"The Mothership" - 1998 Civic - Maintenance Log

[ctag]

Yesterday I reinstalled the windshield wipers. I still haven't painted the arms but it was raining So time's up. The plastic trim that goes over the wiper motor got dunked in Armorall since it was starting to fade.



A friend rode in my car a few years ago and said "Man, your accelerator pedal is all messed up!" I checked it out and it seemed fine, so I didn't think anything of it. Recently though I've started to notice more apparent "stiction" where the pressure to press the pedal will fluctuate as the cable sticks, frees, and sticks again. That results in the engine load being just barely bumpy, but it is noticeable. So I took the cable and sprayed some cleaner through it. The tape I used didn't work out well, a lot of the oil just forced its way back out and got everywhere.


Now the accelerator is butter smooth! It's a small change, but it makes a big difference.

 

[Johnp410]

Yesterday I reinstalled the windshield wipers. I still haven't painted the arms but it was raining So time's up. The plastic trim that goes over the wiper motor got dunked in Armorall since it was starting to fade.

View attachment 30670

A friend rode in my car a few years ago and said "Man, your accelerator pedal is all messed up!" I checked it out and it seemed fine, so I didn't think anything of it. Recently though I've started to notice more apparent "stiction" where the pressure to press the pedal will fluctuate as the cable sticks, frees, and sticks again. That results in the engine load being just barely bumpy, but it is noticeable. So I took the cable and sprayed some cleaner through it. The tape I used didn't work out well, a lot of the oil just forced its way back out and got everywhere.
View attachment 30671

Now the accelerator is butter smooth! It's a small change, but it makes a big difference.

Man small things make the biggest difference. Lol

 

[ctag]

Man small things make the biggest difference. Lol

The whole accelerator cable thing has got me thinking: I wish I could drive a snapshot of this car as it was new back in 1998. Then I could clearly see just how it's changed over the past two decades.

Last night a friend helped me get the replacement passenger window motor installed. The original assembly's central axis pivot was damaged and loose, which was causing the crazy rattling. I'm not sure when that happened but it must have been something like a person leaning on the halfway-lowered window.

I didn't have a great time replacing the driver side window motor way back in 2013. So it wasn't very surprising when the passenger motor assembly arrived damaged and I had to nearly break my wrist pulling on the lower sled to free the little plastic sliders that were jammed. Oh well. In any event the passenger side window now lowers without sounding like it's about to break

 

[ctag]

Clearing the headlight housings today. I need to just bite the bullet and buy new ones...

 

[Johnp410]

Clearing the headlight housings today. I need to just bite the bullet and buy new ones...

View attachment 30672

Looks pretty good to me. I was thinking about getting a set from Rock auto, black housing and clear lenses. I think they're $100 give or take.

 

[ctag]

I think I forgot to write about it here, but a week ago or so I jacked up the rear wheels and took the wheels + drums off to take a look at the brake components. The car had been jerking and creaking as I braked recently, and I wanted to see what's up.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary, though I did notice that one of the drums just fell off in my hand and the other needed some "persuasion" to be removed. At the suggestion of my friend I wound up taking a little piece of 400 grit sandpaper and gently buffing the brake shoes, and then buttoning it all back up. To my surprise the brakes have been behaving a lot better since then! They still pulse a little, but not as much and the noise is gone. Now I wonder if it was the sandpaper or just re-centering the drums that did it....

Anyway, I'd like to get rid of all of the pulsing if I can, and I think one of the next steps is to start replacing the 25 year old suspension components. It's time. But I don't know what I'm doing yet, what should go first? What brand and type of parts do I want? A lot of the information online is geared toward ricing, but I want to build my car for a comfortable ride, not some cambered out and slammed one. On top of that, I have a decent discount at OReilly's auto parts, so I'm looking around at what components they can order me.

 

[ctag]

I gave up hunting around for the perfect shocks to buy, and went with some KYBs that advertised close-to-original performance from the auto shop. I ordered Strut-Plus - which come pre-assembled with springs - for the front, and Excel-G - which are just struts - for the rear.

Christmas came early!


The Excel-G boxes were opened, and it looked like someone has returned them previously. The threads didn't have any wear though, so I assumed they just didn't fit their car and got sent back.

Old and new:


I installed the front two struts and went for a test drive. The car rides straight lines noticeably better, but nothing magical. I had heard that KYBs were harder than OEM, so it was a relief to find that potholes are soaked up a little more than my originals. But where these really shine is turning. I would say "cornering" except I'm a scrub and drive like your grandmother. Even so, taking a 90 degree turn at 5-10 miles an hour handles way, way better now and the car feels much more competent.

