Cheap car,   cheap mods and a whole lot of fun. That’s the plan, anyway!

We had it all planned. It was to be an orchestrated strike on the boss, the whole NZPC editorial team in his office, laying out the plans for a project car of epic proportions and not leaving until a signed blank cheque was handed over so we could put the wheels in motion. It sounded so good in theory. But really, who were we kidding? We left the office with $2.10 in loose change and half a tin of peanuts, our hopes screwed up and binned, our dreams quashed with little regard.

Like goldfish we quickly regrouped. And then it hit us: if we couldn’t spend a sh*tload of money building a street-legal machine that could double as a bit of a track and strip plaything for the weekend, we would build the cheapest! The car had to tick all the right boxes. It needed to be cheap to buy, cheap to modify and cheap to maintain. Basically an average Joe machine built to an average Joe standard that most people could relate to. A car like the ’91 Honda CR-X SiR living like a hobo under some boxes in the nether regions of our warehouse. Better still, we didn’t even need to fork over any money for it, and a little bit of the work had already started. “Get those JTune Honda boys on the phone project on!”

And so it begins. Our quest: to overhaul $3000 worth of used Japanese import that once ripped it up in its homeland as an N1 endurance class racer. Our problem: following its arrival in the country in 2001 and being complied for use on our roads and fitted with a six-point roll cage, it was left to waste away in the weeds behind Ed’s house before being relocated to the office some while back.

Undeterred, we’ll be spending as little money as possible and doing as much DIY performance work as we can to prove that you don’t need a big budget to build a sweet little car ripe for a good old thrashing. We’re staying N/A, staying 1.6 litres, but we’re out to create a car that’ll go fast, corner hard, brake quick and look good doing it. Can it be done? We’ll soon find out…

Stage 1 – The Games Begin

The first stage in any car build project is always the easiest. It’s the time where you get to pull things apart in the misguided belief that you know how to put it all back together without any nuts and bolts left over. Luckily for us, we’ve got Jacky, Jason, Steven and Julian from JTune dudes all well versed in swinging spanners on Hondas along for the entire ride, which will definitely make things a whole lot easier when it comes time to start reinstalling parts. But there’s a little way to go before that happens.

Our original plan was to leave the engine in the car and work around it. But because we absolutely needed to take the gearbox out and give it some TLC, replace the clutch, change the cam belt and sort out a few other engine things, it soon became obvious that it would be a whole lot easier to have the B16A out than in. So out it’s come. It’s actually a good thing, because it also now means that we’ll be able to clean up the engine bay and do a few paint touch-ups where necessary to have it looking nice and tidy when the motor goes back in the hole.

Having the engine on the floor also gave us a chance to take a better look at it, and doing that revealed our first potential stumbling block. Although there’s a genuine 63,000km on the clock, the car’s previous life in Japan was obviously a hard one, and judging by the moisture in the head’s intake ports (a tell-tale sign of worn valve guides) the engine could well be on its last legs. Being a tough little B16A, though, maybe it will only blow a bit of smoke and burn a bit of oil, which is a good enough reason to say a little prayer and just throw it back in once we’ve finished giving it a service. If things go bad, it’ll only take an hour or so to pull it back out. The jury’s still out on this, though, but I’m sure we will have made a decision on what we’re going to do by this time next month.

The next job was to separate the gearbox from the engine. We found a well-worn clutch assembly (which was already pretty obvious from the slip in third, fourth and fifth gears when driving the car under load) and the flywheel, which turned out to be a bit of joyous find in contrast to the engine downer. By the way the engine had revved we knew the flywheel wasn’t standard fare, so it was nice to discover a Toda Racing unit bolted up. It’s something that will definitely go back in when the gearbox is reinstalled, but that won’t happen until it’s had a bit of an overhaul something we’ll be covering off along with our clutch upgrade in the next couple of issues. Hopefully we’ll find a limited slip diff of the aftermarket variety in the box, too. Fingers crossed.

Along with the engine and box, the suspension was removed from the car as well as the rear trailing arm assemblies, of which we’ll replace the bushes. Considering they’re 18 years old, all the bushes in the suspension and steering, along with the engine mounts, probably need overhauling, so we’ve added that lot to the list as well. New bushes, especially if we can get our hands on the good stuff from Nolathane or the like, will definitely improve the car’s overall handling by tightening all the well-loosened link points.

Hopefully the shock absorbers can be overhauled too, as that will save us a little bit of coin by not having to replace the coil-overs with brand new replacements. Although the shocks are branded Vision, a Japanese Honda tuning specialist, they also have Tein stamped into them, leading me to believe that New Zealand’s only Tein-approved service centre, Autolign, may be be able to give them a good working over  provided they actually need it. All we know is that they’re bloody hard, so we won’t really be able to tell much more until we get the dampers tested and the spring rates measured.

With the easy part out the way there’s lots to get on with, beginning with the engine, for which we’ve already gathered a few performance bolt-on performance parts, both new and used. That’s all happening in Stage 2.

Words: Brad Lord Photos: NZPC

This article is from NZ Performance Car issue 150. Click here to check it out.