The chassis
First registered 15/08/96 this is one of the very last 4th generation preludes ever to be sold in the UK. I believe it was originally the Honda dealer's demo car, it has had 1 previous owner, and I've owned it since 2005. The service book is stamped from new all the way up to 103,389 miles in 2005. I have all the original manuals, folder, and supplements. The chassis has done 182,375 miles.
Standard features - Air con (working but needs re-gas), cruise control, 4 wheel steering, electric sunroof, electric windows, electric mirrors, electric aerial, driver & passenger airbags.
Optional extras - Leather seats, front fog lights (clear), original Honda tape head unit with boot mounted multi-CD changer.
Aftermarket extras - Clear front and side indicator lenses, Cobra CAT1 alarm with remote central locking.
Aftermarket modifications:
- Genuine Mugen M7 alloy wheels (£1000+ in the US)
- Bilstein B12 suspension (£830)
- 30mm drop but raised back up 19mm with custom alloy shims so no scuffing on speed humps - Ultra racing rear anti-roll bar (£160)
- Goodridge stainless brake hoses (£80)
- Unbranded front strut brace
Bad points:
- The rear windscreen is broken and needs replacing. I woke up one day to find it smashed (I think a piece of tile fell off my roof)
- RUST. There is rust around all wheel arches, the sunroof, and under the rear of the car. The NSR outer wheel arch has rusted away and is covered with gaffa tape.
- Paintwork. The car will need a full respray once the rust has been sorted.
- Brakes. The car has been sitting for a while so the brake discs need skimming or replacing.
- Interior. The leather on the side of the drivers seat is badly worn.
Completely rebuilt, re-bored and reconditioned around 12,000 miles ago. Every part was checked for tolerance and compared to the service manual. Any that came near or beyond the service limit was replaced regardless of expense.
- Refurbished wrinkle red rocker cover & spark plug cover
- Steam cleaned head
- Custom PCV system
- Custom intake system with K&N cone filter
- JUN high lift cams & valvesprings (£1,012)
- Adjustable cam gears (£80)
- Crower titanium long life retainers (£200)
- 16 new OEM valves (£846)
- New OEM rocker shafts (£150)
- New OEM open spring type LMA's (£114)
- Supertech bronze valve guides (£70)
- Portmatched & deburred head & a mild intake port/polish
- Accord type R intake manifold - portmatched (£100)
- New 68mm CNT throttle body - portmatched (£80)
- New TPS
- Hondata intake manifold gasket (£35)
- Hytech tri-y replica exhaust manifold - modified 3mm for better ground clearance (£350)
- Magnaflow 200CPI high flow sports cat - removable (£155)
- Blueflame cat-back exhaust (£285)
- Ultrasonic cleaned OEM 345cc injectors
- Magnacor HT leads (£80)
- New HT coil (£40)
- NGK plugs - 1 step colder
- ADL Standard thickness head gasket set (£190)
- Rebored, honed and painted block
- Mahle high compression pistons, rings & pins (11.5:1/+0.25) (£409)
- Honed OEM rods to fit Mahle pins
- Balanced reciprocating assembly (+/- 0.5g)
- Clevite & ACL bearings (standard clearances) (£80)
- New OEM oil pump (£409)
- New ADL water pump (£58)
- New OEM manual timing belt tensioner (£89)
- New OEM harmonic balancer/crank pulley (£286)
- New OEM front engine mount (£140)
- Neptune real time programmable engine management & tunerview II (£520)
- Innovate LC1 wideband O2 sensor - connected & calibrated to ECU (£130)
- Accord Type R gearbox with Limited Slip Differential U2Q7
- reverse and 5th engage perfectly, steam cleaned and painted (£300) - New OEM Accord Type R clutch kit complete (£150)
- F1 Racing lightweight flywheel 5.2Kg (£145)
- Both front driveshafts reconditioned
Compression is an excellent 277 PSI across all pistons and I can demo this to the buyer.
Total spend on parts and engine machining: £7,145
Labour: 100+ hours
The tune
Neptune allows for tweaking of almost every setting available on the factory ECU. I've spend a lot of time tuning every option from the cold start up fuel enrichment to intake air control valve duty cycle to below idle ignition advance to fuel 'tip in' enrichment. This is far more work than a tuning shop would do, tested across a far wider range of temperatures and driving conditions. The result is that the engine starts first time every time, and idles and runs like a standard car, without the usual high lift cam/forged engine hassle.
The ECU also runs in 'closed loop' mode under normal driving conditions, monitoring the (wideband) lambda/o2 sensor and tuning the fuel tables to hit an optimum air:fuel ratio. Again this is what the standard car does to save fuel and keep the engine running cleanly under normal conditions.
The higher load/RPM maps have been tuned for ultimate responsiveness, torque and power, so the engine responds immediately to any changes in throttle position.
What I haven't done is aggressively tuned the fuel and ignition maps at full throttle, or raised the RPM. This is something best left to the professionals as getting it wrong is not really an option. So the engine is fairly close to it's maximum performance but there's still a little more room for improvement. The JUN valvesprings and lighter retainers will allow a safe rev limit of about 8500 RPM but I've kept it to 8000. (Words can not describe how good it sounds at 8K!)
The piston to valve and valve to valve clearances were measured and noted during assembly so whoever does the final tune can know the safe maximum limits of cam adjustment.
Performance
0-60: 5.68 seconds
Tested & data logged with a Racelogic performance box:
I'd estimate there's another 0.5 to 0.1 of a second to be taken off once fully tuned. A quick google shows a 5.68 second 0-60 puts this car in the top 10 fastest front wheel drive standard road cars of today.
Running that 0-60 time plus the car's weight through a couple of online calculators puts the engine at a current realistic estimate of 255 - 265BHP. As expected - similar to the JUN Super Lemon Prelude
Pics
Slideshow
Pics of the rebuild work
Buying
It is perfectly driveable but is SORN, has no insurance, no MOT and no rear screen. It would be best trailered or towed away.
I can get an MOT for it as I've checked the rear screen is not a fail. But it's not really ready for the road so I'd rather someone buy it who plans to strip or restore it.
I also have an engine hoist and quite a few new and used spare parts that could be discussed with the sale.
So here's a car with over £7,000 spent on the engine not including labour and tuning costs. Plus another £2,000 in other performance parts.
Asking price: £3,250
Please message me if you're interested. It will go up on ebay and gumtree at the weekend.
GLWS!!
