Project Honda CRX: Part 2

Long-time readers of Sport Compact Car may recall the introduction to our Project CRX Hybrid. Actually, it wasn't that long ago, only seven months. Yes, this is part two of a series that debuted in the December 2000 issue. So where has the car been all this time? The answer is a very long way of explaining why, if you like driving your car, you should avoid the body shop at almost any cost.

A year ago, Holley Performance Products and SCC teamed up to build a project car. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What arrived at our offices late one afternoon was a 1990 CRX HF. The car was shipped to California from Holley out of Bowling Green, Kentucky and it came with instructions to do whatever we wanted to do, using whatever aftermarket parts we wanted to use, and making it as cool and fast as we knew how. All the while, we were learning everything we could about making Hondas perform. In our initial installment story, Dave Coleman provided a buyer's guide to the second-generation CRX, supplying tips on how to find the best car to get to an eventual goal with the least expense.

However, the CRX that arrived at our doorstep might not have been the greatest choice to begin a project of this scale. We knew it would be a mistake for a reader to take that approach, but thought that maybe, since we knew of a body shop that would generously contribute to the project, we thought we could get away with this badly beaten CRX. We found out that we aren't above the Project Car Blues laws, after all. Our little HF has been in the body shop for what seems like an eternity. Finally, as I write this, we are a few days away from having it in our possession once again, and it's still got a ways to go.

To be fair to the body shop, the car we got wasn't in the best condition.

It had been an executive's daughter's college car, and even though it was donated to us, we paid too much. We didn't mind that the drivetrain was junk, because it was our plan all along to get rid of it first thing. However, we would have liked to have a straight body to work with. While our CRX's chassis wasn't bent, almost everything attached to it, except the roof and rear bumper, was. Both doors, both front fenders, the hood and the front bumper had enough dents, dings, and wrinkles that it was easier to just replace them with new, straight ones from Honda Auto Salvage, the all-Honda wrecking yard that HASport, our engine swap supplier, grew out of.

Even at that, we still have filler in one of the rear quarters. Instead of locating a stock front bumper, we chose to replace both bumpers with a body kit from Wings West. We aren't typically big fans of body kits, but this isn't a combat-style design. Instead, it's very similar to an old Mugen kit, designed before monster air scoops became fashionable. Since HASport supplied most of the rest of the swap, we also used its fiberglass SiR-style hood. Unlike the real Japanese-market SiR hood, this part fits U.S. headlights, so we don't have to source rare and expensive (and illegal) JDM parts, and we won't blind oncoming traffic with beams designed for driving on the left side of the road. The hood also has a bulge to provide enough room for CR-VTEC hardware, if (we want to say when) the project gets to that point.

We can't really blame Cypress Auto Body for taking so long. There's an old line that any engineer or manager has heard dozens of times, on the subject of project management. It goes, "Quality, speed, price - choose any two."

We were asking Cypress for good quality, which they delivered, and talked them into doing it just because we were really nice guys. What did we expect? We'd get busy with other magazine business and not call for a few weeks, and Cypress would get busy with paying customers' cars and back burner the CRX for awhile.

There were momentum-killing setbacks along the way, too. The first pair of front fenders that came was for a Civic, not a CRX, and Cypress had to wait for the correct parts. Also, the factory rub strips along the side of the car were removed and reinstalled so many times in the process of fitting the body kit that the clips holding them to the car began to break. So those were replaced, too. Then it was a rainy winter here in sunny Los Angeles, and painting cars was impossible for many days at a time, not exactly the conditions that get a busy body shop ahead of schedule. In fact, strangely enough, rain around here makes even more cars need body work.

Dave Coleman said last time, "When looking for body shops, a parking lot full of smooth, shiny street rods is always a good sign that they know how to do quality work." Production body shops that specialize in insurance repairs, or one-day turnaroud times, will get your car back to you in a hurry, but the results are liable to be less than satisfactory. Some guys spend half a day just masking the car once. Unfortunately, body men who do really good work are often a bit flaky, and tend to work on a car when they feel like it.

Project CRX would be ready to leave the body shop, but now that it's mostly put back together, there are some pieces missing, despite there having been extra pieces when the car came apart. What happened to the parts and where the new ones will come from are mysteries at this point, but we're going to take the car and put the engine in it anyway, just so we can keep the project moving.

We chose to change our CRX from mini-fridge white to Y57, the paint code for a yellow Integra Type R. The first time we saw the car in yellow, we freaked out. Dave and I got out of the yellow Type R that has been the Eight Great Rides test car for two years, walked over to the CRX, and both nearly got whiplash from the double take. Type R, CRX, Type R, CRX...wait a minute, the CRX looks like a school bus! First, we were sure Cypress had gotten the paint code wrong. Then the owner of Cypress, Tom Rodriguez, read the right number back to us. Still, we were sure there had been a screw-up, because the yellow Type R we were driving was a much paler, less orange shade of yellow. Then we finally saw another yellow Type R, and it was exactly the same color as our CRX--it turns out it's the press car that's odd. Project CRX's paint isn't the color we expected, but it is correct. And it's smooth, after being buffed out.

