7/25/06 - This is the first day of the project. I installed the subframe and the front & rear lower control arms.

7/28/06 - I started to get the front and rear suspension installed. I found how much some of these parts were damaged for some reason. I ordered in all new hubs for the front and some other misc parts that I am going to need to keep going.

10/24/06 - This is a big day, rather then find or order the parts that I need, I came across a perfect donor car. It is a 2002 Type-S that hit something really hard in the front end. The rest of the car is near perfect needing only minor clean up to make it look brand new again!

10/29/06 - We started tearing down the donor car today and got pretty far. The majority of the interior is gone, all the fluids have been drained, and I started to cut away some of the metal that was in the way. With two of us working on it, it is going really quick.

11/09/06 - Got the motor pulled and started to pull out the brake lines and steering rack. We need full access to the fire wall so that we could transfer over the clips and wire hangers to the black RSX.

Here is the first shot of the black RSX starting to come together. We cleaned off the firewall and also started touch it up with some semi-gloss black paint. The goal is to make the car better so while we have access we are taking our time to clean and paint anything we need too.

01/20/07 - Got the dash and some of the front half of the interior installed. We also hung the doors from the donor car and also finished up the gas tank install.

01/28/07 - We have finished stripping the donor car.  We moved it out of the shop to be towed away.  I had it towed to a scrap yard and made $200 off the shell.

02/19/07 - Finished up about 90% of the interior and wiring.  Everything is hooked back up and should be ready to run.  We also hung some of the misc pieces from the donor car just to get them out of the way.

02/27/07 - Installed the motor and transmission from the donor car.

03/01/07 - After working out the final details with another race team, I have decided to go back racing.  Because of this, Project Rebuild is going to be put on hold for the time being.  Here is to be covered and stored until I feel like working on it again.  Because of how it looks right now, it has now earned the nickname of Franken Car.  While moving it we found out the transmission was screwed up and was locked up.

2/18/08 - After almost a year and a half, the project is back in the shop ready to be worked on again. I started by trying to figure out where I left off and what were the first things that needed to be taken care of.

02/20/08 - After the first day didn't work out so well, I talked to Tony Palo at T1 Race Development and he explained to me the way to patch them up using tig welding instead. I followed his advice and it made a world of difference. It took me a day to make the clean up everything, make the patches, and weld them in. This is the first time I have ever tig welded upside down on my back and the first time I have ever welded anything this thin so the welds are not that great but they work. I am sure with more practice I would have been able to do pretty dime welds but I don't think I did too bad for my first time with this type of work.

02/21/08 - Once the patches were filled, I took some metal sealer and applied that around each of the patches on the top and bottom. This was a to prevent water from getting into either side of the patch and rusting out the trunk. I left that to dry overnight, sanded them down as best I could and tried to get them to blend in.

02/22/08 - Here is the final day of the trunk repair and the start of finishing up the interior.  I started by painting the top side of the trunk with a primer and then a flat black but that didn't come out as good as I thought it would.  I then went over it with a light coat of glossy black but again, just not was I was looking for.  To be honest, this was just a test anyway but I figured it would be a good test.  While the top was drying, I went ahead and sprayed the bottom with a undercoat/sound proofer.  This came out really well so I sprayed it on top side as well.  Both came our really well (way better than I had hoped) and now it is nearly impossible to tell that anything was done on the bottom side and the top looks pretty good as well.  In order to really top off the interior, I decided to install Dynamat over everything.  I figure that since everything is already out, I might as well take it that one step further.  You can really tell the difference in sound and damping with this stuff and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for that little extra out of their car.  Cheap plug, you can buy Dynamat from Club RSX from much less than local retailers: http://www.clubrsx.com/cr/dna.html.  I ended up running out of Dynamat and after researching their website, there are some other things that I would like to do as well.  So the rest of the interior is on hold for right now while I wait for the remaining Dynamat to come in.  One tip for everyone, when painting anything in your interior, make sure you mask everything off like I did.  There is a lot of fine paint particles that kick up and it will float around your car.  Also, wear gloves when installing the Dynamat, I have some cuts on my fingers from the silver top piece.

02/23/08 - Did some catchup repair work today.  As I said previous, we had an issue with the transmission.  We opened it up and rebuilt it.  We couldn't really find anything wrong with it so it might have been locked into two gears because of the accident.  I did spin the motor and that didn't have any issues.  Once the car is back up and running, I plan on doing a compression test just to make sure, but everything appears to be ok with it.  The other thing that I started on fixing is the right side suspension.  The bottom bolt was squished trying to get it out using the Honda tool.  I tried many different ways to get it out and it took destroying the bolt in order to separate it from the lower control arm.  I pulled the hub apart and found out that the new knuckle that Honda sent me was the wrong one.  This put everything on hold until I can get the parts.

02/29/08 - Some more parts showed up to finish the interior, brakes, and clutch.

03/01/08 - Exactly one year since we pulled the car out of the shop and stopped working on it.  Unlike last year, I actually got some real work done on it today.  I installed the new clutch.  I put in an Exedy Organic clutch for a little bit of an upgrade but still very streetable.  I reused the stock flywheel as I plan on testing a flywheels in the future.  I then got the trans and the motor bolted together and toss them in the car.  It went in really quick and I didn't have any issues at all.  I then started to connect up all the hoses, intake manifold, cooling system, and A/C.  I ran into an issue with the radiator.  I didn't have a stock one with stock fans so I had to do a little work to one that I ran in the race car.  In order to get it hooked up correctly to the stock wiring, I had to do some work with the stock clips.  I decided to solder them over using wire connectors.  There wasn't a lot of wire left so this would make it easier to tie everything together.  Once that was done, I got it installed and everything hooked up with no issues.  The A/C unit went in and the engine is almost done and ready to fire!

