Little Red Monster: Rebuild - Part 1 - New Tranny, Clutch, flywheel, headers, drive shafts, wiring relocation

I drove the car for years after getting it to where it was in the last post. I ended up selling my NSX and drove my Civic all year round, but what I should have done was get a beater for my beater. They salt the roads here in Vancouver so winter driving causes cancer for these old cars. A couple of bubbles were starting to form on the rear fenders, but nothing catastrophic.....yet.

Some years later, somebody sideswiped me and ran me up onto a curb. The fender was dented, and the front end was shifted over slightly. I figured that since the car was already in the shop, I'd get the rust bubbles looked after, but the shop I took it to (same one that did the initial re-paint) did a crap-ass job of repairing my car, despite being authorized by ICBC. First of all, the paint didn't match anymore, and I was quite pissed off about that, not to mention the orange peel and paint runs they added to the paint. They also didn't notice the frame was no longer straight, and after a few months, one of the drive shafts would start to pop out.

About two weeks after I got the car back, the rust bubbles reappeared on the rear fenders. Only two weeks! I was choked, and compounding the driving shaft issues didn't make things better. I shelled out $600 to get the frame straighend out, and spent another $600 to get the rear fenders fixed properly (got the fenders from a donor car with no rust) by another shop. So, now I got the frame straight and fenders replaced. I drove it like this for a short while, but then started having tranny issues and on top of that, rust started to appear on the rear fenders again....wtf? It turns out that because I was driving on a drive shaft that was too short on one end, it ground up the the tranny so even though the shaft was now the right length, the tranny was pooched. And on further inspection of the fenders, the second shop did a crappier job than the first. They didn't cut away my rusted old fenders, they just welded the new ones on top, and not even the whole fender, but just the lip. My car was now mechanically and cosmetically FUBAR.

I left my car with Justin for about two years. I just didn't have the money and Justin didn't have the time to look at it until this year. Justin got my car into his garage and he started to sort the fenders without it costing me an arm and a leg. We figured it would cost maybe $2500 or more to get a reputable shop to work on just the fenders to get it done right....prices for paint had also gone up. That's when the idea of cutting the rust out completely, and popping on some fender flares a la Datsun 510 or Fairlady Z. Justin sourced a set for about $100 but you get what you pay for and these flares needed a lot of work before they were looking decent.

Justin pulled the motor out, got a new tranny, new clutch + flywheel kit. My buddy Jay came in and braced up a few spots to add some strength. There was a lot of cutting and grinding, and since the motor was out anyway, Justin suggested repainting the engine bay black and his hunch turned out right, it looked pretty sharp.