All in all it took me about four hours and zero air tools to swap these in. I wish I'd done it years ago.

 

[ctag]

Went back out to change the rear struts today, and immediately broke a bolt:



Tomorrow a friend might be able to loan me a welder to tack a new nut onto the bolt.

 

[ctag]

My hero friend showed up last night with a welder and set to work tacking a new nut onto the bolt so that we could get it out of there.


And the nut just broke right off. So we tried a few more times and the nut kept just breaking free from the bolt. Eventually I decided to give up on trying to save the old shocks, and set to cutting the shock mount off with a dremel while my friend used his impact wrench on the other side's bolt.

... And then that side's bolt broke too. And the dremel cutting disk wore out before I got the shock free.

I wound up just unbolting the entire lower control arms and pulling them both out.





Now that the car is really out of commission for a bit, I want to go through and replace the rear bushings... But I can't find them! All I see online are Rear Trailing Arm bushings, nothing for the lower/upper control arms

 

[TigBitties]

Your issue is normal, I have yet to see a Honda or Acura lower control arm come apart from that generation. Look into urethane bushings if you can’t find rubber ones


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[ctag]

Yeah, I wound up just buying replacement lower control arms. Was about the same price as all of the bushings too



I unpacked the shocks and installed the old springs on the new KYB Excel-G struts with some extra mounting hardware my friend found for me. I installed the top rubber isolators backwards and had to take it all back apart and swap them. Then I mis aligned the top studs to the control arm, and had to loosen the springs again.


Ta-da!


Next up was the rear trailing arm bushings. They were pretty shot:



Replacing the rear trailing arm bushings wound up being a huge pain. I rented a press kit, and found that it wasn't large enough to reach or cover the bushing rim, so I spent some time trying to hammer the bushing out before giving up and pulling the entire RTA. The brake line was disconnected and stopped up with a little rubber cap to prevent a lot of leaking. Pulling the parking cable out of the drum hub looked like a mess, so I disconnected the cable from the parking lever in the cabin and removed all of the mounts for it along the undercarriage. It was slow going and showered my face with gunk, but overall I think it was the right thing to do. Once the assembly was free, I pressed the old bushings out and new bushings in with a hydraulic stand we have in the garage, super easy.



On the passenger side I used an existing paint mark on the arm to align the new bushings, and just eyeballed the depth. When reinstalling the bushing, however, I had to fight with the alignment a whole lot. On the driver side I carefully measured and marked the angle and depth of the old bushing, and used that to press in the new one. Unsurprisingly it lined right up to the frame during reinstallation. I'm interested to see how much faster/more the passenger side wears because of the misalignment.



I noticed while doing all of this that there were 2 or 3 alignment paint marks on the trailing arms... Which means that these bushings were probably replaced a few times before I owned this car. If that's true, then these things get replaced a lot more than I was hoping, since the car was only 10 years old when I got it.

It's also worth noting that I put anti-seize on the lower control arm bolts.. We'll see if it helps in ten years.

So at the end of all this I have new rear struts and hardware (old springs, new isolators), new lower control arms (with new bushings), and new rear trailing arm bushings. I ran a quick test drive and the car definitely handles a bit differently, but the big change is that the ride is quiet, there isn't nearly as much road noise and clunking.

 

[TigBitties]

Have you considered buying a new Honda with a warranty at this point lol


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[ctag]

Have you considered buying a new Honda with a warranty at this point lol

I'm actually running in the other direction. Next year I'm planning on kicking off an engine rebuild and exterior repaint

 

[ctag]

I'm about a week behind on car stuff, so let's catch up!

I started working my way through the front passenger side suspension components. New upper control arm bushings, upper control arm ball joint, lower control arm ball joint, lower control arm shock bushing, inner tie rod, outer tie rod end, tie rod boot, sway bar linkage, and sway bar to frame bushing. For the most part, the items coming off the car seemed to be in reasonable shape, and probably could have stayed a while longer, but I was already in the middle of things so I just kept going.

All of the ball joints (including driver side) that came off the car were loose enough to push around with my finger, but still fit tightly in the socket without any noticeable slop. I wonder why people say that it being loose enough to move means it's shot?


Old and new upper control arm pieces.

The upper control arm ball joint had an alignment mark so I set it up with the dot on the arm.


