general New member

[chindeck]

Hi everyone,

My name's Nishan, since ive been reading through some of the threads I figured id make an introductory post 🙂

 

Ive got an manual MC1 aerodeck with a D16W4 on 118k that I picked up as an MOT failure about a month ago for £800, its got an enormous stack of history and im the 3rd owner

 

Been fixing her up slowly over the last month, getting the bits done for a fresh MOT, rear passenger caliper was seized when I bought it and was pretty much the first thing I did along with discs and pads both sides on the rear. 

Next issue to sort was the horn not working which I stupidly assumed was the clockspring since I had the exact same issue on my first car which was a D14 mb6 and I know its a common issue on old civics. Replaced it and ended up buying a used horn since my multimeter packed up so I just guessed it had to be one of the two. Replaced both the sidelight bulbs since they had burnt out and lastly i had an exhaust leak from the mid section and backbox, since someone had previously taken a few speed bumps pretty enthusiastically and put a nice collection of holes on the bottom managed to score the backbox and mid section for £100 on ebay brand new and almost finished fitting it last weekend, just need to drill out the old bolts to the cat that are pretty in there and that should pass me the MOT fingers crossed 😀.

 

Im thinking of doing some coolant bypass bits as I've heard its a good modification on the D series engines.

If anyone knows a thread that explains how best to go about it or has done it themselves please let me know, would be much appreciated

 

Im aiming to put it on the road as my daily as I'm currently dailying a manual honda accord CM2 2.2 diesel which has a nasty bit of timing chain rattle, so im gonna switch them around and daily the civic while I replace the timing chain along with any other bits that need doing.

 

Any info in regards to preventative maintenance on the aerodeck would be greatly appreciated as im not super well versed in the common issues these suffer from.

 

Cheers guys 😁

 

[Dave]

Welcome mate. Nice looking Aerodeck that, looks clean. Things to prevent on these... rust,rust and rust! Rear arches, sills at rear and also inner sills. They also rust away from left to right along the boot floor, kinda up behind the tank out of sight. 

Mechanics wise, usual thing like giving them a good service to keep them on song. Your timing belt is probably due changing too.

[chindeck]

Cheers for the reply Dave

 

Done some basic service, oil and filter and brake bleeding, air filter was bramd new when i bought it as well as the spark plugs looking fairly new, previous owner only had it 2 years and the bloke before him had it from new, its had some sort of rust prevention work previously on the rear arches from the original owner. Didnt know the boot floor was a common spot on these so will give a good check when I have the chance.

 

Anyone know about exhaust manifold fitment on these? Got a friend with a japspeed 4-2-1 from his d16 eg hatch that he's k swapping. Would be a nice upgrade if it fits

[SirPaperbag]

Basically any D-Series manifold will fit all kinds of engines out of that particular family. Except D17s, those are "special" (aka the worst engines Honda ever made).

Got a 4-2-1 header myself that I bought when my car still had the stock D14 in it and it directly fit my D16Z9 without any modifications.

 

And I can attest to the rust concerns - my rear arches were pretty bad (but still manageable) when I got mine, the front corners where the fenders meet the sideskirts were rotten through and the rear corners are also slowly starting to bloom, as well.

Definitely make sure to check those spots when you've got the time!

 

Oh, and your distributor is probably going to die at some point. All of them do, it's kind of inevitable.

Do yourself a favor and don't get one of those repro units when it finally goes out - Blueprint and Yingzhen and whatnot units are all Chinesium garbage.

The only high-quality replacement I could find was one of those rather tacky sounding "Dragon Fire" units, but quality-wise they are pretty much OEM+, made in the US (not China), and even provide a stronger spark than the stock dizzys do.

 

Other than that, welcome to the club! :)

[chindeck]

Thanks for the reply SirPaperbag,

Really useful info on the manifold, I'm holding off on it for the moment as im unsure whether I want to go down the turbo route or not, havent found a solid answer in terms of a reliable power figure on stock engine internals when going for a turbo setup (answers seem to vary so if anyone has a solid answer I'd love to hear it 😀).

 

Ive had a fair check on the rust front and the previous undersealing work seems to be fairly extensive (luckily) so im not worried about immenent issues for now

 

Ill bear the distributor in mind, thanks for the recommendation on a decent replacement too much appreciated

 

Hoping to do some ecu modification to make use of any upgrades in regards to making power, have come across a lot of people talking about OBD1 conversions to make this process easier, any info on anything ecu related would be really useful! 😁

[SirPaperbag]

With ECU stuff OBD1 really is the way to go, because whether or not you decide to chip it or put an S300 in it, it's basically the best choice to use an old OBD1 ECU.

I've actually got a S300 installed in my Civic right now and since it's a pre-facelift it already was OBD1 from the factory.
But OBD1 conversions are relatively easy and well documented online.

 

Depending on your personal tastes you could also go with a standalone ECU like a Link or Haltech unit.
They cost roughly the same as a S300, but offer a very different featureset and more modern management options. (But they are not plug-and-play)

 

And while I don't have any experience turboing cars, I'd say a relatively safe power figure for a D16 would be 160 to 180-ish hp. (Those conrods are thin)

Already took apart a spare D16Z6 that I bought this summer, as I plan to completely rebuild it for a high comp NA build, and when I held those tiny little spaghetti-conrods in my hands I almost couldn't believe that those suckers manage to survive regularly hitting 7500RPM!