1989 EF7 Restoration

[kdevitt]

I was holding off on sticking this build up for a while, but have had a few curious georges land on my driveway recently taking photos of it, so might as well update.

I have wanted one of these for decades, literally. Its been 21 years since I tried in vain to do a deal on a CRX locally - which I later found out was an Si Exclusive. I paid a deposit on a rough looking one which I'd been told was having some cosmetic enhancements being done - never heard back from them again (although they never cashed the cheque).


When living in Australia I was adamant I'd buy one - and even bought some parts, but nothing materialised, although thankfully some of the parts are now coming in useful. More recently (3/4 years ago) I started looking at them again and figured I'd try and source one from the auctions in Japan. My requirements were pretty strict - needed to be black, needed to be an EF7, and needed to be a pre-facelift car. Zero interest in VTEC versions, or anything with the face-lifted front end. So this essentially mean I was restricting my search to a relatively rare car produced over an 18 month period or so.


By this stage though, the cars were eligible for import to the US and prices had gone nuts. An Si I bid on eventually went for €12k at auction - which would have ended up being a €16k car once shipped and cleared. At even at €16k, there was still a chance it would need substantial work.


So, when this one popped up on Facebook, I knew that while it looked like a horror show - a full restoration might end up being cheaper long term than buying one. I got in touch with a bodyshop prior to pulling the trigger to see how manageable it was - and pretty soon it was being transported direct to them.

[kdevitt]

Quite obviously, this wasn't a quick paint job type of resto. The car was inspected and a list of new parts was quickly drawn up. The reality of picking up new parts for a CRX quickly dawned on me - they are very thin on the ground.

Getting the parts took several months - but eventually I had a good used bonnet, a perfect rust free used drivers door, new wings, new bumper and new window rubbers.

I'd also sourced brand new headlight lenses, good used pre-facelift rear lights, indicators, and various other bits.





The intention was to keep it very stock looking - so original 14 inch wheels were bought, and delivered straight to Lepsons for a refurb. I had them fit new Goodyear tyres as well while they were with them.





And after 2.5 years or so, and a lot of welding the car was in primer -



And then paint!

[kdevitt]

In terms of projects I've taken on, this probably has the most involved work. Its also unusual for me to take on a car that's already been stripped - as such its hard to know whats missing, or where certain bits go. First up was putting the brand new headlights together. Even though they were bought about three years back, I hadn't unpacked these prior to getting the car onto my driveway.

The JDM headlights have plastic lenses, are renowned for not being the brightest, and the bulbs can be difficult to source. The first thing I noticed when I dug out the old headlights though was that they were also glass ones. The previous owner had obviously bought them when he was putting parts together, but never altered the wiring for them. They were actually good enough looking to keep - but the mounting frames were in bad condition so I decided to strip and paint them



This one was in ok condition -



The one on the far left wan't quite as tidy - especially in comparison to a completed one -





Pair completed -

[kdevitt]

Next up was to attempt and make some headway on some of the bits which should be easy enough to fit up to the car. The old antenna had seen better days, and was removed for the respray - leaving me with a hole in the car that needed to be sorted.



The antenna is no longer available from Honda, but the exact same one was fitted to Rovers of the same generation.





Fitting it into the car required a bit of further disassembly -



First the steering wheel came out - which required some brute force. The air vent wouldn't come out while the crash bar was in place, so that came out too.



An old coat hanger and some garden twine combined nicely to help the antenna down the A pillar



Factory fresh!



The crash bar was tidied up while it was out - it will never be seen again, but I like to know things are done properly

[kdevitt]

The idea was to get as much of the wiring out of the way while the car was a stripped. I picked up a set of power fold mirrors which had the wires chopped at one stage. I probably wouldn't have gone ahead with these if the car wasn't stripped as running the wires behind the dash would have been a pain.

First task was to extend out the wires -



It was at this stage that I noticed my mirrors had more wires than were accounted for in any of the wiring diagrams I'd found. A bit more investigation, and I realised these were not only power-fold, but heated. Rare parts are great, but it meant there was no wiring help really available. I did have one picture of them, with the plugs intact - so based my initial wiring attempts on that.

Thankfully it didn't actually take took long and the power fold function was up and running quickly enough, even if it was a bit messy.

