Hey friends!
Good to write a post that's not writing prompts for y'all! Hope you've been enjoying Fox and Castiel's writing. It's fun to see them posting, it's given them a place to talk about random stuff. But today is about my Civic, because wow, I've been so happy lately. I had the best day in months last Sunday, I had a really good time visiting a gem show with my mom. Then I was out til dark putting stickers on my Civic, which you'll see later in this post. Bought some great stuff, and was so happy to finally see the spoiler we got at the scrap yard on my Civic. It's not the most special Honda Civic upgrade ever, but for some reason that's all I needed to finally feel free from some of the stuff I've been dealing with. I've had to separate from some friends the past few months and that took a big toll on my mental health, and the end of my semester was super busy. I've settled into summer, and the work on the Civic isn't done. The plan is to take out the carpet and put a new one in, and put in the speakers I got for Christmas. The CD player wants to retire, so we may be getting a new one, or maybe a screen? We'll see. We'll probably also get some color match paint to do touch ups on all of the scratches and dents, along with coloring the spoiler to match. We'll see what we manage to get around to. It also needs new breaks, and we gotta fix one of the belts cuz it's still being a pain. Enough with the future, let's look at the present.
Before I start, please note that some of the videos contain loud noises such as drills, along with the blowing wind. You may want to turn the volume down or skip the videos if these sounds bother you.
Firstly, we had to get a spoiler. We went to a scarp yard looking for a spoiler on a Civic of my era, but there weren't any. Which was honestly great, because I feel like those old spoilers look like handles. So we went back and looked at other spoilers. I saw the spoiler on a 2000s Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder and knew it was the one. It was the right size, so it'd fit, and I loved the shape. It makes a great statement. Now I have to wonder if my cousin would be proud of me. She loves Mitsubishi but hates Honda for some reason. Never knew why. So have I defaced a car she loves, or have I added grace to a car she hates? I think too much like an English major in my daily life. I do like the webs on the Spyder in the scrap yard, it looks pretty cool. Too bad for the car that it was in the yard and not still driving. Good for me that I can take its spoiler and love it more. That's the nice thing about scrap yards, you can take the good parts of totaled or unwanted cars and use them. My mom calls them "organ donors," which is very funny to me.
We had to pull the spoiler off the Spyder, which I honestly didn't think to document, but I was also helping my dad hold the trunk lid up while he unscrewed the spoiler. Some of the bolts had rusted and become sort of bonded into the fiberglass spoiler and we broke it slightly. My dad just put new holes in it, but we had to be careful anyways. What's funny is that one of the bolts got lost in the spoiler, so whenever you picked up the spoiler you'd hear a clanking, which was very funny. It's not noticeable when driving, but when lifting the trunk lid you can sometimes hear it. You can see some of the broken fiberglass in this picture. The white stuff is where the spoiler tore some.
Now that we had our spoiler, we got right to work... after three or so weeks. My father and I were both busy with work, and I had to finish my classes. I did wash, compound, and wax the spoiler the same time I did with the Civic, and that helped take off the scratches and dirt. But one Saturday after work, at maybe 8PM, we put the spoiler on. My father did most of the work, but he encouraged me to take pictures and videos to post here. I was happy to be the camera and hold stuff.
Step one was to measure the spoiler onto the trunk lid. We had already checked to see if the spoiler fit by holding it over the side. Luckily it didn't cover the 3rd break light, which would be illegal. I had no idea about that til the night we put it on, honestly. My father used paper to make a template for how wide the spoiler was, shown here. He pressed into the paper where the holes for the spoiler were, and aligned the paper where we had marked earlier. These marks were made by holding the spoiler on the trunk where we wanted it and tracing the outside to give us a general idea of where it would land.
After this, my dad punched holes based on where the paper template had placed them. I'm not sure what this tool is called but it made a louder noise than I had expected, and it shocked me. My dad said that a spoiler was a commitment, and I answered that I was excited to make that commitment.
