Oh look, I bought a RSX

[duh09]

That's right guys! A import build thread on a Mustang forum!

I've been eyeing this car for a couple years and after it sitting for the past few months, I was able to snag it up for $3k. I'm planning on fixing it up and flipping it to get enough money to fund the suspension I want for the 67 to finish it up.

Anyways, little history on the car... It's a 2003 RSX Type-S. My buddy bought it not running a couple years ago for around $6k. The car had a little over 100k miles on it with a host of sweet parts on it. The previous owner was the original and had put a Comptech supercharger on it, K-Pro, coilovers, full exhaust, etc etc and quit driving it when he kept running into issues with the belt tensioner and not being able to keep a belt on it. He had a kid and the car sat. So my buddy bought it, pulled the S/C off for his K24 swapped EG hatch and put an RBC intake on the car and sold it to another friend of ours. That guy decided after running around with all of us that he wanted to turbo this car... and I realized real fast that it would never be done after helping him swap the oil pan and him not knowing the difference between a sway bar and the brake line. So he put it together with a bunch of shitty eBay parts and after 3 different trips to the tuner (he never actually got it ready for tune), he kept dumping money into it and never got it right and when it started to give him problems, he parked it and didn't touch it for months. Then I bought it.

First couple days with the car were spent just trying to get it to run. All it took was a little fiddling with anything the last guy had touched. Plugged the ECU plugs in and half the trouble was fixed. Car still didn't have any fuel pressure so I pulled the fuel pump and what do you know, that wasn't put together right either. Reassembled it correctly and I had a running and driving car. Drove it a few days and after looking at everything, I've decided to put the car back N/A. It was a load of fun to drive before the turbo and I absolutely hate how everything is routed on this car. The BOV is sitting where one of the foglights used to, the A/C lines have holes in them from running against the turbo, the wiring harness is basically sitting on the turbo, etc etc etc. So N/A it goes! Started ordering parts today, work starts this weekend. Now for a couple pics!

Still got to do some digging around and find out exactly what is on the car but here's the current mod list:
RBC intake
Full 2.5" Exhaust
Progress sway bars
Coilovers, Konis with sleeve-overs I believe
Polyurethane mounts
K-Tuned fuel rail
RC 750cc injectors
Kosei K1 wheels
Shitty eBay log manifold
Shitty eBay wastegate
Shitty eBay GT30
Shitty eBay intercooler
Shitty eBay oh wait no legit Greddy BOV
Shitty eBay A-pillar gauge pod with no gauges
Walbro 255lph
Battery moved to da back

Parts on the way, more pics/updates soon.

 

[ttocs]

I like the rsx myself but a word of warning on those cars is that the metal on the top/back of the hatch is really thin. When I was installing in Scottsdale we had a large system we did in one of those. When it was done the owner suddenly became a raging a-hole saying we bent the metal there while slamming his hatch shut. Not sure if that was the case or not but the kid blamed me directly one day and as I said did it like a total A-hole. Ever have one of those moments when you actually consider all the variables needed to get one good solid punch on someone? Its only happened to me one time but in no time I had figured out I needed to take 4 steps forward and would need to duck down to be sure I missed the top of the car he was now sitting in and from there I had to snap back to reality that I didn't go and punch the little mofo... It kind of reminded me of that scene in high fidelity when the new boyfriend comes in? it looked like someone might have at one time slammed his hatch and bent it.

 

[Orange 94]

Nice! I always thought they were decent cars.

I'm not sure if it's just my area but they're very expensive and always beat to shit.

 

[duh09]

I was always indifferent to them until I drove this car back when it was N/A. I ALMOST bought it for $6k back then but decided against it. They're not fast but they're peppy and with the suspension on this car and the K-Pro, it's a lot of fun so I'm excited to pull all this crap off of it and get it back to the basic fun car that it was, maybe take it autocrossing a bit and enjoy it.

