Vtecmec's 4th Gen

[Vtecmec]

Post 11 - Posted: Wed May 12, 2010

I managed to get the head finished and attached to the manifold, fitting them together is far easier than getting the manifold on once the head is in place, its just a little heavier.















Some of the brackets behind where you can't normally see are rusting a little.








So I treated them with Dynax s50.








And then on to the head refit.











Unfortunately the cam seals that I have are damaged so I've got to put the engine work on hold until I can get some off Honda. Might do the rear screen tomorrow instead.

[Vtecmec]

Post 12 - Posted: Sat May 22, 2010

Some more progress, somebody needs to stop me from cleaning and painting bits, I'm sure I have OCD as I just can't stop myself.









I promise thats the last of the cleaning and painting, I need to get this car on the roads before this summer is over.

Too cheap to buy an EGR valve gasket, I made my own.





The engine is pretty much on hold now until I can get some parts from Honda.

I've bought 4 new discs and pads and decided to paint the centre bits that always corrode and look tatty.



Picked a 5th gen glass sunroof of a guy local to me this morning.



I'm going to swap the whole assembly over so i can retain the sun shade slider. So some modifications are required to do this. I got the idea for this from a link placed on this site recently.



After the angle grinder...



I'm hoping to get it fitted tomorrow......

[Vtecmec]

Post 13 - Posted: Sun May 23, 2010

Didn't get too much done today due to the blazing heat, I almost fainted a few times today, till my woman made me stop and sit in the shade with a cool drink.

Some more work on the sunroof....

Removed the head lining.





4th gen v's 5th gen sunroof assembly (4th on the left).





A bit of work to make the interior light fit.





The rear lip was required to be cut off so to fit the headlining.





And bolted onto the car.



A bit of hindsight would have helped here, as you can see the lip on the front of the sunroof assembly sticks out a little too much, this'll need cutting for the headlining to fit perfectly, but that’s for another day.

Here it is from the outside, looking a bit dirty, but it’s too hot to clean (and that drink is waiting )

[Vtecmec]

Post 14 - Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010

Got the cam belt done today.

Some new cam and balancer belt seals.



Belt and auto tensioner.



While I was in there, I decided to swap the water pump out at the same time.





The rubber seal around the plastic cam cover had come loose so I had to glue it all back together.



After a bit of a clean.



New water pump in place.



I'm glad I bought a new tensioner as the old one had a nick in the rubber boot, here is the old and the new.



The new tensioner comes with the stopper tool, but due to its design is difficult to remove once the tensioner is in place, so I made a better one.



Here it is on the car, you can see a slot cut in the top, this means that the stopper can be slid out much more easily.



All the timing gubbins back in place.



Pic of the cam seals in place.



Cam belt on.



Balancer belt fitted.





When I checked all the timing I noticed that the inlet cam was a tooth out, so I quickly slipped it off moved it on a tooth and slid it back into place.



Now I know I said that I was done painting bits, but I just couldn't resist while these were off.









A balancer belt seal retainer.



And in its place.



I bought a pack of 10 sump plug washers, I'll need these as I intend to swap the oil every 3k miles.



Engine mount back in place.



I've swapped most of the vac lines, in a fit of madness I decided to go for orange ones.





You can also just about see the aftermarket cam cap I bought in this pic.



And that’s as far as I gotten for now.

[Vtecmec]

Post 15 - Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2010

A bit more progress....

I got round to doing the valve timing, and made my own tool to do it, basically it's 2 sockets and an old spanner welded together with a screwdriver down the centre.





Some feeler gauge action.



Now onto where the battery sits, and it looks a bit grotty.



So I whipped the tray off.



Since this is not really seen, I took the drill and wire brush till almost all the rust was gone, also the little piece that is spot welded on was a bit loose, so I drilled out the spot welds cleaned it up and welded it back on. After this I treated it all with Hydrate 80.



Before bolting back on I de-rusted underneath and bladdered some S50 down there.

