Just Another Build Thread, My 99' MR EM1

[Flopez76]

Decided on starting a "build" thread or a progress thread for my 99' MR EM1. To start this would be my third Honda I've owned, first was a 96' Civic w/ an H22 swap, 2nd a 94' Acura Integra, and now the beauty of an EM1 ) always wanted an SI and now I have one.

Now here's the story of how I got the civic, if you don't care, just skip this paragraph; I got the Civic in a trade with some random guy I met while leaving the mall, he was just standing by my car when I got to the parking garage, you best believe as soon as I saw I ran as fast as I could ready to beat some jacker ass! Turns out, he was a cool guy that just liked my Integra, enough to wait for an hour for me to come out haha. We talked for awhile about my car, and eventually he told me that he had an "EK Civic" if I wanted to trade. That's all he told me, didn't mention it being an SI or anything. Blah, blah, blah, either way we traded he told me it had a GSR motor swapped in w/ "100k miles" and that was all. Didn't really say anything about it, not what it had or anything.

Now I'm going to warn you, there is nothing crazy happening in this 1st post just basic maintenance, so sorry for boring you haha


Here's some pictures the PO sent me, I'm going to use it as the starting point.


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Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr


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As you can see, it has some problems already. The front bumper is painted some random red, no where near matching at all and the engine bay is dirty as hell! :angry: but nonetheless that can be fixed.

First thing when I got the car home was put some gas, $3.25 a gallon, and then give her a bath


Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr


Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr

Next morning I got to looking over the car and checking everything out. Come to find out that the the motor is actually a JDM GSR, and not a USDM GSR. Not sure on the difference between the two, just that the JDM block stamp reads B18C? But either way, I have a JDM motor also I have wires everywhere in the engine bay

Wrong size radiator? Held with wire and half of the condenser stay. Does it have a full size radiator because of the swap? Or could I just go back to the half sized radiator without a problem?


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Random wires & just craziness;


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What are these clips for? I need to follow that wire and found out where it leads. It's next to the PW steering pump?


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Broken valve cover bolt, where can I just buy one at? Honda?


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And this is how the HIDs are wired up, yeah don't ask why. I'm pretty sure HIDs are plug & play...


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Then got around to changing the oil, oil filter, and spark plugs. Kept the wires for now because they're MSD wires, but I'll probably replace them later with Ngks or OEM. Maybe even Spoon


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Decided to slap on some wheels that I had left from my Integra, they're some Motegi MR12s I think the white looks real good with the red


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Come to find out the Civic has some eBay coilovers, so I did what anybody would do... Slammed it to the ground!

Before...


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After!


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Sadly, the rears where stuck so I couldn't lower it anymore than it is now. So for the time being I have a raked SI haha


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While rummaging through all the crap in the trunk, I found a bra... for the car ) but only the lower portion. Anybody selling the hood bra? But either way, I put it on to cover up the ugly bumper for the time being.


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Took her out to give her a bath again, don't worry I checked the brushes and even sprayed 'em out to make sure. But either way the paint isn't that great anyways, the clear is peeling at places.


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Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr


Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr


Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr

Then today, it started off as just being a simple vacuuming but ended up being so much more haha. Started at 9:00 am

Began cleaning out all the crap I could pick up with my hands. And found a little surprise that the PO left me under the drivers seat...


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And under the passengers seat. A USDM P30 ecu from what I've found from searching, these things a pretty hard to come by and are from a SI Del Sol? Correct me if I'm wrong.


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[Flopez76]

Then the tear down

Before;


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Whataburger!!! For all you Northerners, it's just a fast food restaurant


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Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr


Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr


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Before'

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After


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And as you can see from some of the pictures above, there's that annoying stereo wires that I have running through the center console, so in an attempt to clean up the interior and also the engine bay I decided to remove all of the wiring.


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Here's where it all led too


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And this weird ass LED strip? I guess the PO had a system and would "Pop trunk" and drive around showing it off? I can't think of another reason for it?


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Wires gone


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Removing the LEDs


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Removed, for sale? Random light thingy haha


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Now here's all the junk in my trunk ) for sale? haha


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Vacuumed out the trunk also


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Weird s*** I found under the trunk carpet? And no, those are not condoms... they're latex gloves haha


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Junk in the trunk! But nice and neat until I get home haha


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Everything back together and clean!


