It’s no secret that the first-gen suspension is mushy and leaves much to be desired. The suspension aftermarket for the 84-87 CRX leaves much to be desired as well, so you may think your options end there.

You’d be dead wrong! You simply need to get a little creative with a hybrid setup. First-gen Integra parts are sill commonplace as well as third-gen Civic parts. For whatever reason, the second-gen CRX stole the first-gen’s fire, so to speak.

A full rear end can be used from the Integra, which gives the added bonus of rear disks (unless you race heavily, the only differnece you’ll notice is the ease of maintenance). The front end of the CRX is respectable, but the rear really needs love, suspension-wise. Focus on stiffening the rear with a strut bar and upgraded sway bar, and if your budget allows, move on to springs and struts.

If possible, search for a full set of matched coilovers or a kit that includes struts. Remember to drive safely, and keep speed on the track.

Don’t let tuning carbs scare you away from the 1st-gen CRX! The Si may be fuel injected, but you probably won’t end up with an Si. Essentially, it breaks down to 3 options:

Tune the stock carb

While this may seem like a no-brainer, many people miss this as an option. Starting with a rebuild and a thorough cleaning, then go a little more hardcore with a devac job.

This may come as a surprise, but car carbs really don’t have much good documentation. While the very popular carbs like Edelbrock or the Holley 4160 seem to have the design behind every bolt documented publically, you won’t have either on your stock CRX. For documentation purposes, DansMC has the basics of carbs covered completely on his site and Anassa was kind enough to post his devac job on RPR. All the same principles apply, no matter which carb you’re using.

Get a better carb

I often research the methods of the old-school tuners (we call them hot rodders now). There was a movement, for a time, when putting dinky little motorcycle carbs on their engines instead of one big carb. There are advantages and disadvantages to this, but essentially you’re treating your engine like a motorcycle engine. You won’t get the scary 1600rpm redline that motorcycles enjoy, but you also don’t have to deal with a wet clutch in a 1-ton vehicle exploding in your lap.

Look into the flow rates on the older (pre-fuel injection) CBR-1000 or GSXR-1100 or even the Hayabusa. If the flow rates match up, and you can figure out how to attach it to your intake manifold (hint: zip ties just won’t cut it here) you’ll have the advantage of easy re-jetting, well-documented tuning, and overall simplicity. The other advantage is that the more carbs you distribute your air through, the more accurately you can tune the fuel flow into that air, and the better your car will run (after you tune and sync, of course).

Inject Fuel

You don’t have to stick with that carb. Replacing your fuel tank, lines, ecu, and intake manifold with an Si model’s will effectively set you up for fuel injection. From there, tuning becomes more ’straightforward’ (actually, carbs are quite a bit easier to work with, but in this society having a computer do the work for you is a bonus) and you can move up to you crazy dreams of a powerful 1st-gen with a stock motor.

Questions, comments, corrections? I’m definitely looking for feedback!

The main advantage the 1st gen crx (84-87) has over the 2nd gen crx (88-91) is its weight. That’s also the most important aspect of the car to improve. Putting your car (and yourself!) on even a 10lb diet improves acceleration, braking, and cornering. That’s essentially everything, and no other upgrade (even tires, but that’s its own article entirely) single-handedly accomplishes so much. Believe me when I say that dieting is the single most effective and efficient upgrade you can perform.

Because this is an article on the 1st-gen, and the car’s aren’t especially expensive, so we won’t be including expensive parts or materials, such as carbon fiber in this article. Instead, we’ll start with the basics and stop at the point of diminishing returns.

For the basics, tear out your carpets and sound deadening materials. Your bumpers are one of the most grossly overweight parts of the car, so replacing them with some regular tubular steel (1.5″ diameter will keep the car as safe as it can be while reducing weight significantly) will save weight on the front and rear sides.

Once you’re getting ready to get more advanced, you should look to rotational mass in addition to removing excess material. Head to a local junkyard and snag some nice alloy wheels off a VW, or order some on eBay. They should be inexpensive, and are often both wider and lighter. They also have the added benefit of not ruining the stock look of the car.