The value on these cars varies a lot around here. High mileage, beat up cars are bringing $4500-5500, lower mile cars with some stuff done are around the $5500-8000 mark, and then you have the super nice cars asking around $9k. My car is one of the lowest mileage I've seen around in awhile, it's not quite at 115k yet. It will have a decent parts list here soon and the interior of the car is mint. May post it on Craigslist once it's mechanically right and see if I can double my money but if not, I'll hang on to it, fix up the exterior and throw some better fitting wheels on it and ask around $8k and see what happens.

The outside is a little rough but really nothing too drastic that can't be fixed. The worst damage is the driver side door- the car rolled back at some point in it's history and caught something, overextending the hinges and put a crinkle in the lower section of the door and damaging the fender. New fender and some beating with a hammer and that'll be 100% again. I'll be ordering a new lip soon to replace the busted one, I'm getting some used OEM headlights to clean up and put on this and some BNIB foglights from a guy that wrecked his 04 model and they won't work with his new '06 fo free so that will clean up the front a lot. Couple dents on the passenger side and a couple on the decklid and I'll probably get it resprayed to fix the million rockchips and generally shitty condition of the paint from neglect.


Anyways, had to run to town to pick up my battery box and lights and went ahead and threw some LEDs in the dome/map lights. Bling bling JDM yo fools! Haters gon hate! Stance brah!

 

[mcglsr2]

Nice! I personally would love to see more non-mustang build threads on our site. I get that we are SN95Forum and I'm not saying change that, keep it true to the SN95. But there's a lot of neat cars out there I wouldn't mind seeing more stuff on, and if I get to see while at SN95 (rather than some other forum) then all the better

 

[Tony]

thats a steal with only 115k on the clock. seems like EVERY acura ever made has fn tons of miles and still go for crazy $$ lol. like an 05 tl with 245k miles for 9500 type shit!

 

[duh09]

Finally got a chance to get the car cleaned up a bit and put some miles on it this weekend. Paint is in pretty rough shape, it really needs a clay bar in teh worse sort of way and some good polishing but overall it cleaned up very nice. These white wheels are going to be a pain to keep even remotely clean. Just gave it a quick bath and a wax job with a few friends. Good enough for now.

Anyways, like I said, I went for a nice drive Sunday evening and was sorta feeling out everything with the car. Honestly, it ran and drove great. Although the coilovers are sitting pretty low, the car rides fantastic, way better than my Mustangs. The tune is obviously not letting the car build power but that's ok, I wouldn't trust it in its situation with any amount of actual boost getting to it. My only real issue and concern was with the clutch. With some driving around town, it seemed to be getting harder and harder to get into gear but I couldn't tell whether or not it was me or a mechanical issue because it would pop in, but it just seemed to need more effort than I thought it should. Well yesterday, I drove it to work and on the way back, the clutch just practically stopped disengaging. You can push the pedal and it has perfectly fine feel and tension to it but it doesn't do anything. I managed to get it home without incident but I will have to investigate it further. The slave appears to still be moving enough but didn't actually measure to be sure so may have to put a clutch in it but not too worried about it. Still pretty happy with the little ricer.

 

[white95]

Beats the pumpkin

 

[duh09]

Infinitely slower than the pumpkin, worlds nicer. Part of me wants to keep it boosted and make some good power but it isn't worth the headache. Waiting on my clutch so I can procrastinate putting it all together.

 

[duh09]

Well my clutch in so got to work yesterday pulling everything apart.

Come to find out the only actual physical thing holding the bumper on was the BOV, the vacuum line port ran through a hole in the bumper and held it up. Neat.

Anyways, dropped the subframe and had the transmission on the ground in a couple hours, surprisingly easy for a FWD. The car had a lightweight flywheel and some no-brand-stamped 6 puck clutch in it and a few of the fibers actually almost like welded to the flywheel and the clutch disc, hence why it wouldn't disengage. So time to order a flywheel.

