First gen Civic (1975) 1.5l 4spd CVCC
 

The first gen civic forum wasn't very active and now it won't even let me log in. I need some help/advice. This will be my first attempt any real restoration work and I'm trying to do my best.

Pic from the original Craigslist ad:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...cf-600x450.jpg

First hurdle: They only had one brand of drum listed on RockAuto, easy choice I thought. Well I have to transfer the wheel studs to the new drums, I bought new studs just in case I had problems with the original studs. They all came out fine, the problem is that they don't fit in the holes. Not even the threads of the stud (new ones or the original). The thread is about .012" larger than the hole. The knurled portion is .020-.030" larger than the hole. I haven't checked with the dealer yet, but everywhere else I've checked doesn't have the drums available so it seems I need to try to make these work.

What do you guys think is the best way to proceed?

Its pretty eco-oriented so I hope you guys are fine with this help me/build thread

First, I think this is a wicked cool "ecomod" idea! Keeping the old steel and plastice and making a running gas sipper out of 'em sounds great. Subscribed. Very interested.

I have never restored a car. But confronted with your plablem, I would slow down, don't force or cut anything, research, and ask people. What your doing. You mention RockAuto. What about CARiD? I went over the and entered 1973 Honda Civic and got a hit for brake drums with some specs:

https://www.carid.com/1973-honda-civ...412476769.html

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1592184707

EDIT: Also, HondaPartsNow seems to have 1973-1979 Civic parts schematics and such online, which might help you... maybe they have some of the parts, too... information:

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1592185513

I'm not sure what you are suggesting.

If this is a saying I've never heard it before.

I've asked some people I know for suggestions. Nothing fruitful yet.

The only ones available at CarID are the same ones that I got from RockAuto. :mad:

Here is a picture in case my description wasn't clear what the problem is.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...614-204504.jpg

The rear wheels were stuck when I got it so I am redoing brakes first. I bought (pretty much) everything from the master cylinder to the wheel cylinders. I've got the master cylinder off (which was frozen) and the rear brake assembly removed (including the backing plates). I'm using a combination of sand blasting and electrolysis to clean all the parts that are being reused.

The spindle cap is the same paint I will be using on the rims.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...613-172814.jpg


I'm still trying to figure out how to redo the center caps. This is what they are supposed to look like. I bought some "super chrome" powder coat to try. Then I am going to order some red powder coat and try it on the worst one of the bunch. I've already bought a few extra. We'll have to see how it turns out.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...8-dsc-3305.jpg

Is that a cvcc or a regular Civic? I remember working on both back when they were a few years old. I wonder if some Civics used 10mm studs like the 89-94 Metro did. The 12mm studs and the later disc brakes were a nice upgrade for the early Metros.

CVCC. I just checked and it doesn't list 10mm studs for the earlier years either.

Do you have any experience with the carb on the CVCC? I've read its difficult to tune for proper performance.

Me And My Metro might have a reply. My only 1975 Honda was a CB400F motorcycle. I did alright with the carbs, but it's totally different. Do you have the Honda Factory Service Manuals yet? I searched for your car online last night. The original "Shop Manual: Honda Civic, 1973-1977" for the USDM is on sale on eBay (in print) from about $20 to $70+ ... I was hoping to find a free PDF for you (and me!), but no luck. It should be about 300 pages, but I only found a shady site with a 96 page version... probably Haynes or Chilton... no bueno.

Have you read/heard about the CVCC before?

Summary of what I've read before (might be slightly inaccurate)
It uses a 2nd smaller intake valve and a 3 barrel carb. The main 2 barrels were tuned a little lean. The third barrel is tuned a little rich (for an overall stoich-ish). This made the combustion cleaner and meant Honda didn't have to fit catalytic converters to them in California.

I have a chilton. Got it on clearance on Rockauto. I wonder if the CVCC version of the factory manual is a supplement or a complete book. The only ones that popped up initially on ebay were 1977. I might just buy both versions.

edit: I found (and bought) one that is a loose leaf version (in an original binder!). It says it covers all models 73-77. I might scan some pages in for everyone's viewing pleasure.
ETA 6/24-7/1

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...51-s-l1600.jpg

I stopped by the machine shop. He suggested I just buy a 12 mm drill bit and "not let it walk much". I stopped by a few local stores. No 12mm bit. I will have to order it online.

Why not spend a couple bucks and try the other sizes?

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/...3&gclsrc=aw.ds

Even if it fit I'd have to buy new lugnuts. I would rather spend the money and have a metric drill set.

