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Meet my '89 Honda Accord LX. His name is Nelson. I bought it from a friend to use as a daily while I built my Prelude. It was just a simple, carbureted, factory accord with a nice interior and exterior, lots of miles, and bulletproof reliability. It remained stock for about a year until one day I got bored and decided to throw the lowering springs on that were included with the car when I bought it. Never aligned it, tires went bald, and one day in the rain I lost traction and slid down a 10 foot deep ravine, hitting an embankment and laying the car on its side briefly before it came crashing to a hault.
In a way, that wreck was the best thing I ever did to the car. I was left with a beat up, perfect running car that I liked too much to junk. It became a blank canvas. An all-out, no-holds-barred expression of myself. I could do no wrong, so thus began Nelson's journey from factory daily status to a goofy interpretation of a rat rod beater to its current state of stance. The following pictures will display the last 3 years of what I've done with the car.
When I brought it home
crx swirlies and a canoe... cause roof racks are for losers.
back to steelies and lowering springs installed
Then I hit this ditch. The picture doesn't do it justice, but trust me if you stand at the bottom of it, the road is above your head.
caused the following:
The bumper support and radiator support used to be almost parallel.
so I fixed the frame damage with this...
I guess that and the canoe on the roof are really showing the Tennessee in me...
Anyway, kicked the quarter back out and did some bodywork. Re-aligned the front end as best as I could since the hood, headlight buckets, bumper and fenders were pretty out of whack, and ended up with a fairly straight car again
but doing bondo means you have to prime and paint the car, and I wasn't gonna even try to blend to the factory color, so army green it was.
kinda rocked the two-tone for a bit, picked up some BMW E30 bottlecaps and balloon tires and threw those on
Volvo lip and trunk rack from an 85 Prelude
Then I really wanted to go rat with the car, so I took the old steelies back out... but with some paint
Decided it needed more low, so I threw on some ebay springs. then the lip was constantly dragging so i got one from an 84 camry or something at the junkyard
struts were still factory, so it bounced pretty badly, but it was starting to look pretty good. decided to go a bit lower then things started to rub in the fender well and the shocks were constantly bottoming out. at the new height i had about an inch of suspension travel before the strut reached full compression with no bump stop installed. they blew very very quickly
besides the suspension being maxxed out, the bottom of the car was starting to take a beating as well. the flex pipe rubbed through and started to pull apart
after a bit of looking at the suspension geometry and scoping out what was hitting and where, I started going to further extremes to get it down
(I don't really have a good pic of it, but i mounted the top hat above the fender well on those bolts to get my shock travel back.)
Then went to Import Alliance in Atlanta and let the crowd freely chalk the car. LOVED the result.
Then sadly those tires were toast, so I swapped out for some E30 steelies I painted tan to kinda give it a military feel. Also, the chalk washed off 2 weeks later when it finally rained.
At that point I decided I wanted to run some flush fitment. Always liked the look of steelies on the car so Diamond Racing was a given, and I wanted to overhaul the suspension since I had travel pretty figured out but everything was blown. Decided on an exterior makeover as well. So I set my goal to finish all that by Import Alliance in Nashville
I set the suspension as low as I could and with the new tires, my ride height was getting silly. Exactly what I wanted
The final, assembled, current look of the car:
And that's where it's at! Well actually it's dead at the moment... coolant overflow tank hit the ground and bled out all the coolant without me knowing till on the interstate my gauge started dropping and the heat was blowing cold. Drove 11 miles with no coolant at all. Threw some in and it ran fine till I went to replace the oil pan (which also hit the ground one too many times) and found that most of what drained out was a coffee colored coolant milk. So the head gasket had blown without me knowing and it ran out of oil at the same time. I rebuilt that engine and am working on getting it back together. Maybe some other little details will change too
In a way, that wreck was the best thing I ever did to the car. I was left with a beat up, perfect running car that I liked too much to junk. It became a blank canvas. An all-out, no-holds-barred expression of myself. I could do no wrong, so thus began Nelson's journey from factory daily status to a goofy interpretation of a rat rod beater to its current state of stance. The following pictures will display the last 3 years of what I've done with the car.
When I brought it home
crx swirlies and a canoe... cause roof racks are for losers.
back to steelies and lowering springs installed
Then I hit this ditch. The picture doesn't do it justice, but trust me if you stand at the bottom of it, the road is above your head.
caused the following:
The bumper support and radiator support used to be almost parallel.
so I fixed the frame damage with this...
I guess that and the canoe on the roof are really showing the Tennessee in me...
Anyway, kicked the quarter back out and did some bodywork. Re-aligned the front end as best as I could since the hood, headlight buckets, bumper and fenders were pretty out of whack, and ended up with a fairly straight car again
but doing bondo means you have to prime and paint the car, and I wasn't gonna even try to blend to the factory color, so army green it was.
kinda rocked the two-tone for a bit, picked up some BMW E30 bottlecaps and balloon tires and threw those on
Volvo lip and trunk rack from an 85 Prelude
Then I really wanted to go rat with the car, so I took the old steelies back out... but with some paint
Decided it needed more low, so I threw on some ebay springs. then the lip was constantly dragging so i got one from an 84 camry or something at the junkyard
struts were still factory, so it bounced pretty badly, but it was starting to look pretty good. decided to go a bit lower then things started to rub in the fender well and the shocks were constantly bottoming out. at the new height i had about an inch of suspension travel before the strut reached full compression with no bump stop installed. they blew very very quickly
besides the suspension being maxxed out, the bottom of the car was starting to take a beating as well. the flex pipe rubbed through and started to pull apart
after a bit of looking at the suspension geometry and scoping out what was hitting and where, I started going to further extremes to get it down
(I don't really have a good pic of it, but i mounted the top hat above the fender well on those bolts to get my shock travel back.)
Then went to Import Alliance in Atlanta and let the crowd freely chalk the car. LOVED the result.
Then sadly those tires were toast, so I swapped out for some E30 steelies I painted tan to kinda give it a military feel. Also, the chalk washed off 2 weeks later when it finally rained.
At that point I decided I wanted to run some flush fitment. Always liked the look of steelies on the car so Diamond Racing was a given, and I wanted to overhaul the suspension since I had travel pretty figured out but everything was blown. Decided on an exterior makeover as well. So I set my goal to finish all that by Import Alliance in Nashville
I set the suspension as low as I could and with the new tires, my ride height was getting silly. Exactly what I wanted
The final, assembled, current look of the car:
And that's where it's at! Well actually it's dead at the moment... coolant overflow tank hit the ground and bled out all the coolant without me knowing till on the interstate my gauge started dropping and the heat was blowing cold. Drove 11 miles with no coolant at all. Threw some in and it ran fine till I went to replace the oil pan (which also hit the ground one too many times) and found that most of what drained out was a coffee colored coolant milk. So the head gasket had blown without me knowing and it ran out of oil at the same time. I rebuilt that engine and am working on getting it back together. Maybe some other little details will change too
" - Stretchd8
" - FittedDownLow
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