I'll post what I'm doing on the civic here. Just about everything I post here is probably my first time doing it, ever.



I've owned this Civic, five years in PA and now four and a half years in CO. It's got a lot of miles and a lot of scars, and after thirteen years of it, most of the car could probably stand to be rebuilt. I've owned it nine years, and to some degree, its reliability fostered a sense of benign neglect; it visited instant oil change bays for eight of those years, excepting two preventative timing belt changes. Other than that, misc maintenance brake and exhaust work, until the 210K May'10 head gasket job. I started in 2001 with 92K or so, and it's up to 218K on the odo, now.



Since getting the MZ3 last August, I finally felt less inhibited to work on the Honda, I wouldn't be stranded on a mountain if I broke it or (more likely) needed a part or supply from the auto store. So I've been starting to invest in tools, and start small. Finally finding a copy of the honda service manual gave a lot of clarity too... But essentially this is similar to the DIY learning process that's been ongoing with house I bought in '08...



I've basically never had the alignment of situation, need, tools and resources, and interest necessary to jump into this before recently, so it's all new and mysterious to me. Well, not the rust. That's un-mysterious enough.



At first, I had only pulled off the right front fender because the fender has been messed up ever since a tire self-destruct while underway on CO-470 a year ago. The fender liner was simply eliminated that day, too, by flying rubber and I assumed from there out that I'd rebuild that corner. Anyway, so, I pulled the front bumper cover and the right fender, then figured, hey, might as well, and pulled the left fender, too. It wasn't pretty what was hidden behind the left...



I'm convinced this corrosion got rooted in PA, where the winter road salt is merciless. It worked its way in past the fender liner clips and, there, didn't get washed out. I'm pretty sure this was the first time the fender and liner were pulled off the body since happier days in a Canadian Honda factory in '98...

I don't have a lot of auto body tools, nor a welder, so my first concern was whether or not this was going to turn into something bigger than a surface refinishing. I set at it with what tools I did have, mostly, a Dremel tool with various kinds of grindy bits (technical, I know), and some Bondo brand rust-removal gel. I've been alternating back and forth between the two this past week as weather and daylight have allowed.



We had Good Friday off this year, and so I worked at it quite a bit this afternoon, the above's about where I got. I'm not too certain how best to attack the ferrous oxide in that little corner (you can see the pitting left there), or whether it can be made stable as-is.



To wrap up today, I went ahead and sprayed everything that had been ground and/or chemically de-rusted with four coats of this product, a transparent agent that can be sanded and primered over. I'm just not sure if this is 'job done' or if it's essential I go over the remaining corroded pits with whatever I need to to grind it out until nothing is left...

Any feedback is welcome, I literally have no experience with this stuff, but am hellbent to learn.

Few things are as satisfying as a thorough DIY tasking.

Good for you. You'll save so much money doing this stuff yourself, and you'll know so much more about the car, so if/when it does break, you're more likely to know what's wrong with it.

I don't have any feedback on rust treatment, but I'd be interested to see what others say about it. I have a few rust spots on my Miata.

holly cow somebody taking care of a honda dang looks good I used to get hondas and crap like this would happen to me like it did last week

Dumbizzle wrote:holly cow somebody taking care of a honda dang looks good I used to get hondas and crap like this would happen to me like it did last week

Oooh, is that a ball joint failure? Er, sorry, I mean, that sucks man. Seriously no fun, whatever the cause. I have bad dreams about those, probably because something like that actually happened to me in a 93 Ford Festiva in that took a side impact to the left front wheel in Boston I think in '00. Paid someone's mechanic friend to put it back together because I was young and stupid and didn't realize it'd've been best just make an insurance claim. Apparently it needed a ball joint replaced. About a year after that, that corner started clunking occasionally on turns.

I didn't recognize it for what it was, ball joint failure, and continued driving it. One day, after driving down a state highway with only a yellow line median past lots of head-on traffic, I turned right into the industrial park where I worked. As I cut left to turn into work's parking lot, the front left wheel knuckle separated from the rest of the suspension, turned the wheel about 70 degrees leftwards out of the wheel well. This kinda "worked out" as the wheel actually braked the car to a halt from 20 mph and held the chassis off the ground throughout. (Being in a small PA town, the guy at the local Exxon garage put the suspension back together, reconnected the CV, and it was back on the road for $75. He suggested I bring it back to him for future work, but I never had the chance, due to a viscous rear-ending in oct'01.)