We can't wait to have our CRX running and go get rock chips in it. Though we're big fans of ugly cars that go really fast, we don't need every car to be ugly. It's just that we mean to drive this thing a lot, and we're excited to get started. There's obviously a lot of work to be done before that happens, though. Like tracking down the missing body parts and putting an engine in it--you know, the remaining 90 percent of the project; the little details needed to make it run. If things go as planned, it will all be together and photographed for the next issue. If things go as usual, we'll have to scramble to finish the engine installation and get it moving under its own power so it can be photographed in time for our deadline.

Fortunately, we've had a lot of time to prepare for the next month. Almost all the parts we'll need for the initial buildup are already here, getting in our way as we try to move around the office. We'll break it down into several installments, but here's the basic plan: For the initial buildup, we're going to have a stock B16A engine, supplied by P&G Auto Parts, bolted into the chassis using off-the-shelf parts that anyone with opposable thumbs and a phone can buy and screw together. We have a ZDyne single-wire B16 conversion ECU, while all other wiring, shift linkage, mounts, axles and whatever else is needed are being provided by HASport. Measuring a performance baseline with stock HF suspension and brakes would be silly, so we're upgrading to later and larger Civic discs, courtesy of Honda Auto Salvage, supplemented by an EBC/Goodridge upgrade package provided by The Progress Group. Suspension will be from Neuspeed and Koni, while wheels and tires will be feathery SSR Competitions, provided by The Tire Rack, and Toyo Proxes T1-S. The interior will stay ugly and stock for awhile. Our plan is to get around to that once the mechanical upgrades are assembled, sorted out, dialed in and tested. At each step, you can count on SCC being completely obsessive about the little details, weighing everything, and comprehensively evaluating the performance of the car once it's together. Then we're going to hate a bunch of things about the car and set about fixing them. It's what we do.

What We Learned
The obvious way to avoid having your car stuck in body shop purgatory is to avoid body and paint work completely. One of our contributors, John Thawley, has gone this route, taking his Civic hatchback from a contentedly daily-driven stocker, with no fancy plans, to a completed LS/VTEC torque monster in a fraction of the time our car has been in the shop. John's Civic is a clean car, and he's not touching the paint, even to put on a spoiler.

The next alternative is to learn how to do the work, and do it yourself. At least two staffers have promised themselves that if they're ever in charge of a project being painted, that's how it's going to happen. One of them happens to have a car with an assumed market value of zero, but plenty of sentimental value, that he wants to make a project out of. It needs some dents repaired and faded paint made shiny and red again. The other staffer already got a sweet deal and still spent $2,400 getting his old "first good car" repainted (imperfectly), so a DIY paint project could happen.

The last possibility is to be ugly and be okay with it. Some of us actually see a lot of appeal to a car that's fast and ugly--nobody will accuse you of posing. People will sound really dumb talking about how ugly your car is when you just schooled them at the track. There's a kind of car that goes to the track all the time. In fact, that's really all you want to do with it. It's not pretty, but it doesn't need to be, because it's so good to drive, it always leaves you satisfied. If you decide to build a car like that, though, be warned: To be ugly and cool, being fast isn't good enough. You have to be dang fast.

Long-time readers of Sport Compact Car may recall the introduction to our Project CRX Hybrid. Actually, it wasn't that long ago, only seven months. Yes, this is part two of a series that debuted in the December 2000 issue. So where has the car been all this time? The answer is a very long way of explaining why, if you like driving your car, you should avoid the body shop at almost any cost.

A year ago, Holley Performance Products and SCC teamed up to build a project car. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What arrived at our offices late one afternoon was a 1990 CRX HF. The car was shipped to California from Holley out of Bowling Green, Kentucky and it came with instructions to do whatever we wanted to do, using whatever aftermarket parts we wanted to use, and making it as cool and fast as we knew how. All the while, we were learning everything we could about making Hondas perform. In our initial installment story, Dave Coleman provided a buyer's guide to the second-generation CRX, supplying tips on how to find the best car to get to an eventual goal with the least expense.

However, the CRX that arrived at our doorstep might not have been the greatest choice to begin a project of this scale. We knew it would be a mistake for a reader to take that approach, but thought that maybe, since we knew of a body shop that would generously contribute to the project, we thought we could get away with this badly beaten CRX. We found out that we aren't above the Project Car Blues laws, after all. Our little HF has been in the body shop for what seems like an eternity. Finally, as I write this, we are a few days away from having it in our possession once again, and it's still got a ways to go.

To be fair to the body shop, the car we got wasn't in the best condition.

It had been an executive's daughter's college car, and even though it was donated to us, we paid too much. We didn't mind that the drivetrain was junk, because it was our plan all along to get rid of it first thing. However, we would have liked to have a straight body to work with. While our CRX's chassis wasn't bent, almost everything attached to it, except the roof and rear bumper, was. Both doors, both front fenders, the hood and the front bumper had enough dents, dings, and wrinkles that it was easier to just replace them with new, straight ones from Honda Auto Salvage, the all-Honda wrecking yard that HASport, our engine swap supplier, grew out of.

