Restoration: 1978 Honda Civic (1200) Part 1

[EvoCivic]

The windshield is waiting for a hot day to soften the rubber for easy removal.

Run a knife around it and slice the top off. Then you can just lift the glass out.

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

I love that body cart you built!! Amazing progress!!

[Randy]

The windshield is waiting for a hot day to soften the rubber for easy removal.

Run a knife around it and slice the top off. Then you can just lift the glass out.

I have done this before, but this rubber is not very old as I salvaged it out of my other car parted out. The car has been garaged since I put it in so it should be reusable.
Some dish soap, and I use a plastic putty knife to get behind the rubber to set it free from the metal inside and out.

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This time I have this new supper slippery lube to help. This product is so slippery I used it to push a pipe inside anther pipe over 6mt long with very little clearance. Great for putting on Radiator hoses and tight fitting tubing.

[Randy]

I put the car out on the driveway to put some good light on the new findings, holes and more holes.

Looks Good, like a turkey ready for the oven :)

Rear view, black spots where I ground the filler off to inspect the quality of previous repairs. Not too bad.

Rear view

Rotten floor and rocker panel has to go.

Is this how the mice get in. Rats!
No Rats just rust

I expect this side to be just as bad as the other.

I did not expect this, rotten through to the inside and down the door pillar to the bottom.

I told you, to the bottom, this corner was also involved in a collision including the lower door pillar.

I can expect the same on this side.
Have to figure out how to fasten one corner or the rear cross member as it is rotted out up inside the body. I could re-enforce the floor and weld-er-up.

This area is not so bad, once I get the dirty old Waxol off and the bit of rust. Is the battery going to the back in the future?

Don"t roll down the driveway now.

Door pillar is full of body filler and rotten at the bottom.

Superior Rust Protection, I am sure they are not in business now.

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I made it out to the garage last night to scrape off the rest of the black tar coating under the back seat . It was pretty chilly that it came off easily with a stiff beveled putty knife and hammer

Plan is to try one of the 3m clean strip disks and a heat gun to take the seam sealer off. With a lot of scrapping and digging with a putty knife and screw driver.

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[slow_and_ugly]

Wow. I am afraid to look to hard at mine. For now I'm just going to pretend that it can't have happened in Alberta.

Salt is hard on cars.
I remember this old 2nd gen that was parked on my street when I lived in Toronto. It literally fell apart over the time I was there. You could look though the side above the rear wheel arch into the car. One day I walked past and the licence plate mounts had rusted off and the plate was lying on the ground.

[Thor]

Superior Rust Protection.
They probably are not, but they certainly helped your car to survive this long.
Mine's survived because of Dinitrol Treatment, ugly black tat-like substance that only comes off with a wash of petrol [gas], not even kerosene does a decent job.
I only waste petrol [gas] when it's been through a carburettor first. ;-)

[Kurt]

Looking good Randy. Don't be too discouaraged by the rust!! My Honda trailer shell was a rotted out mess. I picked up a small Lincoln 110 volt mig welder and went to work. I was new at it when I started and you can see my early patches in the floor of the trunk (good and hidden away!!). Before too long I was welding patches in more visible spots and eventually even welded in new sills and a patch..butt welded no less into one of the rocker panels (the fender flare). It was some work on the parts that are more visible but sheet metal was cheap and with a bit of trimming, hammering and grinding all the rust is out now and about 80% of the body work is done. TIme was the tough part but I sort of enjoyed the metal work. Weird I knoW!

[Randy]

The windshield is waiting for a hot day to soften the rubber for easy removal.

Run a knife around it and slice the top off. Then you can just lift the glass out.

Adrian

Thanks
I did just that as the rubber was supper stuck to the metal, too cold to risk breaking the glass.

I was putting in another cable winch in the loft of the garage to lift the bins and part up out of the way and off the floor. I have to also take down some 92 Civic doors I bought and never used and my old back cannot handle that weight anymore.

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Anyway the stuff that is packed away up there I had totally forgotten about.
Go figure two front windshield seals, maybe the rubber is too hard. New OEM exhaust, New leather Recarro seats, Leather back seas from an EG Civic. Humm! will these fit a first gen?
Flared front fender, really cool. Door skins, I don't remember those. All kinds of stuff. I really did loose my mind.

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Looking good Randy. Don't be too discouraged by the rust!! My Honda trailer shell was a rotted out mess. I picked up a small Lincoln 110 volt mig welder and went to work. I was new at it when I started and you can see my early patches in the floor of the trunk (good and hidden away!!). Before too long I was welding patches in more visible spots and eventually even welded in new sills and a patch..butt welded no less into one of the rocker panels (the fender flare). It was some work on the parts that are more visible but sheet metal was cheap and with a bit of trimming, hammering and grinding all the rust is out now and about 80% of the body work is done. TIme was the tough part but I sort of enjoyed the metal work. Weird I knoW!

Thanks Kurt
It does look overwhelming and I am going to find more for sure.
I am lucky as I bought some rockers many years ago so I wont have to make them like the last car I had. I did find a rear quarter panel last night and could use it where it is holy by the gas door but that may be over kill as a fix unless I find the wheel arches are bad. I know the inner arches are toast and that will make it easier to fold the rear lip in to allow me to put my bigger wheels bask on and lower it down when I put the 1200 rear suspension in. It has a CVCC rear end and sits high.
I have to make some fixes in the wheel wells and stiffen the body before I can start removing the rot.

[bob78cvcc]

I admire your persistence and patience.
My next go around, if there is one, is to pick up a rust free west coast car.

[Randy]

Last night I cleaned up the rest of the black residue with some mineral spirits (var-sol) from the back seat.

I tried one of these disks on my mini grinder, and wow it ripped that stuff off like butter. It did a great job of removing surface rust too.

Around the back seat and along the floor the space is too tight to get the grinder in, so I used the heat gun and scrapped it off with a putty knife. It's not fast but it does save your hearing and keeps the dust down.


I cannot believe on YouTube the number of DIY'ers using a torch, that stuff is so toxic when burned and the risk of setting the under side of the car on fire is too risky.

Seam sealer makes a really nice cloud of dust when taken off with the disk.

I took a break from the inside and started to remove the undercoating from the rear wheel well so I can patch it up to run a pipe from the front to the back extended out to give me a point on witch I can rotate the car on its side. This will also stiffen the body up when I remove the inner and outer rocker and part of the floor. I may leave this in place and weld jacking points off it down through the bottom of rocker.