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Confused's Prelude Rebuild Thread

Tell us about your old honda preludes that you used to own.
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Confused
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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:26 pm

28th August 2007

After running around for a week with the new Alpine speakers, which now run-in slightly sound even better! However, there is a serious lack of substance to the lower portion of the sound range - or in other words, I need a sub!

Because of the CarPC boot build, I couldn't put a standard sub box in there and still have easy access to the CarPC and spare wheel, plus I didn't want to lose all my boot space to a large sub box.

So, I started to build up a box which would fit nicely in one side of the boot, and not take up too much room:

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Cardboard template:
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Including bit that extended back right into the rear quarter, to maximise the volume of the box, whilst minimising the impact into the boot.

Unfortunately, that bit just proved to hard to easily produce (and have it still fit in the boot), as I decided to bring the front edge past the hinge (again to maximise the available volume), so I just made it without the bit going backwards:

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Internal volume is just under 0.5 cubic feet, which makes it just about right for an 8" sub, which should provide a nice little bit of punch, without being too overpowering, which is just what I want.

And, finally, as it is at the moment, in the boot (still need to order the sub), you can see how it fits around the hinge, and how little boot space I've really lost, compared to what I would if I had a pre-made box sat in the middle of the boot!

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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:27 pm

30th August 2007

Well, I bit the bullet yesterday and ordered a sub.

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OK then, 2 subs :lol:

They were only £35 each, so I figure if I don't use both in the Prelude, either because one sounds good enough, or I can't be arsed to build another box for the other side, I'll use one in another car, or make up a box and use it with my home cinema :lol:

As you can see, it's reasonably beefy, so hopefully should sound good! :)

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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:27 pm

30th August 2007

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About there should do, reasonably central :)

Marked up around the sub:
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And used the age-old "pencil on a bit of string" trick to mark out the correct size circle for cutting:
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And sub sitting nicely in the hole:
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So now I'm happy with the hole, I decided to permanently attach the front to the rest of the box. I also put a bit of silicon sealant on all the joins to make it a little bit more sealed, as some of my cuts weren't the greatest ;)
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And some weight (aka a sub ;)) to press it down:
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Just got to wait for the glue/silicon to go off before I put the sub in, otherwise the fumes/gasses given off could eat away at the sub! Not a good idea ;)


Next update now will be Saturday! ;)

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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:28 pm

1st September 2007

Got the sub installed properly today :)

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I tested it out with a song called Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors by Radiohead, on their Amnesiac album. This is probably the bassiest song I own! I was outside in the garden, and with it on ~20% volume, with doors/boot shut, my dad, who was inside the garage, with the doors shut, could hear, and almost feel the bass! I'm very, very impressed!

Anyways, once that was done, we had a look at my ABS, which hasn't worked since I put the car back on the road. We tried to bleed the ABS unit, but there was no pressure being created. The pump was running, but it wasn't sounding like it was actually doing much... :(

I had kept the ABS pump from my car (the one from the donor went on during the rebuild), and we ran the pump on that, and it sounded much more like it was doing something. So, we had to swap the ABS unit out.

However, doing this with the engine in-situ isn't an easy task. The fuel filter needs to come out, strut brace off, wiring across that corner disconnected, then the ABS unit has to come apart in order to get it out!!

As the ABS unit was coming out, and the brake system needed to be bled, I decided it'd be time to finally install the Goodridge braided brake hoses I got on the group buy a few months back! The fronts went on fine, but I encountered a few problems at the back!

Firstly, the hard line on the driver's side wouldn't unscrew, it just started to round off the union :( So I moved onto the passenger side, where it started to go, and as I was unscrewing it, the union broke away from the pipe, leaving a bare end :( We didn't have enough pipe to go all the way to the front, so we had to cut back the hard lines on both sides, and insert a repair section. Plus, some of the bolts for the clips that hold the driver's side brake line are obscured by the rear crossmember - meaning the entire rear subframe would need to be dropped to remove the brake line!

So, we repaired these bits, and then could get onto bleeding the callipers. However - the on the rear driver's side calliper, the bleed nipple was stuck solid, and wouldn't undo. I then had to swap the calliper with one of the spares from the donor!

