The forgotten HX - Story of an '01 Civic

[darcane]

Originally Posted by California98Civic

Very pretty. 0.006 refers to valve lash/clearance? 0.006 would be tihter than spec just a hair, yes?

No, that's how much he had to shave off to get it within spec for flatness. He had a lot of heads he was working on. That is how he keeps track of his notes...

[TheManVan]

Very nice car man! And very tasteful upgrades! can't wait to see what you do with it!

[jcp123]

I actually...didn't know there was an HX for this gen. Shame it was still only a 2-door, a family man like myself has a hard time justifying that for a DD. I do like the looks, inside and out, of this gen Civic.

I like the mods, agree they are tasteful, and I will say this, thanks for losing that stupid ass spoiler LOL!

[darcane]

Welded up the exhaust:


And reassembled the motor. No pics this go around, looks the same as always except the power steering pump is now AWOL.

I did have a couple issues though. While it was torn apart, I replaced the brake pads. Well, the front calipers were leaking badly so I replaced those too. My 5-year-old son did a great job helping with bleeding the brakes. I got it all together and got the air out of the coolant and everything looked good. Put the radiator cap on and went for a drive... coolant was everywhere and it looked like my power steering was leaking, still.

Coolant turned out to be easy, the resonator for the intake bolts right above the upper radiator hose. Because of the orientation of the spring clamp on the hose, when I bolted down the resonator it pushed on the clamp. Rotated the clamp, and fixed.

Then I crawled under to check on the power steering leak and OH HOLY HELL THERE IS BRAKE FLUID ON ALL THE THINGS!!! Sure enough, my helpful 5-year old was also somewhat distracting and I didn't get the banjo bolt tightened down on the driver's side caliper. Cleaned it up and tightened the bolt.

Good to go.

[Chrysler kid]

Admittedly I know very little about the seventh gen hx motors. The only seventh gen hx I have ever seen have been auto with CVT trans.

Not to go back into the old debate but having back pressure will increase torque, where as a free flowing exhaust is more effeceint at horse power which in terms of fuel effeceincy is not as relevant.

Whatever floats your boat works, I use to have an 01 ex with an integra muffler and it was less restrictive but still very efficient in noise reduction

[Daox]

Glad to hear its getting fixed up. Are there any lingering issues or does that take care of everything?

[darcane]

Originally Posted by Daox

Glad to hear its getting fixed up. Are there any lingering issues or does that take care of everything?

Seems like it's all good. I've put about 300 miles on it and nothing new on it.

Unfortunately, my commuting routine also changed and I now have 5 miles added to my commute every morning to drop off my son now that he started kindergarten, and it is three steep hills each way (2 down 1 up there, and 2 up 1 down back) with stops/turns at the bottom of each. Consequently, that will do Bad Things™ to my fuel economy numbers.

[darcane]

Still trying to sort out the low fuel economy issue and not making any progress.

So I decided to tackle an easy issue. New headlights.

I've tried cleaning them and even when I put a lot of effort into it, they still looked crappy. $70 later, new lenses arrived at my door. I should have done this years ago. Almost literally the difference between night and day.

Old vs New lenses


All back together.


I'm probably at three times the light output I had yesterday, and even when I cleaned my old lenses, I wasn't anywhere close to the same light output.

[MobilOne]

Hi,
Beautiful job! And very nice work!

There is not much space (metal) between cylinders on a Honda! I'm impressed that the head gasket seals at all.

My experience with valve jobs was that they lead to a ring job in 10,000 miles or so.
Hopefully, you will have a better experience.

Have you thought about some "trip strips" at the edge of your trunk lid and at the corners of your rear bumper?

[MobilOne]

And you are correct, the farther one is from the exhaust pipe, the quieter is the car. I can't hear it at all in Atlanta! LOL