The Civic 25XT

[ChargeR]

Not too much happening with the old Civic at the moment, but the parts I ordered to partially refurbish the distributor should be here any day now. Apart from that I bought a 50mm steering wheel spacer from eBay and fitted it up, though I still think it needs more spacer so I'm going to put the 25mm one back on as well.

Had to finish off a roll on Sunday so I drove around the industrial area near my workplace and took a handful of photos:







I'm planning to head to Winton later in the month to firstly test whether fixing the distributor has corrected the misfire issue, but mainly to test an upcoming suspension tweak.

The joys of the fwd and street tyres lol I always found the same thing, once your street tyres go through the first bit of abuse in the first session, they don't seem to come back as well for the rest of the day. Plus you get tired and go through the motions a bit. It's still a decent time though considering!

Yeah that sounds about right, I'm honestly considering taking a spray bottle and spraying the front tyres down with water like the US AutoX folks do between runs to try to cool them down between sessions.

[ChargeR]

A while back I bought a seat for the CR-X, a Sparco ADV Pro, but since the CR-X is in quite a few pieces at the moment I thought I'd mount it in the Civic in the interim. Not being keen on spending the cash for a dedicated side mount seat rail I thought I could make my own. So I removed the standard seat and measured up the seat sliders (which I'd already changed over to the ED6 parts from the manual donor car, they provide more rearward adjustment) and modelled up a pair of brackets to attach to the standard slider:



The brackets have provision for height and fore/aft adjustment, and they'll also suit a variety of seat widths in case I use a different seat in the future. I had a handful of sets made up in case some EF/ED mates are looking for an economical seat mounting solution. Here are the brackets fitted up to the standard seat rail:



The brackets fit well, but as expected the broad outboard bracket is more flexible than I'd like, so I'll be dimpling the 4 holes in it to add some stiffness, and I'm considering welding in some stiffening ribs.








My initial impressions of the seat after a quick test drive are great, it's much more supportive than the standard seat, surprisingly comfortable and with some adjustment I'll be able to get a bit more head room so my helmet doesn't hit the roof. I do need to figure out a good solution for the seatbelt though, and once I'm happy with the install I'll have the brackets powdercoated stealth black so the whole install will look stock...

Thanks to itsu-san for having the brackets laser cut and bent up for me, and for the loan of the dimple dies.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Holy crap that's one intense seat. Awesome work on making your own brackets. The seat should help a lot at the track!

[MYDC5R]

Always love looking forward to your updates Tom.
Looks really good.

[felixR]

Wow that's great work!! Love it.

[Shakeel]

Laser cutters are so useful!

[ChargeR]

Holy crap that's one intense seat. Awesome work on making your own brackets. The seat should help a lot at the track!

Cheers guy! Yep it's a serious seat, I would have preferred to have no wings but of all the seats I sat in this was the most comfortable.

Always love looking forward to your updates Tom.
Looks really good.

Wow that's great work!! Love it.

Thanks guys!

Laser cutters are so useful!

Yeah! I was talking about my need for a seat bracket with Grant (itsu_san) and he suggested that rather than stuff around making brackets manually to just get them laser cut, happy I took his advice.

[Importtuner]

Nice work as always, Tom. That red dust inside the distributor is most likely the distributor bearing shaft failing. Pretty common on older Honda's. Not sure if you plan on replacing the bearing but if you're disassembling the unit for other maintenance, replacing it is a good idea. When they're really bad they'll squeal and howl but the red dust is usually the first indicator. If they seize, I've heard stories of timing belts skipping as the distributor runs off the camshaft.

Not sure what size bearing the EF needs but MOST Honda distributors take this bearing: http://www.ebay.com/itm/400572314896...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

The original bearing should have a stamping on it to identify the exact model.

[Paulieee_R]

I just spent most of my day at work reading through this whole build. This is amazing. The dedication, the DIY and knowledge is insanity! I was proud installing my mirrors! I loved seeing the lap times get quicker and quicker throughout the whole build.

And those seats! Well done!

[ChargeR]

I just spent most of my day at work reading through this whole build. This is amazing. The dedication, the DIY and knowledge is insanity! I was proud installing my mirrors! I loved seeing the lap times get quicker and quicker throughout the whole build.

And those seats! Well done!

Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad the thread was worth reading, hopefully the lap times will keep dropping .

