The newest edition, 1987 CRX HF

[texanidiot25]

Another 38 mpg average, over a half tank. I think this will be the little car's basline. The missfire is still present, but today it seemingly resolved itself for much of the day. Will have to just work around it either way. It's nice, how ever, to be able to hit 5th gear at 30 mph and just drive with the motor loaded up, apparently one of the more efficient ways of cruising.

[texanidiot25]

The missfire is damn near gone! Only shows up for a few miles or so on a restart, but other than that the car can putt along in 5th gear at 30mph all day long, and get up to freeway speeds from there with no issue. I'd have to say the heavy-load issue is just about gone. Fuel economy reflected it, as the car finally met the EPA numbers, at 41.38 mpg! The only driving change is short shifting and skip shifting where ever possible since the car can now actually do so!




Also, got tired of the LOOK AT ME ECONOMY CAR wheels, and painted them up a little. Still pondering how to treat the center caps, silver or black.

[S-Dog]

Such an awesome car!!! I had one in the late 90's and got 45mpg all day long. The tall gearing works surprisingly well considering the lack of HP. Good luck with gettign some serious MPG's with it.

[Arragonis]

Nice car - the misfire going - it wants to LIVE!

Here in the UK in the 80s 100K was about death for an average car, the original 1.5 100hp CRX was considered highly tuned so wouldn't last. One magazine bought their CRX loan car from Honda and ran it to over 120K with no problems at all, and then a staffer bought it and ran it until it rusted out.

Your's should last forever with a bit of underseal.

[MetroMPG]

Followed the thread so far - enjoying the progress. (And the mysteriously "healing" missfire.)

Looks like a fun little car. I had a plain jane Civic 1.5 of that vintage for a short while and it was the first car I ever owned that surprised me with its mileage: 53 mpg (US) / 4.4 L/100 km just by taking it easy (90 km/h / 55 mph cruising) on a back roads trip.

There was an old lady in town who had a ridiculously low-miles 5-speed exactly like mine that I had my eye on (the car, the car!). Unfortunately, a tree fell on it in a storm, and my dream was squashed along with the car.

I'm a bit envious!

[texanidiot25]

Doing 55 is near suicide here, the highways are only 2 lanes each side and even the truckers will be passing you at great speeds. Though now while on delivery I take the feeder roads (when time ain't an issue), since it's only two exits each way. There I can cruise ~50 mph, and also since we're on the edge of houston, no traffic to deal with on the feeder too. Main loss in MPG is when in neighborhoods. Stop-n-go all the time.

After another tank or so I'll see what it's baseline is now that it's operating fine. I think it was that Lucas fuel cleaner that did the trick, it was the 1st dose that started to fix it, and subsequent doses that have put the missfire to near non-existence.

Once the baseline is figured, grille block is next and more ecodriving, EOC among others.

Still a wicked piece of engineering, though. Carburetted, and better MPG than most cars can dream of. And, unlike most compacts, is a pretty quality little car on it's own. Normally I'm not fond of the manuals in 90s compacts, and their handling is terrible.

This little car is a hoot, though a rear sway bar is up next to knock out some of it's understeer

[texanidiot25]

Originally Posted by S-Dog

Such an awesome car!!! I had one in the late 90's and got 45mpg all day long. The tall gearing works surprisingly well considering the lack of HP. Good luck with gettign some serious MPG's with it.

I'm fairly surprised at it's torque around 1000-2000 rpm for a 4cyl. Unlike most, it's happy to be putting around at low RPM in higher gears. Unfortunatly, this is the california model so it does have a shorter final drive ratio than the normal HF. I'm a bit OK with this, I live off a highway and need the acceleration the shorter gears give. Just wish for a taller 5th!

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Nice car - the misfire going - it wants to LIVE!

Here in the UK in the 80s 100K was about death for an average car, the original 1.5 100hp CRX was considered highly tuned so wouldn't last. One magazine bought their CRX loan car from Honda and ran it to over 120K with no problems at all, and then a staffer bought it and ran it until it rusted out.

