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"Weirdmobile" 1998 Honda Accord - El Camino conversion
Thought you guys might like this project I have been working on...
As I get older, I like nicer things and work harder to earn them. With work & family, life gets busy & stressful. It is almost therapeutic to get out in the garage with some friends, beers, and just wrench/hack/weld on something for fun. Something that doesn't really matter if it isn't perfect. This is how the Weirdmobile came to be.
The History…
Summer of 2012: A friend got a Honda Pilot earlier that year and his 200k mi 1998 accord 5-speed had been sitting in his yard ever since. Another friend competes in the Medina County Fair Rough Truck competition every year, but didn't get his vehicle (turbo Geo Tracker) completed in time to compete. A few days before the event, friend 1 sold his 98 Accord to friend 2 for $500 under the condition that he had to run it in the Rough Truck Competition.
Mikey (friend 2) brought the car by after he bought it. It was actually a decent daily/nice beater. It had some rust on the rear wheel wells, rockers and hood. It needed brakes, fresh fluids and a cleaning. He could have flipped it and doubled his $500 and maybe then some, but that was not the agreement. He had to have fun with it.
Figuring it would need all the extra support it could get, I was in charge of the paint scheme to make it a crowd favorite. Bath Salts & Zombies were big that year... So I came up with a theme: http://6thgearadvertising.com/pics/w...ccord_comp.jpg
("Let's Get Weird" is a quote from the show Workaholics and something Friend 2 says when ever he gets a few beers in him and does something questionable.)
4 days before the race, friend 2 (Mikey) got the car and brought it over to the garage. Friend 1 (Nick) showed up with the beer. We already had most of the aerosol paint colors between all of us combined. The rest was donated from Mike’s work.
Siliconed the teeth in so they wouldn't wiggle out of the gum holes and she was ready to go!
We didn't have the time/$$ to find a set of 15" mud tires for the front or a set of Honda Odyssey springs to lift it. Also we decided not to ruin the hood putting the intake through it, just in case the car survived Rough Truck 2012.
So once the 30-day temp plates expired, the car was once again retired to sitting outside in a front yard. The drivetrain was great, so he didn't want to scrap it. He felt guilty trying to sell it on craigslist, as the front alignment was pretty bad off. The wheels were visibly further back in the wheel wells than before, although the car drove perfectly straight. Winter rolled around and the car was forgotten about.
Then in 2013, he was tossing around the idea of keeping the drivetrain for a buggy/gokart project and parting out/scrapping the rest of the car.
But as 2013 went by and winter came around, the car sat through another Ohio winter.
Then in early 2014, his Daily driver (Suzuki Sidekick 4x4) was getting terrible mileage and needed a bit of work. Working at a new job with a long commute. So he registered the Accord, checked everything over carefully, and started daily driving it. It drove great and got 35 MPG!
A few weeks later, I got a text from Mikey:
"I need a truck to haul my quad or dirt bike... How do you think the accord would look as an elcamino?"
The first thing we did was google search to see if this has ever been done before, as that would make it a lot easier. We found 2 older accords converted into a truck, along with some Civics, 240's, bmw's, vw's, an RX7... but no late model accord.
It would have been easy to build a flat wall and drop a truck window in it. We saw a lot of conversions done like that but really liked the way the cab flowed into the bed on an actual elcamino & Holden UTE's. Especially with the little rear 1/4 windows the UTE's had.
We searched online for about a month, looking for actual rear 1/4 glass from a UTE (not likely since they're from Australia) or any other similar shape of glass from a vehicle. That's why we settled on re-using part of the roof & C pillar and simply move it forward. Then we could just cut a new rear 1/4 window from plexi or metal to get that UTE look.
The rear of the cab was the next issue. It would be awesome to have a removable rear wall to have an open cab/bed, sort of like an old Blazer/Bronco/4runner. But since Ohio weather sucks 6 months out of the year, we decided that it should be a permanent structure. That would also help things be more structurally solid.
For the rear cab window, We found some reasonably priced truck rear windows, but I really wanted to use a Del Sol rear window. That way we could still have a (smaller) opening to the bed at the touch of a button, since the Del Sol rear window is power & rolls down. Also, it would be cool to re-use Honda parts on a Honda.
So after more searching and missing a couple wrecked del sols that sold too fast, we found a guy selling one that was a project car, hit hard in front & already mostly stripped. Mikey went out to Wapakoneta, OH with a trailer & sawzall and came back with a F22 motor, H22 SH trans, some del sol body parts, most of which we would sell to fund the project, and beer of course. Most important was the entire rear firewall with window & all window mechanism intact!
Because there wasn't really a good DIY for turning a sedan into a truck on the internet, we decided to document as much as possible and upload some videos of the progress.
Here we take a close look at the car and realize that the subframe and the rest of the front of the car has been shifted from some of those big jumps/hard landings. We look at how far the front wheels are pushed back, the awful hood & bumper gap... The front door/fender gap is big enough near the bottom to fit an entire index finger in
So between all of that, plus the typical honda rust on the bottom and rear of the car, we decide to modify the original plan...
We're going to keep it "Weird" and stick with the zombie theme. Instead of a smooth flush body (which would be nearly impossible to achieve with the way the car is now) we're going to keep it raw: Exposed stitch welds, pop rivets, wear the blood and honda rust proudly.
That brings us to 2015 and we have been working on the car while he continues to drive it daily.
We get together one or two evenings a month and make a little progress at a time.
If you're in NE OH, you might see it on the road in the Medina, Cleveland area.
Part 10
We take the Weirdmobile on a road trip to our local scrap yard. Back at the garage, we finish welding the roof and delete the rear door handles.
02-24-2015, 12:14 PM
