Snoozin

Those old NIssan CVT in the P11 Primera etc are absolute hilarity. Its total comedy just jumping in them and pinning them, they sing at high rpm and gain momentum in this oddly casual fashion, while screaming at 6000rpm or so.

I recently had a Civic RS, 1.5 turbo with their CVT. Impressive, it ensured the engine was essentially always at peak torque/boost when you needed it to be and would pull seamlessly on any judicious application of the loud pedal.

2020 Honda Civic RS Mugen-215-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Some updates. 

Waikumete upholsteres made a carpet for me. 2 pieces, like original, and we found a loop pile in maroon! Which was brilliant, as I really wanted a loop pile for that more premium appearance.

20210321_161234 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210321_165710 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I think it turned out pretty well! Did the boot also, but I haven't got a pic of that for some reason.

20210408_210246 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Engine and gearbox came out again. This is minutes before it all lifted out. Very easy.

20210417_114901 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Pulled apart the gearbox with great guidance from Earle McFarlane. 

20210417_121227 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Measured all the clearances, then pulled it apart. Selector hubs are a bit pwnt, there is excessive wear in the shift forks, bearings seem all right but they're all being replaced anyway with all those parts in the post above. So now the mainshaft has been assembled (in my absence) and we are just waiting on the forks to come in from Japanland so we can reassemble.

20210330_125040 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Since the motor was coming out anyway I thought it'd be a good time to get the top end sorted, as it's only ever been a stock head and cams, despite the bottom end being built/hi comp. This is a spare smallport head that I spent a while scrubbing in the shed to get clean.

20210330_125016 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I then thought I'd try cold jet/dry ice blasting as a bit of a test case on the cam boxes to remove the baked on sludge and scum. This is the result. Pretty awesome! I'm going to be using this process to clean some of the undercarriage parts in situ on the Honda.

20210331_084622 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I stripped the head myself, once I learned how to remove the collets from the retainers it was all pretty simple. Here's the head, with all the bits catalogued and in containers, with the Kelford 193B cams and Supertech retainers/springs I bought ages ago for it. It's in with Alan Harris at Harris Performance Engineering (previous Lynn Rogers) for porting, some tickles on the combustion chamber and a port match of the ITB manifold.

I then got to thinking about what audio this car is going to have, even if you can't hear anything inside it really. Initially, I was going to run a modern Bluetooth head unit in the glovebox, and got as far as buying this pretty rad Sony unit that has 50wrms per channel - from a head deck!!! Enough to power anything, speaker wise. But then Ed sent me a link to a Yahoo auction that changed things.

20210422_172330-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210422_172308-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

This is an AD-189T fitting kit/adapter produced by Pioneer in the early 80s. It fits a 'B' type head unit, which is conveniently what the 'component' systems of the early/mid 1980s are. Before the standard DIN size we all know and love today. It replaces an entire middle panel on the dash, replicating the OEM fit where normally there would be a spindle mount head unit (as is the case on my factory dash). I had never, ever seen even a picture of one of these kits before, let alone a NOS one on Yahoo. So I bid on it, because who doesn't love period accessories. And I won it. So then I thought I'd probably better find a head unit to fit.

20210422_172407-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I ended up with this Pioneer KP-717G tape deck. Note - it's a tape deck only, there is no AM/FM radio or anything with this, as was the style of the component systems of the time. This one was listed with a clean bill of health, and some remedial work done to ensure it was operational. The auction was backed up with a video to prove it. It's one of the higher end units in this range, with Dolby NR, adjustable tone controls, all the fruit. It doesn't have an amp on board - luckily Ed has one of the Pioneer GM-4 amps for this to plug into, that will find it's way into my car.

20210422_172454-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

This is how it should look when installed in the car, using the AD-189T kit. Fuckin. Awesome. I reckon.

20210422_172612-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210422_172638-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

And this is essentially what the initial system I run will be. Later on I may add some fronts - I have some NOS Pioneer TS167 coaxials, and also dual cones whose code escapes me right now. These TS-X9 are incredible though - I had them wired up to my amp in the house and they produce enough bass you can actually feel it through the floor. How they achieve it, I do not know. Sure it's not sub levels, but it's a beautifully balanced sound that I hope will be loud enough to listen to while pootling along at slow speeds or stuck in traffic.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Hopefully, next updates will include a rowdy cylinder head, a slick shifting T50 and some Phil Collins tapes in the KP-717G.

1 hour ago, kyteler said:

It's Tuesday though? 

Trailer wheels Tuesday.

REunion 2018-272 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Hey, still got this Honda.

