honda civic engine bay prep/paint/cut/buff

[redboost10]

hey guys. some of you may remember me...haven't been on in a while. so after a long up and down race season, we decided she needed a new coat of paint under the hood over the winter, and since we decided to get rid of the brake booster and rear brakes it was perfect timing to strip the entire bay.

here is a picture of the car this season. finally figured out some timing issues we were having, but still ran out of good weather and finished the season with a best of 10.0 @ 149 at only 30 psi of boost. whole new setup going in for this upcoming season, new roller rockers and big lift cams, whole new longblock from oil pan to valve springs.

so after scuffing off the old clear in the bay, i decided to spend the extra day removing all that crappy seam sealer from the factory. we then sprayed it with some 2k urethane primer and wet sanded with 600.

this being a garage paint job, we knew we were going to have to do some wetsanding and buffing/polishings. tried to keep the dust down as best we could by wetting the floor of the garage and putting tarps up over the doors but its gonna happen. here are some pictures after a couple coats of base and 3 or 4 coats of clear. in some of these pictures you can also see our carbon fiber firewall plugs, haha. hope they pass tech. my air compressor also did not have a pressure regulator and its in a wood shop that gets a lot of moisture so that was drained ahead of time and a filter and regulator were connected to the gun.

in some of the above pictures you can see the specs of dirt on the shock towers.

im waiting for my buddy to get the finished pics after wetsand/buff/polish uploaded from his d700. we just finished up yesterday. will updated asap. thanks for looking guys.

 

[67Customs]

Wow. That is going to look awesome.

 

[ASPHALT ROCKET]

Great job, glad to see you posting again. That is a helluva lot of mph for a 10 flat, I am sure the 60 ft times are slow with that mph.

 

[redboost10]

thank you for the comments. haha, yes, 1.68 60 ft. and we had smoke coming off the slicks in 3rd gear. was not a pretty site at all.

still working on getting the finished pictures uploaded. i actually finally got the nerve to use a rotary...figured why not, its just the engine bay.....and i didnt want to see how long it would take a pc and sip to bring back the shine after wetsanding, haha.

 

[redboost10]

after wetsanding with 2000, wool pad on the rotary with sip, and pc with white 5.5 pad with nano, this is what we finished with. i was afraid wetsanding would just move the dirt back and forth so i was a little paranoid at first but all-in-all im happy with the outcome. now once the swirls accumulate on the exterior maybe ill grab the rotary instead of the pc, haha.

we also had to hand polish some areas as you can see in the last picture due to it being an engine bay and the pads not being able to fit in some tight areas.
in the first pic, the fender covers the rougher area so we did not spend much time on those areas.

 

[sullysdetailing]

Looks great. That MPH is good for low 9's. Bigger slicks and suspension?

 

[redboost10]

thank you! we run 24.5x9x13 mt slicks with some drag race specific suspension, along with traction bars. i actually rolled the front fenders a couple weeks ago hoping to drop the front of the car a bit more than before to keep the weight up front. plan to add some preload to the front coilovers and traction bars as well, see what it does.

the car was lifting the front pretty bad. these hondas are weird because they have the backwards rotating engine which makes it difficult to design a torsion bar setup, so i gotta settle for my traction bars for now.

we can run a 26" slick, but its a little rough on the drivetrain and i think we can do some great things with the smaller slick.

 

[christian900se]

I laughed a bit when you said it was 'only' running 30psi. That sounds like a pretty incredible machine, what kind of times and trap speeds are you looking to get into next season?

Nice job on the engine bay btw, no one could ever tell that was a garage job.

 

[redboost10]

thank you for the compliments! haha yeah only 30 psi. we are running a 72mm turbo so 30 psi isnt really....efficient for this turbo i guess you can say, it needs more air to push through the motor. the 24.5 slick is our hold up, hoping to get to mid 9's with roughly the same boost once we get the new cams in the motor.

 

[Lasthope05]

sullysdetailing ~ 150 MPH is good for mid 8's easily but your right he does need some bigger slicks like a pair of 26".

RedBoost10 ~ It looks good. I did the exact same thing to my track car also. I stripped the bay, removed the seam fillers repainted everything(was gonna shave but got lazy.) Are you running a 42r? if so you need to get that baby into the upper 40s, lower 50s psi. Best Ive ran was a 10.8@125 35R@32psi.

 

[redboost10]

its very similar in size to a 42r, its the bullseye/borg warner s372 with the race cover compressor. rwd and fwd are two totally different ball games. 150 on a fwd is right on par with a mid to high 9 sec pass, where as 150 for a rwd is definately a mid to low 8.

but like you said, these 72mm turbos definately need to push some air to be more efficient. 30 psi is just getting this turbo spooling. im a broke college student so im trying to stay away from the 26 slicks, haha.

 

[redboost10]

kinda starting to look like a car again. got the brake lines done, ran them through the frame just to do something different. made a battery tie down bracket out of a chunk of aluminum. thought id share some progress pictures.

 

[santov]

Wow! Great paint job.

 

[redboost10]

thank you for the comment!

 

[Slava]

Great looking car and nice work on the engine bay.
What motor are you running?

 

[redboost10]

thank you. block is a integra gsr 2.0L and the head is a civic si 1.6L dual cam

 

[Slava]

thank you. block is a integra gsr 2.0L and the head is a civic si 1.6L dual cam

Great set up.
I'm running a similar set up but mine is 1.9L all motor set up in 89 CRX.

 

[Mike PhillipsMike Phillips is verified member.]

Nice work on the engine compartment, I've done this a few times and it's a lot more work than most people would know.

:dblthumb2:

 

[redboost10]

your crx should run pretty good! any 1/4 mile times yet?

thank you, yes it is quite a bit of work. not just the prep, but the wetsanding and polishing is what beat us up, haha.

 

[Slava]

your crx should run pretty good! any 1/4 mile times yet?

thank you, yes it is quite a bit of work. not just the prep, but the wetsanding and polishing is what beat us up, haha.

No times yet. It was just put together in Nov. I'm hoping to get it tuned on E85 and on the track in March. I'm thinking it'll be in low 13's to high 12's. With altitude of 5280 NA cars don't get all that fast unfortunately.