UPDATE! Clutch Installed! - My D17 Adventure, Start the slow road to boost - No 56K!
OK folks.
I've been a d-series.org ghost since March 2005. I get on and post occasionally, made a few sigs for people, pissed a few folks off, bought a hat, and have generally had a good time. I'm going to start to document my slow road to a boosted EM2. I love my 03 EX with its D17A2, maybe its because I like to root for the underdog. Don't know, don't care. So this thread is going to be my diary of the steps I take to boost my D17 - and hopefully do it right, as well as dosument all the other work I put into this car. If you don't like it, that's fine, it's not your car. If you hate the D17A2, that's also fine, I'm sure you'll like it just fine when built and boosted. This is more for me to share what I feel is all the hard work I've put into my car so far, and all the work I will continue to put in. I will do most of the work myself, until it comes to dyno and tuning time. But that's at least a year down the road. Its time to save up for the EMS, turbo kit, cam, valve train, pulleys, disc brake conversion, sway bars, clutch and flywheel, new injectors, fuel pump, and fuel rail - I think that's it for planned upgrades!
History lesson.
I bought the car in 2005 for $3K because it had been totaled out due to excessive hail damage. For The previous owner beat the shit out of it, but also had sunk some cash into the suspension and wheels. It had 18K on the dial and I figured I got a pretty good deal. Here's the specs on my ride now and some good and bad side pictures.
2003 Civic EX
Megan Racing FU, RU, RL strut bars
Tein Super Street Coilover kit
17" Konig Holes Graphite
Sumitmo HTR Z IIs on the Konigs
N1 Stealth 2.5" cat-back exhaust
DC Sports ceramic header
Knockoff Ebay CAI
Exedy Stage 1 Full-face organic Clutch
Exedy Racing 11 pound flywheel
Revo Technica Short Shifter
Aluminum Shifter Bushings
Seibon CF hood
D16Y8 intake mani and TB (not installed yet)
DIY trunk shocks
Relocated battery to the trunk
M3 mirrors
TYC projector headlights
Blacked out tails
Kenwood head unit
2x12" KENWOOD eXcelon KFC-XW1202DVCs in the trunk
Kenwood KAC-8something powering the subs
Kenwood Excelon 6x9s
Stock fronts and tweets
Custom mp3 mount
Now for the pictures of the car as it was. Here a couple shots of the good side of the car. It was parked up against a building when the hail storm hit. This happened in 2003 in southern Germany, the car was 2 weeks old.
The good side
Another shot, not so bad
A round of golf anyone?
Ugh, hail.
![]()
Needless the car looked the shit. We moved from Germany to England and it got a little worse. The car made for a great conversation piece, only now I could understand them as they were speaking English instead of German, and I got lots of looks driving down the road, but for all the wrong reasons. I did some homework on body work, having not done a whole lot - tossed around the paintless dent removal/massage technique, but the dents were too small and too many. I thought about using dry ice to get them out, couldn't find enough for a reasonable price since I'm stationed in England now. Thought about pulling the dents, but then I sobered up. My only other options were to cut the panels off and replace them or bondo it. Well, I found the body panels, but freight to get them shipped over the UK was ridiculous, so I went with the Bondo option. I didn't have much choice. Here are some photos of the process. I originally tried sanding the paint off, but the time involved was ridiuculous. In the end I just took off as many seals as I could and used ZipStrip and drill-driven wire brush.
Here's the take apart process.
The difference between naked and nekkid. Naked means you have no clothes on. Nekkid means you have no clothes on and you're up to something!
Look ma! No pants!
Just plain nasty.
I didn't know her ass was so white! Yes, those are a nasty set of Altezzas in the trunk which are now gone.
See next post as the saga continues.
