Project Turtle: Bluesteel93's Civic VX build

[Baltothewolf]

Originally Posted by bluesteel93

Hey wolf. So my 93 GT has the Bullitt suspension shock and spring kit on it which is decently priced and it handles ok too. The bad thing is it sits like a 4x4. My SVO has H&R race springs with tokico illumina shocks. I love the way it sits and handles but it was a more expensive set up. So I guess it depends on what you want haha.

As for the tires they are definitely a priority. My list isn't really in order by priority. I'm thinking I should be able to get them next month sometime. But I'm planning on converting it to lean burn and lowering it before then. I live in south OC though and you're more then welcome to make the trip if you want to. I have plenty of free time because I'm still off of work from my knee injury. PM me if you want to set something up.

Definitely! PM sent.

[bluesteel93]

I have some good news and some bad news...

Bad news first. Double checked my tire pressures the other day and found out one of my tires wasn't holding pressure. I filled them all up to 45 psi when I first got the HX wheels but now one of them was all the way down to 20 psi .

Found this to most likely be the culprit. A small dent on the inside edge of the wheel. Hopefully I can get it straightened for a decent price or find someone willing to sell just one HX wheel.


So after finding the dent I decided to clean up and run my factory VX wheels for the time being. The tires aren't in great shape but they should hold up for a little while. Here's them on the car. I think they look pretty good! I still prefer the HX's though...


Ok so now for the good news! Got some cool stuff done on the car over the past few days.

Painted the exhaust heat shield flat black, and the valve cover with a wrinkle black paint. Along with replacing the valve cover gasket which was leaking.






My brother and I also started on a little project, but we're not finished with it yet. Here's a little teaser ...




Last but not least, I finally converted it to lean burn! I've been sitting on all of the parts for awhile now and even made the harness over a month ago, but for some reason I didn't convert it until now. Man I'm glad I did though. Lean burn is friggin awesome!

Here's the LAF sensor installed..


My harness spliced in at the o2 sensor and at the passenger side shock tower..




and the ground point...


Like I already said, lean burn is awesome, but lean burn plus MPGuino is even better! The MPGuino really lets you take advantage of lean burn just by letting you know when you go in and out of it.

Here was where my trip average was last night coming home from my brothers house.


Then this happened... Freeway was narrowed down to one lane for construction at 9:30 at night .


Still, I made it home with my trip average being 57.6 mpg which is the highest I've had to date for that long of a commute (about 65 miles). Plus I was hitting some crazy bad head winds toward the end of the trip.


That's about it for now. Gonna try to work on our "little project" some more next week and possibly get some other stuff done. I keep you guys updated!

[awcook]

Nice work man!

I've been getting tons of headwind recently on my commute to school, it's hard to get the instantaneous MPG above 40 in those cases, and that's when I'm already going 60! Fortunately, I get a little bit of a tailwind on the way home (not as strong as the morning headwind) and I get over 50 MPG on the freeway and maybe 55 on the city streets (speed limit 50 on city streets, allows my torque converter to lock) and no stops usually .

Sorry bout the tires man, hopefully it gets fixed!

[Baltothewolf]

Those headwinds are fun aren't they bluesteel!! I hate going through there on a windy day, it's horrible. Also, all that stop and go clears up right about 7:30-45. When I came home on Wednesday I didn't leave until 8:05pm and there was no traffic all the way home.

Let me know if you still planning on getting new tires once your rim is fixed. It shouldn't be to hard to tap that out with a hammer (extremely carefully). If you don't maybe we can set something up. I'm sorry about this week, my boss changed my work schedule last minute, I got a, 4th work day (Yay!) but it messed up my entire week life wise.

[iveyjh]

On that bent wheel, fill it with air and spray the bead with soap suds. Take a hammer and Balto said carefully tap it on the bent edge until there are no more bubbles. Fill it again and put fresh soap suds to check if its holding air. I've done several like this. Nice car.

[Baltothewolf]

Good advice ive. Also you might want to go get the rim balanced once you bang it out, it might shift some weight around.

[bluesteel93]

Thanks guys. I'm kind of sketch about just taking a hammer to the wheel as I don't want it to crack. I've seen videos of people fixing alloys with a rubber mallet but they heat the rim up before hand quite a bit and even afterwards the rim isn't perfect. I think I'll take it down to a local shop and see how much they quote me. As long as it's not too expensive I'll have it done professionally. If not I guess I have nothing to lose cause I'd have to end up finding a single rim for sale. Maybe someone on this site has a spare they'd be willing to sell?? Lol. Maybe I'll post a WTB ad.

[bluesteel93]

New spark plug wires came in yesterday. Ended up getting the NGK's. I seriously think the sumitomos that were on there were the original wires that came on the car. They were in pretty bad shape and had the 1993 marking on them which I'm assuming means they were manufactured in 1993 ?

[Baltothewolf]

Originally Posted by bluesteel93

New spark plug wires came in yesterday. Ended up getting the NGK's. I seriously think the sumitomos that were on there were the original wires that came on the car. They were in pretty bad shape and had the 1993 marking on them which I'm assuming means they were manufactured in 1993 ?

Yep, they were probably the original. When I come down to visit you gotta let me drive the VX, never driven one before. Have you ever driven an insight?

[bluesteel93]

Originally Posted by Baltothewolf

Yep, they were probably the original. When I come down to visit you gotta let me drive the VX, never driven one before. Have you ever driven an insight?

Haha ya for sure man. And nope never driven an insight.