Todds new EK1

[Toddxxx]

Not much has happened with the civic lately. Just doing it's job as a daily driver. I did swap out and sell the recaros but more on that another day.

A few weeks ago I went on a trip up to Mount Wilson with my girlfriend and some friends to enjoy the autumn colours.





With snow season coming up and lots of driving planned it was time to service the car. Since buying it I hadn't really touched it bar checking the dipstick every now and then to check the oil level. Surprisingly the car barely goes through any oil even with 220k kms on the clock. Testament to Hondas reliability.

I timed the service perfectly as SCA had a sale on so I picked up the oil, coolant, coolant flush, oil filter and spark plugs for a great price. A trip to Honda to grab some oem mtf and some left over rbf600 in my tool box at home and the car was ready for its refresh.



The service was pretty straight forward. All the fluids that came out of the car to be replaced actually looked to be in good condition so the car was probably serviced not too long ago. At least now I know when the last service took place and I can follow a schedule from here on in.

The gearbox is noticeably smoother now with the new oem mtf in there. Not sure what was in there previously but it came out looking and smelling good so maybe it just wasn't Honda fluid?
Brakes feel better too now a bleed. Rbf600 is a bit overkill for a street D16 ek maybe haha

I just got a new phone and was testing out the camera taking some random pics. Man the P10 camera is awesome! Can't fully tell once the pic is uploaded but man when viewing on the phone/computer the quality is amazing!



So that was the car serviced and fresh once again. Now for more road trips over the next couple months 🙂

[Toddxxx]

First trip of the snow season done!

I was planning on heading down this coming weekend for the season opening but with good falls last week perisher announced midweek that it would be opening a week early so that trip was moved forward and my girlfriend was now able to come.

Luckily I had done the service recently and knew the car was fresh and ready to go so it was just a matter of packing our gear and tool bag and off we went.

With no real rush to get down there (I have a season pass and my girlfriend didn't really care about squeezing 2 full days of boarding in) we left Saturday morning and decided to just stop along the way and make a bit of a road trip of it.
First stop was at Trappers Bakery at Goulburn to grab some delicious pastry goods. Best pies in Aus.
Also had to take the mandatory Big Merino picture.



Onto Canberra next for some looking around and a quick visit to Parliament House and the War Memorial.
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. We arrived at Jindabyne in the early afternoon and went for a walk to a few spots around the lake before we checked into the hotel.



We met a few friends that night at Lake Jindabyne Hotel and had some awesome pub food, lots of beers and played many rounds of pool.

On Sunday we headed up the mountain nice and early to get a full day of boarding in before the long drive home. Started off helping my girlfriend out and getting her back up to scratch (2 years since her last trip) and then we met up with our friends and just spent the day doing runs down the mountain or through the park. Being the opening weekend only perisher front valley was open but it was more than enough for a day of boarding. The mountain wasn't too busy which definitely helped.
There wasnt a cloud in the sky all day so perfect blue bird day. Really couldn't have asked for a better opening weekend!
Surprisingly the snow was actually fairly decent and had a good coverage. Way better compared to the opening few weeks of last years season! Last time it was this good this early was 2012 and that year we had an awesome season so hopefully the same happens this year.

Few pics from the mountain







The trip home was again uneventful. Just a long drive in mostly night conditions. Not the best combo for the Hume highway but good company and good tunes makes the drive a bit better. Speaking of tunes. Last trip i mentioned that the civics sound system needed upgrading as the speakers were pretty bad. Well i played around with the settings and the speakers are much better now but i still might replace the rear ones in time.
Overall the car performed perfectly all weekend. Zero issues and over 1000km driven. The trip home ended at 511km and i still have 1/4 tank left on the fuel gauge so excellent fuel economy!
Really happy with the car and bring on more snow trips this season!

[Toddxxx]

It seems that the photobucket sharing issue doesn't affect tapatalk as I can see all my pictures in the thread?

