Hi! I decided to make a post about my CRX projects in english, since I've noticed I've got some visitors from other countries.
My name is Hege.
I'm a girl from Norway with a huge obsession about Hondas, especially the EF CRX!
I'm a girl from Norway with a huge obsession about Hondas, especially the EF CRX!
Therefore I now owe four of them... That's right! FOUR!
It all started with CRX number one...
A rare model from 1991 with a dual carb 1,4 litre D-series engine. (D14A1)
I was actually searching the web for a new car, since my old Civic was pretty worn out at the time...
I had fell in love with the Honda CRX's look, so that's what I was searching for...
A rare model from 1991 with a dual carb 1,4 litre D-series engine. (D14A1)
I was actually searching the web for a new car, since my old Civic was pretty worn out at the time...
I had fell in love with the Honda CRX's look, so that's what I was searching for...
And there it was!
It was the cheapest of all the CRX's that was listed, had low mileage (112000 km) and it seemed to be free of rust and dents -at least big dents.
The only thing that was weird when I saw the pics was that it had an automatic transmission!
Guys at the Club Honda Norway forum was sceptic to this car... 90 horsepower engine and automatic transmissmion didn't exactly float their boats I guess! Until one of them said it was known of being a very rare model made only for the European market, and therefore maybe it wasn't such a bad deal after all...
It was the cheapest of all the CRX's that was listed, had low mileage (112000 km) and it seemed to be free of rust and dents -at least big dents.
The only thing that was weird when I saw the pics was that it had an automatic transmission!
Guys at the Club Honda Norway forum was sceptic to this car... 90 horsepower engine and automatic transmissmion didn't exactly float their boats I guess! Until one of them said it was known of being a very rare model made only for the European market, and therefore maybe it wasn't such a bad deal after all...
But I didn't have enough money at the moment, and after some weeks the car disappeared from the listing on the site :-(
One day, my mom had to pick up my sister and her two kids on the train station coming home to visit us from Sweden. They went to the gas station for a quick stop there before driving home, and mom saw a car there that looked pretty much like the car I had shown her that I found on the webpage www.autodb.com.
It had a "for sale" print on its rear window which info about price and mileage seemed similiar to the car I had printed out from the website. When she told me this, I instantly got my print of the add for the CRX, texted the guys number asking if it was still for sale; and hey!
Not only was it for sale, it was parked in my home town for some weeks too!!
It was pretty destined to happen I suppose!
It was pretty destined to happen I suppose!
April 4'th 2005 the car was mine!
And since it's such a rare model, I'll keep it forever!
Here it is at home standing next to my old Civic:
The CRX EE6 went through many changes over the years I used it as my daily driver.
It started when some blind ass dude backed his Mercedes into my car at a parking lot once, which resulted in a nasty dent in the passenger side door! Since the paint on the car was already pretty worn, and the car had some minor dents and scratches here and there, I had a full respray done to it for a cheap price :-)
Very nice and shiny... :-) Oh yeah; angel eyes installed! It was very popular back then, remember?? *LOL*
I got it some new 17" wheels afterwards -which was too big for it anyway! Haha!
Then I went to the race track (The Arctic Circle Raceway) on a Honda meet with it in 2007.
With this small engine, I had a hard time keeping up with the others, so I was pushing a bit too far not hitting the brakes too often, and that's when it happened! I lost control and smashed my poor CRX into the barrier...
I don't have the pictures from right after the accident on this computer, but the brand new wheels was scratched up and full of grass after going sideways off the track and into grass and gravel + my right rear light was shattered into pieces.
This picture is taken in 2010 when I worked as a car parts dealer, where the boss there who was familiar with fixing dents took care of it for a cheap price.
But it still looked great in pictures before this dent was taken care of!
Here is a couple pictures of it with the Rota Flight wheels on.
I think they are taken in 2008.
Very nice and shiny... :-) Oh yeah; angel eyes installed! It was very popular back then, remember?? *LOL*
I got it some new 17" wheels afterwards -which was too big for it anyway! Haha!
Then I went to the race track (The Arctic Circle Raceway) on a Honda meet with it in 2007.
With this small engine, I had a hard time keeping up with the others, so I was pushing a bit too far not hitting the brakes too often, and that's when it happened! I lost control and smashed my poor CRX into the barrier...
I don't have the pictures from right after the accident on this computer, but the brand new wheels was scratched up and full of grass after going sideways off the track and into grass and gravel + my right rear light was shattered into pieces.
