So the towing rig rolled into our home base just after dark on Tuesday, the 23rd of October.  Heather needed to run straight out, because she had a program at the library that night, so I had to be content with sipping on a beer and standing at the front door staring at the car on the dolly.

The girls climbed in and had some fun blowing the horn.  They really love doing that.

After Heather got home, I tried very unsuccessfully to push the car off of the dolly with Heather behind the wheel to apply skillful and timely braking when needed.  Peter, our next door neighbor, just happened to be outside and asked if I needed help.  I sure did.  We couldn’t get the car over the hump, so his son Alex came out too.  He seemed to have been sleeping, so that made me feel very bad and very humble for good neighbors.

Well the three of us gave one good heave and it was off the dolly and down the driveway.

The first order of business for me was to blast the car with clean water and wash and wax.

For some reason, I decided to work on Hondas.  I was inspired by the late-model Civic hatchback we saw in the paddock that first night.

But what kind of Honda?  Something small, something cheap.  It was pretty much down to a Civic, but then I remember the “CRX”…a Civic-like vehicle that was very cool in its day.  A thorough daily scouring of Cragslist uncovered one for sale in the Chesterton, Indiana area.

I started a correspondence with the seller.  This particular car, a 1989 Honda CRX Si, with a stock D16A6 engine, had many problems.  The engine was blown, had a history of overheating, a busted windshield, and a pretty good amount of body rust.

On the 19th of October, I sent out an email to my friends:

So the plot thickens.

Jason, the seller, called me tonight, unsolicited.  Said he tried to reach me earlier and that from my emails, it sounded like I had a lot of questions so he wanted to chat.

He’s firm at $600 because he claims to be able to part it out for a good amount more than that, but doesn’t want to screw around doing that.  If he can’t get $600 he will, though.

He did tell me he parted one thing off of it already…for some guys who were racing last weekend in Joliet.  Asked me if that’s what I was talking about 🙂  I said, yeah.  He said, yeah, they called me desperately and said they’d be right over and drove all of the way from Joliet to get the wiper motor and the armatures off of it.

• Block is pretty much shot, I’m assuming.  He had a blown head gasket and drove it for a while before checking it out and noticed he was leaking coolant.  #3 and #4 cylinders were polished mirror smooth, but he replaced the gasket and it drove “fine” after that, albeit burning a bit of oil.
• On his way to work one morning it started making a really bad knocking sound, he knew what that meant and before he could hit the exit the motor died.  It “seized up” but he was able to unseize it and restart it.  Oil came out the “front”, but he can’t see any holes in the block.
• He used it to go 100 mi. round trip from Michigan every day
• Got about 275,000 mi on the whole vehicle.  Body has a decent amount of rust but the structural stuff is still intact.
• New brake parts, small leak in the right rear cylinder
• He lost his hood at one point and it busted the windshield.  It has a new hood on it.
• Moonroof works, A/C parts are new but there’s a leak somewhere.  It will charge up but all leak out after some time.  It’s an R-12 system 🙁
• Hatch glass and head/marker/tail lights are all intact
• Interior is intact

Forgot to mention

• New front wheel bearings
• Transmission is still “great”, shifts perfectly, clutch only has about 50k miles on it, he has a “short shifter” on it.

Alan wrote me back:

It turns out that the pictures in the Craigslist ad were…flattering, in that the damage to the windshield and the far more extensive rust on the driver’sside is not immediately apparent.  But the engine, apart from having a thrown rod, and the engine compartment seems to be in decent shape.  The interior is in decent shape, and I have new front fenders and a whole bunch of spare parts in the trunk.

But I was sold.  I picked it up on Tuesday the 23rd of October and brought it home on a dolly, using Mama and Daddy’s sweet Toyota Sienna.

The D16A6 is a 1.6 L, SOHC, 16-valve four cylinder that makes 108 hp.  There seems to be a pretty decent sized aftermarket and it shouldn’t be too hard to rebuild the engine.

I’ve never tackled something like this before so it should certainly be a learning experience.  That or Heather gets fed up and has it towed away.

We rewind the clock to the weekend of October 13-14, 2012.  I was invited to participate in a crapcan race in Joliet, IL., “24 Hours Of Lemons/American Irony 2012”.  The race was held at the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, IL.  We were “Team Resignation” (Facebook page).

It was a cold, rainy, windy weekend.  We were driving a ’91 Ford Escort.  We had an animated Richard Nixon head on the top of the car.  It was a complete and unbelievable adrenaline rush.  I had a coolant leak while out on the track, and even though I was a complete rookie, in the rain, blinded by water and fogged up glasses, noticed the “Check Coolant” warning light.  Throttled down and made it back into the pit and said,

“Hey, I got a ‘CHECK COOLANT’ light.”

Kiko said, “good thing you came in.  The radiator is empty!”

Later in the day, I’m flying down the track and I notice the air intake box lean over about 30 degrees.  Say, “well that can’t be good.”  Back into the pits and good thing because the air box was being held on my the MAF sensor wires.  Thankfully, I was not driving later in the day when the brake line was abraded through by the right front tire, and Alan had a complete brake failure going into turn one.  The tire wall stopped him with minimal damage.

It was a terrific and exhilarating weekend.  I was amazed at how handy the people were, and realized that this is not rocket science.  I’ve always wanted to be able to do this kind of maintenance on a car.

Alan’s caution to me was, “I have to warn you that this may become addictive.  You’ll be scouring the roadside for $500 cars.”