The holes in the drum measure ~11.64 mm. Too big for M10's unless the knurl is alot larger than the threads.

I really only remember the vacuum line manifold mounted to the firewall. Lots of little steel pipes and solenoids. Yes I remember the three barrel carb with the rich one and the two lean ones.

Yes, I have. It is a great iconic story of how innovative Honda was. The Big Three US could not keep up. Old man Honda was really a giant. And he didn't even want to go to Mars.

I'll be the vacuum hose schematic on this pre-electronics Honda is a sight!

1985 Civic:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1592277477

I would spend the $1.50 each and buy several sizes.

11.64mm is a very familiar sounding size
(m8) expansion bolts go in that size
for example
so I wouldn’t discount anything .

If it were me, this would be my approach I would try first, before drilling. I can always try drilling as a last resort. The studs are cheaper than new drums.

LOL! So 1970s ... but also quite beautiful ...

I don't see how expansion bolts are relevant. They use a collar for the expansion part so the OD is larger.

I've checked many places online and unless the information they list is wrong then I don't see the point in physically checking the available wheel studs. It seems like a waste of time. The Dorman catalog only lists one wheel stud in the M10 size and the knurls are too small. The only place I saw one that 'might' have fit was on amazon where the reviews were claiming the knurl was too large and wouldn't fit in the OE application (side x side I think it was). It was only listed at 11mm anyways.

I ordered the bit set. Its gonna be a bit:D before I get them so I will probably see if NAPA has a book of wheel studs I can look through to double check. I've only seen Dorman wheel studs around here though.

The vacuum lines look like a nightmare and a half. Hopefully its simple enough that it just takes time and attention to get it done.

Note that it's for a 1985 Civic. Your CVCC should be much less complex.

Yea, I saw that. I can only hope right now.

Obviously, I didn't see that when I commented. :D Looking forward to your progress. :thumbup:

Tried the super chrome. It's definitely not the same. It does say to apply a clear coat, but I am waiting on some bright red powder to come in first. The left one in the last picture is one I bought on ebay for comparison to real chrome. Maybe once the clear coat is on it won't be so orange peel-ey. I think it will be passable atleast. Especially if all 4 match.

Blasted:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...2-dsc00748.jpg

Coated, pre-bake:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...3-dsc00749.jpg

Coated, post-bake:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...4-dsc00750.jpg

Finished (except clear coat):
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...5-dsc00751.jpg

Also, I checked the chilton's manual and it doesn't list a vacuum diagram.

It might not look the same, but that is convincing enough. It'll look clean, and it'll shine. It reflect. It'll "give ya those nice bright colors, give ya the green of summer & make ya think all the world is a sunny day, oh yeah..." (i know the song is about kodachrome film, but it still captures the feeling).

I got the drills today. They were sitting on the desk and I was just was too excited to try them. I drilled a hole in some 3/16" plate I had and it just barely fit the threads of the stud (caliper measured 11.97mm). So I went ahead and drilled the drums out. All threads fit and stop on the knurling. I haven't pressed them in yet.

Service manual is "supposed" to be here Monday (6/22). The tracker says

Which I've never seen before. Hopefully its not lost. It's been like that for a few days now. The red powder is supposed to be here Monday as well.

Congrats on the success. Did you take any pictures you want to post?

:D I have some, but not ready to post yet.

Is it worth it to paint the inside of the drum? Not the braking surface, but everywhere else of course. Just to try and keep rust off.

I need to repaint the heads of the wheel studs and bake them to harden the paint. Then maybe paint the inside then I will press them in.

The rear brakes will almost be ready to be put together. I need to

• Clean and paint the backing plates
• rebuild the wheel cylinder (bought rebuild kit and new units, going to try to rebuild originals)
• Un-seize the drum adjuster (one side is already done)
• The rest of the parts are maintenance parts and I have new, so just assembly
• I can't decide if I want to buy new wheel bearings. The old ones seem to be in good condition. Thoughts?

Still need to finish blasting the rims and paint. Then I can put the new tires on. I might get a white paint pen and color the letters. I think that would look cool. At that point I think the looks will really perk up.

I'm trying to free the master cylinder up. I want to see if I can transfer the guts of the new master to the old one. The new one is slightly different design and plus the old one has the patent numbers on it an everything. It would just look much cooler I think.

I think maybe yes. While you have it off the car... now is the time to do it.

i vote new, but keep the old as backup. Better reliability, which is hard to get in our old machines, so while you have it apart a few extra bucks serves a good purpose...