I'm also going to have to have the exhaust modified to work with the new header. There should have been a flange further back for this to bolt to but it looks to have been welded solid at some point. Pics later maybe

 

[duh09]

Roadblock as usual. Got all the turbo shit off and managed to get the header mounted up but wasn't able to install the flywheel/clutch because my clutch's pressure plate was made wrong. One of the holes for the dowel pins is way off so waiting on another to come in, should be here Wednesday. I'll hopefully have that back together by the end of next week and in the exhaust at the beginning of the next. Then comes a good wash, clay bar, and buff and a trip to Import Alliance two weeks from now. Busy busy busy

 

[g36 monkey]

yea but a nice new clutch and pp will be so happy

 

[duh09]

Started hiding stuff in the engine bay and rerouting vacuum lines. I removed the little brackets that held the wiring harness to the firewall and modified one to hang off the back of the valve cover. The cruise control line and power steering line used to come and around the outside of the strut mount but I managed to get them tucked in between the motor and strut tower. Got rid of the useless temp sensor/vacuum line something or other that was mounted on the water neck and used that free space to run the only visible vacuum line along side the fuel line. Also ditched the useless metal lines that ran along side the valve cover and modified a coolant loop that used to come up and loop over the valve cover breather line and hid it a little. Once the tranmission is in, I was re-wrap the wiring harness as it comes along the block there and clean it up a little.

Overall, it's not a whole lot of change but it does look better to still have everything there.

 

[1996GTKB]

Good looking car and a fun project for sure. Seems like u got a good deal.

 

[duh09]

Clutch back in and transmission is hung. Need to get the subframe mounted back up but it's pretty greasy so I'm carrying it to town tomorrow so I can run through the car wash and take care of it before it goes back in as it'll be pretty tough to clean once it's mounted. I'm also going to order some balljoints and one control arm, I noticed a bushing was 100% shot and my balljoints look like ass so time to do it while it's apart. Also went ahead and used my 3M kit on the headlights and brought them back some. I'll focus on them more when I detail it next week.

No pics, again. My phone is always dead, my bad. Hopefully it'll be moving again by this weekend and I can get my exhaust fixed Saturday. and get some pics of it hanging out N/A.

 

[duh09]

Put a couple hours of work into the car Friday night and got everything back together and running. Did a quick drive up and down the road open header to make sure everything was good and got up early the next morning and had my exhaust fixed up.

Brought it back home and unloaded it and begin immediately trying to get it washed up. The paint is in such bad shape. I need to spend about 12 hours claybarring, wetsanding, and buffing on it but it's absolutely too hot, so I'll tackle it when it cools down a little again. But it cleans up halfway decent. Really pleased with how the headlights turned out. I'm picking up a set of BNIB foglights from a friend for the cheap cheap so those will go in soon.

 

[g36 monkey]

How does it feel?

 

[duh09]

How does it feel?

It's running and driving great. I'm using a base tune and been tinkering around with it but it's pulling a lot better than it did with the turbo shit on it. Clutch is super light but gripping good so far, haven't done any prostreet burnouts yet but should do the job just fine. VTEC crossover is comically loud so I'm feeling super ricer these days but overall I'm pretty happy with it. Runs good, pulls good, handles good, looks halfway ok. Few more changes and it'll be ready for craigslist.

I'm planning on rewrapping a few things under the hood to clean it up a little more. and replacing an A/C line so I can get some air again before next weekend and the trip to KY for Import Alliance. Hopefully I can unload some of these turbo parts there. I'll at least have a chance to get some nice pictures up there.

 

[g36 monkey]

Dude sounds great, I like the idea of buying a fun little 4 banger, I Just have no room for anything. Then again the coyote was my reliable grown up car lol.

And lol at poppin dat vtecs

 

[duh09]

Car's doing great. Racked up 1500 miles on it since last week between driving around and going to Import Alliance.

After my last update, I ordered a new A/C line from the closest Acura dealer and got in installed and had a local shop put it on vacuum and charge it up and I have air again which was basically the only thing between me and imminent death from heat stroke at IA. Car ran great the whole way up and back and did well with my constantly giving it hell. I had to adjust my VTEC up from the 4300rpm mark to 4500, it doesn't sound like it's going to rattle apart now on crossover and I won't get into VTEC in 6th at 95mph anymore which didn't feel good on the way up. On the way back down, I apparently caught a nail in one of my tires so I've got a set of 245/40's to replace the way too skinny 205/40s and once they're mounted tomorrow, I'm going to adjust the suspension a little to get the stance right and it'll be close to time for Craigslist for the ole gal.