Rilas : 1993 Accord SE

[Rilas]

So this is what Lola looked like the day before she was stolen.

Lola 1


Lola 2


Lola 3


Lola 4


I finally got her totally color matched, not so much anymore. I'll have to find the other camera and get some pictures off of it. I forgot to grab the Nikon on the way out the door to the impound yard. So I have some pictures on a low end Canon somewhere.

[apalileo]

I just caught up with the latest. I'm angered and relieved. I know the pain of car theft, and mine was never found (believed to have been chopped). I'm glad your drive hasn't diminished!

[Rilas]

I just caught up with the latest. I'm angered and relieved. I know the pain of car theft, and mine was never found (believed to have been chopped). I'm glad your drive hasn't diminished!

Well my drive has been killed for awhile recently. But then again the lack of even having the car hasn't helped. I'm still fighting with the insurance over this. I think we are finally about done.

[Rilas]

On our trip to California I didn't find all that much for Lola, but I did manage to find an almost mint condition set of 2002 Acura CL Type S front seats. Eventually I would like to see if the rear seats from this same car would fit into our coupes. (Jarrett if you get some time could you measure the width of your CL-S rear seats?) Also from another CL-S I brought home the entire intake manifold and the heads and cam's. I have no idea what I will use these for yet but considering they are hard to find or overly expensive. So with the insurance money I'm going to have Lola repainted, and buy a 3rd Gen TL. I've currently got my eye on a 07 base model with navigation. We'll have to see how this goes over the next week. Anyway I'll have some pictures and more updates coming this way soon.

[Jarrett]

My girlfriend is using the car right now and she lives back home, but I'll see if she can go pull tape on them tonight. They are a multi-piece design, so some work would need to be done mounting them up. Possibly installing some rivnuts for the bottom cushions to bolt to. You would also lose the rear seat folding capability, just as you would if you were to do a '97-'99 CL rear seat install. They are comfy, though. The fronts, too. Both of the front seats are powered and heated, so they are incredibly heavy. '03-'07 front seats might be a fair alternative if you don't want both seats to be powered due to the weight.

[Rilas]

My girlfriend is using the car right now and she lives back home, but I'll see if she can go pull tape on them tonight. They are a multi-piece design, so some work would need to be done mounting them up. Possibly installing some rivnuts for the bottom cushions to bolt to. You would also lose the rear seat folding capability, just as you would if you were to do a '97-'99 CL rear seat install. They are comfy, though. The fronts, too. Both of the front seats are powered and heated, so they are incredibly heavy. '03-'07 front seats might be a fair alternative if you don't want both seats to be powered due to the weight.

I already have the full powered and heated '99 CL seats in there now. As well as the rear seat. So I've already lost the fold down function. The '02 Type S seats are incredibly awesome! I already love how they hold you, and I haven't even hooked up a battery to attempt to adjust them. I've already installed some rivnuts to hold the '99 CL rear seat in. So not really any sort of hindrance to add some more to the body. I'd appreciate the measurements. Then when I finally get Lola back I can measure her up. If they are anywhere near each other I'll be on the hunt for a set of rear seats from the Type S CL to get into her.

[Rilas]

So finally some updates on Lola. The insurance shit is finally over. I'm going to buy another Optima battery tonight for her. Tomorrow I'm going to take off work a bit early and go drop the battery in and drive her home. Hopefully nothing suspension wise or engine wise was damaged while in the asshat's possession allowing me to drive it home. Some updates tomorrow, I'll let you know how it all went.

Also another FYI I haven't hear anything from the police and the officer on my case still hasn't returned a single voice mail I've left. So I doubt I'll ever know that they were caught until I start receiving checks from the insurance company on reimbursement of my deductible. Shitty part for these thieves is that if they are caught they owe State Farm almost 10k for my car. Probably the most damned expensive 4th gen Accord they've ever stolen.

[Raf99]

wow. just caught up and holy crap. Glad you got it back! Can we see some after pictures. And i hear ya on the kill switch. The smartest thing I ever seen someone do was rig the clutch switch through a window switch where you had to hold the rear passenger window switch down to start the car. But i imagine the window didn't function still. But I always wanted to do something like this, think i will as it would be easy to do.

[Rilas]

Alright so a quick update. I didn't get a battery. No one in town carries the Optima I need for our cars anymore. I'll have to order it online. Thursday night I had a fever and was dead to the world all day yesterday. So I didn't do anything with the car. I have Monday off due to the holiday so I'm going to pick it up sometime on Monday. I'm just going to have AAA tow it to the house. I'll get some pics up once she's in the driveway.

[Rilas]

So she came home. It's late and I'm tired. So I'm just going to make this one quick.

Lola 1 (As you can see she is shit flat black. There are sanding marks all over you can see through the black paint.)


