CATEGORIES FOR ARTICLE LINKS BELOW

Striping the EG civic down to a shell

I can’t believe I am going to do this.  I am going to take a perfectly running car with a B16 swap and turn it into a giant paper weight……for now.  Honestly I have never done that before.  Usually when I am tearing apart cars it’s because they are broken and not working.  Yet here I am pulling out a perfectly running drive train.  A deal was worked out and “the swap” in the car has been sold for $1650.00 bucks.  That includes the motor, transmission, ECU, wiring, Motor mounts, clutch and CV axles.  The new owner has a very interesting swap of his own that he is doing where he is looking for a little more power and a lot more reliability.

With the drive-train sold I dig right in to pulling it all out. 

Now that the drive train is out most people would stop here and get ready to weld in the new mounts for a J-swap and be done with it.  The swap would be as simple then as just getting custom axles, which are sold over the counter for J swaps, and then do the wiring.  We would be up and running in a matter of days sticking with front wheel drive. I want AWD though, and while the idea of taking that approach has crossed my mind, I really want to not just have an AWD civic, but also have a civic that has all of the technology of the RL, but under a civic body.  Essentially this is what Nissan did when they made the JUKE R.  They didn’t just swap the motor and AWD over, but instead brought over the big brakes, all the sensors, and all the technology the Nissan GTR had, and stuffed it under a Juke Chassis.  To do this then I will be bringing over all the Aluminum A-arms, the HUGE brakes, and the all aluminum sub frame to hold it all together.   I will also try bringing over the whole aluminum rear sub frame with all aluminum suspension arms as well.  We are talking MAJOR modifications to pull this off and even then I am unsure if it can even be done and work.

Here we pull the factory sub frame out with the attached steering rack and lower A-arms.  

Already you can see one of the first challenges will be to get the RL sub frame aligned and mounting brackets welded in to perfectly position it front to back, left to right, and the right height for hood closure, and for suspension geometry.  YIKES!  See what I’m talking about being difficult? 

Now I still have a lot of stripping down to go.  I will need to completely remove the dash and all of its wiring along with the console between the seats to get ready to put the auto shifter in there.  I’ve decided though to not do TOO much destruction till I am at least sure I can get the RL sub frame and motor in the front of this car with the steering rack and suspension.  And while that’s going to be a big job, non of it requires me doing anything in the interior just yet, so I am going to leave it alone.  So here we are.  Next step is to take nine million measurements and build some sort of positioning device to hold the RL sub frame while I try and make this all work.  Wish me luck!