Morning All,

Well, as you may or may not know from my Fiesta thread I've been given the inlaws old car as they have bought themselves a new one.
Its a 2004 Honda Civic 1.6 VTEC-e in Magnetic Blue.

I picked it up from Inverness on Saturday and drove it the 130 miles or so home.
It's an alright car, it's never going to win any races... ever!...but it is an honest car that's a decent place to sit and drive.
It's only got 57,000 miles on it and has been serviced as and when required having had the timing belt changed twice due to time rather than mileage. With the last one being done in December

It has a couple of scratches and one small dent which, although they have been touched up with a touch up stick, I want to rub back and spray to hide them fully.
It also has some rust on the boot where the chrome bit above the number plate meets the corner. Will strip this down and re-spray at the same time.

I took one of the wheels off to give it a clean and see what state they are in and they appear to be pretty near mint except for the yellow staining but I couldn't find any alloy wheel cleaner hence why I only did one!
Also adjusted the handbrake as it was up at around 10 clicks so its now down at around 4 which is a nicer number for it (still not the 1 or 2 clicks of the Fiesta but I'll cope ).
Then gave under the bonnet a bit of a de-grease as it was clarted.
Followed by re-charging the air-con, don't know why other than cause I could

Took some pictures also, I know its not like me to have pictures so early in a thread but hey ho

















VTEC-YO!!! Or not, its a backwards VTEC designed for economy not speed But on that I did manage to get 47mpg out of it on the way home, which for a 1.6 petrol I thought was pretty damn good! So it does what its supposed to.

I'm a bit confused as to whether or not its a facelift or pre-facelift model as the headlights look facelift but it has the indicators in the wings. Will need to stick some pics up on some Civic forums and find out! The changeover was 2004 so it wouldn't surprise me if it was a mid facelift model.

Got a few plans for it as follows:

Change oil and filer (father in law never got round to it over the winter)
Change cabin pollen filter as its manky!
Get a decent stereo in (still to decide if I go single DIN or Double-DIN Android)
Get a new clip for the bonnet stay as its broken
Try and get some cheap gas struts for the bonnet
Get a new Gear knob as this ones worn at the top

Possible plans that I'm not decided on yet:
Type-R Seats as the standard ones aren't great
EP2 White dials
Bigger brakes (Only has 15" wheels so not sure if I can go bigger than 262mm thats on it)
Type R Three spoke wheel
Cruise control

That's about it so far.

Will keep this up to date with what ever I do to it.

Paul

P.S. I'm desperately trying to still keep the Fez

Very nice for a sensible car.

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Nice tidy car, good stuff.

Good tidy car, be a good daily drive

Not much been happening with the Civic atm.
Have bought the following bits:

Oil
Hamp Oil Filter
Genuine Honda Oil Filter (got sent by mistake as I was after the next thing)
Genuine Honda Oil Filter removal tool (don't really know why I bought this but M'eh!)
New plastic clip for bonnet stay
Spare top bit of dash off of eBay which gave me:
DIN Stereo adapter
Spare buttons for A/C, Recirc and Rear window demister (can use these to trial changing bulb colour)
Climate Control control unit

Had a look through the wiring diagrams and parts catalog regarding Auto Climate Control versus Manual Air Conditioning and the only difference is the control unit, sun light sensor and interior temp sensor. So looking to get the two remaining bits and upgrade to Climate Control. All other wiring is the same so simple case of running three wires to control unit, couple of earths from sensors and tap into the exterior temp sensor. Simples!!

Also going to install my Nokia CK-7W Bluetooth kit when I change the stereo over.

Paul

Got a few things done on the Civic yesterday as I had a cheeky wee day off and the weather was luverly

So oil and filter is changed, most of which is now on the driveway but I've left eh car parked over it so the missus doesn't see it
Got a new clip for the bonnet stay so that was changed.
And put my Sony Single DIN stereo in for just now.
Wired my Bluetooth kit up to the stereo wiring harness and gave it a quick test. Have pulled the fuses and the control box out as I didn't have time to run the mic up to the roof so its all ready once I wire in the mic to just plug in and go

What a fucking ball ache to replace the stereo!! Took ages!!

Other than that gave her a wash at the weekend.

Paul

Good progress, sounds like you are making good improvements.

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Cheers mate, nothing too drastic as it's never meant for modifying.
Will just be doing bits and bobs as they come up.

Ordered new pollen filters today too, so will get hem changed over before the weather gets too good as don't want to be putting the air-con under any extra strain having to push the air through clogged filters.

Paul

Wanted to keep this as a separate post as it's quite confusing.

When I got the car the handbrake ran up around 14 clicks, now I am used to the two clicks my Fiesta does so this wasn't good enough for me.
The adjustment is easy as it is a single nut behind the handbrake. Remove centre console rear section and adjust. So I did that and got it down to around 5-6 clicks. Bingo!!

But, then my mother in law was down and driving the car and she complained that the handbrake wasn't holding the car on a hill so went out and had a look and sure enough it wasn't holding very well.
So had a look at the discs and pads and the pads still have a fair bit of meat on them but the discs are not great. So I said that was probably the issue.

But then I thought about it some more. The handbrake was working fine before I adjusted it so I undid my adjustment and free'd up the connection from the handbrake cable tot eh caliper actuating cams.
Whilst in there with the handbrake cable disconnected I tried actuating it by hand and one side seemed to work and the other didn't. So I tried it with the hand brake cable on and both worked.

I think that what has happened is that the caliper piston has been retracted and then the handbrake has been put on before it was fully extended onto the pads via the foot brake (had something similar on my Audi) but I cannot figure out how setting the handbrake lever to more clicks makes the handbrake work yet fewer clicks and it doesnt work. The lever still pulls the same cable to the same point (when it can't be pulled any more!) other than you cannot get enough leverage due to the lower number of clicks.

So I now have it adjusted to travel all the way up to the stop and it works fine! But it should be set to 8-10 clicks according tot he manual.

Sorry for the rant, but it has and is confusing the hell out of me why it doesn't work adjusted to a fewer clicks.....