Project 1979 Civic Wagon

[BillyEno]

I started the refurb on the ceiling console by sprucing up the clock. No before pictures, but water had gotten to the face and rusted between the plastic and the metal. It was also pretty rusty in general. Luckily all the mechanism needed was a little cleaning and a shot of lubrication.

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Sadly, the lens is very sun damaged and very fragile. I am going to look into replicating it. I saw some reproductions at civic garage, but it looks like they are sold out.

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I also ordered some spray vinyl dye for the ceiling console and the 5-speed manual floor console that will get installed along with the manual transmission.

[BillyEno]

I am keeping the the wheel console, tachometer and instrument pod with fuel/temp in it. I am also swapping in the 5-speed and gearshift plastic into the wagon.

That's pretty much all the prime stuff, but if you need anything else like lights or interior/exterior trim pieces, let me know.

Billy

[BillyEno]

I installed the tachometer and gauge pod this afternoon.

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[BillyEno]

Quick update.

Got the 5-speed from the latest parts car installed and running. It took about 10 hours working mostly by myself. The car is completely different with a manual transmission.

I had spent a couple of evening cleaning the new transmission. I Installed new output shaft seals and throwout bearing. I also rebuilt the distributor from the donor, as they are different from hondamatic. Completely dissasembled it, removed the 25 year old congealed grease from everything. I even swapped the guts to a case from as 1200's distributor, which are interchangeable. Also had to replace the vacuum advance with one from a 1200. I re-used the CVCC's spring though.

Dropping the Hondamatic took about 2 hours. It went very smoothly. It turns out the instructions in the Chilton's manual are quite good. Also Hondamatics are heavy compared to the manuals.

After I pulled the flex plate, it turned out the rear main seal was leaking. It took me about an hour to get the seal out, I think I was being too careful. The outer part of the seal had glued itself to the block and left big chunks of rubber. After about an hour of carefully scraping it with razor bladed and plastic scrapers, barely any had come off. Consulting with our team's mechanic, he pointed out that for the outer part of the mating surface, you can be reasonably aggressive and that as long as you don't put a giant gouge in it, you'll be fine. That gave me the confidence to really go after it with the razor blades. It all went back in quite well.

I had a NOS re-manufactured flywheel that I installed. But, I didn't discover until after I had the thing bolted up and torqued down that the clutch pressure plate bolt holes were packed with rust, probably from the resurfacing that took place. It probably would have been easier to pull it first, but I cleaned out the holes with a tap with it in place.

The manual transmission installation required the assistance of my son to man the jack lifting the it as I lined it up. As I have described before, I used a headless bolt in one of the engine block holes. That gave me a good reference point and the input shaft slid right in. That was the end of day one. About 6 hours of work.

The next task was pulling the auto shifter and installing the manual shifter, which went well. I had to loosen the exhaust hanger to get it out. The car had the nicest shifter rubber mount I've seen yet, thankfully.

I then reassembled the suspension and cross member. That is when I found out the clutch case covers are very different between the automatic and manual. With the automatic version in place, the left side axle won't go all the way in. Which I didn't find out until I had already completely reassembled suspension and cross member.

Then I dropped the car on the ground. Easily the most tedious work was pulling and reinstalling the brake pedal. The automatic has a wide pedal and the manual needs a narrow pedal. As most on the forum know, the pedal is welded to a shaft that runs across the firewall to the brake cylinder. I spent about an hour upside down in the passenger seat pulling the snap ring on the old one and putting the snap ring back on the new one, the air conditioning did not help this job. I did have to drop the steering column to get enough clearance to pull the brake pedal assembly across. Also, there is no replacement for proper snap ring pliers in this case. I installed the clutch pedal and cable from the donor car, and it all worked out just fine.

Later, I re-installed the original floor console, with the shifter boot from the donor car's floor console.

Things to note. Make sure you get the brake and clutch pedals from the donor, including the bearing on the driver's side the clutch pedal attaches too. Also, the transmission to engine block bolts are much longer on the hondamatic, so you need the donor's bolts also.

I drove it to work twice this week, and have been driving it around as much as possible to see what remaining bugs need to be sorted out. The next is finding the source of the gas smell. I imagine it has something to do with the fuel pump, or maybe the gas take venting. It get's pretty strong in the cabin after an hour or so of driving. Also I need to go through brakes. The front calipers probably need to be rebuilt, they make the pads drag just a little too much for my liking. That being said nothing is getting overly hot. I haven't cracked open the drums yet, but will just to be sure.

[BillyEno]

I did get the cover for the auto shifter hole. I hadn't thought about the two holes towards the front, I'll look for those plugs next time I'm going through the parts car. I didn't trace the shifter wire back up under the dash, but I jumpered across the reverse and starting sensors. I was out of enthusiasm for fishing behind the dash. I wonder if I can get to the end without removing the air conditioning.

My understanding on the auto distributor is that is lets it rev up faster to the usable range for the torque converter. It also has a vacuum retard in addition to the advance. And, it at least the one I had, wasn't generating any power past 4K RPM, so probably broken in some other way.