Biffopolis

So a little while ago, my brother’s 1995 Honda Civic Si seemed to develop some transmission problems.  Estimated cost to replace the transmission – $2000.  Thankfully for him, he happened to have a second Honda Civic ready for this exact occasion.  Same type of car, 4-door saloon instead of an si coupe, but pretty much the same.  So – we had all the tools we needed between him, myself, and our other brother, we had a place to do the job (his parking lot), and we had a spare transmission.  What could go wrong?

Oh, but how things did go wrong – horribly too, might I add.  Our first problem was not having an engine hoist to you know, lift the engine out of the car once we had it unbolted.  Luckily, a friend of mine Craig (Shameless Link to his site) happened to be doing a complete rebuild of his 1982 Chevy Caprice, so he had all the ‘real’ tools we were lacking – including a handy engine hoist.  He also had about 40 feet of driveway in which to use it.  We broke the task into three phases – removal of the donor transmission, removal of the broken transmission, and installation of the donor transmission.  We were to do this in one day – 12 hours, 3 meals, and 2 cases of beer.

The next step was to get the old donor car to the chop shop.  Easy thing would be to get a flatbed tow truck.  As it turns out, that was too easy.  Someone got this brilliant idea to rent a tow trailer from U-Haul and tow the car behind a pickup.  After the easy task of loading up the car, we proceeded to drive the car to Craig’s place and complete the job.  We took our time, making sure to capitalize on the excellent photo opportunities this ride gave us.

The goal of the project was to retain as many usable parts after the job so they could be either sold or kept for more inevitable repairs to the Civic.  After a gruelling 15 minute of meticulously undoing each wire and keeping each bolt, we decided if it takes more than 10 seconds to get it off the right way, then just cut it.  Before no time at all, the engine was free and clear of any wires, hoses, and non-supporting bolts.  After a close examination of the engine bay, it was decided to lift the car up and drop the engine out the bottom.  Its what we’d all heard from a friend of a friend who knew a guy who had a tuned Civic and that’s what he did – again – what could go wrong?

In a typical garage we would have drove the car onto the lift and started working underneath the car.  This wasn’t a typical garage.  After a quick discussion, we decided the engine hoist would be better re purposed to lift the chassis of the car itself, leaving the engine & transmission to drop out nicely under the car.  This seemed to work and the engine was making a small but sure drop – until we realized it was attached to the drive shaft.  Which was attached to the Wheels.  Which were attached to shocks and the frame of the car.  Refusing to admit defeat, we simply started removing the  entire sub-frame of the car.  With fluids dripping all over creating a toxic mess, we fought our way to free the engine – drive shafts, struts, wheels, supports, exhaust – nothing was safe.  When wrenches failed, power tools came out.  When power tools failed, sledgehammers finished the job.  After hours fighting with the sum of Japanese engineering with blunt tools in the burning sun, the car looked like a scrappy puppy after getting hit by a bus.

Finally, the engine (and everything else) was clear of the frame which presented another dilemma – how to get the engine out from under the car so we could put it back.  Simple man power was not enough to move hundreds of pounds of steel, aluminum, rubber, and electrical wires.  We re-purposed another vehicle to drag the engine out from under the car and onto the front lawn.  While the sun was starting its descent, we busied ourselves with trying to separate the mess of twisted metal to retrieve the only thing that mattered – the transmission.   After some time as many approaches as men on the job, the transmission was finally separated from the engine, thus ending the first phase of the project.

By this point none of the remaining crew had the energy required to even start thinking about the second part of this project.  If it took us 6 hours to remove a transmission with no regard for human safety or the well-being of the car, how were we to expect to remove another one that day while keeping all the hoses and wires from breaking?  It simply could not be done.

Maybe one day we’ll finish the job we started, but as of now we’re hanging onto the car in the hopes we finish this – maybe after the housing corporation stops hearing complaints about toxic oil spills on Craig’s driveway.  At any rate, check out the photos below for a view of this job.

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