I put it in the Ellerslie Classic Car show with the Japanese Nostalgic Car group. Pretty cool to be asked to take it along, I guess it makes all the minting up worth it. Pulled the front off, polished and re-cleared the headlights and generally spruced it up a bit more. Loads more OEM fastners and brackets have made it into the mix under the bonnet. But that's not important.

I have a wheel addiction issue, and got these old TE37s off George. I needed to get one fixed, as it has a pretty gnarly bend in both sides (one thing I have learned from fixing bent wheels, is that if one side is visibly bent, then the other side will also be bent, regardless of if you can see it).

Here they are, after being made round again.

20210312_074441 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Next, I take these to Creosote Charlie for a spot of acid dipping, and we always have a yarn about some aspect of his XR8 ute, every time I shoot down there to get the paint stripped off wheels. He always under promises and over delivers on the service, usually it's a "they'll be ready in a week" which turns into a phone call the same afternoon I dropped them off or the morning following.

20210315_154335 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

And yeah they look nice all raw and aluminium and all that, but I chose to get GT Refinishers to slam a coat of jam on them. This is a close close match to an OEM Rays colour, it's called Magnesium Blue. Cool, in the know kids call it 'Mag Blue.' Haters like Tank will say it's black.

20210323_175153-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210323_175213-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210323_175236-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

It's got a pearl in it that goes pretty flippin' hard (see what I did there?) in the sun. Now awaiting gen-you-wine deckils from Japan, and some proper Rays blue valve stems to finish off the resto.

Looks beaut I think.

Expect photos some day. 

I might stop buying wheels.

SOme more things have been done, including all-new loop pile carpet and a nice alloy sealed battery box in the boot but that's not even important.

What is important, is the gearbox, which sucks.

Downshifting is impossible without a big ol' rev match and double clutch to get it from 4th to 3rd, then from 3rd to 2nd. As the car makes a little bit of a racket, it's quite obnoxious. So I sat down with Earle McFarlane (he's had many many experience with T50s and rebuilding them) and ordered a whole load of parts from Japan.

They came in this box. This struck me as odd. Amayama orders are sent to an NZ warehouse then dispatched from there, so I'm guessing this happened locally.

20210325_180028 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

And this is what's in it.

20210325_175701 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

We have;

Synchros for all gears

New selector hub sleeves

Gasket/seal set

Selector hub shift keys

Clippy springy things for above

Bearings a go-go (all bearings I could possibly get, we need to get the 2 countershaft bearings locally)

Some good low km selector hub centers are en route from South Island.

Next, I will rebuild the gearbox - well, Earle will rebuild it and instruct me to do some of the easy bits.

Then I can finally aim for some twisties and give it a good drive, assuming it all plays the game. Looking forward to pissing around with brake bias, making all that stuff work etc.

20210129_194419-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Toyota Fest later this morning. Can't sleep. Too amped. Finishing touches to the detailing this evening, then I sat and looked at it for a bit. 

Man, I am super into this thing. 

The idle is proving to be a little problematic on this car, it lopes away like it's got some stupid set of cams in it - but will work through this after Toyota fest this weekend, it's otherwise behaving itself well.

Treated the car to it's first detail in over a decade, and maybe the first time I have ever hit it with some polish. First stage results below, wash and a hand cut (machine would have been much better, but you know). Paint isn't bad for a 14 year old respray done in a carport, it could be flatter but I know much more about what nice paint is now than I did then.

20210126_232629-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Gloss has come back nicely, and the colour is much much more vibrant than it has been. Next step is a glaze, and a couple of coats of wax for silky smooth depth. Then maybe I'll scoot out for some actual photos with the real camera again.

I am super duper amped to bring this out and share it with everyone at Toyota Festival! 

Anyway, this car is now tuned.

@kprkindly agreed to handle the tuning duties, following some initial setup by @Stujust to get me running in the meantime.

Some things to note :

1 - the gearbox is still not good, downshifts into 3rd and 2nd are the absolute pits.

2 - this tune is still done with the stock head and cams, attached to the high-comp bottom end.

Here's a short clip of the final dyno pull, Kris managed to eke 100kw out of it, the engine wasn't keen on taking a lot of timing due to my wack combo, but this is decent regardless I think. Anyway, it's a little smoky when it gets up in the revs, but I hope it calms down a bit with some bed-in time.

The dyno session went fairly smoothly. The cam covers were leaking a bit of oil, and a few fasteners on the engine self-ejected, probably as a result of me not checking over the engine nuts and bolts thoroughly enough.

So naturally, you get the thing home and you want to drive it, right? So I did. Here's a wee 2nd and 3rd gear entrance onto the motorway, gives a nice idea of how it sounds in car.

