New Old Member from the NorthEast

[Vermonter]

Bought an original era carpeted dash pad for the Vigor.... USPS lost it. Strike 2 for them.

[Vermonter]

Progress picture. I basically just cut out as much rust as I could, treated the metal, piled on the bondo glass, filed it down to a mostly level surface, and sprayed over everything with rustoleum bed liner. It isn't perfect, but it's better than having a hole.

[Vermonter]

Here's what my rockers looked like. I thought I had a picture of my progress on this, but apparently I don't right now.

[Vermonter]

Progress picture found.
First I removed as much rust as possible and got everything down to bare metal, or as much as I could reach. Then I treated everything with rust reformer, and sprayed inside the gaping hole with bedliner. Then I filled the hole with spray foam to give me a backing and further protect everything inside from moisture and salt. After that cured, I shaved down the foam and started throwing fist fulls of bondo glass at it until I had something that resembled what was originally the metal body. After a lot of shaving, sanding, and filling with bondo, I came up with what you see in the picture. It's close to original in shape, but it still requires a lot of finish work before I will feel good about painting it. I realize it's by far not the proper way to fix this problem, but I really had no choice other than to hack it. I can't justify the cost of proper body work on this car as it's so far from perfect. I'm simply trying to get a few more years out of it before sending it to the yard.

[kseriescivic]

Nice rsx!

[Vermonter]

Nice rsx!

Thanks, I enjoyed it but it was never a good fit for me. Just didn't quite fit my personality. I probably should have kept it, but then I would never have bought the Element...

[Vermonter]

I bought another 1994 Desert Mist Metallic Vigor GS with 46k miles. This will be my summer car, and I will probably swap all my JDM parts over to this more worthy candidate.
My Rusty Vigor will make a good parts rig/ winter vehicle.

[Granite CB7]

^nice purchase Where'd you pick this one up from? Where you happy with the price that you paid?

[Vermonter]

^nice purchase Where'd you pick this one up from? Where you happy with the price that you paid?

Found it on eBay in Maryland. I'm driving down on Wednesday or Thursday to pick it up. I wouldn't say I'm happy with the price, but I'm content with it as long as it's in as good of shape as it looks. I paid over book, but I find book value starts to become less relevant to actual consumer pricing when it comes to vintage, rare model vehicles in outstanding condition. I paid no more than I feel it's worth in this market.
I'm excited to see it in person so I can put my mind at ease.

[Vermonter]

It's home, and parked next to it's twin. Feels good to have a zero-rust vintage Honda in the driveway.
46k original miles. I will get cleaner pictures when the weather gets nicer.

[Vermonter]

Found a couple JDM goodies.

1- Power Folding Mirror switch
2- Bumper pole button
3- Wiper switch with Intermittent delay adjust.
w/ turn signal arm.

The good thing is that this will add to the pile of Japan parts I have acquired for the Vigor.
The bad part is that these do not appear to be a plug and play project.
First, the signal and wiper arms are reversed, so I will have to retrain my brain to flick the right side of the steering wheel for my blinkers, and the left for wipers. That's IF the arms plug in without any modifications, which appears to be the case.
Secondly, the folding mirror button housing is reversed from the LHD setup, and the housing is not a flat shape. It's contoured for the dash... on the opposite side. Which means there is absolutely no use for the housing at all in a LHD Vigor. More than likely I will have to use the Canadian model switch housing I have, tear it apart, and swap just the tiny folding button in place of the heated mirror button and wire it to work.
Hopefully the last issue I'm facing is that the bumper pole button housing is not contoured so much that I can't swap it in directly. It looks to be ever-so-minimally contoured, but that could just be an illusion it's so minor. I will check that first, as it seems to be the most straight forward part to install.

[Vermonter]

I messed around with the JDM buttons today. Ran into a lot of obstacles, and I'm thinking there's no way I will be able to make the two buttons work as is.
The bumper pole button housing is a completely different size than the USDM counterpart, so it will not slide into the dash hole. The wiring plug is the same size, but something is not wired the same because as soon as I plugged it in and turned on the ignition I could smell burning electronics and I think at one point I saw a small amount of smoke coming from the switch. Aside from correcting the wiring, which won't be that big of an issue, my only option is to alter the housing with a dremel until it fits in the dashboard. I really don't want to alter good JDM parts, but it's either do it or don't and deal with the fact that I wasted the money on obtaining these parts.
The second issue I ran into is the folding mirror button, which I was expecting. I knew the housing was obviously not a direct fit so the plan was to take the button out of the JDM housing and swap it into my Canadian housing which has a heated mirror button in the same place. Then it's just a matter of wiring the heated mirror lead to the folding mirror wire. The only thing left to figure out after that is whether or not the button will activate properly, as the Canadian heated mirror button clicks on in a sunken position and when turned off returns to the outward position (just as the fog light button does), whereas the JDM folding mirror button only presses without any clicking and returns to the same position which I'm assuming is the correct behavior for the button.
I'm hoping the wiper and turn signal arms are just a direct plug-in, which was my original thought but with all these surprises I'm not quite sure what to expect now. We will see.
I clearly have a project on my hands.

[Grumpys93]

This seems like a fun interesting project you have. Referring to the jdm parts. I'm curious to see how it turns out. Modifying the jdm parts to work, will yes hurt the originality of obtaining the jdm part. But if you were to resell them later to another LHD person you can use that to bump up the price. Since you went through the hassle to figure out how to make it work.

[Vermonter]

This seems like a fun interesting project you have. Referring to the jdm parts. I'm curious to see how it turns out. Modifying the jdm parts to work, will yes hurt the originality of obtaining the jdm part. But if you were to resell them later to another LHD person you can use that to bump up the price. Since you went through the hassle to figure out how to make it work.

This is a positive light you have shed on this obstacle.
The other problem I have is that the Folding mirrors themselves pose a whole 'nother issue. If you buy the correct Folding Mirrors for the CB7, you can swap the JDM bases and have folding mirrors that have the correct glass and angle... there are no options for the Vigor. Only one style mirror available. You can't swap the bases, I've tried. So even if I get this button to work, I will have RHD mirrors at a weird view angle. Best case scenario I can have glass cut to make up for the far/near view glass in the RHD mirrors. Did I mention the JDM mirrors are different dimensions than the USDM mirrors? yeah... so you can't swap the glass either. BIG headache. I'm less motivated by having the JDM goodness, and more motivated by my brain challenging myself to do it.
I'm sitting here staring at the JDM buttons and the USDM buttons and scowling at them. My brain is running marathons.

[Vermonter]

I had a couple minutes of free time and figured I'd make the back match the front.
I have all the gold letters for the V I G O R too, but I don't see the point in putting them on until the rust is fixed. You can see some bubbling under the letters in this picture, and I just know that if I start prying the letters off then I'm going to be peeling the paint off with it. So for now, just the H. I may decide to put the gold letters on the good Vigor and find a gold A. Who knows...