87 LXi Progress Log

[Benjamin4456]

Seems with how much work I've been doing to this poor car it deserves a build thread.

Starting with a little back story, I purchased this car around six months ago I believe and haven't stopped fiddling with it. It was for sale on the side of the road back in my folks' neighborhood and they shot me a message asking if I was interested. Made it over there one weekend and did some poking around - the car is an 87 LXi four door auto. At the time it had 149k on the clock and had been parked for a couple months due to a few issues that had arisen. I've never worked much on Hondas (I was daily driving my 1980 12AT RX-7 at the time) and didn't really know what I was in for. Turned out it was running horribly, could barely accelerate once up to temp, power steering fluid was pouring from the pressure hose onto the header (quite the smoke show), it had some serious vibrations, and had a couple fixable body dings. Other than that however, the car was in surprisingly good shape. Here's a some photos of how it was when I first picked it up.






The interior is in gorgeous condition

$1500 and a couple more trips and I limped it 80 miles back to my place to start toying with things (it was quite the trek not being able to accelerate consistently). I nearly got the car for $1200, but the guy had a cash offer for $1500 while I wasn't around so I matched it for him to hold it another week for me to get back. Oh well, still a pretty good deal in my opinion.

The primary running issue turned out to be an O2 sensor, even though it wasn't throwing a code for one until after I fiddled with the EGR. $20 sensor fixed that and we were off to the races. Pretty quickly I replaced the power steering pressure hose, all engine mounts (I'll come back to that one), cleaned out the EGR vacuum control stuff, did a full tune-up, new fuel filter, fixed all the bulbs that were out, new cheap speakers and head unit (the factory one had eaten a cassette that I couldn't retrieve), repaired rock chips, valve adjustment and repainted the valve cover while I was at it, fixed the AC, etc. The actual list is a bit longer and more boring (I ended up including it further down) but tl;dr I brought it up to snuff in most regards. There were some complications on a few accounts but so far they've all been sorted out.

The goal here was to bring it back up to daily driveable condition. Even though it's a bit old to be a daily by many folks' standards, I managed to daily a first gen RX-7 for over six years so this thing is luxury compared to that. As the car got further along I started noticing some other, more annoying problems. Up until recently one was a highway vibration (turns out a radius arm was loose and I never noticed), as well as an idle vibration. The new mounts helped the idle significantly but that darn front 87 LXi mount, why do they have to be unobtanium? I ended up with a used one off eBay so at least the engine sits level now, but it's still on its way out. I'm trying to track down the bracket for the 88-89 fluid filled mounts but missed the only sale I've seen of one. And yes I want the fluid filled, I want to stop rattling at idle in gear even if it's less durable.

Anywho... A few new ball joints and more later and here we are. I recently did a quick cut and polish on the car to see what the paint had left and it's really not too bad for the age. Plenty of minor digs and scuffs but it's an old car; still in good shape over all. I'll deal with the fender dent eventually but at least the rest is shiny (photos below). A simple spray ceramic sealant helps keep it clean too. I also used some bumper paint on the front and rear black trim sections to help the fading tops (Back To Black didn't stand a chance).





Today I finally tore out the trunk plastics to unclog the rear sunroof drains so I can park facing uphill again. Very excited about that.

Since this is becoming sort of a jumbled mess with me trying to spout off everything I've done since purchase, here's a little list to sum things up.
- EGR system cleaned, valve replaced (that darn canister loves to clog)
- Full tune up
- O2 sensor replaced
- New speakers and head unit
- New engine mounts*
- New drivers outer tie rod end (boot missing)
- One door jamb switch replaced
- TV cable adjusted (still fiddling with it)
- Windshield rock chips filled
- Valve adjustment and valve cover painted
- Power steering pressure hose replaced (system hasn't lost a drop now)
- AC repaired
- Tail light assembly replaced
- Repainted wiper arms
- Driver's window adjusted to stop wind noise
- Central locking system inspected (seems I need a new control box)
- Bumper trim painted
- New front brakes
- Front left lower as well as both rear ball joints replaced
- ATF cycled through with Honda DW-1
- Exterior detail and polish
- Dizzy o-ring replaced
- Filter pedestal o-ring replaced
- TW sensor replaced
- various interior rattles remedied (more to go)
- sunroof drains unclogged

Based on my excel sheet I believe that's most of it.

