1987 Honda Accord "Organ Donor"
Type: Automobiles
Model: 1987 Honda Accord
Real Name: John Turk
Location: Lacey, WA US.
Gender: Not sure.
Age: 25.22 years
Bought this car for $200 off Craigslist. Not concerned about the condition of the car. I just wanted the engine. This poor little car has been abused every which way possible. Its got a broken window on the passenger side, the body is beat, the interior is destroyed. The engine has a blown head gasket. I saved as much of it as I could from the wrecking yard.
I towed it home and played with it a bit. I was actually able to get the car started! I took it for it's last drive down the street. It responded with its last little bit of life revving as high as it could go, with surprising power for its condition. I pulled it back in the garage, it bled oil everywhere, and thats when I finally decided to put it to sleep; out of it's misery.
Good news though. The heart of this poor soul is going to save another life. It is going to be the subject of a swap for my 84 Accord. It's going to get a performance rebuild, with overbore, high compression, performance cam, and headwork. Will be considerably more powerful than the current engine in the 84.
Since I've parted out just about everything that was good on it, I just need to find what I did with the paperwork, and the shell can go to the crusher!
UPDATE: This car is now gone. Sent it to the crusher. RIP.
Comments
2ndgenguy owns:
Bought this car 5 years ago with 150,000 miles on it. It now has over 270,000 on it. Still all original except for the Weber carb conversion I'm currently installing on it, and of course the wheels. Theres a huge list of small mods that I've done to it, which I'll post on here soon. Currently pulled a 2.0 liter engine from a 3rd generation Accord that is going to go in this one. With the performance rebuild I'm doing to the 2.0, I'm hoping for 140hp. Stock this car only does 86, so that will be a drastic improvement. Especially since it only weighs 2275lbs. It should have an excellent power to weight ratio when I'm done.
My friend and I saw this car at the junkyard. It is in overall great shape. Interior is clean, aside from a tear in the vinyl on one of the seats. They said it had a blown head gasket, and the way it was blowing smoke, it appeared to be true.
My friend paid $200 for it, and we drove it to my house, billowing smoke all the way.
Pulled it in the garage and started tearing the head off. It's really hard to tell if the head gasket is blown or not, either way it needs to be replaced. Turns out too that one of the cylinders has a ring groove in it when the cylinder is down. Bummer, engine needs to be bored out.
Friend who owned it bought an RSX, so he lost his interest in the car that made the RSX possible. I bought it for $100.
I've got some plans for the car though. I want to tear apart the engine and have the cylinders bored out, then put oversized pistons in it to fix that problem.
Second, I've got a friend from the 3geez.com forums who is going to hook me up with some parts. We're going to put a Canadian 1.6l head on the 1.8l block. This will keep the displacement the same (aside from the overbore) and raise the compression. Plus the Canadian models had a non-CVCC crossflow head. This should make the engine flow a bit better and be a touch more reliable. The 1.8l CVCC head has both the exhaust and intake ports on the back of the head.
We also found later that the secondary on the carb is corroded shut. Plans are to replace it with a Weber DGV carb. Probably find a used one somewhere for cheap, unlike the nice new one I purchased for my 84 Accord.
Once these upgrades are done, I'd like to use the car as a platform for learning how to do body and paintwork. I'll enlist the help of my dad, who is an autobody guy by trade with 35+ years of experience.
Anyways, thats the history. Hoping to get her fixed in the next few months!
Interestingly enough, this is the car that I finally figured out what CVCC was. Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion. Basically, if you notice in the picture of the head, there are no spark plugs in the main cylinders. Instead there is a small combustion chamber inside the head where a rich mixture of fuel is ignited. When this ignites, the flame travels out through the auxillary valve with the holes in it. It ignites the main combustion chamber and causes a swirling or vortex flow inside the chamber. Supposedly this burns hotter and cleaner, and the swirling effect allows for better flow out of the head.
2ndgenguy used to own:
Bought this truck from my uncle for $800. It was in fantastic condition when I bought it. Has only 108,000 miles on it as of the time of writing. It's an incredible off-road vehicle, keeping up with brand new Jeep Wranglers. It's all bone stock except for the tires.
This car used to belong to a friend of mine. The car sprung a bad water leak, and it overheated and blew the head gasket. It had been involved in some damage to the front end while he owned it as well.
He didn't want to put any money into repairing it, and decided to buy a new car. I asked him if I could have it, and he let me!
This was the first car I ever did a real major repair to. I pulled the head and found that it was indeed a blown gasket. Took the head to a machine shop and had it milled true and pressure tested. It came back cleaned and tested good.
Even with 210,000 miles on it, the inside of the cylinder walls were still in like-new condition. You could still see the factory markings inside the cylinder walls where they were honed out.
I replaced the head gasket, all the exhaust and intake gaskets, the timing belt, water pump and all of the accessory belts. Total for this project was about $400. We fired it up, and it instantly ran smooth just like new.
My dad and I took it over to his house afterwards and decided to do something about the front end damage. We pulled the dent as much as possible, Bondo'd, primed and painted the front end. We took out all of the rock chips at the same time. The car now looks and drives like new.
