I spent a bit of time on the civic over the weekend
I started by giving it a wash, which made it look much better. I then decided to T-Cut a section of the bonnet to see how well the paint comes up. As you can see from the picture below, the section on drivers side came up really nicely
I then got the front end up onto the ramps and had a good look underneath to see the state of affairs. Everything seems really solid!
Until this weekend I hadn't really run the engine at all. My mate had mentioned something about the thermostat and that he thinks everything needs bleeding as it seems to overheat all the time.
After a few minutes the temperature gauge had made it to the very top. I had a good look round all the pipes, and could seem some were leaking, and there was a lot of crustyness by the thermostat housing.
It started to get dark so i left it for the day and went home.
I wnet out on Sunday morning and picked up a thermostat, anti-freeze, some new jubilee clips and some liquid gasket.
After a quick smoke and a motivational chat with Simon I decided to crack on even though the weather was craaaap
Started by removing the rad - I guess it was fairly simple to get out but It was fiddly and I ended up jacking up one side of the car to get to the bottom bolts etc.
Started off by removing the bonnet release mechanism, which was also bolted to the restraining bar for the radiator
After that it was just a case of draining the rad and removing the pipes, the fan, and unbolting the bar from underneath the car. Everything looks in good nick although after flushing the rad through there was a fair amount of crap coming out before everything ran clear.
The hoses were also full of crap which i gave a good seeing to
With the rad out I had a little bit more room to get to the thermostat housing. I removed the cover and found out that he had taken the thermostat out, and been running it without it.
It was all pretty grim inside and it had been sealed up with a bit of liquid gasket.
I gave everything a good clean up and scraped all the crap off of the cover. I put the seal on the new thermostat and used universal blue around the cover to form a seal.
I then bolted the cover back up and put the radiator back in. I hooked up all the hoses and filled up with coolant.
When I went to start the car it just wouldnt go... I thought I'd nackered one of the leads on the dizzy end when I was messing about near the thermostat... but after a while I realised I had left the earth strap off of the thermostat housing!
By this time I had killed the battery, So I had to get the GT's Big Brother SMX to give him a jump
Once I got the car started and gave it all a bleed I was over the moon to see the temperature gauge still sitting at half way after about 20 minutes
Rear lights and indicator stalk should arrive this week and will hopefully get my new clutch ordered too
Thanks for that Dave! I will have a look asap!
