We bought, we researched, we built. Or maybe we haggled poorly, prayed for proper fitment, and bled and swore profusely. Whatever we did, our Civic now kicks ass. In the last installment of Project EG Civic (SCC, Dec. '01), you saw the little blue Raggedy Ann which now sits proudly on our cover, teeth bleached, body toned and posture made straight. Oprah's one-day makeovers be damned; in two weeks we made the car straight, fast, handle, stop and draw beaucoup attention from enthusiasts and officers alike.
Taking advantage of an in-house lift and dyno, plus every blessed Craftsman tool known to man simplified things. It also helped having a bunch of wrench monkeys happy to obliterate their nails and knuckles and fling poo at each other.
With 175,000 miles of use, driving our car as a stocker would require replacement brakes, suspension components and tires. Though strong for a 1.5-liter, SOHC non-VTEC engine, the engine was also uninspiring and the body looked like it had been caught in a hailstorm. Basically, the car's condition was realistic for a Los Angeleno car of eight years.
For Stage 1 of the modifications, we concentrated on the rehabilitation of the body, the installation of a B16, mild engine bolt-ons and serious upgrades to the brakes and suspension.
The Bodywork Begins
We'll admit it: We avoid body shops like Boy Scouts avoid the Neverland Ranch. We know competent, honest body shops exist in numbers, but the sum of our personal experience has been unfortunately negative, and we couldn't afford the substantial downtime leaving the car at a body shop would create.
Enter Dent-ology, purveyors of "the Science of Paintless Dent Repair." PDR, or paintless dent repair, expanded as an industry in the early 1990s, and Dent-ology has ridden the crest of this wave. What PDR offers is the disappearance of most dents, at usually a third to half the cost of a body shop. Their technique retains paint integrity and takes a matter of minutes or hours--our kind of service.
As noted by Jim Perod, president of Dent-ology, paintless dent removal is only as good as the person doing it. The number of years a technician has spent in the field is usually a good indicator of what kind of job they can do, and how quickly. When you see a quality job, the idea is not to say "that looks pretty good," but rather to see nothing. It was without reservation that we dropped the car off at Dent-ology, because the overwhelming percentage of its business includes accounts like GM, Ford and Honda. Although the training center and main facility is in Fontana, Calif., Dent-ology also has mobile units in Northern California, Colorado, Texas and the South.
Of course, cost is completely dependent on car condition, dent location and type and number of dents removed, but prices generally range from $65 to $150 per panel, making popping out all the dents on an average car cost about $200 to $300. The more dents removed at one time, the cheaper the service becomes, so if a car club, for example, were to get all their cars done at the same time, cost would fall accordingly.
At the end of a feverish day, Project Civic sat bathed in smog-filtered light from the setting sun, a perfectly straight horizon line visible on what looked like a lunar landscape just hours before. Several people familiar with the project couldn't believe it was the same car after its visit to Dent-ology, such was the transformation. Between repainting the bumpers and freeing the car of a complete collection of dents, Project Civic was reconditioned, much in the same way Dent-ology reconditions vehicles for resale by major manufacturers.
Riding a wave of dent-free vanity, we decided to indulge a little bit in something with a value that may be more aesthetic than functional--carbon fiber. Benen Industries' carbon products delight every technogeek molecule inside us. No fiberglass is found on any Benen product, just carbon, carbon/Kevlar and Nomex honeycomb.
Where most carbon fiber parts made for street use are made of 3K carbon, indicating 3,000 strands of carbon per weave, Benen uses 4K, which gives the resin more fiber to cling to and increases rigidity. The engineering staff at Benen decided the extra cost of using an autoclave wasn't necessary, given the strength requirements of its applications. Instead, the company uses a vacuum bag system with an operating pressure of 4,200 psi. This system uses pumps that push the resin in through the top of the cloth while sucking it through the bottom to ensure uniform saturation of the fibers.
Benen's is a true carbon-fiber hood, not just a skinned fiberglass piece like the vast majority of hoods on the market. To achieve adequate stiffness, a quarter-inch panel of Nomex honeycomb is sandwiched between two carbon-fiber layers. Splash molds made from Honda parts were used to create the top and two end pieces to ensure a drop-in, factory fit. With the stock hood off, we weighed both. The stock hood weighed in at more than 30 lbs. vs. 9 lbs. for the Benen piece. Despite its low weight, the Benen hood is extremely stiff. Applying enough weight to the center of the hood to collapse a stock steel unit, the Benen hood didn't even flex.
After one of Benen's founders broke his JDM carbon-fiber front lip on a driveway, Benen decided they could do better. The Benen Industries carbon-fiber front lip--all 2 lbs. of it--is made of three layers of sandwiched carbon bonded to a Kevlar mounting plate. Kevlar was used to allow flex in the lip, as many of Benen's customers use the company's products on the track, where the lip could brush the track surface when the suspension is heavily loaded. Although it looks damn nice on the car, the lip more importantly diverts airflow around the car, reducing drag and lift. We'll inevitably be testing its flexibility soon.
Future Benen products include GT-style bumper fairings, or splitters, a rear diffuser to help flow past the rear bumper on EG hatches and a Kevlar fuel pump lid.
With the bodywork complete, we hit the shop and addressed our car's tired underpinning.
Randy Rouse makes the majority of the tools used by Dent-ology in-house, and sends them out to be heat-treated. | 
The four most commonly used tools: the rod, hook, whale tail and the "45." |
This is what the boys at Dent-ology had to contend with. Note the tough items, like a crease in the fender lip. |  |
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Dent-ology technicians descended on the car like a NASCAR pit crew, as many as four technicians working different body panels at one time. By carefully removing interior panels, technicians access the panels using existing holes and passages. They can drill and later plug a hole if necessary, but this is very rarely done, and wasn't necessary on this car. | 
Although any reflection can be used, Dent-ology technicians use either a flat panel painted fluorescent green with a black stripe sprayed down the middle, or a backlit fluorescent panel sprayed with a translucent House of Kolor green with black stripe to better identify and remove dents. Depending on what kind of dent is being dealt with and where, technicians use tools that turn, push or tweak the dents out. |
A nylon or metal stylus is used to remove the miniscule high points that are created by pushing the dents out from the backside. Rather than trying to remove the high points in one or two blows, the technician rather taps quickly and lightly, moving the stylus slightly with each blow to get the most uniform possible result. | 
Juan Delgado, a paint specialist for Dent-ology, decided to respray the front bumper because 175,000 miles of following gravel trucks on L.A. freeways had pitted the surface, giving it a sandpaper-like texture. He also decided to respray the sides of the rear bumper where a previous owner overestimated his parking skills and scraped it. |
Dent-ology uses PPG base colors in varying amounts to produce nearly any color. The benefit of this system is extremely little waste, as all jobs are small scale, and the technician can mix as little or as much paint as needed. | 
Using paint codes and good old vision, Delgado matched the quite difficult factory Captiva blue pearl. |
The Benen rear spoiler accentuates the graceful EG roofline and bolts on in minutes. | 
Despite its Calista Flockhart-like weight, the wing is extremely rigid. The spoiler is made of three layers of carbon sandwiched together, with a carbon/Kevlar mounting bracket and a Nomex honeycomb support inside the wing. |
With the hatch open, the Kevlar support and numbered Benen plaque are visible. | 
With a nasty crack in one cornering lamp and both heavily pitted, we had to find stock replacements or look for something different. JDMHondaparts.com suggested this pair of amber cornering lamps from Vision in Japan. We decided to paint the chrome surround flat black to better integrate them with the front end. Easily installed, these cornering lamps look clean and different to those in the know, but avoid being flashy. |