Adrian Frankel - 1977 EB2 Civic

Condensed EVO Civic history, plus the evolution of EVO4...

If there's one thing I hate about rebuilding a car, it's trying to get the thing to go once it's all together. The first time you start a new engine up a million things flash through your mind; is the head torqued up correctly?, is the cam timing right?, is the ignition timing ok?, are the flywheel bolts tight? etc. etc etc. Then when the engine finally runs you have to think about pushing in the clutching and trying a gear; is the thrust race on correctly? Did I leave anything out of the gearbox? Finally once the clutch is successfully engaged and a gear selected you have to think about letting the clutch out. Once the car is mobile you then have to worry about getting it to stop; do the brakes work? Then the big test comes - driving it; is it going to change gear? Do the brakes really work? Is the steering ok? What did I forget to tighten up? I really hate driving a car that was in pieces for six months for the first time.

I've now had my EB2 Civic for about 5 years over which time it's undergone a number of changes.

When I bought the car in 1993 it was a standard, rusty, oily, smoky, blue 1977 EB2 3-door with worn out everything. I drove it around for a couple of months till the rego ran out, then stuck it in the garage to fiddle with. The intention was to turn it into a PRC rally car, so that's what I did.

I cut out the rust and welded the holes up, stripped the interior, bolted in a six point aluminium roll cage, front and rear strut braces and painted it red. I got a nearly new, mildly worked 1200 engine from Wayne Griffiths which used a standard downdraught carby and rather dodgy extractors and rebuilt the standard 4-speed gearbox. I rebuilt the standard brakes and found a set of 12x5 mag wheels. A couple of Recaro seats, harnesses and a steering wheel out of the trading post finished things off. Thus in early 1994 the civic appeared in EVO1 form. That's about when I joined the Honda Club and started to get a few more ideas.

Over the next few months it slowly evolved with additions such as an RS exhaust manifold (4-2-1) with custom made exhaust which blew the flange gasket about once a week until I braced it onto the back of the engine and installed a flexi-joint. A larger 1500 radiator helped cooling. As it was a '77 model it had larger front strut tops, so I installed earlier model, smaller ones, allowing me to move the tops in a bit and gain a little negative camber on the front. I fiddled with the shocks and other suspension bits a little until I came to the conclusion that it needed something fairly major to make it work. During the latter half of 1994 the Honda Club ran a competition with the winner being the club member with the most points during some period of the year (July to December I think). There were 2 prizes (for first and second), being either a pair of Whiteline sway bars or a Nardi steering wheel - I got the sway bars.

In early 1995 it emerged in EVO2 trim with four new springs, adjustable Konis (how I got them to fit is a secret) on the front, adjustable front radius rods and lower control arms, adjustable rear camber and nolathane bushes in most places. And of course a pair of nice new wedgwood blue Whiteline sway bars (18mm front, 20mm rear). Next came a pair of RS twin carbies and some Bilsteins on the front as the Konis only lasted about 3 months until I broke one during a rally.

Bathurst hillclimb

Wakefield Park, I think.

At the end of 1995 I got hold of a new gearbox (close ratio Mugen 5-speed with LSD) and a pair of Bilstein shocks for the rear, from Gary Cook's ex club race car. The LSD made a huge difference and the close ratio gearbox was great on the track as the engine had never suffered from an over-abundance of horsepower or torque. This is essentially how the car remained until the end of 1997 - bolt in roll cage, strut braces, Bilstein shocks, heavier springs, adjustable camber/castor, mild 1200 with RS carbies and exhaust, Mugen close ratio 5-speed with LSD.

In early 1997 the person who had bought Gary's ex race car (converted to street use) got a new engine as the engine it had was too powerful and so I took it off his hands. The engine in question was an EB2 with an EN1 crank and 74mm pistons, taking it out to 1420cc. It had a standard EB3 head on it but also came with a Mugen head with huge valves and ports that had about 5mm shaved off it, taking the compression ration to about 14:1 which necessitated o-ringing of the head. The cam was a Mugen R1 - not the biggest but supposedly about the best. Breathing through quad Keihin slide throttle carbies this engine was reputed to generate around 140hp - not bad for a 1400. This sat under my house for the rest of the year.

Valve comparison - standard EB2 on bottom, Mugen on top, inlet on left, exhaust on right

As I'd gotten roped into doing some work towards the end of '97 I thought it was about time to start looking at the car again, seeing I could afford to do a few things to it, and I really wanted to see how that new engine went. So just after the Christmas party I started pulling it apart (took about 2 days) with the intention of having it up and running by the end of January, February at the latest. As you can probably guess it took a little longer than expected and I drove it for the first time on the 29th of May, getting it registered on the 1st of June (about 4 hours before its three months out of rego were up).

I had decided that as I had the car apart I might as well do things properly and weld in a steel roll cage rather than rely on the bolt in one. I made up a template from PVC pipe for the main hoop and front legs and took it to Bond Roll Bars who did a pretty good job of bending it to the right shape and it needed very little modification to make it fit. I also got about 12m of straight pipe for the back legs, intrusion bars etc. All mounting points were reinforced and the back legs attach to the rear strut towers, the fronts also being tied in to greatly increase structural rigidity. I also moved the battery into the cabin for better weight distribution. I knew it had a bit of rust and was expecting to have to do a little welding, but was unprepared for just how much it had. With the rust repairs and welding in a full cage I think I used up a 5kg roll of welding wire and a full bottle of gas.