Done!


Removing the lower ball joint was a huge pain. I wound up using an impact wrench and press kit, which they say not to do..


And the lower control arm shock bushing was an EVEN LARGER PITA. I wound up following a forum post's advice and cutting it out with a saws-all.

Old bushing. Intact, but obviously worn.


Noooope. Would not press out.


Finally! Pressed out the inner rubber, and then sawed through the sleeve and pried it out.


The new bushings had an alignment dot, but I couldn't find out where it went So I gave up and just put it facing "down"


I did not replace the lower control arm to frame bushings, and they seemed OK-ish.


The old sway bar hardware was in OK shape. Got replaced anyway.


New tie rod end!

And that's about it, besides the alignment being screwed up, I didn't really notice much difference. At least not compared to how much impact the new shocks had.

 

[ctag]

A friend had some bad grinding coming from the brakes, and I decided it would be a nice Christmas gift to drive to Atlanta and install new pads. That put some pressure on me to wrap up the driver side suspension! I got it finished before noon on Saturday (same stuff as the passenger side above, no pictures though!) and then spent the entire afternoon looking for a shop that would do an alignment. Finally, hours later, a tire place in the neighboring city took my car in. They did an awesome job, got the car back to me in record time, and I was off to Atlanta! (hoping the whole way that I'd sufficiently tightened the suspension bolts, since I didn't torque to spec )


New pads and rotors on the friend's car!

Of course it rained the whole day I was working on those brakes.. And they live in an apartment complex with no garages I did find an awning to work under though.

After a test drive we took my car to get dinner, and the friend exclaimed "Chris! Your car sounds worse than mine!" .. That hurt a lot more than I'm willing to admit But it's fair, I'm just adjusted to the way my Mothership sounds while driving...

 

[ctag]

So the shocks are replaced.. The suspension bushings are mostly all replaced... I've just driven to Atlanta and back... And then I go visit my parents a mere 10 miles away for Christmas! And my car won't start when I'm ready to leave and go home... Nothing to do with the suspension at all

The engine would crank, but it was as if there was no spark.. My mom held a flashlight for me and I unearthed oil pooled in the spark plug wells



I tried soaking it all up with paper towels. But still no joy.. I borrowed my parents car to go to work this morning, and then came back this afternoon to keep troubleshooting.

The pooled oil points to bad valve cover seals, which I've known about and will have to fix some other time. I was worried that the oil had shorted out the plugs, and the ignition coil was toast. So I brought a multimeter with me and tested the coil. It read 4.4 ohms between A and B, where the service manual says "0.7 ohms" and I headed off to Autozone for a replacement. I also installed a new distributor rotor and cap while I was there.

The car started! It immediately blew the spark plug wires loose from the valve cover and bogged down (Engine blowby?! Just valve cover seals?!). But once I pressed them back in they stayed and the engine started idling normally. And for now that's the end to things, I'm going to get those seals replaced and take a while to just enjoy driving!

 

[ctag]

Look what I found out in my garage this morning!


I reluctantly delayed my drive into work to install the new seals. Valve cover off:


The old seals (which I KNEW were trouble) had fallen entirely out of their sockets in the cover, and were resting on the cam rocker arms.


Cheap garbage


I didn't know which direction the new seals went, so I looked it up. Here it is:


I replaced the spark plug seals, the valve cover bolt seals, and the valve cover gasket. Which is to say I used the whole felpro kit.

Back together!

As an aside, I'm a little sad (happy?) to notice that the civic is making more power now. I think it's been dealing with this oil-ignition-coil issue for a while at least

 

[TigBitties]

Good old Honda’s


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[ctag]

So the throttle pedal started sticking again

I searched around online and every thread I found argued that the issue was with the butterfly plate, and not the throttle cable. Apparently the throttle body plate sometimes jams closed and causes stiction when opening. While that may be common, I still decided my issue was still with the cable because 1) I can turn the throttle plate by hand and it appears to be operating smoothly (though it is difficult to tell), and 2) the rubber boot on the cable is ripped, and I expect that dirt has gotten down in the sleeve and is causing the resistance.

So I bought an new, OEM throttle cable, which arrived yesterday. Installation was the easiest thing ever. The whole thing just unhooks out of the pedal and then twists out of the firewall. I tensioned the new cable and then drove to work this morning... It was like buying a new car for $25, I'm absolutely floored by how well the engine responds now! I wish I'd done this years ago!

 

[TigBitties]

The liners wear out over time also


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