Life Cycle of a Junkyard 1991 Honda Civic Si

You’ve read the auction-to-crusher story of the ’94 Camry and the ’91 Civic and you want to see more of the gory details of how the Civic got picked clean by junkyard shoppers? You’ve come to the right place! The complete set of photos of this car’s 11 weeks at U-Pull-&-Pay Denver is available at the bottom of this post, with the images labeled and in chronological order. We’ll hit the high points now, but you’ll need to check out the gallery to get the complete story. To view the Junkyard Life Cycle of its companion, the 1994 Toyota Camry XLE, go here.
This car was a bit battered but reasonably complete when it got lifted up onto the rack for fluid removal. Most likely, it still ran… but now we’ll never know.
The last owner of this car left behind his or her bootlegged copy of The Donnas’ Bitchin’.
Here’s the last we’ll see of the complete engine compartment. The scavengers hit this car early and often.
The first thing to go was the instrument cluster, along with the door panels.
One of the taillight lenses and all the exterior trim got yanked in the second week.
The right front fender, bumper cover, and some other snout-region body bits went away as well.
Under the hood, the throttle body, parts of the distributor, the air cleaner, and assorted odds and ends were gone by Week 3.
The other taillight and the remaining emblems were someone’s score around the same time.
By the fourth week, the interior was getting quite bare, though random bits from other cars were being tossed into the car.Amazingly, the unbroken right headlight was still on the car.
The hood (which was somewhat thrashed) knocked around the vicinity, eventually disappearing.
Not much had changed between the fifth and sixth weeks, suggesting that Denver-area fourth-gen Civic owners were taking a break to digest the parts they’d already yanked.
Some parts, such as the master cylinder, were removed and then abandoned.
During the seventh week, the D16A6 engine finally proved irresistible to somebody. Though U-Pull-&-Pay doesn’t charge less for a long block than for a complete engine, the buyer of this engine left the oil pan, accessories, timing cover, etc. behind.
By the eighth week, an erosive force of junkyard crawlers had stripped and jumbled the remains of the car’s interior almost beyond recognition.
The oil pan and other random bits had washed up inside by the following week.
A fifth- or sixth-gen Civic would have been stripped even more quickly, because more of those cars are still in use as daily drivers, but the rate of parts depletion on this 21-year-old car was respectable.
Still, there’s always something left on a high-demand car, even after ten weeks on the yard. The windshield-washer reservoir, for example.
With just a few days to go before this Honda’s date with the cold steel jaws of The Crusher, even the climate-control knobs and ashtray have been extracted.
At this point, what’s on the car is more or less what’s going to the scrapper.
After its 11 weeks on the yard, the Civic takes a forklift ride to Crusher Land. Many of its parts will live on in other fourth-gen Civics.
Since the engine had already been removed, only the copper wiring harnesses were removed here.
It will go to the scrapper merged with the Camry.
End of the line.