Your's should last forever with a bit of underseal.

I'm in Texas, no worries about rust! 249,700 miles on it, and still driving very well. My old 1990 Pontiac Firebird had close to 270,000 before the timing chain jumped. Didn't burn a drop of oil either!

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by texanidiot25

Doing 55 is near suicide here, the highways are only 2 lanes each side and even the truckers will be passing you at great speeds. Though now while on delivery I take the feeder roads (when time ain't an issue), since it's only two exits each way. There I can cruise ~50 mph

Yeah - I was talking about rural 2-lane roads with little traffic. I almost always take the back roads when I drive places. It's how I get the mileage you see in my log.

[texanidiot25]

1st upgrade is in the handling department:

Finally got around to hunting down a rear sway bar for the CRX HF, as it leans worse than I do after too many drinks. :uhoh: In order to save weight and achieve it's 1700 lbs curb weight, the CRX goes with out any sort of rear sway bar, so how better to improve on handling?

I was suggested to look for a 93-00 Civic rear sway bar. Funny thing... None of them that I could get under came with them. :lol: There were Integras and a few 'ludes, but all had a wildly different rear sway bar than I was expecting, and most were too wide for the CRX. My goal was to mount the bar on the rear axle, and the end links onto the "frame rails" protruding out from the floor pan. I kept running from import to import, finding nothing suitable. Most had some hilariously shaped bar to snake around suspension and exaust, and most just bolted right to the control arms, no end links to really speak of. No good, padre.

Then I ran across a Dodge Caravan, stacked up on top of a Jeep... OH JOY! Chrysler still used a dead-beam rear axle in their vans, just like our cars. I measure up the frame mounts, and they are PERFECT! Exactly 3' 4" end to end apart, just like the Rex's frame rails.


Not all of the vans had them, but the Chrysler version always did and the "sport version" of the Dodge Caravan had them I noticed.


2 bolts in each frame mount, and the two each axle bracket. I think I used a 16mm socket, though it really needed something like a 15mm. But, no bolts even attempted to round. Bring an extension for the passenger side bracket, or use a 14mm socket to unbolt the rear most exhaust hanger and just push it out of the way to swing a ratchet. Keep all of the frame bolts for later.



Your prices will vary, but I've been going to this yard for years and he let me go off with it for $25 bucks! I was expecting 50-75 to be honest.


Dropped by Autozone to grab some 2.5" exhaust clamps, and nuts. Unfortunatly, the nuts I bought didn't fit the bolts despite having the proper thread according to the screw-in chart next to the bolts... Not the 1st time this has happened... Just goto home depot with the bolts, get washers and lock-nuts.



Mock'd in place- holes marked.

Start with a pilot hole, and work your way up drill-bit size. I don't recall what the final size was.



Found it easier to clamp the thing in place with a jack when threading the bolts. The end links are picky about moving around to different angles at 1st, also had to get creative to get around the exhaust :lol:



Bolt up, snug in place.



Perfect fit!!

Now, I'm taking suggestions how to thread a nut into the frame rail, but I'm thinking of just drilling some access holes in the floor pan to get a socket on it for easy access. Right now I've just got them threaded in the holes, but I ran out of time on the project for today to go further.

The results? PERFECTION! The car doesn't seem to start rolling until about 40-50 mph, and slaloming it, it's much steadier. Only did a little bit of driving, so I can't say how the car will react to more situations, but it's very stable and roll-free in corners so far.

The sway bar was $25, each exhaust clamp was 3 bucks, and the bolts were about 3-4 bucks. So, for $35 bucks basically, the CRX is a vastly improved little monster. And, by the grace of the Gods of Speed, a perfect fit! I'm still impressed with how awesome it all worked out.

Total costs in the car? $400~

[MetroMPG]

I'm impressed too. Nice modding!