Da Car is done before and after pics

Rob Keeble

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Location
GTA Ontario Canada
Well finally after a marathon Sat which took Sunday to recuperate from the refurbishment job on my sons vehicle is over. We still have a few body items to take care of and what appears to be a drain somewhere on the battery but the car is running and back on the road. Had the wheel alignment done this morning.

Oh and discovered once again that my Dads words were true...."Act in haste and repent at your leisure or rather expense of your pocket" More about that later in the post.

So this is what we started with....the car is a 1997 Honda Civic and has lived in Canada all its life so those of you familiar with winter in the north will find these pics familiar images. Let me repeat under ordinary circumstances i would have not even taken one look at this car it would have been in the scrap yard. But i am a believer in tough love and teaching a kid to be self reliant and to crown it all the under body of this car was just amazing for its 16 odd years in these parts.
Then i will add were it not for the pricing i could obtain parts for from Rock Auto we also would have scrapped the vehicle.

cross member rusted.jpgdrivers side rear trail arm bushing and compensator arm.jpgFront CV boot and caliper.jpgfront shock upper arm and knuckle .jpgother trail arm bushing.jpgrear trail arm.jpgrear upper arm bushing.jpgtrail arm bushing.jpg

The primary culprit that started this was the rusted out cross member. When we finally got it out certain parts just fell out it was that shot.

So we got a second hand one from the local scrapyard that was in almost new condition (how it had survived i have no idea). The Honda propriety bits like the knuckle and shock forks we cleaned up and the rest is new parts. Calipers were cleaned up and checked as we had replaced them a few years back with new units when we re did the break lines all round and we replaced the drums this time around even though they had been new at the time of the calipers but they took a hammering at the rear of the vehicle.
Next post i will put the after pics that i managed to get at the alignment place this morn.
 
Part 2 after with pics

This is the after scene. You will notice we did not get stuck into the rust in the rear wheel wells we just did not want to create more issues and its only surface so we left it.

The rear trail arms we also got from a local scrapyard they too were unrusted in new condition we gave them a good clean and rust treatment. son will get down there and paint those that have not been painted in a couple of weekends time.

So vehicle has complete new or refurbished undercarriage. If you look at the first pic you can see what i mean about the lack of rust on the body. Its only the rear wheel wells where there is any rust. Beneath the cross member was clean too looks like the cross member is the sacrificial lamb in this case. While we were at it we also replaced the front wheel bearings and the front cv axles both sides and the engine mount thats on the crossmember. Then its got new power steering fluids and boots inc tie rod ends and transmission fluid change. New brake shoes at the rear and couple of brake lines at the rear we never changed last time around and on all four points we changed brake hoses given age of the prior ones.

Due to my incompetence we also ended up replacing parking brake cables which was just as well anyhow because the brackets holding them on were shot. And of course what started half all of this was the brand new tires needing wheel alignment only to discover how bad the undercarriage was at that time.

subframe crossmember and lower control arms.jpgleft trail arm.jpgdriver side wheel.jpgpassenger side wheel.jpg20140714_084354.jpgright trail arm.jpgdrivers side shock.jpgP


Now for my big "act in haste" boo boo. I have a lot on my plate this week so this am i wanted to get the wheel alignment done so son can have vehicle back and mom can have her vehicle back and life can return to norm. So i was off to the alignment guys first thing to get it out my way. Well i knew there was something i had encountered in my test drive which i was not happy with, it was a noise when i turned sharp all the way either side.
Instead of getting the car back on the jack and taking a look i figured the alignment would show it up. WRONG. Passed the alignment no problems then i get back and turn sharp at the end of the road doing a circle and hear the same noise. Take it home put the jack up and repeat and lo and behold i discover i got the tie rod ends on the wrong way around. They have a bend in them and i got the bend going the wrong way meaning the opposite and that means on full turn either way the tie rod touched the rim.
So its back to jacking up and remove and swap and back to alignment place, hopefully they dont hit me for full price again. MY BAD I should have checked first so now i pay for it.

BUt the kids got a basically new car underneath and safe which is my big concern and if he looks after the rest should see him through school and some. Topside body is in really good nick except for the hood which is getting a spray job as its a hangover from brothers damage and replacement to the car.

For me the saga is over, has cost me way more time than i would have liked but we have a great memory and hopefully my son has learnt a thing or two should he ever need to diy things himself. Hopefully he never has to be in a position where it comes to that but at least he has had the mystic taken out of car work and been shown a method by which he can do it if he chooses to take it on.

I have had my fill of mechanical work. Back to sawdust now in my spare time.
 
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Wow, I agree with Paul, that's a lot to take on, but you're right that it should make it through the rest of his school. I'm needing to go through mine and do the linkage, but seeing the pics of your's makes me think twice. Might just be time to trade off. :)
 
Well done, Rob. :clap: That level of mechanic work is way beyond my skill set, but kudos for showing your son how it's done.
 
Rock on! I don't reckon this is a project either of you will soon forget :D Certainly a worthwhile project from the "having done it once" perspective, knowing how things work is often useful even if you don't have to deal with it day to day[1].