[video=youtube;_i3kKOtHBBs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i3kKOtHBBs[/video]

[paul.cherry]

Some great stuff there Ken...you've brought another one back [^]

[Cuchullain1]

Great thread Ken, am subscribed now!

[kdevitt]

quote:Originally posted by paul.cherry

Some great stuff there Ken...you've brought another one back [^]

Cheers Paul - I knew it was a fairly full on resto when I pulled the trigger on it, am not sure I anticipated just how much work was needed though. Almost there at this stage!

quote:Originally posted by Cuchullain1

Great thread Ken, am subscribed now!

Thanks!

[kdevitt]

Next up was to check that the windows and other electrics in the door were working. Once I eventually plugged everything back where it should be, I was greeted by the sound of silence.

The door plug was very loose, so pushed it back together and the drivers side window sprung into life. No joy from the passenger side though. Within ten minutes though, the drivers window stopped working again - repeated the trick of pushing the door plug in, and it started working again. This was repeated over the course of a few weeks, until I could no longer avoid stripping out the door loom.

It wasn't immediately obvious why the plug kept slipping out - but once it I disconnected it and looked into it I could see that a screwdriver had been used to wedge the two parts of the plug apart. This had forced the plastic behind the two prongs in the picture below into the way of the body side plug. So you could push and shove, but it wasn't getting past it and was barely making contact. I rectified the plug as best I could, and it fit together a lot more snugly - the issue was permanently resolved.



Passenger side window still didn't work though. Took the plugs apart on the passenger door and the pins looked to be caked in corrosion. Used some contact cleaner and scraped each of the pins down - and we had working windows all round.

Next up was the central locking - which had seen better days



There was no wiring on the body side, nor any central locking module - so am assuming an old alarm system was controlling this.

I bought a new kit from eBay and set about installing it properly. Stripped off any additional wires in the kit for 4/5 door cars and taped off each section -



Removed the door loom once again, and decided I would add fresh pins and run the new mirror and central locking wires through the door plug. This added a significant amount of time to the install, but was happier knowing it was done neatly.



At this stage I added plugs to the mirror wiring and ran that through the door as well -



Did a quick continuity test on the wiring which confirmed that I was good to start reassembly



Once it was all assembled I quickly ran the central locking wires straight to the passenger door. As expected, it didn't work at all. Some frantic messages to Dave Robinson to pick his brain were made - he thought it was my door plug wiring or the slave motor was a dud. Ran 12v to the slave motor and it was working fine.

At this stage it all got a bit drastic -



With the wing off, the plug was easier to access. The door loom was stripped out, the interior loom was taken apart, the door plug was re-pinned. In short, 3 full days were spent - and there were no issues with my wiring to be found.

I pulled the old master solenoid from the bin and plugged it in - and the central locking started working perfectly. As pissed as I was to lose 3 days, the sheer joy of finding the cause and having it working was immense.

I could finally start putting the door back -



A new waterproof membrane was fitted - there was no sign of the old one bar some old adhesive still on the door. I got this from PartsForCars.ie



Its a 4 door kit, but I had very little adhesive left over after doing the 2 doors.



Final piece was one of the freshly trimmed doorcards

[kdevitt]

Wiring for the headunit didn't escape the butchery at some stage -



Some tidied up wiring compared to the original -



And two complete new looms -



The headunit was sourced a few years back - a brand new and unused Honda Pioneer headunit according to the advert. Once I got round to fitting it, it obviously wasn't unused - because someone had butchered the wiring for this as well, but a new loom from eBay was plug and play and sorted it out.



For the eagle eyed among you - the headunit was sorted out before I even got the CRX back from the bodyshop, so was connected up in my E30!

Another job that I wanted to do once and forget about was the rear speakers. They're not completely inaccessible once the interior is back in, but without any interior in the car at all it gave me the chance to do them without any issues.

The old ones were pretty ancient - although I'm not sure if they were original. The speaker cable was looped around each terminal, which itself was just twisted into the original speaker cable.





I bought a relatively cheap set of Pioneer speakers - which fouled the holder by millimeter's.



I lined the holder with some foam tape to reduce any vibration rattle -





Dremelled the lip off the speakers and they fitted snugly



Put a bead of glue around the lip. Soldered on new terminals to the original speaker cable, and fitted it all up.



The speaker grilles themselves had turned a funky shade of purple with age -



A few coats of Autoglym black vinyl and carpet dye did a good job on them -