The second “advanced” change you should make is relocating your battery. If you can, get an Optima battery or other lightweight sub-sized battery and move that weight toward the center of the car. This will improve weight distribution and improve handling.

Each of these changes may not be immediately noticeable, but the combination will make the car more responsive in every way. Don’t forget to paint your floorpan to match the interior! Por-15 or Underbody Coating are both lightweight ways to seal the floor from being scuffed and rusting.

Here’s the result of Calicab’s stripped interior:

It’s strange. The first-gen CRX that I avoided so hard is finally coming into its own as a classic car. Here in California, they’re more popular than ever and prices are actually rising on them. While I’m happy to see this happen, it makes me wonder about the future availability of the “Clean $500 shell” that’s so common on craigslist.

I’m starting a one-week special on inexpensive first-gen mods, in hopes that it’ll make you all take your cars a little more seriously and recognize the potential that I used to fight so hard to ignore. To make things a little easier, I’ve added the new category ‘first-gen’ to the pulldown list. Assuming my theme hasn’t changed too vastly, it should be on the right and should reward you with all the first-gen articles to date if selected. Now it’s time for you to sit back and enjoy the steady flow of daily updates (it doesn’t happen often with me).

For a full listing of First-gen articles, click here:

http://projectcrx.wordpress.com/category/first-gen/

Well, there’s a new project in my garage now.  My roommate bought what he thought was a 1972 240z, and we found out it’s actually a 1975 260z (even better!).  After meeting with the (now previous) owner, it was loaded onto the tow dolly rented from Uhaul.  Around 40 miles to go.

30 miles, and all is well.

20 miles and all is well.

10 miles and all is well.

5 miles to go and all is well.

4.4 miles - huh.  That’s strange…  How’d the Z get off the dolly?  Why’s it going off into that muddy ditch?  Why’s it soaked in 2 feet of water?  Crap!

A AAA call later it showed up at my house with a very pissed off owner (my roommate; I was lucky enough to get a rant as he walked in the door).  Apparantly the frame was bent near in half, the subframe was gone, the fender was totaled, and the sky was falling.  After further inspection, there was just a bunch of water in the interior along with a crunched-up bumper.  No structural issues.  So, like anybody would do when their roommate buys a new car, I started gutting it for him.  Here’s the resulting garbage:

More on this project later, along with proper pics.  Enjoy!

The most common problem faced by anyone who uses the internet regularly is filtering out the crap you don’t care about on sites you do care about. I hate spending the time of going to my favorite website, waiting for it to load, and being disheartened to find that it hasn’t updated at all, or even worse, has an update that doesn’t affect me in the least. For this reason, I’ve compiled this list of 3 Tools to keep you from trudging through crappy posts*.

Google Reader

All you need to do is sign up for a free Google account for this one. If you subscribe to an RSS feed, you can add the feed to your Google Reader list, and it’ll update you when there’s news worth reading. If there’s no news, you can ignore the site altogether.

iGoogle

iGoogle is like a catch-all homepage which has lots of apps available and offers a cool theme. It offers a featureful at-a-glance view of the areas of the internet that you care about. Strong support of third-party plugins allow you to connect with nearly any website you could want, so it’ll let you know if the weather forecast is inclement near you, run automated ebay searches and keep a running list of results, and let you know if you have new email (and give a summary so you can decide if it’s worth reading). Because it offers “tabs” you can even organize your interests into categories if you have a lot of interests. You can even add Google Reader to your iGoogle homepage!

Foxmarks

This nifty plugin keeps your firefox bookmarks sync’d across multiple computers. If you ever use more than one computer (for example, you own a desktop and laptop) and find yourself forgetting what that sweet bookmark you had just added to your desktop was (while you’re using your laptop), this could solve all those problems.

*These apply to any site that offers RSS feeds (unfortunately, Superhonda is the only forum I’ve come across that is totally missing this essential internet tool, but I’m tired of complaining about their admin’s incompetence)

I’m interested in hearing what you guys think of these tools, and how you manage your “favorites” online. I can’t imagine the days when I used to visit each individual page one-at-a-time, or even opening piles of tabs all at once. I find internet consolidation tools to be invaluable.