I like the idea of trying to rescue the old if you can make it work well, because, as you say, it has special features that the new part will lose. Unlike wheel bearings, the Mast Cylinder is kinda visible to a viewer at the car meet. :thumbup:

I wish there was a facepalm emoji I could post. This will have to do for now atleast.

https://media.tenor.com/images/5c735...8b72/tenor.gif

I painted the inside of the drum last night. I went to get the wheel studs and I can't find the 4th one. I have new ones, but I'd hate to press in a new one and find the old one soon after.


I will wait to order wheel bearings until I get the fronts apart and can confirm the correct bearings and order them all at once. My local Autozone doesn't keep them in stock anyway (more $ too).

Edit: Found it. Must have fallen off the work bench in the garage. I need to do a deep clean in there. Will post pics when they're pressed in.

Just need some wheel bearings now. I am going to powder coat the other side. As a comparison of how they hold up. I figure if I do opposite sides you won't be able to tell if there are any small differences. The spindle cap will be painted on both sides.

I got the master cylinder to budge. I'm hoping that if I can get the innards to compress enough I can use some compressed air to shoot the piston out. I've been letting it soak in some ATF for awhile (before and after budging).

Has anyone had problems with the image size? They seem to be like XXXL.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...3-dsc00759.jpg

I need to find a replacement O-ring (#6) it looks like just a generic O-ring so I'll have to see what I can find at the LAPS.
https://images.cmsnl.com/img/partsli...B__19_f885.gif

That's what they call a clean look. Congrats on solving the fit issue.

The red powder coat arrived. I tried to use it by hand and just fill it in and flatten it out. It didn't work so great. The H is lower than the outside rim so I couldn't just slide a flat blade across the top. I tried to just be very delicate and uncover the H with some q-tips, that worked. So I then carefully used the flat blade (plastic ruler and wooden pencil) to level out the rest of the powder. I thought I got it pretty good. The results are not that great though. The red is a little brighter than the original one (again an extra I bought). I'd think the old one is likely faded.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...4-dsc00763.jpg
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...6-dsc00765.jpg

I am going to spray (paint) some clear coat over the messed up powder to see how it turns out. Then I will probably just blast all of the old powder off and re try the red. My next attempt I will spray the whole part and then try to remove the powder from the outside and the H logo. I'm not going to re apply the chrome because it is in very limited supply. I think they are discontinuing the super chrome. Supposedly there is a replacement in the works.

Good new/bad news on the master cylinder. I double checked and I don't think that its moved yet. I had it in the press to keep some force on it and I had a block of wood underneath. The noise I heard was probably the wood compressing. I did however double check how it went together and found I hadn't taken it all the way apart yet. All I had to do was buy a 21mm wrench and use some elbow grease and it came apart. Now when I put it in the ATF (which isn't filled enough to cover the reservoir openings) the fluid flows through the side and up into the reservoir part. Hopefully that means with some more soaking it will come loose. I also found a place that has a rebuild kit. It's in europe though so shipping is a minimum of 27.50 euros (30.97 US)

https://images.cmsnl.com/img/partsli...B__24_1326.gif

The manual shipping status changed as well. Says its in Iowa now.

Sounds like progress... that "Project Farm" YouTube channel did a good test of the penetration qualities of a number of oils and if I recall right he showed that Sea Foam was quite a lot better than ATF. Search and see. He does great tests.

I frequently visit his channel. I just used ATF because I already have it and am trying to make my dollar stretch.

Rebuilt a wheel cylinder. It came apart fairly easily. I forgot to grab a before picture, but you can probably imagine what it looked like.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...2-dsc00769.jpg
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...3-dsc00770.jpg
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...1-dsc00773.jpg

The center cap I powder coated is fighting to keep the red on the cap. I had to turn the psi up all the way to get it to start budging. It's slowly coming off. The chrome came off pretty quickly. I'd assume it has to do with the thickness though. I also lost the center cap in the bottom of the blast cabinet. When something is taking forever to clean off I like to break it up and do something smaller for a little bit. Well I was cleaning up the wheel cylinder and parts and when I went to start on the center cap again it was missing. I had to open the trapdoor and start draining the media out to find it.

