swapping red interior for black in 87 white coupe

[mykwikcoupe]

I didnt get enough accomplished today to warrent pics so maybe if its not too wet tomorrow Ill get some snaps in. I got the red demo'ed out and the black all cleaned up. My goal is to get the bake half done tomorrow. I need to go back to the yard and snag a few odds and ends. I didnt realize the door weatherstripping is colored inside the cabin. I also forgot to grab the rear window latches. I will say im spraying everything with multisurface windex and with the black interior its comming out great. Im very impressed right now. Honda shou8ld have released more cars this way. Not so many options. The black is very nice

[9shorty20]

alright sounds nice man..hurry up and get those pics up

[Vanilla Sky]

87 coupe?

[MessyHonda]

he has a hatch...lol

[mykwikcoupe]

I have the 87 hatch I bought as a work can and somehow managed to grow on me despite me using it as a work car. i do commercial construction so the jobsites are very hard on cars. I guess im going to have to fix this one up as well and buy a sedan as a work car.

My other accord is the 89 coupe you might be thinking of. pics to come

[charliekuney]

My other accord is the 89 coupe you might be thinking of.

Nah, it's that you accidentally put "white coupe" in the title. A black interior from a red junked hatch is replacing the red interior in his white work hatch.

[2ndGenGuy]

Pretty sweet man! Yeah, lots of little pieces you don't realize are there until you get home and see that they are red!

[RobT5580]

I wish i kept that black interior now!

[mykwikcoupe]

yeah so I have a green coupe with a black interior and a white hatch with a black interior. thanks rob but in all goodness. You could always locate another sei with the same interior? I still have most of it I was saving as a backup just incase a problem should arise. If your interested in buying it back? Youll need a drivers door panel for sure or try to fix the one I broke in the accident. Its mostly just plastics

[mykwikcoupe]

ok, well I have an issue regaurding the rear speakers, or rather lack there in. I have a nice set of diamond audio 5.25 components installed in the factory rear section. I think the dx blanks look alot cleaner than the grills. This being said where do I mount the speakers? I dont want it to look like an add on but I also dont want to ruin a hard to find interior. I was thinking a set of 6x9 in the rear deck just behind the rear seat but the black interior didnt have one so Id have to use the red plate? What do you guys think and can you post pics of your decision so I can see what it would look like? Thanks

[mykwikcoupe]

ok an update, sorry no pics. i think I need to clean the car before I go putting up picks. unless Im going to call her ugly betty. Ive run into a few snags but nothing that cant be worked past. Im not sure if these issues are my fault or maybe an issue due to the changes in years from the 87 car to the 88 interior.

The rear carpet is held down just behind the rear seats with 4 plastic push in anchors. These anchors are in a different position from 87 to 88. The 87 holes are closer to the seat so when i used the 88 carpet I have an inch of extra carpet bunched up behind the back seat that isnt supposed to be there. Because of the conture in the seat you honestly cannot tell. the obvious notice piont is in the back wall. Because the carpet is held forwards an inch I have an inch of bare hatch showing where the plastic wall meets the rea bottom. the fix is either drill new holes (this wont work in my case because I dont believe in maiing holes in a perfectly good car) or dont use the carpet fasteners. the carpet may slide or shift but at least it looks more stock.

The second issue i noticed is the carpet in the cabin area. It really looks like they moved the front seats from 87-88. Remember both cars are hatches and both have minimal wear. The rear section of the carpet lays out perfectly. everything lines up and no issues. Under the seats is the issue. The HVAC holes dont match so they changed the positionion of the rear foot vents. No problem i just used a knife and trimmed a larger hole. i think I removed approximatly a 2inx2in section on the back side of the seat. You wouldnt notice unless the seat was pulled. The Rear seat mounting holes match perfectly. the fronts are too far forwards about a half inch. this may be me not stretching the carpet or not being able to contour to the same shape due to floor pan design changes? the real issue is the firewall. If you get the seats to match as close as possible, the velco tie downs on the firewall are an inch too fr away. If you move the carpet so the vlecro works you can really see the front mount holes problem. i think what I am going to do is get some 3M interior adhesive and glue down the front section of the carpet. If I dont need the velcro the seat mounts look good as I can hide the excess under the seat and the only issue is you see an extra inch of the firewall. Barely noticable considering the dash is in the way.

Speaking of the dash, another design change. On my 87 lxi i dodnt have the selectable dash vent controls just under the right side steering column. On the 88 dx it did have these functions. Because the dash trim allows for the controls I can either mount them as a dummy control or figure out what it will take to swap the vent controls onto a 87. I know the ppassenger side is tied directly from the contrls to the vent so no issue. All the parts and mounts are exiting they just didnt use the controls. Im not sure how the drivers works so that I will play with tomorrow. Hopefully if I get a chance to wash it and give it a final vacumm Ill post pics. that is afterall why i started the thread in the pics section.

A few side notes if anyone else decides to do a swap of this complexity. It really only takes a few basic hand tools and is in no way hard for a decent mechanic with a good memory of which hardware is used in what locations. This is my 4th interior swap so Im getting pretty good at it. The 3rd brake light on the hatch is color coded to the interior. In my case the original is sun faded red and I want the black. I need to go back and grab the proper one. the door weatherstripping is also color coded to the red interior. Mine has a thin line of red just on the cabin side, very obvious with the black interior. The rear window vents are also tied to the color of the upper interior. I totally forgot to grab them desipte the fact I already knew this. You dont need to remove the glass just the E-clip holding the mechanism to the glass.