Travis 1979 Honda Civic CVCC

[tyouphoto]

Hello all!

Finally working on my my CVCC at turtle speed but I'm determined to get this thing alive and running.
Budget is pretty small at the time, personal knowledge is at a low, but hopefully sticking around and posting and trolling through this site will lead me to getting this where I want.

So I'm sharing the little that I know how to do to keep track and hopefully stay motivated.
Even if this ends up as a post of me talking to myself. <3
I know nothing about cars and this is the car that I care to educate me.

Here's where it sits now.


The front wheels are off because I am cleaning them up.

It doesn't run. It use to fight me to start, and when it did, it would die every time I pressed the gas.
Fuel pump is always on so I'm guessing it has something to do with the fuel system?

I ordered a new distributor cap, rotar, spark plugs, plug wires, oil filter, and fuel filter.
Last owner claimed that the fuel pump was new and didn't change the filter so I'm hoping its the filter and not a carburetor o/h.

Hopfully plan on doing a Weber conversion and I've heard good things about the Pertronix Ignitor so I'll probably be doing those next.
But in the mean time, I decided to do what I could figure out on my own, and that was to restore the steering wheel.





I thought I could just wipe it down and put some liquid gold to shine it up, but it's peeling and super rough, no cracks, but getting there.



I took a trip to home depot, spent forever looking at stains, decided on the english chestnut.



Right after the sanding. Got everything silky smooth. I started with 220 grit and moved up to 320. Probably could've started rougher but I'm just extremely paranoid.



And here it is at two suuuuper light coats. This stuff lays a lot thicker than I anticipated. It's drying right now, next question is do I hit it with the semi-gloss or high gloss polyerethane?
Not trying to go too in your face about it so I am swaying towards semi-gloss, but I'm afraid it may look a little strange. :dunno

So there's that. We'll see where this goes.
I've been through a lot of downs with this car but I realize that this is unique vehicle that you don't see everyday, so why not take this thing as far as I can
Plan on keeping this thing forever, so I'm in no rush, might as well enjoy myself. :driver

[tyouphoto]

Wheel is looking mighty fine.

Much appreciated!

Sanded down the steering wheel again after the stain. Dried and it's definitely not the smoothest in the world so I am taking my sweet, sweet time with this next coat.

While all of that is drying I took off the front grill. About to do a restore, but to be honest, it's really not in bad shape, everything is just insanely dull and gray. I'm going to blacken up the plastic with a matte black, add some silver around the outside of the grill, and clean up and try to restore the badges.

Haven't done any of this before but snooping around this forum I've seen to find some good stuff. Thank you internet! Here goes nothing.

[tyouphoto]

It's insanely humid here in Kansas City so the drying is taking longer than it should, but the steering wheel is almost 100% rock solid.
What else to touch up? Tackled the Honda H Badge/Emblem.



After cleaning it up a bit I realized that the orange resin on the H was actually still there! But it is extremely dull.
Definitely have to look around the forum for a bit to see if anyone has done work on the original orange.

But I ended up putting some olive oil on it for now (weird thought/application after making dinner for myself.)
Anyway, black Duplicolor semi-gloss engine enamel. Not half bad in my opinion.