November 29, 2018

We’re coming into the eighth year of this project it’s really been something in my head for many more than that. I remember back in the early 2000’s in high school, making up spreadsheets of my 97 Civic for parts to save up for from inlinefour and PasswordJDM (when the still imported JDM parts). 

Back to the Point

I digress, the point of this post isn’t to reminisce about cars of yesteryear but a look into the thought process behind the few little things I’ve done on this project. The overall goal or feel to this build is, as some would call it OEM+. Anything performance or aftermarket I did or will do with an OEM thought process behind it, “How would Honda do this if they were building this car”.

Cooling

For the radiator I wanted a quality full sized unit and in my opinion the obvious choice is KOYORAD, but have never been a fan of the ‘normal’ solutions to installing the full sized radiator into the Civic chassis. To my advantage, my Dad is the GM of the body shop for the local Honda dealership here in Sioux Falls and when I heard they had a 96-98 chassis in for a front end collision I got the clearance to snag the ‘junk’ one out of their scrap trailer… all for a tiny section where the OE radiator mounts on the right hand side.

Radiator Support Fabrication

Andrey was a quick call away has always been down to do the little fab pieces I bring to him. Andrey and I proceeded to pillage the junk radiator support for the mount piece, from there measured the distance from where the headlight mounts on the EK9 radiator support. Measured the left side, drilled a hole to accommodate the OE mounting nut and allow for a flush/OE style looking mount. While Andrey was doing all of this I took it upon myself to remove the lower radiator mounts to then have Andrey weld them in place to mount the full-sized radiator.

Andrey then welded it into place until my Dad cleaned up the edges to resemble the opposite side. The final product I think speaks for itself, I’m super happy with how it turned out and feel it looks like the chassis was intended to come with a full-sized setup. *cliff note* you may see we did have to remove and weld posts onto the aluminum KOYORAD to adapt to the change.

Click through the gallery above to see the progress pics

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