
  • Posts: 2575
  • Credit to GrantC for profile pic
  • Location: Edmonton, Ab
  • Ride: 2004 WRX Wagon - ej207 v7 swap, 1993 Honda Civic Si
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #73 on: October 25, 2015, 05:28:06 pm »
Sweet. Let me know when and where to pick up and I'm there.

Offline Zac

  • Vendor
  • Rivaling ZZ-TOP
  • *
  • Posts: 1778
  • I liek stuff
  • Ride: 05 LGT Wagon, 08 Jeep WK CRD
Re: Since everyone has a honda project... cheap autox project
« Reply #74 on: January 17, 2016, 10:27:47 am »