After procrastinating for nearly 18 months on the Integra GS-R-derived powertrain/suspension/brake upgrades on my appearance-challenged 1992 Honda Civic hatchback, after the engine-swap party that got the project rolling, I went into a frenzy of activity in late summer and got the car smog-legal and driving. This process required dozens of hurried junkyard trips to extract various Honda/Acura bits needed to clear the usual project bottlenecks, and one used-up 1996 Acura Integra in a Denver self-service wrecking yard a few miles from my house became my personal parts store. It became The Giving Integra, this name inspired by the Shel Silverstein book.
1994-2001 Integras aren’t difficult to find in the big self-service wrecking yards, but this one was a 1996, the same model year as the donor Integra GS-R that provided the engine for my Civic (the GS-R uses the B18C1 engine and the regular Integra had the less powerful B18B1, but they’re closely related). I was having trouble getting the engine in my Civic to idle correctly, so I drove the five miles to the junkyard and grabbed the idle air control valve. While I was at it, I pulled the engine computer; the Giving Integra had an automatic transmission in addition to the different engine, but I figured it was worth $29.99 to have an extra computer on hand, especially since such computers are easy to sell later if not needed).
A few days later, I went back to get the exhaust manifold flange seals, because the ones in my car were shot and caused catastrophic exhaust leaks. These are very cheap, but I wanted them now and the Giving Integra would provide them without forcing me to deal with confused parts-counter employees or wait a week for shipping.
A couple of weeks later, I had the Civic’s engine running well enough that I needed to set the ignition timing, which meant slicing a service connector out of another Integra and then integrating it into the the much-butchered wiring harness in my Civic. Back to the Giving Integra!
The service connector I needed has just two wires, one of which I thought was a ground… but I wasn’t sure. So, I used my $6 car-clock tester with an LED gauge bulb to verify the grounded nature of the wire in question. The Giving Integra was providing information as well as parts.
It turns out that the electrical connector linking the driver’s seat with the car’s wiring harness matches the one on Honda Tool 07PAZ-0010100, so I sliced that out of the Giving Integra while I was there. Ignition timing set!
The Giving Integra had been in junkyard inventory for a good month at this point, and someone had pulled the engine and removed its accessories. In fact, the car got more stripped every time I saw it; Integra parts are always in demand. I took this shot with my 1917 Vest Pocket Kodak film camera.
I’d swapped a complete Integra brake system into my Civic during its upgrades, only to learn that some of the junkyard components I’d grabbed years before weren’t in such great shape. My car had a non-ABS setup, but nearly all 1994-2001 Integras came with ABS and most of their brake hydraulics won’t fit my car. Fortunately for me, the Giving Integra was a non-ABS car, and so I ended up taking multiple trips to grab more stuff, sometimes more than one trip per day. The no-ABS proportioning valve was a real score, since the one I had was bad.
Even my brake booster was incorrect, but I knew where to get the right one. Now the brake system on my Civic works perfectly, thanks to the Giving Integra.
By the time the Giving Integra got pulled out of inventory and crushed, its remaining metals returning to the commodities ecosystem, it had provided me and many other Honda/Acura owners with the parts we needed to finish our projects. I will never forget the Giving Integra.
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