Staff Project Car Updates - Our Garage

By: Charles Trieu, Jonathan Wong, Sean Klingelhoefer, Photography by Super Street Staff

Jonny's Civic - OEM EF3/Recaro Seat Upgrade

Back in 2008, after searching for replacement OEM USDM seats for my '90 Civic with no luck, I decided maybe it would be a better idea to find SiR seats instead. The only problem was the availability of such parts and price. With little to no leads on the Web or through the usual JDM parts suppliers, I had to stick it out, mainly because my original seats were pretty thrashed (the front pair). Finally, after stopping by GSpot Automotive (www.gspotautomotive.com) in East LA to pick up my side skirts and rear bumper, the owner, Frankie told me he also had a set of really clean, complete set of OEM seats from the JDM EF3, which were more unique to me than the EF9 seats in that they came with a different cloth pattern and rear headrests. Best of all, they were a great price in the condition they were in, which was damn near new. Little did I know I'd be opening a whole new can of worms when it came time for installing them...

For those of you who know, EFs produced in years '88-89 differed slightly from those out of '90-91, mainly things like suspension, seatbelt configuration and wouldn't you know it, the seats, too. It's like this: the '88-89 seats won't fit into the '90-91 and vice versa; so if you're trying to do this to your EF, make sure you get the right year seats for your car, otherwise you're gonna have to do what Charles did to my seats. It's a labor and time intensive seat bottom swap that requires you to disassemble the seat and remove the bottom pans so you can interchange everything over. It's not hard mind you, but I'm sure most people would get stumped at "this doesn't fit" from the beginning; just take your time and you will have proper fitting JDM OEM seats. More recently, Charles also knew that I was on the hunt for older Recaro seats and found a local seller with a LXA seat for sale, also in great condition and a steal of a price, so I picked that up, too. All that's left is to find rails and sliders and I'll be able to rock more classic style to match the rest of the car's theme. Score! - Jonathan Wong

Charles'- Project S14

The first thing I always do on a new project car is the sound system. You just can't enjoy a car without hearing your music properly, especially if your car is your daily driver. Now if I get suspension, wheels or anything else, driving is still no fun if I don't have any entertainment. The 14 year-old blown-out speakers and skipping CD player wasn't cutting it in the 240SX. I actually had to buy CD-Rs to burn some music onto. Technology has vastly advanced since 1995. These days you can get quite a lot with your head unit and I'll show you how far you can take it.