EK4 VTi-R Project

[mbikeboy]

A steady stream of parts have been arriving over the past few days...

Hardrace front and rear sway bar bushes, tie-rod ends, and front sway bar links.







HEL braided brake and clutch hoses.



New radio aerial.



Intake manifold gasket.



Hose clamps for air intake.



Billet power steering and alternator pulleys.



Billet transmission mounts



I was just about to purchase some new coilovers, but crisis struck!!! The TV in my "man cave" finally crapped-out after 11yrs of faithful xbox duties, which meant buying a new one...a happy but not happy moment! I figured now was the ideal opportunity to get the perfect set-up, so bought a 55" 4k beast, and sourced everything for a luscious retro 80's Luxman stereo system (not all components have arrived yet). Gaming has never been so good, hahahahahahahaha!!!

 

[mbikeboy]

Another part arrived first thing this morning, a new cup-holder/storage unit direct from Japan! The original cup-holder is broken and drives me absolute insane...it stops me using the storage bin, looks butt-ugly, and I can't even fit a large coffee in it (my "must have" every morning). I'm pretty excited by this, haha!

 

[mbikeboy]

Another part arrived today...a Spoon front strut-tower brace! I'll be interested to see if there's any advantage over the OEM brace (I'd be expecting so given the size difference), but essentially it's engine-bay bling.

 

[mbikeboy]

I got my butt into gear today and made a start improving the handling. Nothing terribly fancy, but I fitted the Tegiwa tie-bar, the Hardrace rear swaybar bushes, and the Hardrace rear swaybar links (which arrived this morning). A couple of uncooperative bolts and the tight space behind the muffler gave me a bit of grief, but on the whole it was a pretty painless procedure.

I took the car for a test-drive after completion, and it's remarkable how much more "planted" the back end feels now. There's night and day compared to how it felt before, so I'm definitely looking forward to fitting the new Hardrace swaybar links and bushes to the front end, which feels all mushy when pushed hard.

Here's a couple of rather unexciting pics with the tie-bar, links and bushes installed, haha!

 

[mbikeboy]

After weeks of waiting impatiently, a delay thanks to the wrong postage method used (in fairness I was reimbursed the difference), and it being held up for an eternity by Australian Customs, I finally have my centre-console armrest!!! It's from an Orthia (an EK Civic wagon which sadly we never got here), which explains a couple of buttons which are of no use to me, but the 2x coin holders are a nice touch.





It's the same fabric that's on the bolsters of the seats in my VTi-R, but just needs a good clean to bring it back to matchy-matchy. The photo makes the difference look much worse than it is in real life tbh, but I'll get the interior professionally steam-cleaned in the near future. Having extra storage space and somewhere to rest my elbow is going to be amazing!!!

 

[mbikeboy]

The mighty little Civ has been rapidly deployed to perform daily duties. It's been awesome fun whipping around in it, but grrrrrr.....

The fancy-pants Subaru GT wagon (with very low klm's and full history) we bought a few months has been amazing...super comfy, super fast, super practical, and a super pain in the ass!!! In the space of approx 3 months, we've had a christmas tree of dash lights happen 4 times (which puts the car into limp mode and costs $77 each time for a reset), a replacement front Bilstein shocker (trade price of $455), and now it needs a new torque converter (curl up into foetal position and cry kinda expensive). You'll be driving along minding your own business, and at random, the revs suddenly drop off and an almighty bang/jolt that feels like you've been rear-ended at high-speed, then it acts like nothing happened at all. The bang/jolt is bad enough to induce a day-long severe headache and whiplash, so there's no way we can drive it atm.


It's fair to say that I'm fuming...so much for the infamous Subaru reliability eh? I'm trying hard to see the funny side of a 22yo Civ being more reliable than a 5yo Subaru...what a piece of sh*t?!

 

[mbikeboy]

Subaru are now telling me that even if they find something tomorrow, the earliest they can do anything about it is mid-december....which with Chrissy, NYE, etc, basically means early next year. What a joke!!!

 

[blandsarcasm]

Subaru are now telling me that even if they find something tomorrow, the earliest they can do anything about it is mid-december....which with Chrissy, NYE, etc, basically means early next year. What a joke!!!

Ugh Subaru...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mbikeboy]

It's been a while since being on here, but good news is that I still have the Civic, the bad news is that I've done absolutely nothing to it since the last post! It's been driven maybe 5 times this year courtesy of getting a company BMW to drive, so just like the Suby, it's just sat up the driveway getting dirty and hasn't felt any love. I've simply been too exhausted with the crazy-long 6-day working weeks to spend any time on it, and it was more important to enjoying any spare time with my better-half.

Spending the odd evening or saturday back at work late in my own time, I've been busy building up my brand new bike for an upcoming 5-day endurance event, but asides from that I came to a realisation that work was consuming far too much of my time, experiencing huge pressures, wasn't happy, for various reasons had lost the love for what I was doing, and it was necessary to reconsider my priorities in life and leave for greener pastures.

It's been decided that it's time to escape the city for the country, and get back to enjoying the simple things in life which I've sorely missed. For now I am completely free, which means I'll be putting some time back into the Civic, and we'll be moving to the country soon. This of course means I'll spend more quality time with my better-half, have a proper garage/workshop, more personal time enjoying things which matter to me, more time with my golden retriever, and we can save for a house. It's like a huge weight has finally been lifted from my shoulders.

