CATEGORIES FOR ARTICLE LINKS BELOW

The start of an All Wheel Drive AWD V6 Civic Hatchback

Planning the build and finding a donor

Contributed by:Enginebasics.com

Many times the difference between a successful build and a non-successful build is the amount of planning done ahead of time.  The first person that did a J-swap Honda V6 engine into a civic most likely took a good amount of planning, so ask yourself: “How much planning will it take to swap an entire awd-drivetrain that is super sophisticated and has as many sensors controlling it as a modern EFI engine take?”  The answer…..A lot, if one is looking to do it successfully.  With that being said I would like to set the record straight right now.  I give myself a 60% chance of pulling this off and having all the systems function perfectly just as they would if Honda themselves built it.  I give myself a 75% chance of getting it to work but maybe not with all the corning acceleration devices and other tricks this SH AWD system has.  On a good note, I give myself a 100% chance that at the end of all this I will at least end up with a running v6 swapped car with AWD that maybe is engaged the entire time with no fancy vectoring and yaw control sensors controlling it.

So how much planning have I done? Well this project originally started off as swapping a j32 into the back of a civic to have a mid-engine V6 hatch.  I planned on enjoying the car for a while and getting everything working and then doing what I do to every car I own……slapping a monster turbo on it.   I even started to draw up the swap in google sketch up and at car meets ask owners of EG civic hatchbacks if I could take measurements of their trunk area to start drawing it up. 

After 3-4 months of all the planning and believing I could make it work I starting trying to source the rear components I would need.  I decided I wanted to ditch the entire factory suspension and A-arm design and instead go with double wishbone A-arm suspension from the rear of a Miata.  A few more weeks go by till I source all those Miata parts with E brake cable and all.  Understand during this whole time I am looking weekly at the salvage auto auctions for an Acura TL 6 speed to pop up wrecked that I can pick up as a donor car.  Months pass by with no luck on the donor. 

Meanwhile understand that at the same time I am looking for a clean EG civic Hatch shell.  I figure with clean running cars going around $3,000 and clean swapped cars going around $4,000 a non-running shell shouldn’t be more than $1500.  Boy was I wrong.  First off, most of time a shell would pop up for sale it would be HAMMERED.  I just wasn’t interested in doing bodywork and paint, and I also wasn’t interested in doing such a labor-intensive build on a civic that was going to look like trash afterward, so I keep endlessly searching.  Almost a year has gone by since the decision to do this build and all I had was some google sketchup drafted images, and basically the running gear out of the rear of a Mazda Miata.  So more time passes and I realize that  looking for a clean shell just isn’t going to happen, and when they do happen, people still want $2500 dollars for just a shell. 

This is when I finally wise up and change my strategy.  Instead of looking for a shell, I start looking for an entire car that has parts desirable on it that I can sell and be into the shell around my original budget price of $1000 bucks.  Well for those that know a 1992-1995 EG civic hatchback isn’t exactly the car everyone keeps the cleanest, and I can’t tell you the number of hatchbacks I drove to go look at who’s owners told me the car was SUPER CLEAN with minor problems only for me to show up and see peeling paint, or trashed interiors, or rust everywhere.  I wasted hours and hours driving to look at these cars.  Now before you think I was an idiot for not being more specific with the owners on the phone before I went to go look, understand that I would take 5 minutes explaining to the sellers that I am looking for a MINT shell with no rust, no problems, no dents, no paint issues, which they would tell me there were non, yet there I was, standing there, after an hour sometimes hour and a half drive to look at crap. 

Now I should add that I realize there are some Honda guys right now thinking: “Man if this guy came and saw my car he would be blown away how clean it is”, but ask yourself what you would sell you car for.  There were several EG civic hatchbacks for sale that were in INSAINLY MINT condition and the owners also wanted INSTAINLY STUPID money for them.  I wasn’t going to spend $8,500-$10,000 dollars on a car when the car and all its parts could only be parted out and sold for $5000 bucks.  And remember, you get MORE money if you part a modified car out to sell it so if the parts should part out for $5000, then leaving the car together is only worth around $4500. 

You want me to get to the point already.  Finally a civic was found a year later in not perfect condition, but VERY good condition.  To sweeten the deal, it had enough parts on it that I could sell the parts and easily get under my $1000 dollar shell goal.  If your paying attention to the timeline since the build was given the green light to go and make this thing happen it had been just over 2 years and all I had was:

1.  Miata running gear
2.  1993 Honda Civic Hatchback (EG hatch)

Well that isn’t going to do it.  I still didn’t have one of the most important pieces and that was an Acura TL 6 speed donor.

Well this is where the story takes its turn.  During this 2 and a half years another car of mine started getting REALLY fast, and I mean dangerous fast.  Want the specs on it?  Ok.   It made 503 wheel horse and weighed just 1634 lbs.  It was one NASTY machine but only if everything was just right.  Meaning it was fun in a straight line if I had the Mickey Thompson wrinkle wall tires on, but try to go into a corner and get ready to pinch your butt checks cause you would swear something just broke on the rear of the car and you weren’t going to make the corner.  The flip side of this coin, have the 335/30/18, 60 tread wear Corsa track tires on the car and it would corner like nothing you ever felt, but could spin its tires no problem all the way to 100 MPH.  Friends thought I was sandbagging all the time since I wasn’t that hard to beat in a race if I didn’t have the right tires on the car.  Finally I realized that either I needed to turn the power down or needed a robot that could change my tires for me at the push of a button.  No one wants to turn the power down and there is no magic tire changing system on the fly.  This is when I realized the civic I was building was going to have the same problems of the car I currently had.  It was going to be super lightweight with big power and limited traction.  Well I already had a car like that why would I want two? So I change up the build entirely and the move to an AWD civic was born!

Now the donor.  Acura did make a manual transmission 6 speed AWD 3.7 liter V6 in the TL from 2009-2014, but good luck funding one for sale, and you’ll need even more luck finding one at a salvage car auction anywhere in the country.  I started researching how to ship a non-running vehicle and while it can be done, it does still need to be able to roll and it is very expensive.  Getting a manual transmission donor started looking to be impossible.  Enter the 2005-2008 Acura RL.

The Acura RL has been Acura’s flagship sedan since the 90’s.  In 2005 it got a 3.5L motor rated at 305 horse and Acura’s newest technology marvel they called SH-AWD, but it was only offered with an automatic transmission.  I was approaching 3 years since the start of the build and decided that I could be waiting another 3 years for a manual transmission AWD TL to pop up so decided that I could live with an automatic.  Worst-case scenario was that if I hated it, I could buy the manual transmission straight from Acura for $4800 dollars and see about swapping it in. 

Now the 05-08 Acura RL wasn’t exactly a super popular car so finding one in a salvage yard wasn’t that easy either but eventually one was found.  It had higher mileage than I wanted but the price and location couldn’t be argued with so I bought it.

  For those keeping up with the money on the build, here is the break down so far:

Civic: $3800
RL Donor: $3448

AND IT NOW BEGINS!