I started removing the front brake parts. At first I couldn't figure out how to remove the wheel bearing. Then I remembered to check the chilton and not just the assembly diagrams on CMSNL.com. The chilton says to remove the caliper. Then undo the ball joint, tie rod, and strut and remove the knuckle. Then I can start dis assembly to change the rotor and wheel bearings.:eek::rolleyes:

Getting the axle out was actually very easy though. Used an impact on the axle nut and a single hit with a hammer and it popped out of the knuckle.
https://images.cmsnl.com/img/partsli...B__22_800c.gif
https://images.cmsnl.com/img/partsli...B__27_4546.gif

Master cylinder is apart!! I decided to drill and tap the piston (#3) so I could use a bolt as a puller. As I was threading the hole the piston started to spin. A little upward force on the tap and the secondary piston (#3) came out. The primary (#2) was a little bit of a pain. I ended up stuffing a paper towel in the reservoir opening and my finger over the piston retaining bolt hole (#5 is the bolt, hole between the outputs). Applied a little too much air pressure and bang, something launches across the garage. My hands were occupied blocking the holes and I told myself it didn't matter if I lost it. Now that its missing I really want to find it :(.

https://images.cmsnl.com/img/partsli...B__24_1326.gif

A little something showed up in the mail today as well...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GC_...ew?usp=sharing

I only scanned the pages I want some opinions about. What would be the best way to upload the manual? Not necessarily on Ecomodder, but where I can link to. I scanned it in as a pdf, but I have some other options too. I probably won\'t scan the whole thing in one sitting. So either upload sections or I could just wait until I scan all the pages and upload at once.

So the chilton says to remove the knuckle. On the first page it says I can remove with a slide hammer. Thoughts? I was hoping to not mess with the suspension yet so I think I\'d rather use the slide hammer to pull the hub. If I can get the knuckle off easily though I think I risk less damage and where the car is parked right now getting the slide hammer on might be a little difficult.

You can share files on Google Drive, just enable link sharing and access to everyone.

Master cylinder is rebuilt! I think it turned out really good. I\'m pretty confident that I won\'t have any issues with the new guts in the old body. Assembly went fine. The seals made good resistance as I was putting it in.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...r-take-off.png
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...take-off-2.png
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...take-off-3.png
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...4-dsc00776.jpg
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...6-dsc00774.jpg
https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-m...5-dsc00775.jpg

Edit: After looking at these pictures I realized I put the clamps on backwards.

Oh yeah. Look at that 1970s hardware! You're starting out strong on this restore. I like. I assume the Master Cylinder is not yet reinstalled. You're confident it'll work?

Not installed yet. I think I am going to remove the booster and clean it up first. It's covered in dirt like the master was and would really detract from the master cylinder. I'll grab some pictures when I pull it. Then reinstall the booster and master cylinder.

I am confident because of the fit the new seals had. The internals matched the original internals and the pictures of the rebuild kit for the original body I found at CMSNL.com. When I get the chance to find out for sure I will be excited because I will be bleeding the brakes!

If it sounded like I wasn't confident in the master cylinder it's because I have never done anything like this before.:D

Here is a dude who is doing some nice patient work on this CVCC. YouTube suggested it to me. Seems to belong in this thread. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yLGzhJU-sq4

Very cool. I watch his videos when it recommends one with a neat car. I haven't seen that one. Notice 1 handed steering with no power steering as well. When I got mine 2 of the tires held air so I put them on the front and the back 2 on dollies. I was surprised at how easy it is to turn at a stand still. Also his car is missing the original intake. I was leafing through the service manual and its actually temperature controlled. If intake air temp is below 100 F then it pulls air by the exhaust. Once above it switches to an intake thats open in the fender well. There is another where he drives a Honda-matic equipped car. I am excited to drive my car, but I have a lot of work cut out for me before that happens.

Does anyone have any experience with older radios? Mine has an AM radio that doesn't appear to work. I hooked a battery up to the car just to see what I was dealing with and I couldn't get any sound. Fixing it sounds like fun, but I'm not much of an electronics guy to know how to fix it beyond obvious signs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p00_6XxaS-w


I left a comment about the missing ring topper things (part #17 in diagram a few posts up). His were missing maybe he'll see the comment. Here is the scanned pdf file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UnY...ew?usp=sharing

I have been having problems with my scanner. I've been just emailing the scan to myself instead of direct connection to my PC. It will only let me email 6 pages (3 front and back) at a time so it will be awhile until I get everything scanned in. Just a heads up

Fixing the original radio would be a restoration plus. You could work out a stealthy aux port as you repair so you might plug in a device and not be stuck with crap talk radio stations all the time. If you can't fix the radio, you could leave it in the dash and bypass it entirely with an aux cable for your phone. But the best is having the original unit installed at the factory in 1975 and still working. Pretty amazing after 45 years, if it can be fixed.

The scanned file looks like the two plastic rings in your photos that name the brake fluid. What am I not understanding? There is a missing piece of hardware?