RC2904's 99 Civic EX

[RC2904]

This is my 99 civic ex coupe when I picked it up a few months ago. Im not really after performance so much as just wanting a respectable clean civic for a daily driver. I like reading some of the build threads here so I decided to start my own.


When I picked up the car it was in pretty rough shape and I had to drive it back home from out of town.
Im not sure which was louder between the rusted off muffler that was held up by a clothes hanger or the shaking and road noise from the bent rim. And to top it off it was over 100 degrees that day and the air conditioner only worked for about 10 minutes after I left the tag agency.

And some damage on the passenger side. Looks like its been hit, repaired, and hit again so now theres broken up bondo and rust underneath.

Didn't take any before pictures of the interior but basically the visors were missing cloth, the glovebox wouldn't shut because it only attached by one side and dirty, dirty, dirty.



The next day I gave the car a cleaning and replaced the muffler with a walker brand OEM style replacement.
Also put on these del sol rims. Gotta love the price of tires for 14 inch rims

Filled the AC with the neon stuff so I could try to track down the leak with a black light. I ended up not needing the light after all. It was pretty obvious where the leak was coming from.
The threading was stripped on one of these but luckily the bolt they used was way too short so I just needed a new O ring and another bolt. Have not had any AC issues since.

The grill was some cheap aftermarket thing so I found myself an OEM grill with a silver trim.
Used some Milano Red paint from auto zone to make it match the rest of the car.

And the new compared to old...

Aquired a new driver side tail light and that panel thing underneath. When I sanded this panel down it had layers of black, red, and green on top of oem silver paint lol.

Before

After

Still not amazing but im making some small steps in the right direction I think.

 

[nd4sped]

Ya who ever did that fender work blows. Bondo is used to fill in small areas and smooth out minor deviations. Not to full in full dents and level out an entire area. They didn't even attempt to pull the metal back out and straighten it up. I have worked some series bent up fenders with a wood block and my body hammers then used very little bondo just to perfect the lines.

 

[HeX]

to the forum, and congrats on choosing to revive a Civic to simple respectable standards. We always need more nice and less rice. Those tail lights look like they need a good polish and waxing. How does the engine run?

 

[RC2904]

to the forum, and congrats on choosing to revive a Civic to simple respectable standards. We always need more nice and less rice. Those tail lights look like they need a good polish and waxing. How does the engine run?

Engine runs strong and appears unmolested except for an aftermarket air intake. The bay is still really nasty, once I have time id like to get it cleaned up so I can track down a slow oil leak easier. It does have an automatic transmission which randomly quit working on me recently so im going to post this next bit in case it helps anyone else who runs into this issue.

The Automatic Transmission Issue:

A couple weeks ago I was stopped at a stop light and when I started to take off the car would not go anywhere. The engine would rev but there was no forward motion. It acted like having the clutch pushed all the way in on a standard.
I cycled through the gears D4, D3, 2, R, etc but got nothing from any of them. I turned the engine off for a few seconds and started it which allowed me about 15-30 seconds of working normally until the car just quit accelerating again. I checked the transmission fluid and it was not low at all so I was clueless about what was going on,
Every time i would shut the engine off and start it up again this bought me another 15 seconds or so and this allowed me to limp the car back home that night.

I asked around to some people online and local and everyone pretty much agreed that the whole transmission should be replaced. I wasnt quite ready to shell out the dollars for a new transmission though because something just didnt seem right to me. For those 15 or so seconds the transmission seems great, shifts normally, etc so I did not want to give up on it yet.

The Fix:
I purchased some new transmission fluid and went to lowes to get some paint strainers. I changed out the transmission fluid and ran the old fluid through a paint strainer so I could see if there were any pieces coming out with it. I also pulled off the shift solenoid to clean the mesh but the solenoid was surprisingly clean.
What I got from the old transmission fluid however was this:

With the new fluid in there I started the car and went about 5 feet forward and back in my driveway a couple times until the transmission started having the same problem again. I was pretty let down that changing the fluid didnt help at all but since I got so much crap out with the old fluid I decided to drain the new fluid, run it through another paint strainer and cycle it back in. I got just as much junk out of the transmission that time as I did with the old fluid so I kept doing it over and over.
After about 4 cycles I was able to keep the car running in my driveway for about 5 minutes and still be able to go back and forth in my driveway. I still didnt trust leaving my driveway since I was still getting garbage out of the transmission so I kept filtering the fluid for another dozen times or so. After i ran out of paint filters I found a funnel with a fine mesh in it so I started using that. Here is what I was getting still after at least a half a dozen passes.

Once the fluid finally started to come out clean I took the car for a test drive about 5 miles around my neighborhood.
The only thing I can figure is that something was getting clogged internally by all the debris and not even allowing tranny fluid to pass. With no fluid pressure the torque converter probably could not do its business and caused it to act like a standard with a bad clutch. Shutting the engine off probably caused some of the debris to fall temporarily until the car was running again for a few seconds and it got sucked back up again to clog it back up.

It has now been driven about 600 miles since then and I have not had another issue with the transmission at all.

 

[RC2904]

Those tail lights look like they need a good polish and waxing.

Yeah ive never done any polish or waxing before. Usually just a hosing down and vacuuming at the car wash every so often. Seeing cars like yours though really makes me want to polish mine up along with trying to shine up these wheels. Any paticular products or tips you recommend for a newb?

 

[HeX]

Congrats of being determined enough to reflush the tranny until it was clean. Thats alot of debris. You may also want to consider adding in a magnetic tranny drain plug incase more debris frees up.

As for the taillights, some standard polish & wax will suffice while using terry cloth rags. Plastic polish wouldnt hurt either but still add some wax.

 

[dancam]

Wow, thats crazy with your tranny fluid! I dont know much about 6th gens, do they have a transmission filter? If they do i would replace it and if they dont i would install an aftermarket in-line filter. That looks pretty bad.


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[nd4sped]

The problem you were having was not the clogging up the torque converter (that's actually quite impossible). The debris was clogging up the small passages in the valve body. This is where the fluid is controlled by single ball bearings that open and close those passages by fluid pressure which is controlled by the multiple valve body solenoids. Here is a pictures of one (not sure if its a Civic valve body or not, but you get the idea).

​

This is already unbolted as the valve body comes in two halves with a gasket between them. This fluid goes through those channels and on to the specific clutch controls to move the drums sets around which change our gears automatically.

The torque converter creates the rotational force (torque) which is transferred from the engine to the internal pump vanes (stationary) which starts the fluid movement and eventually creates a figure 8 motion between the pump vane, turbine vane (opposite side of pump vane) then into the stator vane.

 

[RC2904]

Thanks Spooled that makes a lot of sense. I have to admit I don't know a lot about transmission internals. And Dancam I read that the filter in the civic auto tranny is meant to be permanent so I believe it's a lot of work to replace. I do want to get an inline filter to keep from accumulating all that crap in the tranny again.

 

[HeX]

I think its a safe assumption that all that debris likely accumulated from a lack of interval fluid changes over too long a period of time along with possibly reckless driving strain on the tranny resulting in the fragments. Stay on top of the tranny fluid changes and I would think you'll be fine from here on out. My personal philosophy is that automatic trannys should be flushed every 30k-40k miles just to be on the safe side.