More recently, in this Honda Civic, a couple of things stacked up. The civic had been given bridgestone blizzaks on the front two tires in maybe early Nov'08 in the middle of a snow storm that blew in suddenly while I was down in Centennial. I never got an alignment, and it seems it was pretty far out of spec because by late March'09 when this happened, the center tread was very low even as the outer corners were OK. On a day I normally would have stayed home, I drove through the rain and slush because of a dentist appointment.



About a block from the destination, the road was a mix of rain and slush. It was basically just what most of a PA winter is like. Up ahead, traffic slowed suddenly, and on this downhill stretch of Yosemite between County Line and Dry Creek, I tried to slow but slid. On a clear road, I'd've just steered left and gunned it in a low gear, but with traffic slowing ahead, I had no room to maneuver and watched helplessly as the vehicle slid in seeming slow motion to the right... not just into a cement curb but exactly into a rain gutter, which caught the wheel. When I said above that the Honda was reliable, I was obviously failing to mention that I did *this* to my car, but I don't blame the civic, it was the product of my own pattern of neglect, a wake up call I suppose you could say. Neglecting a car leads to many "perfect storm" multiple-causal failures that are sometimes less apparent until they hit you at the worst possible moment, as I've learned.

Insured declared it totaled, high miles, I think the payout was about $1500. I kept the car and looked for alternatives to letting the wreckers scrap it. (Someone there tried to lift the rear emblem but only managed to snap off the "CI" of "CIVIC". The three screws that held in the rear hatch lock mechanism were missing, too. The shop denied all responsibility, but I'm not stupid. Shady. Anyway, I wasn't going to let someone there have it for $400 or whatever...)

After that, I had the vehicle moved and taken to Foreign Automotive (formerly: Honda Menders) where they pretty much replaced the entire front right suspension, which had taken the brunt of the damage. Apparently the guy who worked on it knew exactly where I lived up here in Clear Creek from my address because he lived three houses down the road up until recently. He did a good job.

What was actually awesome about this was that it corrected a problem I inherited from the original owner: the right wheelbase was 1" shorter than the left as a result of them driving it into a ditch when evading a deer back in PA when the car was brand new. It had always pulled ever so slightly to the right until this accident's fix-up. Now it steers true and aligns better than at any prior point of my ownership! (As a footnote: Foreign Automotive has apparently been distancing themselves from Honda, sounds like they are more interested in Suburu these days, and they no longer service Hondas. Might have been a change in resident mechanics, dunno.)

Tire wear was also much improved. After that I got a new set of tires, and I'm still on two of them today, which is impressive considering they are winter M+Ss. Though unrelated to alignment, one did go from OK to no sidewall in the space of about 6 seconds while on CO-470 in '10, unworking some of the diligent pro rebuild from the '09 accident, prompting this current round of work today. (That one was probably a close thing, being in traffic. As I rolled to a stop on the side, the tread, sans all sidewall, rolled past and down toward Chatfield Reservoir. Had this civic been lowered, something not meant to might have caught asphalt at speed, but as it was, even the wheel wound up surviving OK.) So May'10 I replaced that tire as a pair. Had to get the head gasket done a month later, had no budget for new tires, and they're still on and OK winters still in the rotation with OK tread despite autocrossing on them in Dec last year.

I want to put on summers, or at least performance all-seasons, and see what this car can do in autocross H-stock before I leave that class with possible additions like a rear sway bar mod. Compared to the MZ3, this Civic rolls on the corners a lot more... I'm just not yet sure how best to properly adjust suspension dynamics, so I'll proceed slowly.

yep the bolt on the ball joint decided to pop off and that was all she wrote luckily I was near work also because right before it fell off I was doin 80 plus on the highway that would have been a disaster so like you I used to neglect everything except the motor lol but now im now paying alot more attention to the suspension. I couldnt imagine that happening at 20 plus mph I was doing maybe 5 mph away from that stop sign and it scarred the crap out of me.

