1996 Integra GSR Sedan

If i could track down an aztec green DB2 gsr, i would be in heaven lol.

 

a buddy of mine had the aztec green, mine was Milano red.

 

I had a 93 2dr, black on volk gt-a’s, tan leather, one piece headlights, Tein suspension and a $10k b18c1 build.
Love G2’s. Tried to find a G2 gsr this go around, but the universe wanted me in a 2000 gsr I guess.

 

Solid plans man. I personally think OEM+ is the way to go. Just keeping things simple and keeping the Honda reliability is huge for me now...

I don't have a current, up-to-date pic since it's not registered/hasn't been driven much. But it has a fresh b20vtec motor with a built head, si transmission with LSD and 4.7 final drive, Recaro SRD seats, Volk CE28's, CTR headlights, and pretty much all the dress-up Spoon goods.

Here's a pic from Eibach in Socal, 2012... I'll see if I can finish the fuel line setup soon so i can pull it out and drive it to take pics...



and how it currently sits;

 

How’s it going? Work on her at all lately?

I’m slowly building motivation to work on mine. I jumped the dead battery last weekend and went for a spirited beer run. I love it when those secondary butterflies open.

I did pick up an S2000 throttle body for when I install my old gen1 skunk manifold.

I have a slow thumping coming from the drivetrain. I’ll prob tear the suspension apart and do a full rebuild. Axles, intermediate, hubs, bearings, rotors, pads. Blech.

 

I've clearly been lacking in the updates for this thread. I've been getting some work done, i'll update later with whats been done, whats left and all that good stuff. Its a lot harder than i thought to set aside time to work on the car with a 6 month old and a toddler, but i'm still setting time aside at least once a week lol

 

So....where did i leave off with this lol. pretty sure not mentioned in this build thread is at one point this car was almost sold because i was so sick of working on it with no results. Had a pending offer,but the money didnt make sense so the car stayed. my buddy let me borrow his mig welder to work on the quarter panel repair. the panel adhesive wasnt happy with the colder temperatures of the winter so it just wasnt going to work. so i grabbed the welder so the main portion of the work didnt get delayed. Turns out, my buddy's welder is on its last leg. It kept feeding the wire inconsistently so it kept blowing holes through my sheet metal. I got tired of that real quick so i bought my self a mig welder. What a difference! i'm almost done fixing the repairs from what my buddy's welder did. Should have the inner panel repairs 100% complete this weekend and start on the outer panel next weekend. After that panel is done, time to start the body filler over the entire car and work towards that painting date. I set myself a reasonable date so i dont try and kill myself to get this done, i'm shooting for end of August completion of all the painting and then start the re-assemble of the car.

Other things that i completed-

S2000 HID Retrofit
Swapped out the engine harness (which fixed my electrical issues! the car now goes to closed loop like it should)
Picked up a trunk lid with oem spoiler from the upull yard that i'll be putting on the car.
Made my own version of the OEM woodgrain shifter insert since people want a ridiculous amount of money for them (picture might be somewhere in this thread alread)
Picked up a yakima roof rack for the car for $40
Changed out the oil pan for a new OEM pan and gasket (no more leaks now!)
Swapped the sedan seat rails for coupe seat rails to give myself a little more clearance around the steering column
Wired up a couple of kill switches and re-routed some of the alarm components.
installed child seat anchors for the kiddo's car seats

i'm sure theres more, i cant remember it all at the moment. Its Friday though, i'll get to work on the car tonight. With dad life, its been hard to dedicate a lot of time to work on the car. So, every Friday and Saturday night, i'm in the garage from 930 or so until i feel like quitting for the night lol. I was making really good head way on the car when i was swapping out the engine harness a couple of weeks ago, i ended up walking in the house as the sun was coming up lol. Heres some pics of the work i failed to upload here:








Hopefully my truck will behave now. I've had to dedicate a lot of time to working on that thing over the last few weekends.

 

Good to hear you got that harness gremlin licked.

 

I was literally jumping up in down in the garage when i saw the car go into closed loop lol. If swapping out the chassis harness and the engine harness didnt do it, i really wasnt sure where i was going to turn next.

 

I might be in the process of doing something dumb....

 

Good to hear

 

Ok, the dumb thing did not happen. There was a stock EM1 Civic for sale nearby, but it sold for more than what I was willing to pay for it, so no new car for the stable. But, I had a mostly productive weekend of working on the car. I finished the inner panel work and seam sealed it all up. Next, I went over the car and circled every low spot, ding, and dent I could find. Then went over with my first round of body filler and sanded it down with my DA. I'll still need to go over and block sand these spots to get them good and level. I now need to clean my garage, so much dust just from this little bit of filler.









I'll probably need to do this at least once more before I get to the epoxy primer. You can see in this last picture i started test fitting the donor panel. This was wear it went wrong and I made a mistake. I mis-measured somehow from one of my reference points and cut the donor panel a hair too short (maybe a little over a 1/2"). Super annoying. It can be fixed with another small piece of metal and some additional weld time, but I'm still mad that I have to do it and it was completely avoidable.