My father then moved forward to drilling in a guiding hole, and finding the hole on the other side of the trunk. Basically, we needed to make sure we weren't gonna drill into anything super important. We didn't. But later, after I'd turned off the camera, the drill bit snapped and fell into the trunk lid. That's two clinky clanky things in my car now. The wind really picked up at this point, and you can see that it was dark. This must've been around 8:30PM.
We also had a little friend coming to help. We weren't sure if he, MB, was hungry and I had asked my mother if she'd fed him. All he wanted was to be a part of the fun.
After that we had to make the holes inside the lid bigger so the bolts would fit. My father looked at a couple of his drill bits until deciding on using a hole saw. This basically cut a big hole into the inside of the trunk lid, which had to be smoothed out afterwards. I really admire how my father has all these older tool kits that still work well. Maybe it's because I work at an antique shop, but I appreciate when old things are kept nice and used to their fullest potential. I want to keep my Civic in good shape and take it to car shows one day as a classic car. The hole saw set was rescued from a youth center he used to work in, after they were going to throw it away. The hole saw took out big chunks of the lid, two of which fell into the lid. So now when you lift the lid, it sounds like a maraca. It's one groovy car.
Here's the hole saw going into the lid. It's around 9PM.
And here's my dad smoothing out the edges.
I'm still shocked the neighbors didn't come complain to us about all the noise. I mean, they make more noise than we do, but they're kinda crazy. My father took a smaller drill bit and made holes on the outside of the lid. These didn't need to be as big because they didn't need as much clearance for the bolts.
We wanted to plug up the old holes with something so the spoiler didn't get water or other damage over time. We also needed to cover the broken fiberglass. My father was explaining the stuff we used to me, which is called butyl tape. It helps seal the holes and be sure moisture and what not doesn't get in. I believe the type my father was using was for auto, but it's made for other purposes as well.
Our little helper made another appearance before we finally finished. MB is one the feral cats who live on our porch. He's very friendly, and all he really wanted was to be pet. He's fixed, which is why there's a tip on his ear. This helps trap neuter return (TNR) groups know which cats have been trapped already. MB was ready to use the hammer for something, even though we didn't need it.
The final step was to screw the bolts in, which I didn't film because I was helping. Here's the finished product with the spoiler! It was so much fun to help out and see the process, since I wasn't exactly what was in store. I also got to spend time with my dad, which can be rare because our paths never really cross. I wanted to spend more time doing things he likes, which is working on cars, before I leave to another college in a year or so. We had so much fun looking in the scrap yard for the spoiler, and putting the spoiler on. My dad is very proud of his work and he should be. It turned out great.
You'll have to excuse the awkwardness of the black square censoring my plate. It's hard to get a perfect cover on a moving video, but I wanted to show you all the full view anyways.
In the video, my father asks me to step on the break so we can check if the light is still visible, and it is. So the night after we put the spoiler on, I added the sparkle stickers I bought off of Etsy onto the car. Click this for a link to the listing if you'd like some for yourself. The product is great, they stick well. I had a bit of a pain getting some of them off the transfer sheet but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I had seen someone do this in the listing's reviews and loved it so much, and I wanted to try it on my car. They don't block my view at all, which is really nice. I worked around the existing stickers, and both windows ended up looking different since I was working in the dark. I managed to get a good video of me putting one on. It's so satisfying.
And the final product! The photo is from the night I did it, and only the first window, but the video shows how I added some to the back window and the full view of the side windows. I wanted the back of the car to be cohesive, so the sparkles on the side really help with that.
The Civic has been improved a lot, in my opinion. It's starting it's journey from being a basic commuter car to something that's mine. My little guy, as I've been saying for the past few years. I've fallen in love with this car, and I couldn't tell you why. I should've known I'd be a car person as I got older, since I watched the movie Cars so much as a child that I scratched the DVD and we needed a new one. I think there's some really good energy left behind from the English professor who sold it to me. Hopefully I can return soon with some more Civic updates. Fox or I will definitely post more about car shows in the coming weeks, I'll probably let him post because he has so much fun with it. I'm off to do more writing!
Have a good day,
-Rosetta 💖