Luckily I have a couple of spare cars for bits, which came in quite handy. As it's a '77 model the doors have intrusion bars in them which are not all that necessary when you weld extra ones in, so I pinched the intrusion-bar-less (not to mention less rusty) doors off a spare car ('75 model) which are each at least 5kg lighter. I also replaced the front left guard with a much less rusty one. I didn't spend too much time making the body perfect as it's not a show car and there are still a few small dings and ripples, but it's good enough for me. Instead of Toyota post office red, I decided on a Honda colour this time and finally chose carnival yellow (it really stands out!)

OK, for all those people who keep asking me what wheels these are - they are from a Nissan (not sure exactly but I think a Skyline, Bluebird or something similar). They do NOT fit on standard hubs as I think I've made it pretty clear I changed the stud pattern. The offset is wrong and the center is a bit big. I walked into a wreckers one day and there they were ... the price was good and they had tyres on them with enough tread to get it through rego. So please do not ask me what they are or where they come from!!

As well as doing the body I looked at the brakes and suspension. As the standard brakes are pretty feeble I proceeded with a relatively easy and proven conversion and got a pair of EN1 Civic (1980 - 83) front uprights which can take much larger calipers. Onto these I mounted '82 Accord vented disks and calipers. Unfortunately I subsequently found that there are no good pads available for '82 Accord calipers so I got some '89 CRX calipers and larger discs from an '84 Accord (approx. 10mm bigger than 82 model).

1982 Accord discs and callipers	1984 Accord discs and 1989 CRX callipers

The rear brakes are still drums, but larger ones from an EN1 wagon. I also got stainless braided hoses, a bias valve, hydraulic hand brake and an EN1 booster. One side effect of this conversion is to change the stud pattern to a much more widely used 100pcd, rather than the original 120pcd, so getting wheels anywhere from 13in to 17in should be no problem. Geoff O'Toole of GT Tooling did the machining work on the rear stub axles and front uprights to make everything fit, as well as making some new front lower control arms and top strut mounts.

Instead of the shim adjustable control arms I had on previously I got Geoff to make some new arms with a double ended threaded section (right hand on one end left on the other) to allow infinite adjustment. The inner bush was also replaced with nolathane.

The top strut mounts are aluminium plates with a spherical bearing mounted in them, offset to give maximum camber and castor. I made a slight miscalculation on the minimum length of the bottom arms (about 40mm) and it currently has about 5deg. of negative camber at minimum adjustment. This will be rectified in the future.

The radius rods were already adjustable so they were left alone. For springs I decided, after some consultation with Gary, on an adjustable dual rate setup - small helper spring to load up the larger spring on droop and soak up the small bumps and a larger main spring. Whiteline was called upon for springs and they supplied adjustable spring seats all round, the main springs and the main to helper adapters. Unfortunately they had a lot of trouble finding wire for the helper springs and I resorted to getting them from England.

The drive shafts are from an EN1 (about 50mm longer than standard) to accommodate the longer arms and different uprights. The gearbox is a standard EN1 5-speed with the Mugen LSD in it. I decided to go back to a standard box rather than the close ratio because of the torquieness of the new engine. I can always change back again. Connecting the engine to the gearbox is a Mugen ultra-lightweight steel flywheel (an absolute work of art).

Mugen flywheel and clutch assembly
Mugen flywheel compared to standard

To reduce engine movement I installed an extra engine mount at the rear (from an EN1). The engine had provision for an oil temperature sender welded into the sump so of course I had to plug it up to stop all the oil running out and what better way than to put a temp. sender in it. This of course meant I needed a temp. gauge to go with it and while I was about it an oil pressure gauge, voltmeter and ammeter seemed like a good idea. The dashboard obviously needed a bit of modification to fit all these extra gauges in, so I built an aluminium box that takes up about half the dash to put gauges, light switches, fuses etc. in. I removed the radio when I first built the car and its hole is now filled with the oil temp. and pressure gauges. At the bottom of the dash is the voltmeter, ammeter and cut out switch. I replaced the standard water temp and fuel gauges with a tacho, and moved the gauges to the new box.

To finish things off I got the indicator/wiper mechanism from a '79 EB3 civic which has intermittent wipers and a headlight flasher. A nice suede Sparco wheel and lightweight fiberglass seats were the last touch.

I've been playing around with the gearshift linkage for a while now, initially a simple short throw shifter, made by lengthening the shifter between the pivot ball and the end of the linkage, and then something more exotic, involving a number of rose joints and a large hole in the floor. The main reasoning behind this is to allow me to adjust the position and throw of the gear lever and to move the shift linkages into the car, thus allowing the exhaust to be moved as close to the body as possible.

When I finally got to the point of starting the engine it took me some days to get it running. I knew that with a 14:1 compression it would be a little difficult to turn over but it barely even budged! After repeated battery chargings and flattenings and then finally killing the starter motor I gave Gary a call and he said to get a reduction drive starter motor from a later model twin cam. It fitted straight on and the engine fired up immediately. After fiddling with the timing a bit the engine ran quite well with a very nice induction roar, but at this point it still needs a new exhaust with a little more muffling. So after a six month lay off the Civic re-emerged in EVO3 form.

Unfortunately 649km after this the engine died. I'm not sure what the exact cause was but the result is pretty obvious.

While the engine was out again I made a couple more modifications, including a proper timing scale and reducing the compression to about 12.5:1.

Here's the engine back in and ready to be re started.

After getting the car going I had a bit of a clean out of all the old stuff I'd collected and stuck it all in storage. It's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate when you aren't even trying!

EVO4 is currently under construction since the demise of EVO3 ....