Couple more random photos, here's from when I had just redid the valve cover and was painting the bumpers.





Last photo for now is today's project, the sunroof drains.



Anyway, hopefully going forward there will be smaller, more incremental posts. Not sure what the end goal for the car is, but for now it's to keep as a comfy and unique (by today's standards) daily driver. Cheers!

[RI86DX]

Very nice, this is the stuff I like to see - these cars being fixed up, not being ruined with "sikk mawdz" and being driven into the ground. Great thread.
Your car is definitely an 87 LXI by the tails and bumper lights, but those alloys appear to be the 88-89 pizzacutter style LXI ones. 86-87 had a "turbine" design to them.

[Benjamin4456]

Thank you! And yes you are most definitely correct on the wheels being the later style. It seems the PO was either unaware of that fact or just didn't care because the tires are too tall currently (scheduled for new tires tomorrow funny enough). Speedo is a little off because of it but it's not by much. I guess someone just swapped them at some point in the past, although even though they're "not the right wheels" they're plenty close enough and I like them.

Little bummed the correct 195/60R14 tires are quite uncommon though. I ended up splitting the difference between the OE 88/89 LXi size and the current size by going with the more common 185/65R14, so it's an improvement regardless. At present it has 185/70R14s so it's an inch too large overall.


Anywho, as I touched on in the other post, the goal is to keep this car as stock/factory as possible while fixing all the little quirks. I have another, different car to play with; this one doesn't need to be modified. Heck I put back in the PGM-FI bulb (it was missing when I bought it) and fixed the EGR system after many trials and tribulations. This thing is staying stock . [I will admit they look good lowered a bit, but from the research I've done it sounds a little tough to find the parts to do it right, and that's just not something I want to deal with right now.]

Fun fact regarding the car, it spent its entire life in Beaverton up until I bought it, with a lot of the miles being highway miles running trips up and down I-5. It was bought new from Honda of Beaverton in '86 and just stayed there. I only have records of the last two owners and some of the original purchaser, but it seems to have been kept up with pretty well until just before I picked it up. Timing belt and water pump was done at 146k too so I don't have to worry about that for while - currently at ~157k.

[Benjamin4456]

Three trips and four alignments later I finally got the alignment sorted out today. Had some really bad luck with the Les Schwab here in town not catching issues before they aligned it.

First they missed a faulty front ball joint on a shake down (no alignment yet) and its boot was even missing - this was one of their free "trip checks" when I first bought the car. Then on the first alignment they missed that the rear ball joints were bad (boots intact) and I didn't notice myself until afterwards. So on the second alignment (after I replaced the rear ball joints) I asked them to check out a squeak in the front right suspension, and they didn't find anything, so they did the alignment again (now done twice). A few days later I found out the squeak was a seriously loose radius rod. I replaced the the locking nuts, torqued it down, and then brought it back again today but to a different location. Had it aligned for the third time (still for free because it was less than 30 days since alignment #1) and I got it back with the steering wheel crooked. So back on the rack it went for alignment #4 in less than a month. Finally I think it's all squared away. No noises, it drives straight, etc.

I still can't get over how they missed three very shot ball joints and a loose freakin' radius rod. It was so loose I could move the wheel forwards and backwards a bit by hand. Even the big washers near the bushings could spin freely. And I know it was loose when they looked at it because it was the cause of the squeak I asked them to investigate during the second alignment. Not at all impressed compared to my past experiences with them, but at least we're finally sorted out.

[Benjamin4456]

Alright I might have gone a little overkill here, but I figured if I'm going to make a custom front engine mount bracket I might as well do it nice.

For context I'm getting annoyed with the vibrations and how the 87 LXi front mounts don't exist anymore. So I decide to model up a little engine mount bracket designed to fit the 89 hydraulic front mounts. Coincidently these are also the tallest mounts out of all of them, so in theory all the other ones should fit provided a spacer is used and the stud is long enough (the studs always seems excessively long anyway).

Hopefully I measured everything correctly, but we'll find out in perhaps a few days when I get a chance to put it together. For now here's just a photo of the fresh laser cut and bent parts (note that I still have to cut off some excess metal from bending).

[ShiRen]

Well, that's one way to solve that problem

[Dr_Snooz]

Super cool!