Sea Foam! Magic in a Bottle (or can as it were)

You ever see those "intake cleaning" advertisements on TV or on the wall at your dealer?  They claim to improve fuel economy, increase and restore lost power, do everything you ever wanted and more... all for a hundred or so bucks.  Well, it turns out, they can back it up.  The good news is I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to cost $100+ bucks.  Go to Advance Auto or Walmart and buy a can of Sea Foam motor treatment.  You can do the same thing for about 8 dollars.  If you have a brand new car, this process won't do anything for you. if you have a car like mine with 191000 miles on it, it really is a miracle worker.

So, you bought some Sea Foam and you are wondering what the heck to do with it to bring your car back to life?  It's decently easy.  First, put 1/3 of the can into the gas tank.  This will clean out your injectors/carb jets and is much like a normal pour in engine cleaner. 

Second, open your crank case and pour 1/3 into your oil.  This step cleans up the valve train/cam/whatever is in there.  Do this ONLY if you plan on changing your oil the same day!  You should not allow Sea Foam to sit in your engine block long term.  Some people skip this step all together.

Next, and this is where the good stuff starts, you will put 1/3 of the can into your intake manifold directly while the car is running!  Yup you read that correctly.  For my civic, there is a vacuum line that goes from the intake manifold to the brake booster.  I took it off a the brake booster and poured the Sea Foam through a funnel into the line.  Make sure you have a friend with you to give it a bit of gas to keep the car running if necessary.  When you've put the full 1/3 into the motor, turn the car off and wait 10 minutes.  When you come back, turn it on and let it idle for a second.  Then rev it up to about 3-4 k and hold it for a few seconds.  Do this at varying rpms for 4 or 5 times then take the car for a drive.

If you did not skip step 2 then go ahead and change your oil and oil filter now.  That's it!  You are done.

I was looking for some pics of when I did this to my car.  I couldn't find them but picture my car totally covered in white smoke.  Don't worry... the smoke is normal.  This just means its burning out all the carbon deposits etc.  Now, if you are wondering if this really works let me tell you this, I have a 15 year old car that still gets 38 miles per gallon and 40 mpg when I'm being good.  That's average of city and highway!  I believe that the Sea Foam treatment is well worth the 8 bucks!

Drilled and Slotted Rotors for CHEAP

When it comes to brakes... I absolutely recommend doing the brake pads first.  Once you have upgraded your pads, the next step is to throw on some trick rotors so your brakes look as cool as they feel.  There are all kinds of aftermarket types.  There are drilled, slotted, dimpled, and recently J hook and "blade" slots.  These all handle the gasses created by the brakes and dirt created by the pads in different ways. 

What I would suggest is this... For stock or basic street pads, go with a blank rotor or one that is simply slotted (or slots and dimples if it's EBC).  The reason I say this is because it is unnecessary to save weight by running drilled rotors and the cooling properties of the holes are unnecessary on the street.  There are a ton of other things that go into that suggestion such as the way drilled brakes tend to crack under repeated heavy braking and that it removes more of the braking surface for the pads to contact.  All kinds of things.  Just take my word for it, the slotted or blanks are the ticket.  The advantage of slots over blanks is you experience more even pad wear and slightly better wet weather breaking because the slots carry the dirt and water away from the braking surface.

That being said, here is a pic of my new rotors:

You may be asking why I have drilled and slotted rotors after that rant on not getting them.  Well, it's because I got these babies for $30.  That's right, that's for the PAIR!  Once again, I went with what was available for crazy cheap.  A buddy of mine picked these up for his EK (civic hatch like mine).  He didn't want to mess with getting dirty and removing those two stupid screws in the middle of the rotor.  You can see them in this pick at the top and bottom of the center section of the rotor.

 WARNING!  If you try to swap out your honda rotors without this cool tool... you WILL strip those dumb little rotor screws.  You put the bit in the screw and hit the other end with the hammer.  The tool does the rest.  This little baby cost as much as the rotors, but the job could not have been done without it.  I picked this one up at NAPA and it is well built.  This thing should last me 25 years.  SO, if you total the tool and the rotors, this job cost me about 65 bucks.  Not bad for a brand new set of rotors.

If you are not so fortunate to have a friend like mine trying to get rid of some parts, check Craigslist, eBay, and the usual forums for parts.  I was able to find no name rotors like mine for as cheap as 90 bucks for the pair.  If you want a quality set of blanks from a great company like Brembo, you can pick them up for $130 for the pair.  The slotted and dimpled EBC rotors usually go for about $150 for the pair.  Either one will be outstanding, but again, if you like the "sport look" like I do, go with the slots.

Quick how to replace your rotors link right HERE

It's really easy to do the rotors if you have already mastered the brake pad replacement, there is literally just two more steps!  Take off those dumb screws (can you tell they annoy me) and pull off rotors, put new ones one, put dumb screws in, tighten, throw the caliper back on, and DONE!

Let me show you a couple other pics of the new brake set up:

 You can see my Megan Racing springs in this one.  That is going to be the subject of a post coming to you soon!

That's a wrap for my brakes.  Hopefully someday I can upgrade those rear drums and get some stainless steel braided brake lines.  Until then, I'm pretty content with the improvement I've seen from the pads and rotors.  It would also be nice if I had some sweet wheels to show off the brakes behind them!  Stay tuned!

Hit the Brakes! Stopping My Civic

One thing I think anyone should look at upgrading, regardless of your end goal, is your brakes.  On my civic, I have front disk and rear drum brakes.  The fastest way to improve your braking is to simply swap your brake pads. Look for a quality street pad from a reputable company.

For my Civic DX, I only have front disk.  I opted to leave the rear drums stock and upgrade the pads up front.  I found a set of EBC greenstuff pads for a whopping 35 bucks on eBay.

That is about half the price of the pads normally.  Ok... so I got them that cheap because a cat peed on them and the guy didn't want them any more.  Thing is, they were brand new, in the box, and had never been used.  I pulled them out of the box and threw them on the car.  My car didn't care about the pee.  And as a side note, the pads didn't smell like anything.  The crazy thing is, the first time I went to stop after breaking in the pads I pulled up 20 feet short of where I was expecting to be.  That's a HUGE difference!  And that cost me 35 bucks!  Even at full price, that kind of impact for just 70 bucks and 30 minutes to install is an incredible deal.  The pads have been on for two years now and they have been great and have plenty of life yet to live!

I found a great site on how to change brake pads on edmunds.com HERE.  The vehicle isn't the same as my civic but it's the same basic concept.

Again, the key is to look out for deals.  You can save a ton of cash just being patient and smart about looking for a deal.  The way I found these pads for half off was searching for the part number of my car's break pads from several comparable companies and lines.  I checked Hawk HP and HP+ pads, EBC greenstuff and redstuff pads.  Then I put each part number in a search in Google Shopping as well as eBay and Amazon.  I found the sweet deal on the greenstuff pads and that was my clear choice!  That's how I get it done, the deadbrokehonda way.