I picked up a 1990 Honda Civic Hatchback the other day. 179K miles, 4-speed manual. Paid $350 for it. It runs and drives alright, but not as good as I'd want it to run. Here's the deal:

1) Black smoke out the tailpipe. I did a compression test and it's kinda all over the place. Worst cylinder is #4 (right-most cylinder). It showed barely 30psi on the compression guage. I poured in a little bit of oil into the cylinder and tested again, and no difference. So is it the valves? How would I go about fixing this?

2) Transmission is VERY stiff. Takes a good amount of effort to put it into first and second (clutch depressed all the way down). Also, there's a metallic clanging sound when I hit about mid-rpm in first gear. Similar sound when it's just idling in neutral with clutch not pressed. I wanted to change out the transmission fluid but I have no experience with manual transmission so I have no idea where to begin with that one. What else could I do to fix the transmission problems?

Other than those things, it's an alright car. I changed the oil, oil filter, air filter, and spark plugs today and it's running a little better. Although the oil pan drain bolt is leaking.

Help a brother out. Thanks in advance.

 

the right most cylinder is the #1 on hondas. I'm not sure about why the compression is low, for a cheapy car though just make sure it always has oil in it and don't drive the crap out of it and it'll run like that forever. My tranny on my 88 4 speed hatch was also very stiff in all the gears. changing the tranny fluid is easy, there is a drain bolt on the tranny, the bottom most bolt, that will drain it. then there is a fill bolt, the next bolt up, when you put the fluid in you stop when it starts to come out of the fill bolt, it means there's enough. You can buy a new washer for the oil pan bolt for cheap and that should do the trick. Hope this helps a little for now.

 

Most likely, both the engine and trans need to be rebuilt or replaced.

 

4 speeds? :ugh:
Find a D16A6 with the nice, short ratio CRX Si tranny and put that in there, shouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

 

i took a real close look at everything. and it looks like the best and simplest route would be to just swap out the engine and tranny. or at least replace the head so as to keep it from burning oil.

anyone have any good engines or parts lying around? i'm not looking for any gains in HP or whatever. i really don't mind the 4-speed. i just want something half-way reliable for around-town driving.

 

http://www.hmotorsonline.com/shop/sc...age&item=30020
I'd find an Si tranny and bolt it on there.
All together it'll probably cost you around $1000 and you'll have a nice low-mileage DOHC D and a short geared Si tranny. It'll give your beater new life and really make it scoot.