RXFORD

Fitted some fresh double sided tape to the 'H' emblem and 'R' badge and refitted to hatch, then touched up the white on the 'Honda' and 'City' badges. Plus taped on these little door buffer things that the blue car had. I'm guessing they are to stop the paint hitting a wall.

This little rubber thingymajig is an optional accessory that helps stop the rear view mirror vibrating and going blurry. It actually works mint so was cool to find one.

Saturday was a big day. Started off by getting bumper back on and tidied up some indicator/parklight wiring. Swapped over the combination switch from the blue car as the manhattans was playing up and had some wiring hackery. Gave all the windows a good razor blade and clean inside & out as they were proper filthy. This revealed a couple more issues. Firstly the passengers door 1/4 window was a plastic replacement and didn't like glass cleaner being used in it. Good thing I had the orig glass one from the blue car, so pulled door panel off again and got it swapped. And secondly a butchered rear view mirror that had been cut off. Luckily the mounting holes were small enough that I was able to drill and tap to m6 to ditch the screws and once again, the blue car offered its parts.

Finished up late friday night. Did engine oil and filter as it was black as, then dumped gearbox oil and put some fresh shit in. Gave the shitty rusty trim rings a quick polish to look less shitty and threw on the stock rims for Sat wof check.

While it was in the air I thought I'd see if the T2 front swaybar shit I had would work. I know people have done it on a narrowbody city but wasn't sure what hurdles they had. Unless it was ordered from the factory the narrowbody citys never had swaynar or even the provisions for them. Radius rod mounts on the T2 have the extra bracket for swaybar and were a straightforward swapover, so that was easy. The issue I came into was the swaybar itself hits the main engine crossmember that runs north/south. I think the T2 crossmember has a slightly different shape to allow for the swaybar. I have one amongst my parts hoard but that will be a mission for another day.

Bit of thrash the last couple of days to get this thing sorted for the Jap Meat today. Thursday night was the first time I actually got it up to temp properly and checked fan was switching on/off. Also threw a beer crate in it and made sure clutch worked and it went forwards/backwards a few metres. Brakes were pretty jammed up and it was hard to push, so I did half a day at work Friday then got busy doing Honda shit. Got it up in the air and pulled rotors off. Dropped them to the local 'we do winz quotes mechanic' and traded him some watermelon I had for a skim. I free'd up the pistons and threw it all back togethor. Whipped the rear drums off and gave them a clean/dust off inside and the shoes a sand up, and free'd up the cylinders. It all look relatively new under there. Put back togethor and bled up.

Shop stunk like fuel when I got into work yesterday, but when it was no better today, I got curious and wondered if the filler cap was leaking or a hose on tank was missing a clamp. Pushed the car forward and saw a couple puddles so got it up in the air. As soon I crawled underneath I found the culprit. No bloody drain bung fitting. Rookie mistake. Out of all the pre-start checks I did I failed to check the tank, but to be fair, I didn't notice any spillage/puddles when I put fuel in it on Monday but that must have been by fluke as I can see the stain on my floor from what spilled. Fuckin muppet.

Got it all back togethor and wizzed it over again. Cranked for maybe 10 seconds then it fired into life! Fuck Yeh, stoked. 1st of the unknowns ticked off.

The last wof on this car was in 2019, and I brought it as a non-runner with no info on why it was parked up. I figured I'd try make a push to get it running so I could take it to the New Years Jap Oldschool meet this coming Sunday. Very ambitious, but worst case I'd swap motor from blue car into it. On monday evening I threw a battery in it and did the usual pre-start checks. Pulled plugs and checked they were sparking, fuel pump was doing its thing, checked cambelt wasn't all old and cracked, pulled rocker cover and oiled the rocker assembly etc etc. Fed it some fuel and wizzed it over after freeing up the starter motor. I soon found why it was parked. There was a fuel leak from base of carb (marked in pink). It was 9pm already but I was pretty determined to find out if it would run that night. So I ripped the carb off and put the carb off blue car on it. I took a shitload of pics beforehand as these things have a crazy amount of vacuum lines. The Combax engines from the Jdm Citys are basically a slightly newer Cvcc setup with the separate pre-combustion chamber and port on carb so they are over the top complicated for a little engine. Alot of guys swap out the 12-valve combax head/carb for a the 8-valve head/carb from an Nzdm cityE

Both cars had aircon factory but I had already removed the pump from blue car ages ago as I planned to get it rebuilt, and manhattan was missing most of the bits other than some hoses. I pulled the dryer, lines and bracket off the blue car and mocked bracket up with the pump on the bench to refresh my memory and sort the fasteners. Then fitted the bracket, dryer and lines to the manhattan. Keihin pumps for these are pretty hard to find in working condition. I have a few as spares just incase.

The original silver passengers fender had a big crease in it so I robbed one off the blu car. The drivers fender that was in the car when I brought it was from a cityE which have the indicators back toward the pillar. Luckily I had a good one in my spares pile, which happened to also be blue, as the drivers fender on the blue car was shit. I've been tracking down, buying and selling City fender mirrors for years now, and still have a few sets stashed. I have a 10/10 mint new old stock set waiting for when I paint the car, but for now I'm just fitted an average set. The main drama when I find some used ones, is the plastic base shroud that hides the mounting plate are always missing. I tasked a mate from Ram3d in Tauranga with scanning a pair of nos bases and printing some for me. They mostly 3d print inconel & stainless but have a normal printer for doing tests and prototypes sonit came in handy for this job. He tried a few orientations to minimise the layering lines. They still require a bit of a sand up but its not much work.

Another optional item is this rear cargo bar setup. They were a standard part in most Aussie Citys as they had rules around importing 'passenger' vehicles in the 80s, so they got around it by importing the City Pro-T as a delivery van then the dealers would sell a rear seat as a separate item. Top pic shows the setup. I had a setup sent over incase I wanted to remove the rear seat so the dog could have room for activities. I got the fella to cut the bar that bolts in place of the seat mounts in half easier postage. For now I just decided to mount the window bars for the hell of it. Once again, a couple of rivnuts each side got them locked in place. I think I mounted them a bit far forward compared to what they should be, but it works better for rear seat passengers and tilting seat forward.

I've been collecting a few cool/rare/hard to find optional accessories for these cars over the years. One of them is this parcel shelf. As this car wasn't ordered with a parcel shelf it didn't have mounting provisions for the outer brackets in the body, but a couple ruvnuts in each side solved that problem. A well thought-out feature with the parcel shelf is a relocated mount for the boot lamp. I had a spare, so I left the original in place on the 'C' pillar and made a piggyback loom off it to the 2nd lamp under parcel shelf.

Started off by swapping out the rusty hatch, with a reasonable one I had stashed. Its a bit dented but is useable til I find a better one. It was just a bare shell so had to swap all the guts and glass over which is actually a bit of pain in the ass on these. I knew there are a couple different types of latch which are totally different but luckily the white hatch, which is from an Nz new CityE, shared the same type as the original CityR/Manhattan in this instance. I did however learn that the original cityR 'H' emblem is smaller and the locating pin spacing doesn't suit the CityE hatch, but luckily I had one from my old T2 hatch which happened to match up. I need to get some double sided tape and fit it, as well as swapping out the 'E' for and 'R' badge, or maybe I should 12a swap it and make it a CityRE. I also started swapping over the door locks and fuel door & lock from blue car as they were all matching with an original Honda key and the manhattan locks were a bit damaged.

Yummy