Seeing a few other sweet JDM and USDM CRXs cruising the streets in his country Alex decided that the best thing for him to was to import a fresh and clean 1991 USDM CRX who’d been residing in Miami Florida as of late. While the 91 HF was a suitable project car, it was far from perfect. Alex initially liked the stock R-63 Rio Red coloring on his new baby. But after taking a look around he realized that about seventy percent of the CRXs in Costa Rica were red… and he couldn’t settle for being just like everyone else. So the first thing he decided to do was give it a fresh new coat of pearl white paint.

But he couldn’t just prep and paint the body as it was; who wouldn’t expect things to be that simple? Poor working conditions combined with a number of typical EF chassis rust spots, 16 years of dents and dings, and misaligned body panels to contend with meant that Alex would spend the next eight months sanding, welding, filling, and sanding some more to get it just right for its new coat. Finally in April 2008, Alex was ready. He mixed up his own home made batch of pearl white paint and lovingly sprayed his CRX.

With his CRX finally looking good, Alex was starting to feel pretty good. So he hopped in, pressed the clutch and turned the key….. What he got was some rough running and a lot of black smoke. The tired, well used old D15B6 HF motor had seen better days. Facing a rebuild where all the seals and rings would need replacing, Alex opted to go for a JDM motor with a few less miles on it. After a month of searching, enter the D15B VTEC motor. He swapped it in, converted to OBD1 electronics and tuned her with Crome Pro, bringing his car to life with a pumping new heart. Alex then got down to cleaning up the motor to match his super clean paint job.

July rolled around and Alex was content. Cruising in his own imported, swapped, painted CRX, brought back to life by his own blood, sweat and tears. But just as before, destiny had other plans for Alex and his CRX. After over eight months of preparation, Alex had only enjoyed his CRX for 22 days before disaster struck. An inattentive driver ran a stop sign, smashing the front end of Alex’s baby. But that didn’t keep Alex down. Despite the extreme difficulty of getting old Honda parts down in Costa Rica, he managed to replace, repair and repaint the front end in less than a month!!!