Lola 2


Dent in Hood (They tried to beat it out from the back side.)


Dent in Roof (This is from prying the door open with a pry bar...)


Rear Window Trim (Or lack of it... This has been out in the weather leaking in the trunk for the last 5 months.)


Original Paint (Only spot left on the exterior.)


Magnaflow Catback (It's all still there...)


Ignition


Front Interior


Rear Interior


Driver Door (I think it's bent.)


Black Trunk Trim (Bent like this for 5 months...)


Battery Rigging


Engine Bay (It's so disgusting from sitting in a yard for 5 months.)


AC Fan (Fell off I unplugged it once it was out of the yard, so I still have the fan.)


ESP Rear Bracket


Hood Underside


SE Coupe Floor Mats (I still have them!)


Missing Tray for Storage Compartment


So I drove it home. Long story with towing... It's home and runs. The oil looks good if only a touch low. I'll try and update more when I'm not a zombie.

[Raf99]

Well................. then. I can't believe some of the items are still there like the ESP items, wheel, and exhaust. They obviously just wanted the car for a joy ride but surprisingly took the time to paint it with the license plate on??? And besides the door damage I'd say this can be repaired. I'm sure a good body shop could fix the issues but at this point it would seem better to swap everything to a new shell. Looks like the interior can be cleaned up too.


So what ya going to do with her?

[Rilas]

I honestly think it was more than a joy ride. You don't just randomly pull the rear window trim off. I just have a feeling they didn't have enough mechanical knowledge to deal with a highly modified engine bay. Although why they didn't at least swap the wheels is well beyond me. I figured they would be the very first thing gone. They had just painted it though when it was found. So I wonder if they got caught in the act or something. When it came off the tow truck at the first yard it still smelled like fresh paint, so it hadn't been very long. I think the goal was to hide it, in the open. Then take all the stuff off of it. After all why only paint it after owning it for 2 weeks and not immediately.

Anyway from whats left of the insurance money, after buying and repairing the TL, and the deductible and the salvage value on the car, and selling the sedan, I should have enough to get the body work done and repaint her the original color.

While I could swap shells:
1. I'll probably not find an SE of this color again without rust in my half of the country, or at least not anytime soon. I was looking for this one for almost 2 years.
2. My little boy grew up working on this shell with me, not another one.
3. It's not that much work beyond the body to get her back to where she should be.

So the only other things I've found broken:
Rear view mirror housing is loose on the ceiling and the frame is cracked.
Something is up with the exhaust as it's louder than it should be.

I'll look into this tonight or tomorrow as it had almost 2 inches of ice on it last night that I had to melt off.

[Raf99]

Good points. It seems like they did not have access to jacks, stands, garage, or other tools too, hence they just took stuff they could pull off. But painting a car with a can is a lot of work and takes a lot of cans. Did they get paint on the wheels, windows, trim?

Glad you got it back though. You could sand it down yourself for the body shop and do a lot of other things now. Make it better than before.

[Rilas]

There is no paint on the wheels. The trim is more or less clean as they at least taped it off. I still have a bunch of masking tape to peel off the car. The windows are another story though. I'm going to have to razor blade a bunch of the paint off as they didn't care about painting the windows but the trim had to be saved....

I'm planning on doing a bunch of the prep work myself to save some cash as well. Also hopefully it will be done the right way also. I'm still looking for a body guy. I few of my friends know guys that do body work on the side. They work at body shops during the day. So I'm going to have to track someone down and have them look at the car so I can get an idea on cost. I've been told it shouldn't be any more than about $2500 if I go with really good paint. We shall see.

Also while I didn't have the car I did slowly keep plugging away on the H22A1. While I don't really have pictures of much of this. I've assembled the rest of the block, aside from the timing belt. I've decided to replace the oil pump with a new one. I was just hoping to run the pump I had the rest of the summer/fall then change it out this winter. Well since the car was stolen that didn't happen. So now before I make anymore progress on it, I need to get the pump replaced. I did take on yet another project with the dremel related to this project. I've decided to totally port match this thing from the throttle body to the cylinder heads. Also while working on the intake and the IAB plate, I decided to finish smoothing out the rest of the runners in the intake. Since they were already done up to the EGR holes there isn't much more from the top of the runners down. I haven't quite started on that as I've been working on port matching the IAB plate to the top of the runners. I have 6 out of 8 done now. Just 2 more left with the plates in them. I haven't worked on this for a few months now, due to many other projects. But I'm about to start working on it again shortly. When that happens I'll get some pictures of this thing up for you guys.

[Crankshaft]

Glad to see you got your car back man, i had bastards try and steal mine 2 times; the secnd i actually saw the guy trying to take it and ran him off while i called the POPO. I hate thieves with the same passion i have for breathing