Project Steph's 1978 Honda Civic 1200

[Steph]

Your innovation and dedication to your project is inspiring...
I doubt I would be able to complete something so thorough!!

But I think I'm gonna start with 1 piece at a time in the engine bay

As always your updates are a pleasure

Thanks for that. You know, it really is an accumulation of efforts over about 4 or 5 years, and I often think of the saying about the journey of a thousand miles starting with the first step. If you bank 2 hours a week, you end up with 100 hours of work done each year, and as things progress, 4 hours per week become more fun, then 10 hours, and so on. Whenever I start to get annoyed, I try to stop what I'm doing. That's the secret to not burning out, AND not making as many mistakes. :o

Sooo, starting with one piece at a time is ideal. In a sense, that is precisely what I'm doing at present. The next job is... err... err... polish the drive shafts!

[Evoboy]

What's next the gas tank :roll:

[Steph]

Funny you should say that, because this morning I was looking at tanks in the Summit catalogue, but I'm never going to polish a tank... am I..? :o :(

No, I am not!

My idea was to buy a sheet of aluminium and cut the pieces required to weld together, then buy another TIG welder specifically for welding aluminium. This time I'll take lessons on how to TIG, both aluminium and stainless. I really want to be able to TIG weld so I can eventually TIG weld a stainless header together. I still have all the primaries cut and ready to weld together. I cut 4 sets of pieces in total, enough for 4 headers, and so far I've assembled 2 of them. The third one will be TIG welded, and the fourth... I might just sell the parts to someone to weld together themselves.

In the front end of the car, I'm only polishing/chroming the; drive shafts, and radius rods... I'm leaving the sway bar off per advice of others.

A custom, meticulously welded aluminium tank would look nice from behind, and underneath. That's one thing I keep in mind always, the times my car will go up on a hoist, and how it will look from underneath looking up. You just know there will be some clown going out of his way to find some fault, and I hate those guys!!! So, this ones for all those d-heads. Good luck trying to find anything I'll be thinking

My second oldest brother is THE worst at picking on people's cars, or more specifically, mine. He will search gleefully looking for the tiniest detail to highlight. Therein lies the roots of my disease I expect...

[Evoboy]

If only I had a 1200 I would buy the parts from you.... But you know I'm one of those pesky CVCCers

[Steph]

Huge drama with Charlie (my 2yo Border Collie) who had a huge health scare, as in, he almost died a few times, with his temperature reaching 105.6F at one stage. He was in the ICU for 2 days, and the whole experience was an absolutely horrible one to say the least. Final bill came out at a little over $7000 so the Civic has been set back a few months while I lick my wounds, and hopefully I can get some work done that doesn't require money to keep it moving along. Bread and dripping for a while I expect, but I have my little Charlie! :D

He comes home tomorrow (Sunday), which is also his second birthday. Hopefully we get several more out of him to justify the expense. I was sorta hoping it wouldn't cost more than $6000 so I could start calling him the Six Thousand Dollar Man, but oh well, can't have everything. :P

oh yeah (for Bill mainly), the diagnosis was Atypical Addison's Disease which is one of THE hardest diagnoses to make. The usual candidate is older females, not 2 year old males. Anyway, completely treatable with careful monitoring. Big sigh of relief.

[Evoboy]

Good to hear all is well (less your wallet). Sometime there are bigger priorities than our cars (don't tell my wife I said that).

[Bill]

You have to do what you have to do when family is involved. I hope he rests well once home, and you as well!

[Steph]

Wow, little Charlie is bouncing back better than ever (he would have been feeling crook for a while before he crashed), and today, in between discouraging Charlie from running around the back yard barking at birds, I found my passion for progress on the Civic returning. I'd been searching for ages for some pieces of stainless I cut from my muffler when I reopened it recently for 'mods'. Anyway, I finally found the bits I needs to weld the muffler back together, then sand and polish back to new again.

Internally, I removed the baffling and compartments, then I welded a piece of 1-3/4" stainless perforated tube between the outlet and inlet, this 'bypassing' the compartments, and creating a straight-through design muffler, with ultra-thin stainless swarf (which I bought in the form of stainless scouring pads at the supermarket -- LOTS of them). I found with my bike muffler, if you pack the muffler really hard with the stainless pads (not Steelo!), the weight/mass of the packing absorbs heaps of sound at low revs, as in, the muffler is way quieter than other straight-through mufflers I've heard, which are really boomy down low. Anyway, I'm hoping I get the same result with the Civic. The muffler doesn't weigh any more than one with glass packing, but the stainless works better IMO.

So now I'll have a nice sports-note coming out of Civic, especially when I open it up.

I hope to get it closed back up and looking like new in the next few days with a bit of luck.

I should say, this was a Genie Turbo muffler that I cut down on both ends to shorten it to fit the Civic. The muffler design was a hybrid straight-through/compartment-style muffler, with 50% functioning as a sports muffler (giving it a nice note), and 50% functioning as a conventional-style muffler, taking some of the noise out of the equation. Anyway, I only had the remove the baffles from the centre section of the muffler, because the ends are already straight through in design.

[Steph]

I finished welding the muffler back together today. Its a bit of a Frankenstein creation, but I opened the muffler from overhead, so with a bit of luck, once it's all sanded and polished, it won't be visible, or I can smooth the welds well enough to hide the joins. I'm really happy I've been able to bounce back (with Charlie) so quickly after all the stress I've been through. I've even been savouring the work, and not powering through it in a hurry to finish. I could have kept chipping away today, but I decided to stop early and avoid ending the day in agony/soreness.

I found these really nice stainless exhaust joints to use. They come with PTFE seals, but I've seen the same flanges and clamp sold with exhaust seals (made out of regular silvery exhaust seal material). I'm pretty sure the teflon seals would do the job just as well, as there's no way exhaust temps will hurt PTFE. These clamps sets are available on line auctions with the kits comprising of 2 stainless weldable flanges (for welding on 1-3/4" tube), as well as a clamp, and a PTFE seal.

With 2 of these fitted in my exhaust system, I'll be able to drop my system off much easier, plus they'll look pretty trick all polished up. I might drill some holes and fit some safety wires to give them more of a race look.

The kit sells for A$12.99 including postage from China

Made from 316 stainless... that's insanely cheap!!!

http://www.on line auctions.links.au/itm/161218740430

[Steph]

OK, had a little time to contemplate the exhaust seal/joint mentioned above, and it occurred to me that road clearance would be an issue, and I don't want anything hanging/sticking out underneath, so I'm sticking with welded joints where possible.