This weekend coming up, I'll keep working with the filler on this side of the car and move to the other side and finish trimming the outer panel for final fitment. Before i weld in the panel, I plan to use the body adhesive for the entire length of the wheel lip.


I also placed an order today for a "Spoon Sports starter pack" lol.

 

I'm tired of this body filler dust covering everything. So, instead of trying to multi task some things, i think i'll hold off on the remainder of the body filler work and get the outer panel sheet metal welded in place. at that point, i can connect the filler neck back up, put the wheels back on the car and move it around. i'll just park the car in the parking pad for when i do the bondo work so the dust is already outside and won't have far to go to get out of my life lol.

Got a lot of the excess metal cut off the donor panel, should be good to body adhesive the wheel lip Friday night and start tacking the rest of the fender in place saturday night.

also, painted the hype r muffler for the car's new setup. You can see the totes and totes of parts i've acquired. I hung it from the rafters in the top floor of the garage, gave me good access all over to paint it lol.

 

Getting closer and closer to the final stages of body work and paint prep that has me excited and nervous

 

So, playing catch-up again with this thread. I fully assembled and tested my air compressor setup. My paint gun is an eastwood concours pro, it only needs 6 cfm to atomize and i have that with my one air compressor, but its only 33 gallon, i'm lacking in capacity. So, i fixed up an air compressor my dad had and i made a system that will tie the two into one line CORRECTLY. Each compressor feeds into a tee fitting, each with a check valve so neither tank backfeeds into the other. From there it mounts to a wall mounted regulator (soon to be wall mounted) and then the air feed for the gun goes here. I tested it out for a bit, it works fantastic, there is only a slight hesitation with the black air compressor filling up quickly while the red one nearly full, then it operates as normal. I also upgraded all of my air fittings to high flow fittings, the difference is night and day, i was really shocked at the difference.











I also picked up a gunbudd as some extra help. If it doesnt work for me, no big deal i'm sure i can sell it easily.




Also been "practicing" a lot with this thing, its helping me control my angles better. That was always my problem when painting smaller pieces, sometimes i wouldnt be perpendicular to the panel.




Fast forward to this past weekend







First time the car was out of the garage in like 14 months, drove out no issues.




I can't wait to remove this exhaust system




I'm not super happy with this placement, but i didnt want to remove the Jdmohio sticker or the garagebuilt sticker, so i made it fit.







And my kid saw the car again, he kept asking what happened to it and kept fiddling with everything lol. he kept saying oh no, what happen car?? Last time he was in the car when it was running he was 1, oiy time flies.







Here he pulled the dipstick right out of the car and tried running around with it

 

I'm clearly a glutton for punishment. My arm might fall off after block sanding this.

 

So, continuing to press forward with the car, but i took some time off the actual car this weekend. I bought enough paint to do a junk hood and my garbage front bumper so i can see if i have any hopes of painting this myself. It was an expensive test, but i'm pleased with the results. Now, keep in mind that both of these parts are junk. I didnt spend a whole ton of time prepping them because it just wasnt worth it. the hood had dents, its rusted, and i attempted to put a coat of sealer on the hood but the black from the hood still bled through. the bumper has cracks and i did get one run in the bumper, but feel like this is the hardest part of the car to paint so im not mad at the results. i'm feeling pretty confident in my "paint booth;s" setup and my capabilities. The hood turned out like trash, but i had a feeling it would just based on the condition it was in before i started painting.


Picaturrreezzzz:

 

Will have some nice updates to share later this week!

 

Alright, here is part one of my updates. I took off 6 days from work to get the car done, it was MOSTLY a success, especially for this being the first entire vehicle i've ever painted solo. I spent way more time on the bodywork than i intended. A long time ago in college, someone backed down the side of this car. I thought the body shop had replaced the door, but as it turns out they did not. They used a dent puller and filled over with filler. This door was the biggest PITA...i spent 3 days tearing it down and building it back up with filler trying to get it to look good. Finally, i just accepted that I was not going to get it perfect and i needed to move on. Also learned that guide coats are not the most fool proof thing. According to my guide coat, my car was pretty level and evened out. It was not...but, this isnt a show car and I can't expect a miracle for my first time.

So, here is the car getting ready for the epoxy primer and a quick run down of the garage and setup. I'm running 2 air compressors as I mentioned before with inline check valves and then the 2 are tied together at the wall mounted regulator.



















Epoxy primer going on








Then 2 solid coats of high build primer and block sanded out for paint.







Green paint coming up next..

 

Here comes green and gloss.

















I did 2.5 coats of base over the whole car, and i had one small catastrophe. I needed a bit more paint to put the second and then the half coat over the trunk. I rushed screwing the cap on and cross threaded the cap to the paint gun, so i proceeded to dump paint all over the trunk. Ugh...so i had to remove the trunk lid, sand it down, and paint it with the rest of the other parts.









Next comes the shiny stuff, my favorite part. One medium coat just to introduce the material to the car, and a second heavier coat with a larger overlap.

























And here's my ugly mug on the hood and the driver's door.







Still need to wetsand and buff, and i had one run in the clear coat by the rear door.





Overall i'm very pleased at how the body of the car came out. Next, i'll post pictures of the other parts for primer and paint and talk about the terrible situation that ensued.