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Adam Lawrence's well-travelled Clown Car. back to top

You may ask what a Clown Car is, and that would be a valid question. Well, the answer is that when Adam purchased this 1993 Civic CX, it was sold to him under the condition that The Simpsons' Krusty the Clown shall accompany the car forevermore. And so he does.

See the inset circle, outlined in yellow? That's Krusty, the car's mascot (he doesn't want his picture taken, so he's running away). Krusty has been all over the place. Adam reports that Krusty has crossed the earth at points as remote as Winnipeg, Manitoba. Winnipeg is just a bit north of Duluth, Minnesota, but if you've ever been to Winnipeg in the middle of January, the cold would have you swearing you were on Neptune or some other planet very, very distant from the sun.

Adam came by this vehicle through an unfortunate event involving a friend of his and his wife.
"My wife and I bought this car from a close friend in July 2004. She was unable to drive after being hit by a vehicle while exiting a streetcar (she's doing much better now) and was in the process of moving. At the time, it had around 171,000 km (106,000 miles) on it, and we paid $800 for it - otherwise, it would have been junked. The car had been laid up for almost two years prior to me purchasing it. "
The lady friend has, happily, since recovered well from her injuries and is now re-licensed, as is the car (but to Adam, not her). I love happy endings.

Adam says,
"Since 2004 we've put an additional 70,000 km (45,000 miles) on it, mostly fun trips. The
car has been from Toronto to Nova Scotia and back (via the mountain
trail in Maine), and from Toronto to Winnipeg (via Thunder Bay) and back
(via Duluth and the upper peninsula of Michigan). We're planning on
going to the Carolinas, and possibly Florida this winter."

This particular Civic has been the beneficiary of substantial restorative and maintenance efforts. A list follows:

- brakes and CV axle (to get initial safety)
- corner light and taillight (cracked)
- radio antenna (old one rusted in place, fully extended)
- stereo (needed CD player - original cassette deck was so '90s)
- driver side window (break and enter)
- timing belt (precautionary, at 180,000 km)
- valve gaskets (started to leak oil into the plug chambers)
- plugs/cap/rotor/wires/PCV valve (tune-up in 2005)
- both front ball joints (one was replaced by the previous owner with an incompatible one - the car drove crooked for a year without us realizing!)
- exhaust from muffler to tailpipe (2005 - pipe rusted out) - catalytic converter still good!
- body and paint job (2006 - had the typical rusted-out rear wheel wells and was rusted under the driver's door)
- water pump (old one still worked, but had a slow leak when the engine was cold)
- new drums and rotors (2007 - old, original ones finally were no longer serviceable)

The engine burns about 1L of oil every 5,000km (that's a quart every 3Kmiles) but runs perfectly fine otherwise. We can do around 700km (fully loaded) highway on a full tank.

Adam's Civic is in good hands with his Honda friendly mechanic, who takes care of all the car's needs. Good medical care is essential, I always say...

An update, June 2007: Krusty gets a new heart

Unfortunately, the engine's oil consumption disturbingly increased considerably the longer Adam had the car, to the point where he had to add a quart of oil with every gas filllup. In addition, there arose problems with sluggishness and hesitation. And other problems. Adam relates:

Six weeks ago: ICM and rocker gaskets (no spark)

Four weeks ago: Front passenger side tire sidewall failure (covered by

Cdn Tire warranty)

Three weeks ago: Passenger side balljoint separation while driving

(fortunately while driving out of a parking lot)

This week: Catastrophic compression failure - engine and radiator

replacement

Plus our cat needed surgery! Seven thousand big ones in seven weeks...

Weaker souls would have got rid of the car. Not Adam. It would appear that the original owner of this car had not maintained the engine as well as might have been hoped for. On deeper investigation, engine compression was dismal, 105 / 80 / 60 / 60. This engine should be on the order of 110psi on each cylinder. All the engine's woes could be credibly explained by this very low compression. After some rumination, a decision was made to replace the original D15B7 engine with a JDM (Japan Domestic Market) replacement D16Z6.

There is possibly a lesson here: owners may truly believe they are taking good care of their car, while not actually doing so. It would behoove a prospective buyer to consider this and take appropriate measures to verify proper maintenance before buying the car.

The engine swap was relatively pain-free, with all sensors, controls and brackets fitting just fine. There can be times when installing a JDM engine into a car built for an entirely different market can cause major headaches, but this was not one of them. For example, when the 13B rotary engine on Tegger's old 1974 Mazda RX-4 blew in 1987, the JDM replacement for that required many hours of custom fabrication to allow all the necessary -- North American, left-hand drive -- hardware to fit.

Adam's new engine appears to have corrected all the problems with the old one, and oil consumption is back to normal levels. The D16Z6 is a VTEC engine and the D15B7 not, but Adam hasn't yet located an engine computer capable of activating the VTEC mechanism, so it's non-VTEC for now.