Bough a 7th gen 2005 Civic.. buyer's remorse?!

[mysterious_7]

I am new here, I live in Kew in Vic and I just bought a 7th gen Civic manual 2005 year model. Actually the factory plate under the bonnet says that the date of manufacture is Sep 2005, so it's probably one of the very last 7th gen Civics to roll out of the factory.

It has the non-VTEC SOCH 1.7L 4 Cyl D17Z1 engine.

Overall this Civic is my third car, I owned a turbo 1999 R34 Skyline GT-T 5 speed manual and then I bought a 2002 Toyota Camry CSX auto after the Skyline got stolen from my house's driveway and was found later crashed near campbellfield.

When I first bought the Camry it had 104,000km, full service history and was very very well looked after and super clean. After four years of owning it, now it has 245,000km and I decided that it's a bit too much for it. So I decided to sell it before anything breaks. And then I bought the Civic.

I know that these are Honda forums, but just a quick note on the side. If you want a very uncool car with bullet proof reliability. A Camry is the way to go. I drove it hard for 141,000km and only the water pump broke at 173,000km. Other than that, it was a beast.

Orite, so back to the Civic.. First impressions..

It handles way better than the Camry, you can't even compare them lol The Camry feels like a boat being guided through a channel, while the Civic feels like it is on rails. The Civic is definitely more well built and has an overall more rigid chassis. There are way less rattles and noises going over bumps in the Civic than the Camry. And of course the Civic is miles ahead in petrol consumption

Drawbacks of the Civic:

The Civic has a lot more road noise that's getting transmitted through the tires. The Civic's engine is noisier than the Camry.

The Civic's D17Z1 is very inadequate in the torque department. 150Nm of torque is definitely not enough! It feels though that this car wasn't designed for the Australian roads or the Australian market! There's way too much hills in Melbourne to have a 150Nm engine pulling a 1050kg car uphills at speeds of 70km/h and 80km/h.

The worst is when you are taking off from a traffic light and climbing a steep slope and trying accelerate from 0-70km/h up that slope. The engine has to work so hard to keep up with the traffic flow. I got overtaken by a 2004 VW Polo climbing a steep slope on Blackburn rd the other day. My poor Honda was revving at 4500rpm and this VW Polo driven by a young P-plater girl cruised past me! lol

And the last thing I don't really like about the Civic, the very short gear ratios of the first and second gears. In the first gear at 20km/h the rpm needle sits on about 3000rpm!! It's ridiculously short, there's no way I can take off hard from a traffic light without working the engine up to 4500rpm or 5000rpm in the first gear to get a bit of distance over the other car I am trying to get in front before putting it in second gear. I just feel so bad revving the engine that hard, I am always kind to my cars, but this Civic really forces me to thrash it so I can get moving.

And the travelling distance of the gear stick between the gear changes is massive too, so if I am trying to get ahead of another car, it's not just that I'll be losing time changing gears way more often than the other car I am trying to beat, I'll be losing time too while my gear stick travels long distance from first to second positions... etc. But I guess that can be sorted out by getting a short-shifter in the future, correct? I think my Skyline had a racing short-shifter installed by the previous owner before the car got imported to Australia from Japan.

Now the big question is, is there anything I can do to this engine to get a bit more power and torque out of it? If I can hit 110kW and 170Nm of torque, I'd be so happy! How much extra power do you guys reckon exhaust, extractors and aftermarket air filter with a cold air intake would give me? And what brands should I go for?

I guess since my car has Honda's "LEV badge" which stands for "Low emission vehicle", then may be the exhaust, extractors and air filter are very very restrictive to keep the emissions low

I guess there isn't much to be done for the gearbox and its short ratios, except replacing it with another one. And I won't do that coz it's just not worth the cost, might as well sell the car. So I am going to learn to live with that gearbox for the time being and consider a short shifter in the future. But for now, I just want to find a way to get a bit of torque out of that little engine.

I am not after any crazy figures like 200kW blah blah or whatever... I just want a smooth ride with a bit of grunt to it. Something that'll do 0-100km/h in 10 seconds or so, as I said may be 100 or 110kW will be perfect!

The plans I have for the future for this car, I'll get 17 inches black rims (may be deep dish), and I'll tint the windows black. I'll also change the springs and lower it a bit and I'll put on a lip style spoiler like the ones BMW M3 has! I like the lip spoilers, they are very classy!

Here are the car's details and a few photos.

It has 83,000km and I got RACV to test it out before putting a cent on it.
Full service history at Eastern Honda since the day it was purchased
It was owned by an old guy living in Hawthorn in Vic that looked after it very well and he always garaged it and serviced it on time.

The car has headlights guards and a bonnet guard, which I am going to remove when I get time, coz it just looks ugly with them. The previous owner definitely looked after it.

It had seat covers, dashboard cover/mat, boot floor mat and all sorts of protection you can think of.. I removed all of them as soon as I put my hands on the car.. lmao

[lolmclol]

Painted flares on the side and red calipers guaranteed extra 15kw

[EKVTIR-T]

House in Kew over $1mil..surely you can afford something better

I suggest selling it and upgrading as trying to get power/torque from that engine is futile

[Sean628]

don't know much about civics but vtec engine from same chassis might be a better option? depends on your budget, if it's only 5-10 hp gain and whole lot of trouble don't think it really worth it.