Several coats of rust fix, three coats of primer, and 2-3 coats of paint later, the front left appears much-improved. Probably not the greatest workmanship on paint, but I'm hopeful this will either stabilize the rust or at least make it apparent where it isn't stable. It's been slow going, between the snow and freezing temperatures this past week, but finally there was a break in the cold today and I was able to wrap up rust removal on the front left. (Front Right remains).



I also used some of the rust fix spray on the left fender itself in strategic locations (where it contacts the car's body) and a few rusty spots. Hopefully I'll have a chance to get the fender and fender liner back on the car this weekend, will let all coatings sprayed today set overnight. edit: should do hood release pull cable replacement before replacing the left fender.

Misc work:
Started to pull off the front bumper mount only to realize I would probably need a 8-12" socket extender to get the final two bolts out. Applied rust fix on various front suspension parts. Applied silicon lubricant spray on all accessible ball joints and boots on left side.

Spark Plugs:
This was today's bummer, though I shouldn't be surprised. My house has taught me when you start something new, you'll probably expose 10x more work/problems once you get things uncovered, like when I cut a hole in some ceiling sheet rock only to discover a floor joist that had been cut in half and very poorly repaired for reasons incomprehensible to the sane. Anyway, back to the honda... For today, thought I'd check out the spark plugs as it's been about 27K since the last plug change (done by a mechanic at a local garage some 3 or so years ago). First plug I started on was locked in pretty bad, didn't really want to loosen (or tighten). I knew it'd have to come out eventually, so I put on a brave face and kept going with as much torque as necessary to get it out:



As you can see, it brought out some of the engine with it, or rather, some of the threads for the spark plug socket came out with the plug. I know this is bad, but I'm not sure what else to do, so I went ahead and pulled out the bits of stripped thread from the plug using some stainless steel dentistry tools I keep around for work like this.



I was able to torque it back into the engine at the specified 13 ft-lb and it seems to be fully seated. I guess some of the engine spark plug socket thread remains, but I have no idea how much of a liability this is going to be. I can only hope aluminum shavings didn't wind up in the cylinder...

Fortunately, the other three plugs were torqued properly and came out without any difficulty. All four of the plugs were pretty badly worn. I'm not sure if the shop that installed them failed to gap them properly, or if they simply suffered enough surface erosion to go out of spec. They were all gapped at 1.5-1.6mm instead of the honda-spec'd 1.1mm. I regapped them all down to 1.1mm and replaced them. The engine still runs, and the stripped plug socket seems to hold the plug in, at least at idle loads up to 3000 RPM. I won't really know what the score is until I get the car back on the road, I guess. If it doesn't blow up, I'll go ahead and do OEM replacement plugs, once all this rust stuff is behind me.

At this point, I'm not sure if these are 27K plugs or if, when they did the head gasket last May, they replaced the head unit and didn't tell me. I do recall thinking the head valve cover looked different when I got the car back, and I had a mysterious new valve seal problem from that point forward, but I'm just not sure.

Any advice related to that stripped plug for this noob you think that I should be considering? Should I do something to Deal With This now, or await the possible emergence of symptoms and hope it's a non-issue until a hypothetical rebuild or replacement of the engine?

Didn't wear adequate eye protection (let myself rationalize myself into thinking regular glasses constituted adequate eye protection) and ground some rust/steel bits into my eye. Five or so days later, was pretty excruciating and becoming photosensitive, went to eye doctor who pulled a metal fleck out of each eye. Goddamn, that sucked, lesson learned, but am told no permanent damage is to be expected...

With as much as 4-8 inches of fresh white stuff forecast for the next day or two, and my civic the only vehicle ready with winter tires, I made a long marathon effort to wrap up the current round of stuff. Both wheel wells have been sanded down and then covered in three layers of aerosol coatings: rust fix, primer, generic similar-color paint. In a few strategic places, I recreated some rubbert/silicon seals over painted metal (more or less in same spots as OEM prior to sanding).

Installed new hood release pull, which was a minor pain. Installed original left fender and the blue-painted right I picked up on CL. Installed left OEM fender liner, and cheesy right aftermarket fender liner, which is about a 95% fit. The other 5% I'll probably have to force, by cutting and adhering a few points where there's excessive slack. Installed front bumper cover.

