It's the off-season for RallyX, so that means it's time to go through Tom Civic, fix everything that broke, and upgrade everything I have budget for. But first, I had to get him home.
So anyhoo, once I got him home the first order of business was rip the soaked carpet out of the interior. I just had my windshield replaced before race season after cracking it with a hi lift jack, and anyone who's had one replaced knows they never seal afterwards. Figured I'd take the chance to dry him out since a friend has been very generous and offered me a spot in his enclosed garage. Seats out for ease of carpet removal, and in anticipation of the racing bucket seat and 4 point on the driver's side to keep me planted a bit better while I careen around the track.
Next up, we pulled the valve cover and upper timing cover, had a look at the valve train and timing belt. What we saw was encouraging, no visible damage, and the engine was completely locked up without even a tiny bit of movement either way, even when torquing with a breaker bar. All signs point to a dead bottom end, which may mean head is undamaged. That would be awesome, as the head is worth significantly more than the rest of the engine.
Found a good deal on a pair of B20Z4's, one with a fresh head rebuild, head gasket, timing belt, water pump etc, but no accessories, and a running core with all accessories minus dizzy. The plan is swap the needed accessories to the good B20, put it in, and then if the B16 head is OK, turn the other engine into a B20VTEC for installation later.
Next up, drivetrain pull. Gotta get that locked up engine out! First, skid plate out of the way. It took a decent beating deflecting no less than 3 trees and many rocks at high speeds.
With the skid plate out, got the radiator and exhaust manifold out of the way (radiator is always challenging because it's a triple core DA integra radiator and a normal DA integra radiator is too large at the best of times. (Don't mind the windshield sticker, I lost a race and my punishment is displaying it all 2022 race season)
With the application of a little blood (pro tip: don't drop the engine on you hand) and much sweat, if no tears (and a quick run to Princess Auto for a ball joint separator), we got the drivetrain out of the bay. Holy SMOKES I forgot how tight EF bays are, and my cheap yonaka mounts sure aren't helping.
With the drivetrain out, we removed the transmission which is getting a new, slightly upgraded clutch to handle the additional B20 torque, as well as splitting the case and welding the diff solid to help put down some power to the incredibly loose surfaces I race on. With that out of the way we drained the oil.
So, let's see what we can see then. Oil pan, pickup and windage tray off and it doesn't look that bad down there. Nothing immediately noticeable in fact, no bent or snapped rods, surprisingly. So it looks like probably a main bearing or possibly a rod finally gave up and welded itself to the crank. Lucky my rpm was low enough when it did that nothing snapped and it just locked up instead. Again, very encouraging and makes me believe maybe my head will be OK.
Thats how he's sitting now. Next up on the list is new struts on all 4 corners, bunch of new steering components to hopefully help with the vicious bump steer, little bit of reinforcing to do to the front crossmember and it's mounts, the transmission work I talked about earlier, and some body work like a sunroof delete.
As I was getting ready to load him on the trailer to take him home from the racetrack, his engine locked up SOLID. It was cold and snowy so we let him get up to temp, and then had to rev him out a little to get out of the snow. Once we got him to the flat cleared area and started lining up to drive on the trailer, he got about 10' and just locked up.
The B16A that I raced with all season has seen a very large amount of abuse over it's life. I bought it with unknown km swapped into a CRX, beat the crap out of it and eventually flipped the CRX 5 times after leaving the road. Miraculously it survived the crash, so I pulled it, changed the timing belt, water pump, and tensioner, and installed it into Tom Civic when he was still my daily.
Then, when I first began turning him into a rallyX car, I went on a nice hard test drive before I installed his beefy skid plate, punched a hole in the oil pan, and didn't notice till the oil light came on at 8000RPM with my foot to the floor.
So I dragged him home, replaced the oil pan, did an oil change with Walmart oil, and he started right up. Since then he's survived a full season of redline rallyX car abuse at not just my hands, but everyone I lent him to who broke their cars or whatever. Little engine didn't owe me anything. Made it hard to load, but I eventually got it done with a pair of hi lift jacks and some tow straps. (Pic featuring my venerable tow rig, Blinky, and my sketch asf trailer built by my pops for a VW sandrail and generously loaned to me for race season.)
Oil is supposed to be glittery silver right?
...Right?... 😬
If there's time, I'd like to relocate the battery to the hatch and mount a small fuel cell back there as well, remove my fuel tank as it is unnecessarily large and heavy. But that is for another day!
Stay frosty, friends.
Comments
Post a Comment