The yellow Civic: the verdict after one season of ownership

When I started this blog in 2007, my daily driver was a 1994 Mazda 323 1.6. I had bought the car for 1300 $. Before buying it, I was briefly without a car. I mused at the time that there was a bigger difference between having no car and having a 1300 $ car than between having a 1300 $ car and a new Bentley. Having a car was very different from not having a car.

When I contemplated not having a track car for 2025, I remembered this. I hatched a plan to get on track with the absolute smallest budget possible, and Alex agreed to the plan. There were many ups and downs and the plan was not 100 % successful, due to errors on my part, and bad luck. Here are some of the ups and downs of the months since I hatched the plan to have a super-low budget backup track car.

Finding the right car

The Civic when I first went to look at it, half buried in swow

I went to see a few cars before I found the yellow Si. Did I buy the right car? The pluses were the fact that the car was an Si, the price (800$!) and that I liked the way it looked in yellow. I bought it in January, so I had about 3 months until the snow melted to get the car track ready. JS got to work quickly swapping the blown out suspension for my nice coilovers. There were a couple of maintenance parts to change, and basically the whole exhaust line, but the first major setback was that some of the hard brake lines were rusted out. This was a problem because not many mechanics are willing to take on the nasty job of repairing and replacing rusty brake lines, and those who are will charge quite a lot. Luckily for me, Auto BG was able to do the job. I barely lost any time on the project, but I spent way more on brakes than I thought I would. Still, the car was ready to test on track before the Calabogie race school. I was pretty happy with how the plan was going, despite the extra expense of fixing the brakes.

First time on track

Yellow tape on the rust holes, ready for the first track test

I hadn’t bothered to bring race tires for my first track test. The car felt fine on street tires. It wasn’t quick, but it was fun. Unfortunately, the car overheated after only a few minutes on track. There was coolant everywhere when I came into the pits. When I got home, I changed the radiator for a new one, which was quite inexpensive. I had a 2-day event coming up at Tremblant where I would be instructing and getting a lot of track time. I had patched up the rust on the rocker panels to make the car look a bit nicer.

Looks way better on race wheels, but the front lip disappeared on the way to Calabogie

The car looked great on the wider race wheels. I took it easy for my first laps of the weekend, but sadly, the car overheated almost immediately. After some tests, I concluded that the head gasket was leaking. I didn’t get any other laps over the weekend. I had to pull over a couple of times to add water on the way home. The weekend was a bust.

I had a decision to make: I had about a month before I would be leaving for our 5-week summer trip to Italy, and I wanted to quickly replace the head gasket, or the engine if I could find a decent one for a good price. This plan did not work out, no one was interested in doing the job in a short timeframe and there were no affordable used engines on the market. I arranged to leave the car with my buddy Pat during my 5-week trip so he could change the head gasket in his spare time.

When I got back from Italy, Pat had not had time to fix the car. When he finally took a look at the car, he could not find the leak. The stop-leak product I had put in the coolant at the Tremblant weekend must have taken hold. He told me to try the car on track as-is, and I took it to ICAR. Of course, it overheated in its first session. At this point, we were in late August and I decided that if I wanted the season not to be a write-off, I should just bite the bullet and buy a used JDM low-mileage engine. It took about a day to find one that was somewhat affordable (1300 $), and I was told it would be installed within the week. This was a setback, as far as the budget went. On top of that, the installer said I needed a new clutch. I brought him a new Exedy clutch (about 200$) and took possession of the car after a little over a week. I immediately brought the car to Sanair for evening track sessions and everything went really well. The car felt great, it had more power than before. The only thing that was not optimal is that my cheap brake pads were toast after only one evening. They were 80$ pads, and I wanted to see of they would be good enough for track duty. They weren’t, but that was OK. I bought some real pads (Hawk ER1, 230$) and headed to ICAR the following Tuesday. Again, the car felt solid and I had a blast, even though the lap times were much slower than with the old Civic.

I was quite satisfied leaving Sanair after a first successful track event

The following weekend I headed back to Tremblant for another 2-day event. Things did not go to plan. By the second session, the car was overheating again. I was not happy! Every two sessions, I had to add water to the car. The weekend was not a total bust, I managed to get in 10 sessions on track. They were a bit shorter than usual and I was constantly looking at the water temp gauge, but I was getting a lot of laps, I wasn’t ridiculously slow and I was having fun as a result.

Tremblant action shot

When I got home from that weekend, I changed the radiator car and flushed the cooling system. I headed to ICAR to see if the problem was fixed. It was not. When I got home, I used my head gasket testing device and confirmed that the head gasket on my fresh engine was also leaking. The Mosport Thanksgiving weekend was right around the corner, but no one had time to change the head gasket withing only a few days. I figured I would attend the Perry Performance friends and family day, despite the overheating issue, then bring the car to JS afterwards to fix it after the end of track season.

On my way home ICAR, after again overheating on track

My sessions at that last ICAR weekend were even shorter than the ones at Tremblant, so I guess the leak was getting worse. I headed home a bit early, but I had got in some laps and improved my lap times. I could see there was potential for 2026.

At ICAR beside Steph's Civic

Last track event of the year, at ICAR

The car worked fine as a street car, never overheating

Since then, I’ve brought the car to JS, he removed the head, I brought it to RD Turbo to check it and reassemble it, and I’ve brought it back to JS, along with a new OEM head gasket. Given that he is keeping the car until Spring anyway, I am confident I will be starting the season with a usable car in good condition, which has pretty much been my goal every year for 25 years (often, not achieved!). The only upgrade I want with this car is a better seat, and I have made arrangements in that department too: the caged Civic that JS bought came with a race seat that he doesn’t want or need, and it is already all set up to mount in a 2001 Civic, so I bought it from him. The seat is quite nice but it has those big side protection “ears”, so it’s not ideal for a street car. I might swap it into the 2000 Civic and put the OMP seat, sans ears, in the 2001. Either way, the seat issue will be solved. I told JS that, at that point, I consider the project “finished”. I don’t see myself spending any money on other upgrades. I would like to fix the horn/cruise issue and the passenger door lock, but that’s about it. I think that if I were going to go to all the trouble of doing a K-swap and installing bigger brakes, I might as well just sell the car and buy an RSX Type S or a 2006+ Civic Si, which already have 200 hp and good brakes.

So, in a nutshell, I hope that this 2026 will bring the “end” of the 2001 Civic project, but the beginning of a period of having a reliable, lightly modified track-ready car. Following the ups and downs of 2025, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for nest season. Stay tuned...

The year ends as it started for the Civic, on winter tires