Restoration progress so far:

Arch repair.





New bumper hangers.



Exhaust repaired and polished.



Bumper fettled and 2" cut from the bottom.



30 years for awfulness.





Rocker cover and oil cap refurbished.





Stripping steel wheels is utterly soul destroying!



The civic where it's happiest.

 

Also done but not photographed:

Oil change.
Valve clearances.
New spark plugs.
New air filter.
Battery from my EP3.
Awful exhaust gas recirculation system cleaned and rebuilt.
Bumpers refurbished and straightened, rear zipstitched over crack.
New speakers.
Wheels painted (just curing now)

Yet to do:

Refurbish seats.
New gas struts for boot.
New front tyres (Goodyears for £34 in this size!)
A few more rusty patches, not serious.
One big chunk of rust behind rear bumper, not TOO serious.
Repaint!
Lower suspension.

 

Nice find mate.

I think I drove past you on the M 8 about a month ago, it's the blue wheels on yer EP I recognised.

 

Thanks guys.



Yeah, it's not subtle, is it?

Great car and write up mate.

This reminds me of a line from the movie "good luck chuck"

..."that's an 87' Honda, how dare you"

Lol

Close, it was employee of the month, and an '81 Honda. LOVE that car, that and a random article is what started me on this whole adventure!

 

Old timer, looks amazing! Good progress so far looks real clean

 

Great car and write up mate.

This reminds me of a line from the movie "good luck chuck"

..."that's an 87' Honda, how dare you"

Lol

 

Wheels repainted and front end lowered.



What I am going to go do to the rear end now will probably not go down well on here, so I'll not say what it is, just post pics when I'm done....

 

What I am going to go do to the rear end now will probably not go down well on here, so I'll not say what it is, just post pics when I'm done....

cut the springs?

 

Secret rear end technique complete. This is the easiest car to work on EVER.

 

Well, the '85 is gone.

Today it went to Honda to be restored as a gate guard for a dealership. I px'd it for a top spec '11 plate Jazz. I'm already missing it, I grew very fond of it over the last 7 months, but I'm happy to know it's in good hands.

Old and new together:

 

Nice work restoring the gen3, nice to know it will live on tho.

Enjoy your Honda

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks mate.

 

Lovely mate! Lot of hard work gone into this

 

hope you enjoy the new car as much, i grew fond of the old civic ...

 

Nice work! Reminds me of my grandad's which is the car that got me interested in Hondas when I was a kid. Nice to see a proper classic restored with so much TLC.

 

gives me memories i had a 1985 model a 1.3 dx manual civic, my first car still remember the number plate c992 cuu, some of the parts ccan be used from a rover 213 if i remember correctly.

 

Great job there!

I also own a mk3 and one day I want to do a rebuilt like you did!

For someone without experience how hard is it to work on it?

 

Thanks, I still really miss this car, such a shame I had to sell it. I'd buy another in a heartbeat if I could.

It's really simple to work on, good old fashioned mechanical engineering. It's REALLY hard to find parts, however, nothing on mine really needed replaced. I was mostly giving everything a really good clean and a bit of paint. I imagine you don't have the same problems with rust living in Portugal, but these cars do have some crevices that attract rust.

There is a US forum dedicated to this era of civic, it's called Red Pepper Racing and definitely worth checking out.

 

Traded into phenoix honda linwood I see

 

It certainly was! They really saved my ass actually. I had a severely broken arm, my type R was in pieces, the '85 needed some work to get through the mot, I was flat broke and couldn't do any of the work myself. So it had to go unfortunately, and Phoenix took it as px with less than a month left on the mot and for twice what I paid for it. Good bunch of guys in there.