Finally we were able to get the system bled, and we checked round the car with the engine running and brake applied to ensure there were no leaks. However, we found a leak on the high pressure fuel line, up near the rear wheel, so, I'm going to need to get a new one, then fit it...! Will it ever end :lol:

Anyways, after all that text, here's a couple of pictures ;)

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Oh, and I also managed to squeeze the cold air feed for my BMC CDA into the engine bay! ;)

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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:28 pm

16th September 2007

I got myself a set of Eibach -30mm springs delivered to me on Friday, from a guy on PreludeUK, so I spent yesterday fitting them :)

All was going well on the first 3 I did, but I then had a couple of complications, mainly when I pulled apart the inner CV joint on the passenger side driveshaft!! A quick call to kawa for some advice, and I then knew how to repair it! :) JohnnyB popped over just in time to give me a hand to push the CV joint back together! ;) So, major thanks to both of them for their help! :D


Had a heart-stopping moment as I took it out of the garage - the front lip actually touched the wheel-free bars on the ramp! :eek:


Anyways, here's a couple of pics of how it looks now :)


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And side-by-side with @JohnnyB's ;) "It makes mine look like it's on stilts!" was what he said when we put them side-by-side! :lol:

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I went over a few speed bumps at the local leisure complex today, and it didn't ground out. Real test will be the speed bumps on the way to/from work tomorrow, and then to the other site on Wednesday :lol:

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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:40 pm

Found another thread on another forum with some bits I didn't post on the one I was copying from up until now, so these will be out of order compared to the above!


18th July 2007

I've not really done anything else mechanical to the car, it's been working OK so far (other than a little ABS issue, but it's nothing that's sortable yet!)

So, this week I've been concentrating on putting my CarPC back in.

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Library picture of the controller board mounted

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Top screen, and fuel/temp gauges moved to the right

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Tidy cables!! This was a complete mess before!

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Both screens in!

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Cup holder? What's that doing in a photo here?

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Ohh, I see - an easy-to-get-to USB hub, in case bluetooth, touchscreen or anything else dies!

This lot isn't really anything new, but I thought I'd put it here for completeness.

Right - boot build!

I decided to do something different to what I did before.

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Basic frame

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Building it up a bit more

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MDF panels for the flooring

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Middle panel lifts up

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And spare wheel still accessible underneath

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PC mounted to board

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And board reattached to boot. PC lives underneath, and sits in the spare wheel well.


PC consists of an Epox 8RGMI motherboard, AMD Athlon XP1700+ CPU, 256mb DDR, 300gb 3.5" hard drive, and an Opus 150W in-car PSU, which regulates the voltage, and provides an automated startup/shutdown controller :)


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Amp mounted next to 4WS computer (leaving ski hatch usable for those slightly longer items!)


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Got the rear panel fixed, and the middle panel is now hinged


That's it so far - need to find somewhere/how to attach the hard drive, power supply, and run the cables! I also need to see how hot it gets, and as to whether and where I might need some fans!
Last edited by Confused on Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:41 pm

16th July 2007

Right, another pretty productive evening :D

Ran the front speaker & remote power wires to the front of the car.

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ATX cable extended by quite a bit, and some fancy sheath put on it!

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Power supply mounted - oof, that's a bit close!

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Hard drive mounted, all cables plugged in (still need to route the VGA/USB/power cables better)

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Hard drive again - that looks a bit close!

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Lid closed - Eeek! There's about 4mm space on all sides! As tight as a tight thing in Tightsville!


All that's left to do is connect the speaker cables, afix the power connector for the CarPC somewhere out of the way but easily accessible (in case the power needs pulling due to a complete crash!), and connect the remote power wire - then hopefully it will all fire up and work! ;)

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Post by Confused » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:41 pm

17th July 2007

Not much progress to show in picture form tonight, but I have now got everything wired up, and the CarPC works! :D

The ribbon cable for the top screen is damaged, however, so it's not displaying properly :( It takes it's pick between stripy lines, a completely white screen, or not displaying any one of the 3 main colours!

So I've only got 1 working screen at the moment :(

Only other main thing I've done is to put a little bit of foam around the frame that the lid sits down on to stop a little bit of vibration until I cover it properly.

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Post by thusee » Thu Apr 20, 2017 6:20 pm

Nice work with the pc setup and boot work!

Curious why are you using an IDE hard drive and not a SATA drive? I would imagine from driving around and vibrations etc the standard drive might not last long with all the bouncing around the back end will do?

Whats the pc running anyway haha?

Great work with the sub box too!! :D :D :D

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Post by thusee » Thu Apr 20, 2017 6:22 pm

You should look into this: INTEL COMPUTE STICK

basically a PC in the form of a USB Stick that has a couple of usb ports and connects to a monitor via HDMI connection. Capable of running windows 10 also has a micro sd slot for expansion.

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