Project Psylocibe 1975 Honda Civic 1200

[Psylocibe]

Saw a tip in the exterior sub forum about repainting center caps by spraying paint into the cap of the rattle can and using gravity to fill in and it works really well.

OEM paint left, new pour right, and the other two with what I'm working with.

[Sami6]

What a great read, thanks. My input on your cooling: recore and that will likely fix your problem. When these cooling systems are working properly, they work well. Engineers arent stupid although I know when I was a mechanic I cursed them daily! I think you said it runs hot at speed as well? If so, the fan isnt the problem, at least at that point,because the airflow is there. If there is any fan problem, work on the thermal switch. With a good flowing Radiator and a thermal switch working properly, you can idle in traffic all summer day in your civic. Fun. If the Radiator doesnt fix anything, at least you have eliminated that always questionable variable. Still hot? Look at the head gasket. Usually easy to tell. Your a mechanic so you know fill the Radiator right to the top and run it up, watch for the odd bubble. But also, smell it. Next time you do a head gasket on any car, smell the coolant, you can actually smell the hydrocarbons in it. There is also kit, you pour some liquid in a container that attaches to the top of the Radiator. Run the car and if it senses hydrocarbons it changes color. Its been a long time since I've seen one of these tools and I cant remember exactly how it works but it was something like that. Also nice trick on painting the caps, I like it.

[Vulcan]

Remember, when investigating head gasket failure, don't just look at the oil filler cap, pull the dipstick as well. The PCV breather pipes on these will clog really easily and you'll get condensation inside the rocker cover.

[thesmogman]

From the look's of it our cars temps are exactly the same, by the gauge that is. When driving it stay's low but at a long red light the temps rise til the fan comes on. I figure that since both our cars are doing it then it must be normal. It has been like this since I got her back on the road, same temps driving stop and go with 102 degree temps out.

This is with a reversed flush radiator and a new 170 deg. thermostat. If you find anything else out I would be very interested in your findings.

[Psylocibe]

See I'd understand if it was 102* out, but my radiator is doing it even with ambient air temps from low '70s to mid '80s. I'll let you know what I find.

Today I started wiping the seats down with simple brake cleaner to see how stuck on the paint was, I know they won't look good until they get recovered but I'd really like the car to look a little more cohesive. I'll bet I can get the interior looking at least marginally better once I get a can of proper thinner and spend some time and elbow grease.

[thesmogman]

Yes, it does it even at 80 degrees out too. It has been doing it for three years now. I wish I had a temp gun to see what the actual temps are. If it is below 70 it does not do it as much, just every once in a while like sitting in a drive thru it does it.

[Thor]

Bear in mind that the vinyl is ''antiqued'' from new, in as much it appears to be dirty. It was never a uniform plain beige, if it is that way, then it has been over-cleaned, certainly on our cars over here. It is as if Honda toned down the beige with an over-spray of dark brown or black during manufacture.

[Psylocibe]

Thanks for the tip on what was original, once I get to that point. As far as it being over cleaned at the moment, I don't mind because the fabric is sun rotted and splitting anyways, all 3 seats are in poor shape. It just happened that the part of the rear that was visible happened to look okay, but eventually all three will need to be recovered.

[Psylocibe]

Weather was nice so I started doing some more stuff to improve the looks, I wanted to clean the car out and blow all the gunk out with air, and get a better look at the floors and see about cleaning the carpet.



Discovered that even though I've been parking it in the garage, and the weather is nice that the horsehair padding was still wet and moulding so I scraped all of that out.



The carpet which I thought I could save was actually dissolving for some reason causing it to melt down into a sticky sludge and it even softened the tar insulation underneath into goo :shock:





The rest of the floors looked really good actually, just some surface rust and the one spot noted before.

[Psylocibe]

Took my car to a vintage Euro/JDM car show today that had a pretty impressive mk.1 turnout.







My little beater is technically a show car now haha