For now, enjoy some pics of the bike so far...it's nowhere near finished, and there's still a massive box of stuff to fit btw!

 

[mbikeboy]

It was decided that the cars are long overdue for some love and had to be done while I have the free-time.

So on friday we had the Subaru serviced (needed the precious service stamp in the book), and had a few other annoying things sorted which I couldn't be bothered doing. We had put it off so long that it was ridiculous. I also got the stone-chip in the windscreen fixed with resin. Today we had it professionally detailed and it looks simply amazeballs! There's a scuff on the bumper which some *sshole did during a hit n run a couple of months ago (wasn't driven for 3 months, took it out for just 15mins and boom, grrrr!), which we've got booked in to have fixed in a weeks time, then it's like new again, woohoo!

Onto the Civic now! On saturday I finally made the time to get my headlights adjusted to spec (after changing the clusters how long ago?!) for the amazingly low sum of $33! I also replaced all three wiper blades and arms for $68, so now I can see properly in both the rain and dark!

Tomorrow I'm going to swap over the tie-rod ends, sway bar bushes and sway bar links to the new HardRace ones I have, then get a wheel alignment done. That's going to be pretty exciting!

While the weather's decent over the next few days, I'm also going to be putting in some serious effort into reviving the paint-work, particularly on the roof which is cloudy and fading. I bought a full set of Turtle-wax compounds and polishes, so will see how much of a difference that makes! The roof just lets the car down sooooooo much every time I detail the car!

 

[mbikeboy]

Here's a quick look at the roof...the extent of the sun damage is pretty severe! The clear-coat has burned through, as has the base-layer in some sections. The goal was to make it look better, not make it perfect...I'm well aware that a respray is the only true way to fix this, and will get some quotes this week.

I've only done a small section so far, which has come up ok'ish, but have had to accept that the paint damage is too severe and it's too far gone to save! The area I've slaved away on looks just as noticeable as the untouched areas, so have conceded defeat.

 

[mbikeboy]

Salvaging something from todays efforts, at least I have a clean car! I found the Turtle Wax trim detailer far better to apply than the Meguires Gold Class version, and was less messy, and less greasy after application. It really brought out the richness of the black trim and I'm now converted.

The jury's out regarding the Turtle Wax polish though...it doesn't give quite the same "wow-factor" as the Meguires Wet Look polish which I normally get. Admittedly I've been polishing by hand, but am tempted to buy an electric buffer to see what difference that makes.

 

[mbikeboy]

I've also got around to replacing the tie-rod ends and thought I'd put some pictures up. It was a simple job which was done in under 30 mins.

 

[mbikeboy]

I found a spare hour today and fitted the HardRace front swaybar links and bushes this afternoon! It was a pretty straightforward job with minimal fuss...I should have done this ages ago. Kicking myself for being so slack!

 

[mbikeboy]

I had the Subaru at a local body-shop to have the minor scuff from the "hit-n-run" repaired, and when picking it up yesterday I mentioned that I was interested in having the roof, possibly the entire car repainted. We went out for a look, got chatting away about the Civic, and was surprised by the findings!

It turns out that the only areas needing repainting are the roof, rhs door, rhs rear quarter panel, and both mirrors...the rest of the paintwork is
in exceptional condition (just needs professional polishing) and there are only a few minor dents to pull here and there (which is to be expected from such an old car).

Something which I found rather amusing, was towards the end of going over the car, the boss pulled up and ran across the road to ask me if I was the guy who'd done a track day with a couple of weeks back at Winton Raceway. Turns out there was a VTi-R which looked the same as mine which had embarrassed plenty of expensive machinery that day. Sadly nope!

They are putting together an estimate quote in the coming days, and I'll take the Civ into their shop on a quiet saturday in the next few weeks so that we can go over absolutely everything for an exact quote. There is no rush for me to fix the panels/paint, which also works well for them also (means I can get a cheaper price if they're quiet work-wise).

I mentioned it to my better-half, and surprisingly she was quite interested. As mentioned, this is a "keeper" car, so I reckon we might be getting it done sooner than later, woohoo!!!

 

[PURPLE_EK4]

I had the Subaru at a local body-shop to have the minor scuff from the "hit-n-run" repaired, and when picking it up yesterday I mentioned that I was interested in having the roof, possibly the entire car repainted. We went out for a look, got chatting away about the Civic, and was surprised by the findings!

It turns out that the only areas needing repainting are the roof, rhs door, rhs rear quarter panel, and both mirrors...the rest of the paintwork is
in exceptional condition (just needs professional polishing) and there are only a few minor dents to pull here and there (which is to be expected from such an old car).

Something which I found rather amusing, was towards the end of going over the car, the boss pulled up and ran across the road to ask me if I was the guy who'd done a track day with a couple of weeks back at Winton Raceway. Turns out there was a VTi-R which looked the same as mine which had embarrassed plenty of expensive machinery that day. Sadly nope!

They are putting together an estimate quote in the coming days, and I'll take the Civ into their shop on a quiet saturday in the next few weeks so that we can go over absolutely everything for an exact quote. There is no rush for me to fix the panels/paint, which also works well for them also (means I can get a cheaper price if they're quiet work-wise).

I mentioned it to my better-half, and surprisingly she was quite interested. As mentioned, this is a "keeper" car, so I reckon we might be getting it done sooner than later, woohoo!!!

Any updates?