But the best sounds are outside of the car, right? I got @Espritto take it for a skid up and down the main straight of my local test route so I could revel in the delicious doorts. It didn't disappoint, especially with these rowdy things reverberating off every concrete and steel building in the area. The exhaust also achieved the requisite amount of twang up in the revs, something I wanted to retain that 4AG character.

Initial driving thoughts then?

It's pretty good. I suppose taking your time with stuff and trying to make educated choices pays off somewhat. It's super cliche but it totally feels like a larger gokart. With the 275lb front and 225lb rear springs it feels planted. and quite lively when you chuck it into a corner. It's got enough travel you can punt it around with relative confidence, I took it for a brief squirt down the backroads out by Kris' place and felt immediately at home. I think with some minor tweaking it's going to be a really fun little chassis.

The brakes are shaping up to be damn near perfect. I've fluked the cylinder sizes, it feels pretty good out of the box and is only getting better with use. Although I am yet to do a proper bed-in procedure on the pads. But I feel, aside from some adjustment of the bias, the brakes will be up to anything I can chuck at this car as it sits.

You can tell me how bad the exhaust sounds in this discussion thread we all prepared earlier. Who would have thought I'd actually be close to completing this car? 

Here we go then with another sporadic update.

So, encouraged by a few people I have been putting in a little bit of effort on this in an attempt to get it to Toyota Festival, later this month.

Nick the Sparky and I put in a couple of days in the shed at his place, where he did sparky things, I occasionally helped with sparky things, but I also stripped the old interior and put the new bits in.

From there,  I took the car to @sheepers, and he did some choice stuff for me which included a driveshaft loop, and mounting the freshly retrimmed Recaro LX (Fishnet) seats. Also while it was there I drained the synthetic (wrong) oil from the gearbox and put the right (mineral) stuff back in it, as it was giving me some strife. More on that soon.

Lewis Horrell in Ashburton is responsible for the killer retrim. I wanted to match the seats to the plastics, and he managed to find a stunning option. We'd been talking about this for a long time - I wanted either a houndstooth or a tartan to channel both early Porsches (which I adore), and also the period the KP was designed in. I reckon it turned out all right.

The gearbox has some shifting problems on the downshift from 4th to 3rd and 3rd to 2nd - initially we suspected clutch drag and maybe a mismatch of master cylinder to clutch cylinder, but after Davo's old man Earle dropped in and helped me through a few checks (he's a real T50-whisperer) his diagnosis is something in the selector or synchro area - so it's gonna be a gearbox out job shortly, nevermind.

However, I will still be getting the car onto the dyno with @kpr and @Stu at some stage in the next couple of weeks, as we can hook 4th with no problem do the doort things! 

Pictures below:

20210110_181421-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Grabbing some sun after a full day of work. 

20210110_181852-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

This is pretty much the final version of the engine bay, I haven't clipped the loom along the sides of the block yet, but it should be all sorted out post-dyno.

20210110_180317-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Got the dash back in for the first time in 5 years. Some plastic repairs on broken parts mean it is now secured better than it ever has been in my ownership of the car. The fake brushed ally of the factory dash has been re-overlaid with a textured vinyl.

20210110_172923-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

The Stack bits all lit up. Tach output isn't turned on in the Link yet, and we are struggling to get a useful signal for the speedo. But shouldn't be too tricky to solve, just need some advice from some experts and Nick reckons we can make it tell the speed!

20210110_180414-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr'

Recaro LX in sumptuous maroon, with matching door cards (new CNC cut from 3mm tempered hardboard)

20210110_182113-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Absolute must to have the RECARO logo embroidered on in the proper location.

20210110_182416-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Imagine having rears that match? Well, you don't have to, because they match!

20210110_183559-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Wilwoods peeking through the Star Brights. It stops well, and it's only going to get better!

20210110_182557-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Top down! You can see the interior and the engine bay, I'm pretty stoked on this to be honest. It has come together better than I could have ever imagined ten years ago, when I pulled it all to pieces. As you can probably tell there's still plenty to do, like carpets and stuff. But the list is signficantly smaller, and there is no way I could have done this myself - I owe so much of this to a handful of really generous (especially with their time) and talented people I probably don't give enough dues. So thanks, if you're reading.

Took it to the drags, ran a best of 14.3 @ 97mph and then a string of 14.4s all day. I think it's got more in it, I just need to not drive like a dickhead.

So I gave it a wash (since we're allowed to in Auckland now) and took a few pics of current state of play, wearing the OEM skirts, Advan RGs, Mugen bits under the bonnet etc.

2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1087-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1172-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1096-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1100-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1133-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1139-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1149-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Turns out it's a pretty decent wee car, sort of running out of things to do on it though which is weird. Although there is some signs of the early stages of a common rust affliction on the top of the hatch opening, so I'll sort that out in the new year.