The Journey to Success

My name is Zack, I'm a 20 year old college student doing a major I'm not so sure I'm passionate about. I am a Biology major due to my huge passion for animals, and I have completed 3 years of college so far. I do however have another passion and that is customizing, tuning, and building cars. Though I have only built one car I plan to build many more.

My first car is an 88 Honda CRX DX, the odometer read 300,xxx and I said to myself "That isn't bad, it's a honda....". The paint was faded and I knew nothing about the import scene.. I was 16 and thinking in order to look low/clean I needed a body kit, god bless everyone who talked me out of it because that would have been the biggest financial mistake. I painted the car two tone, gold body with a black hood and roof, mainly with the hopes of tinting my hatch glass 20% tint that way it would look like it's all one big piece of glass. I soon got bored of the slow D15a, and decided to search for a better stronger motor. The research began... I had heard about the K series and thought "HECK YEA!" then looked at the price tag, and thought "HECK NO!" so I continued looking A friend of mine said "go with a Integra Type R B18C1!" So I looked into it... I decided not to go with it mainly because it was my first swap, and I needed something easy. I learned that the JDM CRX (SiR) came stock with a B16A and figured "Heck doesn't get easier than stock!". I began looking and discovered a semi built JDM B16A CRX in Jacksonville. The shell the motor was in was crap, but it ran and had no problems. I took a trip down there along with my father and bought the Engine for $1800 with the shell thrown into the deal.

I planned to rip the motor out and just throw it in my daily, however my dad persuaded me to do something different... "Rather than taking out two motors and having your daily down for a while. Why don't you just restore the new one with the B16?" he tells me. I begin making the plans.. I wanted the car to be a show car, but it has to be able to put down some rubber when someone talks crap. The build began and my father and I invested our time and money into this build to help it get to where it was.. this included huge modifications such as, going from tin top to a sunroof, as well as creating our own extended wire harness to mildly tuck the harness. I also threw some Ksport pros on it, obd1 conversion, 15x7.5 +30 Enkei Ek98 wrapped in Yokohama S drive tires, some ebay camber kits, Bride racing seats, custom rear flat floor, custom dual 12in wood grain subwoofer box, as well as many other little odds and ends. All and all the build was coming out fantastic. I began to daily her and as I did i discovered problems, fixed them etc etc.

My most recent and last problem I fixed with the car was a worn caliper, the caliper was in need of a rebuild, but with school being a 30 mi one way trip and a new caliper only costing $30 I decided to just buy a new caliper. I couldn't fix the caliper due to school schedule along with my work schedule, so my father volunteered to replace it. The day he fixed it is a day I will never forget. Jan 14, 2015 my pride and joy was stolen from my drive way. 3 days later it was found in the median completely stripped of all the performance parts, and all the ruined custom work. My heart sank; this is the first car I ever built, and it helped me connect with my father unlike I ever had in the past.

I am now in the process of saving money, raising money, fighting for money(insurance), in order to bring this car back to life better than before. I know that the frustration that runs through my veins from this incident will only push me harder to make the car that much better. I hope you guys stay in tune for my build for this year as well as the years to come, that way you can say "If he can do it, I can do it".

Hi,

I thought I would post your photos inline to make them a little easy to see.

Looks like a cool build! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Ben! Hope I can get her looking as good as before and learn some tuning/wiring secrets here on hp academy.

That's some impressive work already, hopefully it won't be long in getting it back and beyond that standard

Thanks chris! I'm still in the planning phase of what I want to do...the ultimate goal is to be a show car with performance to back it up.

nice crx i own a b18c1 honda civic hatchback and also a k20 93 honda civic hatchback from personally driving both you will fall in love with k series engines they are so strong just stock motor hoping to boost my b18c1 after i learn how to tune it its done just need to tune it basically

Hi.

Nice story.. Sad to hear the car parts stolen though. I know how you feel. My Honda Accord was also stolen last January also and found it after a month, nothing was stripped off but the person did break a lot of things. Now it's just sitting there in my garage.

I later bought a 2012 2.0L Lancer ES for US$6400 second hand. Planning for a stage 1 upgrade.