Untitled by Flopez76, on FlickrThen I decided to attack all the craziness of wires I had in the engine bay


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Custom intake?


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Custom heat shield I guess?


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Yeah, I removed it


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Yay dirty bay!


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Well the radiator fan is turned on by a switch inside the car, so since I've forgotten to turn on the fan many times already and once forgot to turn it off! I decided to just loop the radiator fan switch and have it running whenever I turn the key


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How the PO had the fan wired


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And here's the switch for the fan. These 3 wires are cluttering up the engine bay, so it's the main reason why I decided to remove the switch.


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Here's how they came into the cab


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All removed and gone! Like at least 10 feet of wire. Switch for sale? haha


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And of course! The most RAREST JDMest PART EVER!!! *sarcasm*


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Gone, for sale


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Much, much better


Untitled by Flopez76, on FlickrThen decided to remove the window washer bottle since it's not hooked up anyways;


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Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr

OEM duct tape?


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Before;


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Gone


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Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr

Also noticed this while taking out the bottle


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[Flopez76]

Decided to check out what kind of exhaust I had and saw this. I never knew Blitz made exhaust for Hondas? I thought they only did like Subby and Evos? and the Jasma code is 021 which is "Buritsutsu Inc." not Blitz?


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Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr

And here's a sound clip of the Blitz exhaust, Ignore the rattling noise, I had some screws laying on the valve cover


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an-iNBZQlp8&feature=plcp


I'll post up a future mods & all that jazz once I got sometime. Thanks for reading through this post and there is much more to come. And I apologize for all the boring-ness you just read through will have better updates once I save up some more

 

[emerican]

looks good seems the previous owner had quite a few strange things you had to undo, but ive seen alot worse.
glad the monster tach is gone lol.
first thing i would do is replace the ebay coils with something decent.
and the bay wont be fun,but youve already got it looking less clutered just got tp get in there and do some cleaning.

 

[CHILD]

you can switch to a half sized radiator, they just rigged an integra radiator to work.

like above, i'd get off that suspension for safety reasons. I've seen no name springs simply snap from being rusted and seeing the rust spots on this car would have me concerned.

Then i'd address all the wiring issues. Electrical issues are usually some of the worse to have to diagnose and deal with.

and yes, Blitz did make exhausts for hondas. They were more popular around the time when Greddy evolution exhausts were everywhere.

 

[CHILD]

oh, and the jdm gsr has a little bump in compression ratio and more aggressive fuel maps (if you have the matching ecu)

and yes that p30 ecu is from the b16a2 del sol's and the jdm version was in EG civic SiR's with the b16a

 

[emerican]

^ good info there
and hes defintly right about the wiring, but you defintly need to get it all straighted oit
i would go back to the half sized radiator just so you dont have the rigged up one you have know even though it works it dosent look clean or like its supposed to be there.
id also check the ecu just to make sure you do have the matching ecu to the motor so you know what you have

 

[Flopez76]

you can switch to a half sized radiator, they just rigged an integra radiator to work.

like above, i'd get off that suspension for safety reasons. I've seen no name springs simply snap from being rusted and seeing the rust spots on this car would have me concerned.

Then i'd address all the wiring issues. Electrical issues are usually some of the worse to have to diagnose and deal with.

and yes, Blitz did make exhausts for hondas. They were more popular around the time when Greddy evolution exhausts were everywhere.

Thanks for all the good info Child! Definitely switching back to the half sized radiator, I think I have one in my garage from a previous Civic.

And as for the springs, I plan on it. Either switching to some Koni/GCs if I can save up the money and be patient or just get some F&F Type 1s.

And the rust has me pretty worried too, it's where the bumper attaches to the car? But it's like that on both sides? But I'm going to look deeper into it.

Electrical can be a pain, but I'm getting it worked out slowly but surely. Going to check out the headlights in the morning and see what I can do.

^ good info there
and hes defintly right about the wiring, but you defintly need to get it all straighted oit
i would go back to the half sized radiator just so you dont have the rigged up one you have know even though it works it dosent look clean or like its supposed to be there.
id also check the ecu just to make sure you do have the matching ecu to the motor so you know what you have

Thanks, and I'll check out the ECU tomorrow. What should be the code for the matching ECU? and it's behind the passenger kick panel, right?