The air box, pipe and fuse cover are kind of letting the rest of the engine bay down a little, so I gave them a bit of paint.









The rubber air pipe was really nasty, so I spent a few hours with some gunk spray and a toothbrush.



This offers an idea of before and after.



A random shot of some bolts that needed sprucing up.



I obtained a new (used) exhaust manifold and downpipe, I had to drop the whole exhaust to remove the old one as all the bolts had rusted into place. It took an angle grinder to shift it loose.



It's a good job I got a new one, the existing one was in far worse shape than I thought. It's an ebay special and is only about 4 years old. It don't
look very stainless any more.







Nice flat spot too.



It broke into two pieces when I removed the decat pipe, just split in half with with the twisting motion.

Old v's the new.



While the exhaust was off, I thought it rude not to spruce up the front of the block.

Before.



And after a degrease, wire brush and some VHT paint.



I decided to replace all the major earths in the engine bay while I'm at it, using 16mm2 (0awg) wire (I've still to take the girlfriends hair drier to the shrink tubing).





And if I'm doing the earths, I might as well do the lives too.









Just the exhaust to bolt back on tomorrow and a few other little bits.

[Vtecmec]

Post 16 - Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010

It's always the little things that cause problems sometimes, whilst putting the electrical plug on the TW sensor I noticed it looked a little crooked, I grabbed it with my hand and it just crumbled to nothing, so I've had to replace that too, then the electrical connector snapped away whilst plugging it back in.

Here's the plug.



So, not wanting to wait for a new one, I repaired the existing.







Sorted, but an hour wasted.

Anyway, on to the exhaust, and I bought a new o2 sensor, a cheapo universal one, which meant that I had to put the existing o2 connector on.



Not having any gaskets for the exhaust meant that I had to make my own, so I bought a sheet of metal gasket material and cut gaskets to fit the downpipe, and the de-cat at each end. I thought it would be dead easy, but it was a real pain to do and took me about 3 hours alone!



Then finally round to fitting it on the car. I'm quite pleased with the overall look of the engine bay now.



Once this was done it was onto the rear screen and new trim, a while ago I noticed some rust creeping round and into the rear screen area, so I treated it and protected it temporarily until I could get round to actually taking the screen out and finishing the job.

Some pics of that. (you can still see all the fire damage as well at this point).









Then I just whacked some electrox on there until later.

Anyway, it's now later, so out with the screen.



And a closer inspection of the area revealed some more rust hiding away.



Some work with the wire wheel and its looking somewhat better.





The pitting is quite bad, but fortunately there are no holes. A nice lick of paint and its looking a lot better.



Finally back on with the screen, before putting it back on I removed the window tint film that the previous owner had fitted, because it was so hot it just peeled straight off without leaving much residue, it looks much less bad boy now.



When the weather is not so hot I'll give it a thorough clean and remove the remainder of the window glue.

[Vtecmec]

Post 17 - Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010


Feck, went to turn the key to start it and.......nothing.

That turned out to be a dead battery, so, no problem, as I have a spare. So on went the spare and it turned, and turned and just would not start.

Diagnostic time, I checked to see if it had a spark, and it did, but looked weak, a pale yellow rather than a nice blue. Checked the fuel and that's getting to the engine, so it's not that. Then I checked and double checked the cam timing and it's spot on. So it's probably the dizzy. Bummer.

Not wanting to spend any money on parts that might be ok, I thought I'd give the dizzy a good look at to check its condition.

So I whipped it off the car.







It's looking a little tired as you can see.

Coil removed.





Some of the wiring looking in very poor condition.



Igniter removed.



The rest of the gubbins out.



And the housing with nothing inside. There is loads of oil inside as the seal that sits around the input shaft has perished.



I think these are the 'crank' sensors. Looking as tired as everything else.



Here is a better look at the dodgy internal wiring. Not good.



Here is the completely disassembled dizzy.



So, having a weak spark, I thought I'd test the coil for resistance.





That second reading is out of spec, and should be about half that figure. So the coil is knackered.

