Starting from Scratch

I have had my '91 Honda Civic for almost a year and a half. It's my baby and quite an expensive one at that. I wanted an old car as my first car not only because it was cheap to buy but to learn how to fix it when things went wrong. Over the last year, we (my dad and I) have replaced the exhaust, the full front brake system, the power steering rack and pump, and the rear brake lines. About halfway through June, on a Friday, I got in my car to go home from work, and she didn't want to start. The engine was spinning but not turning over. Luckily, I work with a bunch of mechanics who helped me figure out that I needed to replace my spark plugs and plug wires. So we pushed my car into the service lane and left it overnight. Saturday, Josh and I showed up at 10 am, AT WORK, to replace them. We also ended up do the distributor cap to be safe. After about an hour, she finally turned over, and I let her run a little bit. We got on the road and headed home. But, as I turned into my neighborhood, she died again. I got it started back up and running just long enough to get it in front of my house when the engine cut off for the final time. After pushing it into a parking spot and staring at it for a while, Josh and I came up with thousands of possible things that could be the problem.

Timing belt, Fuel pump, the WHOLE distributer, we even discussed if it was the engine itself. We have no clue what is causing the problem or how to fix it. But what I do know is that I don't want to start all over with a new car. I'm determined to fix my baby, even if that means tearing the whole car apart and starting from scratch. Since this is the biggest project for this car, I decided to document everything in a blog. That's kind of the whole reason I made this website... for a blog. So if you want to know how to restore a 91 Honda Civic from the perspective of an 18-year-old girl with little to no experience, welcome to my car blog.

I'm glad you're here.