The saga continues...
While some of you guys and gals were out frolicking in scenic Four Oaks, I spent most of the day tinkering with the Civic. In my (misguided?) quest to clean up the engine bay and repaint all the rusty brackets, I ran into an itty-bitty teensy-weensy minor problem. I was trying to remove the fuel filter from the hard feed line and even though I soaked the entire thing in PB Blast every day for 4 days straight, it snapped like a twig with very little effort from my line wrench. Doh!
Busted Hard Fuel Line:
Do you see that mangled little nub in the lower right of the picture partially covered in yellow paint? That's supposed to look like a slightly shorter version of the tube in the upper left corner of the picture. That can't be good, right? Right! Suddenly my little Civic project just got a bit more "interesting"! If you define interesting as the desire to poke your eye out with a sharp stick, that is...
Here is a picture of the #$%@#$!!! fuel filter and the rusty bracket:
And a closeup of the rusty bracket:
See all that rust? I couldn't let that stand! Unfortunately my compulsiveness got the best of me and instead of just leaving well enough alone, I just *had* to clean that stupid bracket. Apparently I need to switch medication 'cause whatever I'm taking isn't working anymore.
OK, maybe I just need to start taking medication-- I'm not entirely sure anymore.
Anyway, you can see the mangled end of the hard fuel line sticking out of the nut that attaches it to the bracket. I've always wondered where the other end of those lines went and now I had a perfect chance to find out!
The other side of the hard fuel lines:
That doesn't seem that bad, does it? Right! In order to get to that spot in the inside of the firewall, I had to disassemble a wee bit of the interior. How much is a "wee bit"? (I have a feeling that somewhere Ryan is laughing hysterically to himself knowing what is getting ready to happen.)
This much:
Yea, the entire dash had to come out! If you look closely, you can see the fuel lines snaking their way to the left and then up behind where the steering column assembly would be. So that meant if I wanted decent access to the lines, the steering column had to come out along with the entire pedal assembly. This is about as far as I got on Saturday evening so I'm thinking at this point that my original goal of getting the thing running by Sunday evening may be in slight jeopardy. Ya think?
That night I looked up the fuel lines on a few Honda parts sites and discovered that they weren't really all that expensive. The line I buggered up was ~$30 which I didn't think was too bad. I also contemplated making my own lines and did a bunch of research but in the end, I decided that dying in a leak-induced fire probably wouldn't be very fun.
Being the hard-charging go-getter that I am, I decided that Sunday was better spent goofing off so I didn't make any progress with the car. An unfortunate side-effect of that was spending some "quality time" in front of the computer researching various ways to make my project even more complicated. I mean, if I'm going to reach my goal of building this car in 4294967296 excruciating steps, I clearly needed to complicate things further.
I really wanted to try my hand at bending some tube so I decided I would get rid of the goofy cross-braking system that the Civic (if not all Hondas?) has. For those that aren't aware, the stock braking configuration on the Civic ties the right-front brake together with the left-rear and the left-front with the right-rear. Why? The only reason I've ever seen is that if you develop a leak at one of the corners, you'll still have brakes at the other 2 corners. I honestly don't see how that works in practice but that seems to be the popular theory.
I figured that if I screwed something up trying to bend new hard tubing for the braking system, I would always have the engine and transmission to help slow the car. And that beats dying in a fire after messing with the fuel tubing any day! More on that later...
At this point I figured I've stuck my head down the rabbit hole so I might as well see how far it goes.
It goes this far:
After removing the rest of the interior (with the exception of the head liner), I could now easily trace the hard fuel lines back to the fuel tank. You can see them running along the driver's side passenger compartment in the picture below. If you look really closely, you can see that there are 3 lines total: 1 feed line, 1 return line and 1 emissions-related line. I forget exactly what the emissions-related line is hooked up to in the engine compartment but I'll figure it out when I reassemble the entire thing, right?
3 hard fuel lines running along driver's side passenger compartment:
3 hard fuel lines disappearing under the car:
You can see in the picture above that the fuel lines must meet the gas tank somewhere after disappearing into the rubber grommet. I pried the grommet up to see what was under there and was met with another surprise.
Surprise! More rust:
There comes a time in every project where you step back and marvel at your accomplishments. This ain't one of them!
It looks like I'll be replacing all 3 hard fuel lines "just in case" which actually won't be too bad. The total cost will be under $100 and it will give me some peace of mind. Unlike most of the other parts on the car, these fuel lines aren't shared with their sister CRX so I don't have the option of using my parts car assuming they were in decent shape. For the sake of safety, it's probably smarter to go new here anyway.
As I sat there in the bare interior, I looked around and noticed that if I ever decided to become a drug dealer, I knew exactly where I would stash my "stuff". I'm pretty sure a few kilos would fit without too much trouble. Failing that, I'm also pretty sure I could up my "dead hookers in the trunk" count although these holes weren't technically in the trunk.
Say hello to my little friend:
I know exactly what you're thinking at this point: "That is one bad-arse Civic."
That's so weird, I was thinking the same thing! OK, I was really thinking that I may have to revisit my policy against heavy drinking...
If there is a bright side to the project, I must say that I've already learned a ton and I haven't even started reassembling yet. This will be a great opportunity to pick up a few new mechanical skills on a car that could use the attention. Even if the whole thing falls apart right after I get it running again, it isn't a big deal and I can always find another cheap shell. A cheap shell with no rusty brackets!!!1!
In the process of stripping the interior, I almost managed to break even on costs with what I found.
Score! I'm going to the Sizzler!
Yep, I found a proverbial mint in loose change scattered about the interior. Imagine that. I also found a real mint but I decided it was covered in too much fuzz and dirt to eat. And if that wasn't enough, I even managed to add to my tool collection.
Score again! I am the luckiest man alive!
Yep, that's rust on the mini-pliers.
It's weird, I think every car I've purchased in the past 10 years came with free tools. I'm not sure what that means but I can't complain.
That wrapped up my Saturday and unfortunately I feel like I'm further away from finishing than I was last Saturday. Oh well-- it's the journey, not the destination or something...
Progress? Sure, if you define progress as the desire to poke your eye out with a sharp stick:
Jim
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