It was one of those weird times of the day today.. like just after 3pm when there’s was some dead time between my last project (hanging a new overhead fan) and dinner. I was sitting there looking at the car and saying, “dang… a whole weekend and nothing done on the ‘teg.” Well that’s when I started wondering how easy it’d be to get that rear swaybar on.

I had been eyeball’n a couple of times, but just thought it’d be a day project. Or I thought I’d do one then the other same day, but recently my projects have been often sidelined… No worries tho~..

So I just wanna eye ball the project again by jacking up the rear to look underneath. I spot the stock sway bar and notice there’s not much to it… I then grab the instructions with a diagram on how it goes together and the wheels start turning… “let’s do it”

Without double thinking I go at it with sockets & wrenches and pull the stock assembly out and put together the parts for the aftermarket sway bar. There were some funky how to and where does this go for a couple of minutes, but once I figured it out– and put it together. Bingo.. 20 minutes of wrench work and it was nailed out by dinnertime. Well 10min after the first dinner call.

I was pushing to get it done before this thunderstorm hit… And I did it in the nick of time too.

Felt solid when I was done, but I’ll see tomorrow I guess. Anyway, between the stock bar and the aftermarket one I can see why such a bar is needed. The stock bar amounts to nothing more then a dowel to just ease the car before rolling… This new bar is super thick and strong and will probably do the job. I can see later on down the road though… I’ll be pulling all the stock suspension parts and replacing them

Ah well.. good times..

~J out

Wednesday of last week I met a guy over a new transmission for my integra project. My old trans isn’t bad or anything… but it’s a matter of gearing. The trans I bought is known as a B16 Cable Transmission.. It’s sort of a rare transmission that the Japanese made for their version of the civics so car enthusiasts call it “JDM.” A tranny from a US made B16 engine isn’t a cable tranny instead the Japanese used a hydrolic transmission so that’d be a “USDM” tranny for United States Domestic Market. Hydro trannys don’t work in the 90-93 ‘tegs because those tegs used a cable tranny like the JDM version.

What the B16 tranny does is it replaces the long geared ‘teg tranny with a short geared one. Short gears are better in cars with lots of low end power because it increases accelleration. With the B16 trans you can easily accellerate from 1st-5th much faster then in the old trans which takes a little longer.

Sometimes in a 1/4 mile that quick accelleration is the difference between win & fail.

So I’m putting this on da project list.

Good times..

~J out