May as well update then.
Not much has really happened since the last update in June.
The car was used a fair bit over the snow season. I made four solo weekend trips as well as the week trip myself and 15 other friends did. It was an awesome season and every trip the car did it performed perfectly! I even slept in it a couple times and it wasn't too bad. The car just keeps on going.

Besides the snow trips the car has just done the usual daily work trips and running around. All the fluids and everything are still fine after it's big service around the middle of the year. The car ticked over to 222222kms the other week so it's been used a fair bit since I bought it at the beginning of the year. I wonder how long it'll take to get to 250000km?

I just placed a big oem order through amayama for parts for the civic and s2000 so I've got a couple things to refresh once they arrive.

Besides I just received my rego renewal notice in the mail which will be coming up in November. I'll get the car thoroughly looked over and have a list made of things that need to be fixed. Most notably on right hand turns on anything more than a slight curve I get a clicking noise. It's becomes very pronounced the closer I get to full lock. Thinking it's CV related? I guess I'll know soon enough.

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[Toddxxx]

Think it's time to address my sound system situation. My SQ isn't all that good and when I change to aux it just gets worse. I've been playing around with the settings on the head unit and have got it sounding a little better but I've noticed that when I play with the split and put it to 100% front speakers, they're really quiet so it seems most of the sound is coming from the rear speakers only. This could account for the horrible SQ but I'm wondering if this may be a wiring problem or just shitty front speakers?
Any one have any suggestions or recommendations for front speakers that are cheapish but have good SQ?

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[stephen8512]

Im not running anything crazy but I recently swapped out the front speakers in my MX5 for a pair of Polk DB651 2-way component speakers. If you want the Coaxials, the DB6501. These have been superceded recently by their new Polk DB6502 and DB652's so the 651/6501 is now quite cheap. The changes arent that big so getting the 651/6501s is a good choice if you're not wanting to spend too much. The SQ is really good. lows are good and the mid and highs are very nice. No distortion either. I'm running them off the headunit and not a separate amp (as I don't want to/need to). I tried the AUX and it sounds just as good.

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-LEf3p2...dio-DB652.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/CarAV/comme...01_vs_db_6502/

https://www.caraudionow.com/best-6-5...-car-speakers/

I got my DB651's from ebay. Can prob get DB652's from ebay as well. Hope this helps mate. If you're at the CITR BBQ this year and you still havent got some front speakers, feel free to listen to mine

[Toddxxx]

Thanks for that Stephen. Will look into them

I had a bit of a play around today and found out i have 6.5" Sony speakers in the front and 6x9 kickers in the rear. Unsure on models as there was no real markings on the front or back of either.

I have figured out that the aux cord that was in the car was just shit house even though it was a belkin. Tried another belkin cord from my gfs car and it was much better so mine went in the bin. Finally figured out how to connect my new phone to my head unit after I swapped from iPhone to Android recently (no manual given) and at least now the SQ of that is as good as the radio. Still not amazing but at least it's not 10x worse.

My issue seems to be that I need to run the speaker volume too high to hear anything while driving which then results in the speakers distorting and losing quality. I think first I might try and insulate the car a bit to try and get the road noise down and then concentrate on finding new speakers

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[Toddxxx]

So yesterday I said I was going to concentrate on insulating the car first to try and get the road noise down then focus on the speakers.

Well this afternoon I made a quick trip to bunnings then went around to my parents house and pulled the whole rear of the car apart and started laying this insulating underlay. It's mould resistant and all that so should fair fine if it gets a little wet. Haven't really had any issues in the rear with water pooling and no real visible rust spots so should be fine anyway.

I going to do the sides and the boot lid and the front doors as well but I ran out of adhesive spray so that will have to wait for another day. Even without the sides back in the rear has already quietened down it seems. Also with the rear speakers removed the fronts actually work wayyyy better so now I'm convinced it's a wiring problem or the rear speakers need an amp to function properly. I suck at electronics and sound systems so again help please.