Nice work as always, Tom. That red dust inside the distributor is most likely the distributor bearing shaft failing. Pretty common on older Honda's. Not sure if you plan on replacing the bearing but if you're disassembling the unit for other maintenance, replacing it is a good idea. When they're really bad they'll squeal and howl but the red dust is usually the first indicator. If they seize, I've heard stories of timing belts skipping as the distributor runs off the camshaft.

Not sure what size bearing the EF needs but MOST Honda distributors take this bearing: http://www.ebay.com/itm/400572314896...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

The original bearing should have a stamping on it to identify the exact model.

Thanks for the tip! I'd foolishly assumed the rust coloured dust was just wear metal from the rotor and points on the cap, so I'll have to get a bearing as well. Research suggests that the EF might be a different shaft size, so it's probably safest if I pull it apart and match what's in there.

Here's the bits I've collected so far; 3 seals, coil, rotor, cap, and for an unrelated project inner rack ends, boots and lock washers. There's differential bearings and a clutch inspection cover for the CR-X in there too.

[ChargeR]

Over the weekend I thought I'd see what I could to do improve the stiffness of my seat bracket by adding some stiffening ribs and dimpling the holes (Thanks again to itsu-san for the loan of the dimple die). Here's the outboard bracket with the stiffener partly welded in and the holes dimpled:



The stiffness improved noticeably after the modifications, but after looking closely at the install I've decided that a large amount of the compliance is due to the outboard seat slider, which in an EF doesn't have a locking mechanism. Since only the seat, which is fairly flexible, is linking the two sliding sections this amplifies the compliance. To correct this I'm planning to make up some flat plates to bolt in to link the two rails to form a solid one piece seat base. I also fitted a new clutch cable, as the old one was sticking and giving inconsistent clutch disengagement:





The old cable was pretty cheap looking, and unfortunately so was the eBay part I replaced it with. OEM right hand drive EF/ED clutch cables are no longer available from Honda. I also noticed that the other OEM ED/EF clutch cables I've seen have a plastic sheath on the cable to reduce wear which probably makes it last a lot longer, so I'm not expecting great things from this replacement part. I'll definitely be keeping the old one as an emergency spare and look for a better quality alternative if I retain the cable operated clutch in this car..

[MYDC5R]

These updates Tom keep getting better and better =)
Great attention to detail, thanks for the updates

[ChargeR]

These updates Tom keep getting better and better =)
Great attention to detail, thanks for the updates

Cheers Carl! Where are the updates on your car?

Had the car on the dyno at RTR last weekend. Power output was good enough to put me mid field in Nugget Nationals, and it's got 5kW more than the Micra. Jarrod from RTR mentioned that it felt like it hit a speed cut or rev limiter though, and as you can see the run stops at 145 km/h just past 5000 RPM so something is amiss, as it should comfortably rev out to 6,500 and make peak power at 6+. Hopefully the new parts in the distributor fixes it.

[ChargeR]

Last night I re-assembled the distributor with all the new parts I'd accumulated; bearing, shaft seal, o ring, coil, cap, rotor and cap seal. Unfortunately It took a couple of tries to get the correct bearing which led to the car still being in pieces the day of the AROCA event at Sandown that I had entered, but itsu-san kindly offered his car for a co-drive, check out his thread for details.

Here's the process of re-assembling the distributor in pictures, first up the bearing pressed on to the shaft with the bearing retaining plate in place:



Shaft installed in the housing:



The distributor mostly complete, with the coil, vacuum advance mechanism and rotor fitted:



Back in the car:



For the benefit of those that may stumble upon this post searching for information the correct bearing was marked NTN 6201LU with 12.5mm inside diameter, 10mm width and 32mm outside diameter. It's a light press fit on the shaft so the inside diameter is important. The correct shaft seal was NOK BW3888-E.

The car started first crank after I re-fitted the distributor, and seems to rev slightly more cleanly than before, but as always the track will tell me whether it's made a positive difference. I'll have to wait to see whether the new seals have fixed the oil leak too.

[MYDC5R]

I stand by what i said earlier Tom, it gets better and better haha
The thorough attention to detail is what is making this build so good to follow

My car - still @ panel shop.
Over the 5 year journey, it's been at a panel shop for 1 year, not bad ay? lol
Getting some repairs made