03/02/08 - Another long day of work.  I started at about 8AM and worked until about 6PM.  I got a lot done so I am really happy.  I stared by getting the rest of the miscellaneous parts installed in the motor.  I got the covers on, the battery tray painted and installed, installed the Club RSX cold air intake, and also installed the under hood fuse box.  There are a lot of pictures of the intake being installed because I am going to do an update to our current install on the website.  I also took the time to do the throttle body bypass (again extra pictures because of future install instructions) and also installed the Gates radiator hose to give better clearance with the intake.  Since I didn't have any coolant, now was the best time to do both of these things.  That process took about half the day and then I spent the other half removing the dash so that I could Dynamat behind it.  I got probably about 60% of the front fire wall done before my back decided it had enough.

03/04/08 - Put in almost a full day today working on finishing up the front of the car.  I started with the firewall and that took about an hour to finish up.  I then put down Dynamat's Xtremeliner on the floor.  This stuff is really cool, it gives you some extra cushion while it also blocks outside noise and temperature.  I am pretty sure that this will be once the quietest RSX's that anyone has ever driven in.  The only drawback that I have found with installing all this extra Dynamat is you have to fight to get some of the interior pieces installed but with a little pressure they go one like normal.  Brian & I finished out the day by installed the dash and the rest of the front interior pieces.  The only thing that is left are the seats and the front half will be completed.

03/05/08 - Today was a wrap up day of sorts.  I finished up the Dynamat in the interior.  I got the inside and outside rear fenders done, the back of the trunk and them put some scraps on the roof.  I can already tell it makes a difference, there car sounds a lot less hallow when you knock on it.  If you have the time, money, and patience's then I recommend doing it.  The only problem also, I added a good 100 to 125 pounds to the car by doing it.  There is always a price but I will overcome that in a few months.  Once that was done and the interior was back in, I hooked up the battery and tested the interior stuff.  From what I could tell, everything worked fine.  Then we put fluids in it and turned it over for the first time.  The first couple of times didn't work because of miscellaneous things but once those were worked out, it fired up just fine.  Because of how long the motor sat around you could smell dirt coming out of the exhaust.  I don't plan on using the engine for long but toward the end it was clearly up.  Now I am just waiting on parts and then it will finally be off the jack stands and it will be off to the body shop and then driving down the street.

There is also a short video of it running. To see it where it is now from where it started it pretty crazy to me. The car has sat and been neglected for over 5, almost 6, years. To see it now at over 85% complete is a cool sight for me.

VIDEO

03/11/08 - Long day worth of work but not a whole lot to update.  Most of today was just small stuff here and there.  I started with putting on the Club RSX lowering springs (no, we are not going to make them anymore).  Brian and I put on the black doors (better for the body guy since all he has to do paint the outside of the door), the fenders, hood, and other misc plastic pieces around the car.  I am still waiting on parts to get this project on the ground and able to drive it around the block.

03/12/08 - For those that have ever worked on a project like this know that to-do lists are the only way to really complete a project 100%.  You also know that you check stuff off that list as you go along so maybe one a day, maybe two a day, sometimes you don't get to check anything off.  Then you hit that one day in the project where you check of 20 things and that day was today.  It finally seems like all the little things finally started to come together.  I finally got the majority of parts that I needed from Honda and that is really what allowed us to really get things completed.  I took some time yesterday to clean and install the seats, I got the stereo working, and even switched out the key in the ignition so that I am now using the original key that the car came with.  I even found the steps in the manual on how to add the original keyless transmitter so the doors lock and unlock with it.  Some of this stuff is silly but as the project is finally nearing completion, I have realize that I want to use a few of the original pieces from the car just to make it feel like mine again.  Once all that little stuff was out of the way, I moved onto some other larger things.  The black drivers side door that I put on was completely gutted.  I took off all the parts from the blue door and put those into the black door.  That actually took a couple of hours and was much longer than I was thinking that it would.  At the same time, Brian took the time to install the correct knuckle that I had been waiting on from Honda.  Once this was complete, we put in power steering fluid, bled the brakes, and called it a night.  It doesn't seem like a lot of work but in all I put in about 10 hours of straight work and Brian put in another 5 hours.  What I can tell you, there isn't a lot of updates left before this project will be 100% complete!

I took a special picture, not to many times in your life will you see an car with an actual zero odometer.  It now reads over 1 mile just from running the car and the wheels turning.  I am glad that I remember to take it before it clicked over.

03/13/08 - I got the passenger side door completed, then finished up the front bumper, then tossed on the wheels.  I am going to use these wheels but I am going to powder coat them while the car is getting painted.  I need to replace the hatch with the black one but I didn't want to do that until it was closer to paint since there are spoiler holes in it.  Then other then some small stuff here and there it is ready to go.  Paint is about a month off and then this part of the project will be 100% done and I can move on to phase two.

The thing that I am the most excited about, I drove this car on the street for the first time since November 2002. So 5 years and 4 months since the last time it drove on the street, it hit asphalt again. The most amazing part of driving it, Brian and I didn't hear a single lose bolt or nutty noise, it seemed to be perfect. I am sure that I will find something here and there but the first trip was a true success.