Finishing the underlay will have to wait till the weekend as I'm. On day shift the next three days so no time to work on cars

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[Apu]

Whilst you’ve got all the trim out, get some Stinger Roadkill / equivalent (if you’re not concerned about competition level quality)...or even go to your local installer and get some off cuts just to stick on the larger panels to minimise some of the vibration.

The underlay is good enough and lighter than Roadkill or similar...but I would have suggested not using any spray adhesive because it’s a bitch to get off, and it really won’t matter on the floor areas as the carpet will press it down anyway.

If you are going to continue doing it, spray only enough in areas just to hold it up. No point spraying the whole surface...plus some of that adhesive does break down in heat. We’ll know why you appear high the next time we meet up...

[Toddxxx]

Whilst you’ve got all the trim out, get some Stinger Roadkill / equivalent (if you’re not concerned about competition level quality)...or even go to your local installer and get some off cuts just to stick on the larger panels to minimise some of the vibration.

The underlay is good enough and lighter than Roadkill or similar...but I would have suggested not using any spray adhesive because it’s a bitch to get off, and it really won’t matter on the floor areas as the carpet will press it down anyway.

If you are going to continue doing it, spray only enough in areas just to hold it up. No point spraying the whole surface...plus some of that adhesive does break down in heat. We’ll know why you appear high the next time we meet up...

Was thinking stinger roadkill but it's exxy and I'm just trying to do this on the cheap. I'm wondering for the sides whether to put the underlay on the actual body of the car or on the back of the plastic interior panels. Suggestions?
I only grabbed the small bottle of adhesive spray and only been using enough to stick the edges down so it's not flapping around everywhere. If I hadve got the big spray bottle (double the size) it would've been enough I reckon.
We have insulation foam at work so I might grab some to through in the body on the sides to fill those big spaces up.

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[plAythiNG]

todd, let us know how high u get from the adhesive spray, and i might go to bunnings and buy some...

[Toddxxx]

todd, let us know how high u get from the adhesive spray, and i might go to bunnings and buy some...

It's honestly not even that smelly? I've got a bit of hayfever atm so nose is blocked so maybe that's helping haha

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[Apu]

Any other stuff you use, please consider how fire proof it is.

You’re really white for a white guy...I’d say the lightest singe marks would show up pretty clearly on you.

[Toddxxx]

This stuff is meant for houses so I'd assume it'd be relatively fire retardant. I actually didn't think of that lol. I can't see any fire occurring in the rear of the car first though. Badly enough that I can't get out first that is


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[Toddxxx]

Fully finished the underlay process in the civic over the weekend. Did the rear of the car, the hatch and the front doors.
Noise has been drastically reduced inside the car. Doors made a big difference. When closing there's no more rattles etc. Feels more solid. Interior is all back in and you wouldn't know it's there.
Next up is to get some new speakers front and rear and I might just re do the connectors that attach to the speakers

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[Toddxxx]

Had a chance to detail the car inside and out recently. I'm lucky that white hides a lot of my bad cleaning habits (I usually hose the car down then chamois it dry and that's it haha) but lately the car had been looking extra dull and there was a few paint chips and marks that were beginning to annoy me. Running your hand along the outside of the car was almost cringe worthy!

So in a rare cleaning mood I headed to SCA and bought a bunch of products to try and bring the car back to life.

*disclaimer: I have no idea when it comes to detailing and stuff so don't use this as a how to on how to detail your car haha.

I started with the engine bay. I bagged off the battery, alternator and dizzy and sprayed lots and lots of degreaser on everything then hit it with the gurney. It cleaned up really well. Engine bay is immaculate now.

Then I moved to the interior and vacuumed, fabric cleaned and wiped every surface I could reach.

Finally the exterior was washed, clay bared and then buffed. The paint was now smooth as and a lot shinier and brighter. The front and rear bumpers had been resprayed by the old owner and were a little off to the rest of the car but now after the detail they actually match a little better. So I was happy about that. I worked my way around the car touching up the paint chips and the car was done.

The car was looking amazing and I couldn't have been happier with the outcome then I reversed into a pole lol

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