Took it for a reasonably spirited spin. Spark plug no 4 seems to be holding just fine at full engine load, and so, for the moment, I'll try not to worry about missing plug socket thread in the head assembly. It was nice to remind myself why I like this car and why it's worth it to me after having it torn apart in my drive way for the better part of a month. I find myself driving it no slower than my mazda3 and with nine years of reflex accumulated, it's effortless for me, whereas the mz3 can be a little more cerebral. Both are good things, and I won't hesitate to acknowledge the MZ3s general superiority as an all-rounder, but that honda is smaller, lighter, and has a lower center of gravity, and it's still a hoot in the mountains.

In theory I was going to repeat the rust removal I did on the front end on the read end, but I'm honestly needing a break from that, especially after the eye stuff, so I'll probably just do the seafoam trifecta on the engine and when that's done, install the new plugs. Might also install that replacement radio antenna in the A-pillar if I get motivated, but in general, I'll be taking a break from major projects while I think and check some more on what else should be put on the short list.

Exciting stuff, I know. Because I finished after dark, I don't have an updated photo ready. It's gonna look a little ratty on account of the mismatched color fender, but at least it isn't bent out of shape like the one it replaced. I have what I need to shakecan it to a similar silver, though that'll ultimately probably look a bit ratty too. I'm probably going to blow my budget this month on new MZ3 summer tires. It's up in the air which I'll autocross next.

chromal wrote:... I won't hesitate to acknowledge the MZ3s general superiority as an all-rounder...

blasphemy!

Hope that spark plug holds. I've had a spark plug pop out on me while driving down the road in my old '96 Neon and it was not pleasant. Oil everywhere in the engine bay, billowing smoke everywhere. When it happened to me I thought I thought the engine had blown and I sold the car "as is" for $600. Turned out they put a new spark plug in and it was fine. So yea I got ripped off on that deal, lol.

Anyway, hope the same doesn't happen to you, but at least you'll know what to look for if it does.

erod550 wrote:Hope that spark plug holds. I've had a spark plug pop out on me while driving down the road in my old '96 Neon and it was not pleasant.

Anyway, hope the same doesn't happen to you, but at least you'll know what to look for if it does.

Yeah, it's kinda like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I hope that if it does occur, it doesn't cause some cascading damage. I think the main concern I have right now for a helicoil is that with some of the thread remaining, I sorta have the worst of both worlds: a compromised plug socket an enough thread remaining to require grinding the rest out (possibly right into the cylinder). I'm not quite ready to do engine work like pulling off the head unit, but this may be the thing that eventually forces me to learn. I paid a mechanic $800 to do the head gasket almost exactly a year ago in the name of keeping the DD running, but I'm not going to drop that kinda cash on something so routine again.

So, put back together, we have:


The mismatched fender paint gives it that beater chic or something. I plan to try chemically stripping the paint and then building up from primer and 'duplicolor' aftermarket paint. It probably won't match all that well, but it'll be a lot closer than navy blue or whatever. Still have to reinstall a trim/molding on that replacement fender, too. The front bumper also needs a lot of TLC, or just to be replaced, but hey, at least the plate isn't crooked, now. :] The bottom side runner moldings are temporarily gone, which is also ghettotastic. I plan to simply fill some cracks in them with superglue, restore missing/damaged clips (which I have already purchased), and then return them to the car.

Today I did at least seafoam the engine, 1/3 in crankcase, 1/3rd in fuel tank, 1/3 in brake booster vacuum line. Judging from the exhaust as I drove it around afterwords, that burned out a lot of gunk. Once the current fuel tank is consumed, I'll be doing an oil and filter change and replacing the plugs.

Beyond that, I'm just going to need to wait for better weather to paint the mismatched fender and start working my way back from the front end looking for rust to mitigate and other problems I may be (blissfully) unaware of.

Been driving it around a bit, mostly local drives to park at nearby mazda3-eating parking lots and five days out at the DIA extended-stay lot. Did my very first engine oil + oil filter change. OEM oil filter. After a lifetime of Jiffy-Lube type changes, the drain plug somehow managed to have two different-sized washers on it, so I was happy to replace with a use-only-once OEM washer.