This picture is taken in 2010 when I worked as a car parts dealer, where the boss there who was familiar with fixing dents took care of it for a cheap price.
But it still looked great in pictures before this dent was taken care of!
Here is a couple pictures of it with the Rota Flight wheels on.
I think they are taken in 2008.
Worn plastic angel eyes head lights was a no go after dark!
I picked up on the JDM style a bit, and here's how the car looked like before I parked it last year:
The main reason why I parked it is this:
A typical view on a rainy day...
Which is why I bought my 2004 Honda Accord last year to use as my daily driver.
The CRX will be taken care of when I'm finished with CRX #2 -which I'm learning how to paint at this moment!
Because of the devastating accident with the EE6 on the race track + my boyfriend breaking up with me two weeks later, I needed something else to put my mind on. I was SO upset my baby had this ugly dent on its rear end, a crushed rear light -which was custom tinted with black and clear coat paint; in other words IRREPLACEABLE - compared to the fact that it was only a year ago since I got the car painted and the wheels was BRAND NEW and flawless before that accident too!
So... A buddy and I went on a road trip to get me another CRX that he had seen in an add on the web. It was supposedly newly painted, and everything sounded fine.
This was the ED9 model with a bigger engine (D16Z5) that I perhaps could use for daily drive, the track or a project to get my mind off my ex boyfriend and the not so flawless EE6...
But since we drove like 466 miles to get this car, I felt like I had no choise... stupid as that sounds!
Because the car was not at all flawless... Great, it had fresh paint! But the left door handle was missing due to theft, the instrument panel + plastic surrounding the ignition key was cracked because thieves had tried to steal the car while they were at it...
Other than that, the engine and transmission seemed to be in a good shape.
...Exept from one thing...
After leaving the sellers and been driving for half an hour or so, the car started loosing power.
The speedometer collapsed, the RPM needle went crazy jumping up and down, and the battery light was glowing on my instrument panel...
I started changing gears as the power went down, thinking about maybe there was something wrong with the clutch! But no... The car absolutely DIED on me!!
We found out that it was the alternator causing the trouble.
SO FAR FROM HOME!! And the sellers were long gone...
I forgot to mention we traveled with a CRX to get the CRX!
I bet not too many people has seen a CRX towing another CRX though! *LOL*
But that's what we had to do to get me off the road to see what was wrong the first time the car stopped.
It was a hell of a road trip that I'll never forget! I think we used 24 hours to get home, concidering having to stop almost every time my battery light was glowing, opening up the hood and beating the crap out of that stupid alternator to get it working *LOL*
At the end we even had to switch batteries between our cars!
Funny shit to notice his car alarm closed his doors AND SUNROOF one time we swapped batteries, having to call the police to get the doors unlocked! It was pouring rain and really dark in the middle of the night, and the police used 45 minutes to come help us there in the middle of nowhere!
Haha, that was frustrating! But still we made it home!
And this is how the CRX ED9 -CRX number two in my collection looked like when I bought it in august 2007:
Rusty sunroof off course.
Cracked up and nasty instrument cluster...
Mobile phone holder on the center console: I don't like it when people put screws into plastic interior parts! And off course the climate control is cracked. Common problem with these cars.
I did however fix some of the problems with the car after I got it home:
Yeah, I know it's a bad picture, but I have a nice cluster with no cracks in it now :)
Heater control panel also swapped with a new one:
My dad did some welding here...
Nice and flawless, no rust!
The exhaust was making me crazy driving this car home... See why:
Old and new:
Nice, shiny... And the sound from that dual exhaust muffler is just... WOW!
Original plans for this car was to make it like something from "the Fast and the Furios"-movies!Body kit taped on it to see how that looked like:
Since I have no idea on how to mount and adjust bodykits, I figured I had to save up some money to use on this car in the future. The plan was this body kit and candy red paint!
But in order to get a cheaper paint job, I figured having to do the prepping before paint myself.
And then the car just stood there... For years and years as a non finished project, stripped for paint, interiors and other stuff! Just the thought of doing EVERYTHING that was left to do with it was exhausting...
I started lacking interest for this problem car, and beginning to fall more and more in love with racing...
That's why I decided to get myself a cheap track rat!
A CRX EE8 with the 1,6 litre VTEC engine! (B16A1)
One of the members of Club Honda Norway had imported one from the Netherlands.
