| EVO Civic Evolution History |
| EVO 4 - April 1999 |
| 10/04/1999 |
Removed the rear beaver panel, valance and jack well from the yellow car. Removed the rusty jack well from the blue car and welded the one from the yellow car in . Also moved the spare wheel hold down bracket slightly so it will work with the 100PCD wheels. |
| 11/04/1999 |
Welded some reinforcement plates on for the rear sway bar mounts. Welded the beaver panel  and rear valance  from the yellow car onto the blue car. |
| 12/04/1999 |
Removed the radiator support from the yellow car. |
| 14/04/1999 |
Welded the radiator support onto the blue car. |
| 17/04/1999 |
Welded in the battery bracket  and brackets to hold the window washer bottle (located on the rear wheel arch on the passenger's side)  . Cut a hole in the floor for the next evolution of the gearshift mechanism.  |
| 18/04/1999 |
Finished off the modifications for the gearshift  . Started looking at getting the car up onto the rotator. Made some rotator brackets for the rear, using some old bits of pipe and flat steel, that bolt onto the bumper mounts, top strut mount, lower control arm mount and seatbelt mount...it should be strong enough! |
| 19/04/1999 |
Finished the rear rotator brackets. |
| 20/04/1999 |
Made the front rotator brackets  . These bolt onto the front subframe mounting points...should be strong enough. |
| 21/04/1999 |
Engine time...Stripped down the standard EB2 block that I'll be using - YUCK!! The insides were a real mess...all black and mucky. The bearings, pistons etc. are all stuffed...good thing all I need is the block! I guess that's what happens after 100000km, probably using crappy oil too. I also pulled apart the motor from the yellow car...the insides are perfectly clean and shiny (it is only 3000km old). It looks like all the internals are fine, just a pity the block is in multiple pieces.  |
| 23/04/1999 |
Opened up the old gearbox. The belhousing is quite thoroughly stuffed, the input shaft and selector rod is bent. Other than that everything looks fine...none of the gears etc. are important, only the diff, which luckily looks to be in perfect shape...phew!! |
| 24/04/1999 |
Put the car on the rotator today. The rotator itself is a very sturdy item, with the rotating bits being made from Rover hubs and stub axles which are very strong and spin nicely. Onto the hub is attached a large plate, which then bolts onto a bracket attached to the car. This bracket has lots of adjustment to allow one to find a car's centre of gravity about which to rotate it. Each rotation head fits into a stand which spreads the load out over a large area...the whole contraption looks much more like something you would use when building a train, rather than something to rotate a miserable little civic. I started by jacking up the front and rear in turn with a piece of wood and the trolley jack, bolting the brackets to the rotator plate alternately higher at each end.
Then when I ran out of trolley jack height I attached the chain block to the rafters and continued working the front and rear progressively higher...should have used the chain block all along as it turned out to be much easier than using the trolley jack. I finally got it into position with the rotation line just fractionally above the centre of gravity. It spins very nicely and balances in any position with about a finger's worth of support.
I then started cleaning some of the sound proofing off from underneath, which luckily scrapes off quite easily.
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| 25/04/1999 |
Removed most of the sound deadening from under the car. I found the best way was to give it a paint with some kerosene and let it soak in for a few minutes...then it just scraped off very easily. A good soaking with kero, then a blast with a high pressure water blaster would probably get it off a lot easier than scraping but I don't have one and it would most likely make quite a mess. Did a bit of seam welding under the floor (that rotator really is a wonderful thing) and strengthened the front jacking points with some angle iron. |
| 26/04/1999 |
Did some work around the left side wheel arches. At the back I folded the lip along the outer edge in and did some seam welding, also repaired a bit of rust. Also did some seam welding and rust repairs under the front wheel arch. |