Canada man buys abandoned Turbo Honda Civic for $500 to see if he can bring it back to life

A $500 Honda Civic with a turbo bolted on is the kind of listing most people would scroll past.

But Artur from Artur Stone Garage dragged it home anyway.

The car had been abandoned for years with the sunroof left open, flooding the interior until mold and rust took over. 

And this team wanted to know if it would ever drive again.

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Could he bring a $500 Turbo Honda Civic back to life?

First order of business: strip the swamp out of the Honda Civic’s interior.

Artur removed the seats, ripped out soaked insulation, unclogged drains, and vacuumed away years of debris. 

Normally, a car left open to rain ends up with serious rust underneath.

Luckily, this one wasn’t – the floors were still solid, which meant it actually had a fighting chance.

Next came the engine check. 

With more than 248,000 miles on the clock, the Civic should have been toast. 

Instead, compression came back strong at 160 to 175 PSI – the numbers looked good.

But the Civic still refused to start. 

The fuel pump tested fine but stayed dead silent. 

Artur kept chasing wires until he found the culprit – one blown fuse feeding the ECU. 

Swap it, turn the key, and suddenly the pump primed. 

The Honda barked awake, loud and raw with no exhaust, but alive all the same.

That first drive was pure chaos. 

No power steering, a clutch pedal with travel measured in millimetres, and rear brakes shrieking like metal on metal. 

Yet second and third gears slid in clean – proof the old Honda still had some fight left.

Keeping the Civic alive meant getting the basics right. 

Artur changed the oil and filter, dropped the pan to scrub out a smear of sludge, and replaced the turbo oil return hose with a reinforced line. 

Then came the real test: the turbo setup. 

With no tuned ECU in play, fueling and boost had to be managed the old-school way – through vacuum lines and pressure regulators. 

The AFR gauge was way off until Artur and his friend found the leak. 

A bad valve bleeding pressure from the system. 

Once they replaced it, everything clicked. 

The turbo spooled properly, the AFRs leveled, and the Civic finally pulled hard enough to spin the tires in second gear.

It was the payoff for every hour spent chasing leaks and blown fuses, and proof a $500 wreck could still deliver when it counted.

What’s next: from backyard revival to proper street build

Even though the Turbo Honda Civic runs, the project is far from finished. 

Artur plans to install a standalone ECU to manage fueling, along with suspension upgrades, fresh bushings, and a new steering rack.

The brakes are next on the list, with the rear drums grinding away. 

Inside, the wiring behind the dashboard is still a tangled mess waiting to be sorted.

And to top it off, the bodywork hasn’t even been touched yet.

Part two of the project is already teased, promising more tuning and refinement. 

For now, for all the Civic’s imperfections, it’s alive – and for a car left to die, that’s all that really matters.

Head to Artur Stone Garage on YouTube to follow along.

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