The OEM Prelude - BB8 5th Gen Motegi - p16 photo dump!

[mercutio]

although i understand it and i know the car needs rustproofing why does it always look awful

[norks27]

Looks like I drove through a bunch of tar pits!

And for £50 they'll top it up the following year.

[mercutio]

i knew a taxi driver that used to keep the old oil that went through the neglected engines he used to paint that on the chassis of his old cab

[norks27]

Been a while since I updated, although in theory nothing to report:

MOT done with no advisories
Service and a few niggles that where sorted.
In addition the throttle body assembly was stripped and cleaned out.
Fresh cam belt, although I hadn't done the mileage the belt was getting old.
Valve timings set, etc.

Car came back fresher than ever.
I'm not sure if it was the throttle body clean, but the car seemed to have more bite with a more noticeable push/surge as VTEC kicked in. Extremely happy.
Would the cleaned out throttle body make such a huge difference?? (the exhaust sounded throatier as well)

Left to do is a spot of bubbling paint on both rear arches, the corner where the arch meets the rear panel. Not hugely noticeable but needs sorting. It's been examined and there's a wee bit of rot requiring some fresh metal, I'm told nothing too serious and easily sorted. Next month should see that sorted.

Sorry this is a boring update so I'll spice things up and go forward in time several hundred miles:

Trip to Cumbria to see my sister, hit a milestone, (passenger took pic):


The journey back down proved to be eventful.
Stop off at services for a quick break:


Continued southbound on M6, between jct 22 and 23, traffic started to slow.
Foot off the accelerator, as it continued to slow I dropped to 4th and errrr engine has died. No response to restarting.
Now, I'm in the outside lane so have no choice but to hit the hazards and free wheel as close to the central reservation as I can. Thankfully traffic is doing around 40-50ish as I come to halt.
Here's my view:

A touch unnerving.

Phone the police and now wait for the Traffic Officers to start a rolling stop of motorway traffic.
If you where on the M6 on Sunday afternoon, I sincerely apologise!
Must have been 30-40mins before they appeared and pushed me onto the hard shoulder.

Hazards on and on the hard shoulder, the following images are distressing to any Prelude owner:



Not a happy bunny:


Roadside diagnosis: cam belt appears to be missing!

This image has no grounds to ever be on this forum, I let you all down:


Nor these images:


A very distressing site.

I was towed back to Leeds and the next day the Lude faced further humilation:


Seriously concerned for the state of the engine as it went off to Honda. No idea the damage.
Some pictures the garage took:





My initial thoughts from scouring the forum was that the 'Autotensioner' had failed, the belt subsequently slackened and came away.
The cause of the failure:
"The bottom self adjusting timing belt pulley bolt has sheared causing the self adjuster pulley excessive movement, this in turn has allowed the belt to move"
As to why this bolt sheared:
"With regards to the bolt, it’s difficult to say why its failed, there is virtually no damage to the threads on the bolt and even at the actual break point of the bolt there is no distortion or twisting evidence, in Richard the technicians words, the break is so clean it looks like it’s been laser cut"

Today saw further examination and thus far it appears the Prelude has dodged a bullet.
Endoscopic examination of the engine revealed undamaged piston heads and rather surprisingly no valve damage.
Compression test came back as a big thumbs up.

Fingers crossed it fires up nicely tomorrow.
Hopefully the Prelude dodged what could have been a rather catastrophic cam belt failure.

[vanzep]

wow thats some update
sorry to hear of the problems you had
its given me a fair jolt...
there i was happily reading about the rustproofing and all the care youve taken in keeping your lude in top condition and then boom your latest update
that must be a really rare failure on that bolt....ive never heard of anything like that before
only failure similar to to that was due to hydrogen de-embrittlement which can be caused by something going wrong during the plating process which weakens the metal...id certainly be asking Honda to investigate a bit if they did the work on the cam belt.
Hope you get it fixed to your satisfaction

[RattyMcClelland]

The lude god loves you. Saved.

[Curt]

Incredibly impressed with your Lude.

[Kamikazeman]

Finger cross!

[tom023]

Such a lucky save.
Being a lude, I bet it will fire up first time.

Sent from my Redmi Note 2 using Tapatalk

[NafemanNathan]

It's not often you can be glad the traffic was conjested!

I've had a belt go on me before (Actual belt failure), so you can certainly thank your lucky stars there was no engine damage!

Nice work with the rust proofing as well. It's one of those jobs I want done, but can't bring myself to either do myself or pay anyone else to do, as it's one of those jobs I should be doing myself