My Civic modding thread (2000 Civic Dx Coupe)

[pletby]

Originally Posted by Xist

The other day it was so busy at the bakery that I spent an hour at the front counter. When the line moved sufficiently slowly, I was able to learn that they were from exotic places like Alberta and Winniepeg.

I hope that all of our customers do not suddenly migrate.

Ha! I have family that winters in Arizona, and an American friend who wants me to move down there. Look out, Winterpegers are retiring to Arizona!

On a side note it seems that Michiganers retire to Florida, as I have quite a few friends from there. They could even retire to Winnipeg and get way more sun than Michigan. Though the featureless landscape may cause them anxiety.

On a side note, I just updated the pictures in my car's profile. They were really stale. I'll have to take some new pictures, I see that only one has the new decal applied. It was so cold outside I just couldn't bring myself to go outside again after work and work on the car.

[pletby]

Finally got the Civic put back together again. I had the air dam, side skirts and front wheel covers off for the bearing replacement. Also changed the oil in a nice heated garage.

Noticed a pretty big difference, not sure why it was so big but there it is. Glad to be in the 50mpg range again.

[pletby]

I'm back! Got hurt rather badly at work (electrocution followed by fall unconscious to concrete floor below) in February and have sufficiently recovered to work on the car again. Tomorrow I'm installing a recirculating tank heater in the Civic. I have a tighter schedule than I want so hopefully things go smoothly. (Wife needs car in evening...)

Today while picking up needed supplies from Part Source the counter clerk mentioned he had 2 Civics in the family and that he was really happy with his mileage. I mentioned what I was getting last summer and that seemed to knock his socks off. I mentioned some of the mods I've done. Then he followed me out to my car to see it. He was pretty fired up! Ha ha.

I gave him the tour and we said our goodbyes. He'll be visiting ecomodder tonight I'm sure.

Good to be back.

[pletby]

Update: oil pan heater received a fatal blow from a large chunk of ice on the highway in the dark. Wires cut flush with heater pad. No way to repair.

I don't think I'll replace as the oil pan is subject to this kind of abuse on a regular basis. It was dented all to heck when I installed the heater pad in the first place. Should have been a warning...

[Joggernot]

Glad you're back! Also, glad you recovered well. Sorry to hear about the accident...don't do it again...

[pletby]

Installed the heater with Dad 'helping' and changed the oil at the same time in my Sister's heated garage. What a luxury!

I was tight for time so haven't tested the heater yet. Drove 20km home and no leaks.

[pletby]

Tank heater tested and as I had feared, the heater had been installed too high in the engine compartment by my helper and well, I guess you can only expect what you inspect. I thought I'd test it and see if it worked in that weird position. No circulation.

So today I worked outside in a balmy -10C and set it as right as I could. Tank heater relocated to front of car, passenger side right behind my radiator fan shroud and level with the bottom of radiator. Sorry, there just isn't a good spot for one of these in a Civic. There's a few inches of clearance from the engine. I hope it's enough. I zip tied the heck out of it to the shroud and an insulated line from the a/c unit. Nice gradual slope all the way up to the heater core.

I'll test it in an hour or so as the engine has to cool from the coolant refill and air purge.

[pletby]

Successful install! Warmed coolant circulated through the system. I'll post some pics another day. Not many daylight hours this time of year.

Very impressed with the power of this little doohicky. I'm going to do some data logging and make a cool graph like the smart guys around here. Will that make me smart? Ha ha.

I did not install insulation yet. I'll do that after my first data session then I'll log again after and see the value of the insulation too. I imagine it will make a fair difference considering you can warm your hands quickly on the exposed hoses and the fact that the run is long.

[pletby]

I did mess up the graph title a bit. The ambient temperature was not typed in (oops). Ambient temperature was -11 F so not a total cold soak but I think the data was good enough to get an idea of what's going on. First time playing with graphs.

Total time over graph is 1hr 45 min. I could have gone to 2 but it seemed redundant.

Total temperature gain was 112.8 F over ambient by the time I pulled the plug.

[pletby]

Ok, so the circulating tank heater is working awesome. The car is ready to roll on the coldest of days with warm air through the vents right away. I'm happy about that, but I've run into a stumbling block. The problem is total current draw from the car is now higher than the circuit can handle. Egads!

My solution was to unplug the interior warmer. Problem solved!

No.

Not so fast. My Wife drives the car to work now while I'm on the mend. She liked it nice and toasty when she got into the car. If there was any ice to scrape it was soft and easy to remove. Now it's cold in the cabin, and the ice is almost as hard as rock on a cold day. I've seen her scraping for ten minutes on a few frigid days.

Not cool Robert Frost!

So I've gone and unplugged the 1000W circulating tank heater for now. Plugged stock block heater back in (wimpy little thing) and plugged the interior warmer back into the on board timer.

To sum up off the top of my head I have a block heater on a timer at the front of the car, interior warmer on a timer in the trunk, a 7amp genius battery charger on all the time and a 80 watt battery blanket on all the time. I THINK it's 80 watts. Interior warmer on for 1/2 hr before morning start time, block heater on for 2 hrs before start.

If I could run 240V out to the garage and split it into two 120V lines I could run all the appliances in the car, with room for a toaster too! Ha ha. Not sure how I would go about it though. I've worked on a hog barn's electrical system and have a healthy respect for incompetently installed 240V wiring. Must read up.