2 replies to this topic

[mestizo]

Ok to kill the rumor that you cannot do this without the 99-2000 Civic radiator support, here you can see for yourself that you can do it with the 96-98 Rad support and minimal modifications.

**Also to put a disclaimer about the parts I used... all the parts I used were after market and not real Honda parts. The Civic I am converting is my daily driver that gets 315 miles a day driven on it. That being said I just wanted the look of a Civic Type R front end, however I really didn't need the real parts from a Civic Type R as they are very expensive and it would be a shame to ruin the genuine parts since they would get a lot of road abuse. So I don't want to hear anything about I should have done this or that, this is just to help people who are thinking about this front conversion.**

Ok so the conversion itself is really easy and requires no special tools, its pretty much as simple as take the old stuff off and put the new parts on. My conclusion to this is that even if you use after market parts u can still get a decent fit with some tweaking here and there. Its not as good as real Honda parts, but you can make it work with a lil patience. Part of the reason I did the conversion is my front end had some damage from an empty large screen TV box that hit my car while I was driving down the freeway. Once I got all the parts off, I realized that my car had been in a small fender bender before I had it and was not fixed correctly, which may be the reason my front took longer to line up than it should have. If you look at the after pics you can see its an ok fit, mainly the only issue was the gap between the hood and the front bumper, and a small irregular shape to the hood just over the right headlight, not bad for $300 parts and $150 in paint. Later I will probably have my radiator support realigned by a body shop, but for now this is ok with me.

Parts needed:
All for a 99-00 Civic 2/3/4 door all the same front end.
1) Hood
2) Left and Right Fenders
3) Headlights
4) Front bumper
5) Front Grill


Here is what I started with.





Remove the hood by taking out the windshield washers and then taking out the (4) 10mm bolts.



Remove the front bumper by taking out the (7) plastic fasteners along the grill area,


Then (2) Phillips screws on both sides of the bumper where the fender meets the bumper.


Finally remove the (2) 10mm bolts on the bottom of the bumper, there may be more steps in taking it off, but my car already had some things missing from it when I got it.



Remove the head lights, unplug the headlights socket and the corner light socket, then remove (2) 10mm bolts on the radiator support


Then (2) more 10mm bolts on each side of the head lights.



Last step is remove the (2) 10mm bolts holding the black bumper liner. At this point pull the head light out.


Remove the side skirts by taking out all the plastic fasteners along the edge of the fender well liner


then remove (3) Phillips screws from the front edge of the side skirt, now remove the (3) plastic fasteners from the bottom of the side skirt and the slide the skirt forward to take it off.


Now remove the fenders by taking out (3) 10mm bolts along the fenders top edge


Remove (2) 10mm bolts at the bottom edge of the fender where it meets the door


Now remove (1) 10mm bolt from the front of the fender where it bolts to the fender support bracket.


Then finally remove (1) 10mm bolt from the top edge of the fender you will need to open your door to access this bolt.



Now for the modification to the rad support to make the 99-00 bumper fit correctly, all that is needed is to trim off enough metal on the "grill tabs" to let the bumper slide all the way over the tabs. The way i did this was to hold the bumper up to the front of the car and mark a line on the tabs where they need to be trimmed.

Remove the material in the yellow area, the before pic is the left side tab, the after picture is the right side tab.
Before:

After:


Now just reinstall everything in reverse order. I installed the bumper, lined up to the hood, fenders and headlights. Now at this point you can see where to drill (2) new holes in the tabs for the original plastic grill fasteners. After some fitting and tweaking this is what I ended up with. Now I just need a 99-2000 Civic Si front lip and I'm good.




After a full car wash.

[Copilot]

looks good......

[Niello]

I like it! it's not overdone.