 

[emerican]

yes its behind the passanger kick panel and to be honest dont remember the code for that specific motor off the top of my head.
Also if i where you if those are plug and play hids then i would either remove them since in factory housings all they really do is scatter the light. Or do a retrofit on them another moderater on this site named john did a great write up on doing the retrofit so if you interested look into that.

 

[emerican]

off the top of my head i would say it should be p72, but im honestly not postive about that so if im wrong somebody please chime in and correct me.

 

[Flopez76]

Well first thing I did when I woke up was tear in the EM to check out that ECU, and here's what I've come to find.

DAT ASS! Best security you can have for a Honda


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Popped the passenger kick panel off to see this...


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Yupp here's the ECU in all its glory. All tagged up with sharpie, I guess that's cool? Can you guess what "ISR" means?


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Yupp, you guessed it! "Intense Street Racing"!!! PO was an idiot, or whoever did this


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Great, no label...


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Popped the cover off to take a picture for y'all


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Come to notice this weird little thing sticking out? Sorry for the blurry picture


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Untitled by Flopez76, on Flickr

Well the motor head reads, 9/5, so that would be 1995, correct? 0bd1 stopped at 95, so could I have the right ECU since it has the jumper harness? But the ECU looks to be an 0bd1 ecu. I really don't know if I have the correct one or not, but hopefully all you Honda gurus can chime in and help

 

[Flopez76]

Well got bored again today, and decided to talk the mess the PO called his headlights, this is how everything sat in the bay, and from previous posts you can see how hacked up everything was



The HID bulb, never took a picture of it but the lights were purple and put no light on the road! I'm not even exaggerating either



Found the old bulbs in the passenger door and since the harness was cut this was the only way I could wire it up



And... BAM! It's on



Anyone know how to go about wiring these in since I don't have the clip? Any pictures of how it would look stock so I have a reference? There were 3 wires coming from the harness, on the passenger side, 1 was black, 1 was red w/ a white stripe, and the other was red/ a blue stripe i think (color blind, could of been purple) and on the drivers side, the same thing except one was red w/ a yellow stripe. Any help would be greatly appreciated





Much better without the bulky ballast and mess of wires



Moved on to the drivers side and got tired of working in tight spaces so, off came the bumper





Then I ran into a problem with the drivers light, there is no low beam , but the high beam works fine. I tried every combination with the wires. And this is all I get with the low beams on. Could it be a bad bulb?



All the crap out



Already looking a lot cleaner without all the wiring crap. Cleaned up most of the wiring, just need to get a half sized radiator in there to clean it up some more. De-grease and power wash the gunk out, replace the intake, and re-route some wires and it should be good.



Any answers to the questions above would be greatly appreciated! I like to think I'm making some good progress so far and I haven't even began buying parts

 

[TokyoSkies]

Glad to see you're breathing new life into this thing! No idea on the ECU.. gotta love ricers... as far as your driver's side headlight, that appears to be the bulb. Replace em, and you should be fine.

 

[emerican]

agree on the bulbs and if it where me while you where doing it id replace them all.

 

[mymmeryloss]

Damn puttin in work!

Very nice

 

[emerican]

^ couldnt agree any more sir
clean up the bay a little half sized radiator and check on the rust and your in bussiness.

 

[mymmeryloss]

Y do u want a half size radiator?

Full size is best...

Get a mishimoto aluminum full size

 

[emerican]

he wants to go back to half size becauase the full size one that is in there now dosent really fit and is just rigged to work.
so he asked if he could go back to half size thats why i said that.

 

[Flopez76]

Y do u want a half size radiator?

Full size is best...

Get a mishimoto aluminum full size

Well I plan on going to a half size radiator because I feel it would look more cleaner with the bay, also I would go with an aluminum full size radiator but I don't how it would work with the condenser? Plus you have to fab up some brackets and I don't know how haha

But I plan on getting an aluminum half size radiator, just not sure if I should go with Mishimoto or just go with an eBay one? I know you take a risk with eBay products but it's just a radiator and I've read that many people are happy with them


Also thanks everyone!

 

[emerican]

there is an in between from ebay to Mishimoto
there are other companies that have them for cheaper than Mishimoto such as BWR, yonaka etc you could look into those if you want im not sure about the reviews on either the ebays or the other companies i listed, but its something to look into.