Avoided lots of nasty old oil splashing on my face by about fourteen inches when I removed the old oil filter, have no clue how one would remove that in a spill-less fashion. How do you guys prevent/deal with oil filter removal oil spillage? I guess it gave me the oil I needed to pre-wet the new filter's rubber gasket, yay? c_c Ultimately, I wound up shoveling contaminated dirt out of my driveway into a trash bag, as my driveway's flat parking area is about 5' away from my house's water well, so I wasn't going to take any chances...

So at this point, I've changed my own MTF, engine oil+filter, and spark plugs. Hey, more than I could say half a year ago, so that's progress of a sort.

erod550 wrote:Hope that spark plug holds. I've had a spark plug pop out on me while driving down the road in my old '96 Neon and it was not pleasant. Oil everywhere in the engine bay, billowing smoke everywhere. When it happened to me I thought I thought the engine had blown and I sold the car "as is" for $600. Turned out they put a new spark plug in and it was fine. So yea I got ripped off on that deal, lol.

Anyway, hope the same doesn't happen to you, but at least you'll know what to look for if it does.

Haha same thing happened to my brother's first Neon, IIRC it was a '98 or around that vintage. The previous owner or mechanic had cross threaded in a spark plug in a hasty repair so when I pulled it out it stripped the head. It was my brother's only car and he needed it so I stuffed a plug in there as best I could.

4 miles later down the road we were driving, just cruising, and BANG! Sounded like a small bomb went off under the hood and oil smoke started billowing out. I know exactly what had happened. Motor was still running though. Pulled into a parking lot and you could hear the "chu chu chu" of air rushing out of the cylinder. Plug came firing out and even put a dent in the hood.

Luckily cylinder heads for those cars are a dime a dozen and we picked up a used one at a junk yard for $100 bucks and a mechanic swapped it for around $300. My brother then proceeded to total the car out 3 weeks later...but I digress.

So I learned my lesson- I now always put anti-seize on all plugs, all the time. And then when threading them in, I run them in like a tap, slowly going and then backing out a half turn for every 2 or 3 full turns.

Also, when you have a stubborn plug (or bolt) that doesn't want to bust loose, it's best to get your wrench/socket/whatever on the bolt head and then use a hammer or dead blow to tap on the wrench and knock it loose, rather than using a constant twisting or torque method. This is much easier on the bolt and the threads, especially for softer material such as aluminum (cylinder heads) or cast iron.

The Civic keeps on keepin' on, 220500 miles on the clock. No further issues with the spark plug sockets, thankfully, though I got bitten in late July by an issue covered by a very old Honda tech service bulletin that was never applied to my 6th gen: the speed sensor wire runs through the intake manifold bracket without a conduit or protection and can eventually rub through its insulation, short to ground on the harness bracket, and blow the speedometer/alternator charging circuit fuse. Thank god I found the TSB or I might have followed my initial assumption: e.g.: that the alternator had failed. Resolved it with about $0.05 of wiring conduit!

Replaced the A-pillar antenna. Fishing the antenna wire down the A-pillar from the roof to behind the dashboard was as much a PITA as you'd imagine, but I have OK radio reception again.

Replaced the front brake pads, greased the caliper pins and pad contact points, bled/flushed all brake corners. I'm glad I didn't put that off any longer, one set of pads were nearly down to metal along a corner. On a related note, that caliper's bolt was slightly bent. I may have a caliper replacement in my future, but in the short term, it brakes well on the new OE-type semi-metallic pads.



Bought a blown engine+tranny to rebuild for $80 on craigslist! Time to wade into deeper waters, should be interesting.

The plan is to rebuild it, I'm expecting to need new pistons, rods, and bearings at a minimum, possibly a new crankshaft, valves. The engine came with an alternator, engine mounts, starter motor, wiring harness, 5MT transmission, and (I think) a D16Y8 intake/throttle body and fuel rails. Missing: oil pan, distributor, fuel injectors. Will be pulling the cylinder head hopefully on Monday, will get a better look at the bottom end after that...