New in town..., Slowest build thread EVaR! Options

[Saavedro88]

Greetings all. My name is Pierce Ford, I live in Richmond VA, and I look like this:



Great. Now that we have that over with...

Last Wednesday, this little gem was traded into my dealership for a new Elantra:



I jumped on it with a diseased quickness, and had the keys for it before the poor girl had even signed the title, Lol. Bottom line, this car is FANTASTIC. I love everything about it, except that the PO was a smoker...






I've been driving it ~140 miles a day since then, and it hasn't given me a bit of trouble. It leaks oil rather quickly, I top it up every other day, both front axle boots are broken, and it's due for a timing belt, but all in all, its an AMAZING car, and I'm pretty sure it's getting better fuel mileage than my Civic right now... It's also the only car I've ever had that has A/C, which is a MAJOR plus. It has 174,xxx miles on it, but feels like it'll run forever... I picked it up for 800$ out the door.

No real plans right now, I still am not quite sure what I'm going to do with it, as it was a bit of an unexpected blessing. I've been trying to build up this other Civic I have for daily driving duties, but that may be out the window now... Who knows. It definitely needs a paint job, I'm gonna do a dark matte green and maybe two tone it with everything above the window-line being matte black. I've been toying with the idea of slamming the piss out of it, making it all "Hellaflush" or whatever, as I've never seen one of these cars like that before, with some super stanced gold wheels. Wheels is definitely a priority, I HATE how sunk the stock wheels are, especially in the back. And seriously, WTH is up with this 5x100 BS?? I have a TON of 5x114.3 wheels, but I've never even HEARD of 5x100 wheels... Does anyone know if you can swap over SW20 hubs? Like, use their back ones for our front ones, etc?

So anyways, I can promise you this, this build will crawl along at an amazingly slow rate, trust me. But I would certainly appreciate any help and information you wonderful people can give me along the way, I know I'm looking forward to it!

[RabidTRD]

The leaks are probably in the front end. When you change the timing belt, make sure you replace everything in there. Cam seal, Crank seal, oil pump seal (and pump if you choose... might as well), water pump and seal, and get a timing component kit. You won't regret doing all of that and I can bet you that it'll slow that leak. Next, valve cover gasket. After that, inspect the oil pan... if it's leaking, drop it, clean it and black RTV the hell out of it and put it back up. I currently leak no oil and I did everything I just stated. I started off with the same loss of oil you're describing.

Have fun with her! They're probably the best handling car I've ever driven. Stiffen the chassis with the ST205 rear bar, over engine bar in the front (in addition to the strutbars that go to the firewall) and she'll stick like glue. When I drive my friends around, they can't believe the grip this thing has on the road.

Drop her! I'd say get some hubcentric spacers that convert to the bolt offset you're looking for and slam her. They look great lowered.