[charliebrown]

das a nice house. merlin

[RenzokukenJ]

Tldr pls

[lolmclol]

Tldr pls

OP wants to fast in car feels because some P plater female stole his masculinity when she was able to fast car drive ahead of him

[androo]

Everything you mentioned it's why I recommend people take longer test drives. I find it difficult to understand how people can take a short test drive, put down their money then complain about how the car drives. In saying that, shorter ratio gearboxes and higher revs is part of owning a small Honda! I would recommend getting used to the car or simply selling it and upgrading to something more powerful. What little power you might gain from modifications, would be negated with the bigger, heavier wheels and lengthened gear ratios. Alternatively you will need to go turbo!

[mysterious_7]

House in Kew over $1mil..surely you can afford something better

I suggest selling it and upgrading as trying to get power/torque from that engine is futile

Lol, I wish that was my house, it's my parents house. I live there for free and I eat there for free and they bought me my first car too (the Skyline GT-T). But that's where all freebies end.. I am still a uni student (studying my second degree now) and I pay for my own fees, bills, petrol, cars... etc. And that's obviously very fair. So I am actually on a budget. I picked up this Civic for way cheaper than its price, I bargained hard with the seller and got the price down couple of grands. So if I sell it right now I'll make about $3,000 profit on it and it still has a valid roadworthy certificate for 3.5 weeks and registration till December 2013. With that pristine condition and low kilometers, I think this car will be sold in two days. But I really like it, I wanna keep it, but just make it a bit faster. I am not trying to win trophies with it or anything, I am only asking for a 10% increase in power and torque up from the stock figures, am I asking for too much? and I'll be keeping it for long time to come I understand it's an economical car and it was never designed for drag races or fast acceleration. But I just want it to at least match the competition. It should at least be as powerful as the Mazda 3, Lancer and Ford Focus. But surprisingly my model Civic is least powerful in its class for that year model cars :/

I've always heard good stuff about Honda, so I sold the Camry and started looking around for Perludes, Integras, Civics.. I test drove a few Subarus Impreza and Liberty and I drove two 2007 Ford Focus Sedan too.

All the Perludes and Integras I found were beaten up and abused, they handle well but they were all either on their second or third engine/transmission or were still running the original engine and transmission but have very high kilometers! And by looking under the bonnet you can tell that these cars were all been molested, played with and modified. One of them had a loose wire loom rattling under the bonnet and they were all just hideous. Same story was with the 2 door 6th gen Civic. Overall I found the manual cars to be more abused than the equivalent model automatics. But I was only looking for buying a manual.

Subaru Liberty RX and Impreza RX are the two Subaru models I was looking at, I was looking at manual ones. They were exactly the same story as the Hondas, they were all molested, had mods and loose wire looms under the bonnets due to unprofessional home jobs being done on them at home by the owners... etc. :/ I've also read a lot online about Subarus and apparently their reliability ratings are lower than Honda, Toyota and Nissan. And they are pricey to fix due to the boxer engine design and they consume a lot of petrol in comparison to the competition.

The Focus was fast and agile and drove really well. It puts 109kW and 191Nm of torque from a small Duratec 2.0L 4Cyl engine, but its built quality was very low. The one I drove had 64,000km and was 2007 model and I just couldn't believe how bad it rattled. Every time I go over a speed hump or any pothole on the road the glove box would rattle in its place! And it was only a 5 years old car, so I assume after it hit 150,000km it'll just be in pieces.

After I sold the Camry, I decided that I wanted a zippy little car that's also good on petrol. So I thought the Civic fit the description, I even asked a few mates before buying it and everyone told me "you can never go wrong buying a Civic in such a pristine condition".. And every single person I knew told me that Civics are fast little cars and they are good on petrol.. And after reading a bit online I learnt that Honda and Subaru have their road cars equipped with the stiffest chassis for best handling results, and Honda makes the highest quality well built cars in these class.

don't know much about civics but vtec engine from same chassis might be a better option? depends on your budget, if it's only 5-10 hp gain and whole lot of trouble don't think it really worth it.

The VTEC version puts 96kW and 155Nm of torque, only 5Nm torque advantage over the normal engine *facepalm*

I am so frustrated! There's definitely someone out there that modded that D17Z1 engine. May be there's an aftermarket ECU for it sold somewhere with a different re-map or something? There's definitely something to be done to improve its performance!

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your help..

[xenonkuraz]

I believe an intake/exhaust/header combo will only yield a ~5kw difference on that motor. The gains you are looking for will be more thoughtfully spend on forced induction rather than n/a mods. There's no power to extract from that motor at all. I say if you are on a budget and really like the car, just spend the money on handling mods and take it for what it is - a reliable economic daily (that may struggle to hill climb)

[bennjamin]

OP

there is nothing you can do short of sell the car and buy a faster one. Sorry

[Riced_Civic]

let me tell u sumthing after having this car since 2005 and years of research, nothing will help this car in getting faster without a turbo or a K swap.

at around 80kw atw from stock IHE with ecu will get u close to only 90kw

if u have the cash u can do a K swap or if u want the cheaper route go the turbo like i did.

but if u want to have fun in the corners u can add a coilover set up and add a DC5R rear sway bar and its a ton of fun at the track.

power wise unfortunately ive been there and done all that with the 7th gen civic, nothing will help with out boost or a swap, to bad u bought ur car as im selling my car.