It was not a beauty, not registered for road use in Norway without having to pay gigantic taxes to get white license plates on it... But for the race track I concidered it to be a funny car + it was cheap and I always wanted the CRX with a VTEC engine!
August 13 2009 I went to Trondheim and bought it.
It looked like this when I got it...
But off course, I had to do some changes with it...
Coilovers, new wheels (Rota Track R2 with candy orange lip)...
candy orange valve cover, carbon hood and sunroof +++
The cheap track rat became a pretty nice "shabby" car after I put my hands on it :)
Here with a custom made stripe over the car with the Toyo R888 tire track.
I am getting rid of it soon. Tape didn't stick too well, and the car looks better and cleaner without it.
But... It's just because... RACECAR!?
Then one day came, and a well known CRX build from one of the Club Honda Norway members was for sale. I had seen it on the Club Honda meet in july 2010, but I never thought much about the possibility of it maybe ending up in my hands some day.
The owner actually was a buddy of my ex boyfriend. Both members of Club Honda Norway.
This CRX was an EE8 model, but the B16A1 engine was built with a Vortech supercharger!
When this came up for sale, I just couldn't resist...
Too bad the car turned out to be the worst cat in the hat-buy I'd ever made...
Its undercarriage seemed like it had been soaked in salt water for two years. Screws were loose, the engine was leaking oil like there was no tomorrow +++
I didn't get to test run the car much before buying it, since I kind of bought it unseen AND had it brought litteraly to my front door!
I trusted my ex on the fact that the car was in good shape. I even got a spare engine and a huge pile of parts from another CRX together with the car when I bought it, which sort of is a plus...
I've spent many hours on this thing, only to see that once something was fixed, something else went wrong! The worst part about the car now is that the brakes don't work even though I fully overhauled all four calipers on it!
I suspect maybe the brake booster is broken, because there is no air in the system.
Well, pictures as you might wish :-)
Here it is before I bought it:
And here it is, a couple months later, parked outside my parents house!
Since I thought the car was fine, the only thing I chose to focus on after buying it was cleaning up interiors and eventually turning this CRX into a typical "Hege the CRX-girl CRX" without spending too much time and money on it.
Well...
It all started after cleaning the car outside seing that the paint job was pretty cheap and not well done...
Looks okay in the right light though :)
Time to go clean the inside, since the previous owner was a smoker :(
Time to go clean the inside, since the previous owner was a smoker :(
Carpet smelled bad... There was an ugly stereo cable I wanted to get rid of, so I took out the back seat... And I just went all in, getting rid of everything inside the car!
(Yep, this car once was celestial blue.)
I even noticed some rust around the asphalt mat areas.
Sooo, I had to get rid of them too!
I also started getting a little interest for carbon vinyl together with a friend of mine.
More rust to be taken care of:
Hatch area treated with some rust eating oil.
I decided this car had to be WHITE! Like really WHITE everywhere!
So... New carpet!
New steering wheel:
Carbon vinyl project is taken to a higher level:
The bright white vinyl was really shiny out in the sun:
Pretty big difference in colors, huh?
I needed to get this job done REAL GOOD!
Since the windshield had a crack in it and needed replacement, it was only natural to take it out... Only to discover more rust :(
Since the windshield had a crack in it and needed replacement, it was only natural to take it out... Only to discover more rust :(
Nice opportunity to wrap the A-pillars getting a clean non-cut look!
Car is finally fully wrapped, and new windshield installed:
Installing new roof moldings:
Grey transparent vinyl on head lights, side markers and turn signals... Making sure to match the rear lights which is painted in clear coat with a dash of black.
And Because racecar (Toyo R888 track pattern -custom made stripe):
I also had the old el-cheapo home made exhaust system removed and replaced with a brand new one:
I decided to do something spectacular with the spare valve cover I had lying around after replacing the valve cover on my blue EE8...
Hours and hours of sanding and buffing later:
Brake caliper overhaul:
Next: Giving them a paint job!
Pictures of the car this summer:
On the track.
This is where I lost the brakes + the engine didn't run as well as I had hoped concidering the Vortech Supercharger...
Haven't figured out what's wrong with the brakes yet, but one thing for sure is that I've got enough projects for years to come with all my cars!
Haven't figured out what's wrong with the brakes yet, but one thing for sure is that I've got enough projects for years to come with all my cars!
And I love it :)