A new coil is about £35 on ebay, but looking at the poor wiring, broken rear seal and not being able to test the igniter unit (I could not find a test procedure anywhere) I've just ordered a new complete unit.

Whilst looking for the non starting I discovered that 2 of the plug leads were also showing resistance out of spec, so I have new ones of those too.

Not wanting to stand still, I've put the new rear discs and pads on, in preperation for an MOT in about 2 weeks time. If I can get it running that is. No pics though sorry.

Also I have fitted a UK fog light switch into the front switch panel to replace the ugly bright blue button that the previous owner had fitted.

So, now just waiting for the new dizzy, god I hope it runs with it on. [-o<

[Vtecmec]

Post 18 - Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010

Mother funk

If you've haven't guessed that means the the bugger still wouldn't start with the new dizzy.

So, sparks OK and it's getting fuel, the only thing left to test is compression. The wife gave me a hand to do the compression test and it turns out that there is nothing on cylinder number 1. Sh!t. So close yet so far.

Another case of two steps forward and six steps backwards.

Rather that remove the "reconditioned" head which is more than likely at fault (and that I bought from a "fellow" forum member) and find the problem with it, I decided to take my original cylinder head and refit that. Problem is it's looking very shabby.

Guess I should have checked the head more closely and not placed my trust in someone I hardly know. Top tip: never trust anyone to do the right thing, it always goes south. That's something I normally do anyhow, but I'd let my guard slip as I bought it on here, well, once bitten twice shy etc.

Not one to give up though, I did a complete overhaul on the head including stripping it right down, cleaning it fully, fitting new valve stem seals, checking the valve guide wear (which thankfully was well within spec), cleaning and reseating the valves, cleaning out the EGR port and anything else I could see that needed doing.

Here’s some pics...

Before.











Strip down.













Then with everything removed I set to it with some nitromors and a toothbrush, and about 5 hours later.....









Decoked ports..





Looking pretty nasty...



Mid clean...



And afterwards...




Some other dirty parts...



The valves were looking shabby...



And after removing all the carbon and varnish..



Lapping in the valves with some grinding paste.



New OEM valve stem seals...





Cleaning the oil control orifices....





Valves back in place, forgot to clean one of the retainers ...



A lick of paint to the outside...



And the finished product..





Pulled the other head from the car and fitted this one into place and it started first time. I have yet to run it up to full temperature and time it up, but things are finally starting to come together.

[Vtecmec]

Post 19 - Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2010

My Integra Type R front lip arrived the other day from Japan, shame they couldn't package it properly.





Obviously it's not meant for a prelude, so will take some work to get it to fit properly.

First thing is to fix the damage caused by the packaging, so some heat and a little force in the right place...



Here it is laid out next to a lip I made a while back, which is a standard lip with half a bumper bonded onto it and then filled in with fibreglass, I got bored before finishing it.





As can be seen in the next pic, the mounting points for the lip are halfway down so the lip can sit over the ITR bumper by about 2 inches.



Problem is is that I need to mount this on the bottom of the bumper, and don't want it to sit over the bottom few inches.

I figured the best way to do this is to use a prelude stock lip and cut and bond it to this thing.

So, I cut some material off the stock front lip.



Then I put the two together to make sure my idea would work.





Looks OK to me.

Scuffed up the old lip for a good key.



And the relevant part of the lip also.



The lip is a little longer than required so about a centimetre needs chopping off each end.



And the stock lip has a slight kink in it near each end, so I replicated this to ensure a better fit.



I also elongated the mounting holes a little as due to this lip sitting on the old lip, it will need to be mounted a few millimetres back so as to sit flush with the bumper.



Then on to sticking the two together, this stuff is so strong and perfect for the task.



Once bonded I used tape to hold everything in perfect alignment.





And thats now finished , I'm hoping to get around to paint and fit it tomorrow if the weather is OK.

[Vtecmec]

Post 20 - Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010

Well, always working slower than I anticipate, I didn't get round to getting this on the car, but managed to prep and paint it, just a quick fix though with aerosol.