Even at that, we still have filler in one of the rear quarters. Instead of locating a stock front bumper, we chose to replace both bumpers with a body kit from Wings West. We aren't typically big fans of body kits, but this isn't a combat-style design. Instead, it's very similar to an old Mugen kit, designed before monster air scoops became fashionable. Since HASport supplied most of the rest of the swap, we also used its fiberglass SiR-style hood. Unlike the real Japanese-market SiR hood, this part fits U.S. headlights, so we don't have to source rare and expensive (and illegal) JDM parts, and we won't blind oncoming traffic with beams designed for driving on the left side of the road. The hood also has a bulge to provide enough room for CR-VTEC hardware, if (we want to say when) the project gets to that point.

We can't really blame Cypress Auto Body for taking so long. There's an old line that any engineer or manager has heard dozens of times, on the subject of project management. It goes, "Quality, speed, price - choose any two."

We were asking Cypress for good quality, which they delivered, and talked them into doing it just because we were really nice guys. What did we expect? We'd get busy with other magazine business and not call for a few weeks, and Cypress would get busy with paying customers' cars and back burner the CRX for awhile.

There were momentum-killing setbacks along the way, too. The first pair of front fenders that came was for a Civic, not a CRX, and Cypress had to wait for the correct parts. Also, the factory rub strips along the side of the car were removed and reinstalled so many times in the process of fitting the body kit that the clips holding them to the car began to break. So those were replaced, too. Then it was a rainy winter here in sunny Los Angeles, and painting cars was impossible for many days at a time, not exactly the conditions that get a busy body shop ahead of schedule. In fact, strangely enough, rain around here makes even more cars need body work.

Dave Coleman said last time, "When looking for body shops, a parking lot full of smooth, shiny street rods is always a good sign that they know how to do quality work." Production body shops that specialize in insurance repairs, or one-day turnaroud times, will get your car back to you in a hurry, but the results are liable to be less than satisfactory. Some guys spend half a day just masking the car once. Unfortunately, body men who do really good work are often a bit flaky, and tend to work on a car when they feel like it.

Project CRX would be ready to leave the body shop, but now that it's mostly put back together, there are some pieces missing, despite there having been extra pieces when the car came apart. What happened to the parts and where the new ones will come from are mysteries at this point, but we're going to take the car and put the engine in it anyway, just so we can keep the project moving.

We chose to change our CRX from mini-fridge white to Y57, the paint code for a yellow Integra Type R. The first time we saw the car in yellow, we freaked out. Dave and I got out of the yellow Type R that has been the Eight Great Rides test car for two years, walked over to the CRX, and both nearly got whiplash from the double take. Type R, CRX, Type R, CRX...wait a minute, the CRX looks like a school bus! First, we were sure Cypress had gotten the paint code wrong. Then the owner of Cypress, Tom Rodriguez, read the right number back to us. Still, we were sure there had been a screw-up, because the yellow Type R we were driving was a much paler, less orange shade of yellow. Then we finally saw another yellow Type R, and it was exactly the same color as our CRX--it turns out it's the press car that's odd. Project CRX's paint isn't the color we expected, but it is correct. And it's smooth, after being buffed out.

We can't wait to have our CRX running and go get rock chips in it. Though we're big fans of ugly cars that go really fast, we don't need every car to be ugly. It's just that we mean to drive this thing a lot, and we're excited to get started. There's obviously a lot of work to be done before that happens, though. Like tracking down the missing body parts and putting an engine in it--you know, the remaining 90 percent of the project; the little details needed to make it run. If things go as planned, it will all be together and photographed for the next issue. If things go as usual, we'll have to scramble to finish the engine installation and get it moving under its own power so it can be photographed in time for our deadline.

Fortunately, we've had a lot of time to prepare for the next month. Almost all the parts we'll need for the initial buildup are already here, getting in our way as we try to move around the office. We'll break it down into several installments, but here's the basic plan: For the initial buildup, we're going to have a stock B16A engine, supplied by P&G Auto Parts, bolted into the chassis using off-the-shelf parts that anyone with opposable thumbs and a phone can buy and screw together. We have a ZDyne single-wire B16 conversion ECU, while all other wiring, shift linkage, mounts, axles and whatever else is needed are being provided by HASport. Measuring a performance baseline with stock HF suspension and brakes would be silly, so we're upgrading to later and larger Civic discs, courtesy of Honda Auto Salvage, supplemented by an EBC/Goodridge upgrade package provided by The Progress Group. Suspension will be from Neuspeed and Koni, while wheels and tires will be feathery SSR Competitions, provided by The Tire Rack, and Toyo Proxes T1-S. The interior will stay ugly and stock for awhile. Our plan is to get around to that once the mechanical upgrades are assembled, sorted out, dialed in and tested. At each step, you can count on SCC being completely obsessive about the little details, weighing everything, and comprehensively evaluating the performance of the car once it's together. Then we're going to hate a bunch of things about the car and set about fixing them. It's what we do.