[1] a few years back loml called me as her rig wouldn't start - it just "whirred" when she turned the key over. I told her to put it in neutral and roll it back about 6" and voila it fired right up. There was a tooth that had come off of the flywheel (I was hoping it was that and not the starting gear and in this case it luckily was). This would of course be distinguished from the "click click" and doesn't start which is usually a stuck solenoid and can often be "fixed" by giving the solenoid a whack with a rock.. That about sums up my mechanical ability :D
 
Yep that right there was a lot of work, well done!

The rusty parts, you can buy this stuff (or at least I can here in Japan) that you paint or spray on, it is milky white when it goes on, but in about 4-6 hours it turns black, and hard like a rock, it converts the rust into a rust resistant coating, kind of encapsulates the rust. Then you paint over that with a good rust inhibiting paint and it will stop a lot of rust dead in it's tracks.

Cheers!
 
Thanks all for your comments and Stu that's the stuff we put on our parts that we had striped down to shiny metal and bit of rust. We never got round to doing the rear wheel wells. May have a go later but for now we both have had enough of "da car". :) BTW that milky stuff is amazing works like crazy. Here is the make i used , http://www.amazon.com/Rust-Converte...ref=sr_1_3?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1405376285&sr=1-3
Purchased a quart and we still have some left and we were not shy about using it. A little goes a long way.
 
That is how I was able to own cars. That was the ONLY way I was able to own a car. They were $20 and $50 but needed tons of work. I did all the work - and they got me around.

Never had a car loan.

My cars were not as pretty as my friends cars. They had more money than me and with my parents being divorced and my mom raising 4 of us on welfare - we didn't have money.

So Cars - were whatever I could get away with.

It was all good learning too.

Every time I see something like this I have a real deep appreciation.

Great job.

I did it with my kids also.
 
Thanks guys,

@Leo, i had a very similar situation Leo, I grew up much like i would presume many of you guys did fixing your own bicycle that is if you had one.

I also distinctly remember like it was yesterday the immense fun we had as a bunch of neighbor hood kids that lived in a poor mining town, riding a beat up old PUCH Motorcycle something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch#mediaviewer/File:Puch_Maxi.JPG . I know Ed Thomas (a member here has a couple of Puchs) . Well this thing had an issue with the gear selector and somehow, pure dog gone determination someone had found if we stuck a huge nail in the transmission side and wiggled it we could change gears. Yeah it was in bad bad shape but we drove it around the lower parts of the mine dump for days on end. Each took turns riding on it with a few cents of gas in those days. I feel real sorry for the kids today that are being cooped up in bubbles by parental fear of everything. They being deprived of life and air to breath and the feeling of exploring and freedom to dream. But its just a sign of us getting older and changing times.

I missed the "car generation craze" you guys in the US had with muscle cars but watched my friends way older brothers always pouring over their Ford Capri V6 engines like they were something special, (my guess is doing more damage than good ) . So i am not at all a "Car guy". I too this on for other reasons i did not need the challenge :)

After two motorcycle accidents i finally got to purchase my first car with just on $150 US i had managed to get together somehow, at the time. It was a Citroen club my buddies sister and mother had put through at least 3 accidents and repaired and the seats were done so much so they resembled the seats on LOT the Polish Airline at the end of cold war(seat backs did not stay upright ;). Many weekends were spent parked outside a scrapyard at the time, swapping seats and what have you over to refurbish the car to drive-able state. I spent a lot of money getting the hydraulic spheres on that car fixed, time and time again until I purchased an old shape UK/SA version Ford Escourt that had a straight 4 simple engine etc.

Things were not handed to me on a plate and it made me appreciate the value of money but i dont know that this approach is the answer either. I believe had education on my parents side permitted it, it would have been better to teach how to accumulate wealth and manage money rather than scrimp and scrounge it together. (stepping over a dollar to pick up a penny dont work). There is little economic sense in what i have done with this car if one considers the man hours. Its been harder than one can imagine to resist going out and buying the kid a new car like so many other parents here have done with their kids.
But i learnt that side of things when i first bought this Honda for the older son many years back and watched in utter shock and disgust as it was trashed. It actually broke my heart beyond what you can imagine, to see one of my kids do it and it caused a great deal of upset and bad blood as a result in the family. ( I was not going to just stand by and watch). Suddenly there was a clash of values between the wife and me. Despite the fact that we had similar backgrounds and upbringing.

This time around i was determined i would rather be on my own, if it was going to come to that, than abandon my own beliefs, principles and values.
Really happy i have no more kids to teach this lesson to, not convinced it was the right thing to do for the times and it was in no way fun for me. You tube and Google and service manuals obtained online are the go to sources for help.

I honestly feel the power of modern marketing and media is totally corrupting family life. Its hard to go up against the perpetual propaganda war being waged and teach any kind of values. This was my last "Custers last stand" attempt at it. The jury is out on whether the benefits will prevail. Time will tell.
 
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