yoeddynz

As some might have seen in my wanted advert I've been looking for a Nissan k11 Micra (march) for a while, mainly to have as a daily for when the Imp eventually goes under the knife to get its new flat six heart, but also just because both Hannah and I fancy k11s. There's a bit of history with them for us both and this connection along with just the cute unpretentious little car looks has us hooked. Not to mention that overseas there are some wickedly cool uprated versions doing the rounds. Quite a following for these cars in many countries except weirdly in NZ. When I was living in the UK I'd spot these everywhere. Very popular little cars, but ones that I looked past. That is until Hannah's younger sister needed to buy her first car. I helped them look for one and a Micra K10 came up for sale locally. We knew little about them except that Hannah and her two other sisters both learned to drive in K10s. Simple,easy cars to operate (685kg light too!!) So we Leila bought the little K10 and loved her first car, which became known as the Badger mobile - due to the trips Leila would take in it to Badgermans beach down in Cornwall... Sadly, because mother nature can throw out some right horrid things at us, Leila became ill with a rare disease called Crest syndrome, a type of auto immune thing. It started with her hands and she was unable to operate some items, including the windows. The little K10 became a bit run down and the road salt had done its job. Combined with the trickyness of using cars controls Leila decided to seek out a more suitable car. This is where the little K11 came to reside with Hannahs family. Hannah helped her look for a suitable car and then her brother found one. A four door 1000 facelift in dark blue. It had electric windows and central locking- two small things that made life for Leila show much easier... That little K11 did many missions about the place and the family became quite fond of it. Its also what made me start spotting K11s and becoming a fan. In a horrible turn of events Leilas life was cut short. The condition had continued to worsen to the point where it was effecting her heart. She died from a heart attack in 2017 at only 26. A huge loss to the world. Her little Micra was then taken on by Hannahs brother and he now continues to take it on adventures and the other siblings borrow it. I used last year for the 2019 Retro rides gathering - this being the first time I had ever driven a Micra any real distance and I really enjoyed it. While at the gathering I also spotted and fell in love with this little hillclimb beasty... I was amazed at how peppy it was for a 1000cc car. Its handling was 'floaty' but fun. I could instantly see how they would make a sweet little pocket rocket for twisty roads- in very much the same way as the Imp is. Hannah was also smitten and of course there is the family connection to add. So we would own a K11 one day- that was that! Fast forward to last month. I old my Viva wagon during lockdown and had some cash. I know that the Imp is to come off the road for the transplant. Lets start looking for a K11. There were requirements to be met though. It has to be a manual, two door, pre-facelift (PFL) and ideally would have the CG13 engine- not the smaller 1.0. But we soon found that these combined features are a very rare thing indeed in NZ. Kiwis never got Micras here new. They are all imports from Japan. Most are auto (CVT) with the 1.0 and most are 4 doors. All the earlier pre-facelift models, made up to the change over point of around 97, seem to have disappeared. Weirdly - Australia had them new - imported from the UK! They apparently are all PFLs too! Lucky. We found a very tidy 2 door manual face lift locally- but it stunk of ciggy smoke, was a 1.0 and a couple of other alarm bells rang about the owners and their honesty. They were also asking moon beams for it and wouldn't accept my lower offer. Plus- it was a not so pretty facelift version... Then this 4 door PFL turned up locally, going cheap. After a quick look up on carjam we found out that it was a 1.3! Also spotted in the photos were a rev counter. That rev counter dash is certainly a rare thing here- quite a bonus. With some more research Hannah deduced that it might be a March S. These have a few extras like the rev counter and a split rear seat. I messaged the seller and he confirmed it had the split rear seat. Oooooh we thought! Now a March S is not the same as a Micra Super S- as sold in the UK and Oz. I believe that the Super S has a few other blingy things like rear disc brakes, sportier seats, quicker steering rack and a deep front spoiler with added fog lights. ^Dreams. We went for a look. First thing I checked was the engine number- just making sure it was indeed a 1.3 with all those extra 20 ponies. Took it for a hoon (wow- the 1.3 is way faster ! ) checked some things and made a cheeky low offer. 2 days later there was a counter offer and we bagged it for a nice cheap enough price of $825 Picked it up yesterday afternoon. Bought some engine flush, oil, filter and new plugs. Will giive it a bit of Tlc. Its a bit dented and rough but will still clean up ok. Plans : 1 - look for a tidy 2 door PFL car to swap all the good bits into. Probably will be an auto 1.0. Wont be a quick job this so it can wait till later in summer because there are way more urgent jobs about the place. Plus this car is meant to be a runner to use while the Imp is off the road- not another project..... but hey. How can we not have a play! 2 - Lower it. Most likely using some garden variety 'Makita modified' springs... Apparently one can remove 2 coils and they will remain safely contained. We shall see. 3 - Find some nice alloy wheels. 13" x 6 would be nice. The pcd is 100mm so not too odd. 4 - Hannah wants a yellow Micra. So eventually it will be re-painted the official Nissan custard yellow.. 5 - add a turbo. Maybe. Could be fun. That's a way off in jobs to do here though! So here are some pics I took... The seller had the most amazing jumper on! I'd have been stoked if that came with the car... Before handing over the monies I thought it best to quickly check that the spark plugs were not seized in the head. Not coomon but worth checking to save a lot of aggro... All good! So we paid the man and hooned off into the sunset- me in the Imp and Hannah getting used to 'her' new toy Filled the tank.. Played cat and mouse over our hill to home... I took some quick pics in the evening light... JDM factory crystal for added healing power and bling. Some Marches came with these factory fitted... One key element to a good Micra... Another great thing to have when you're ragging all those little ponies to the point of exhaustion... \ Some service items... More to come soon. Lets see how much money we find under the seats etc

what box is it? If its a series 2/3 box then you can move the shifter forwards by around 70mm or something- if that helps. But sounds like ya don't need to Fake edit- I looked at the pic again and see its a series 1 box.

Well because I have a couple of updates worth of advance progress to use up before I have to actually start tinkering again here is another 'update'.. So I had sussed out my oil pump drive. Cool. Lets ignore the tensioners for now...mainly because I have not actually fitted the ones I have - this will be one of the next jobs once Hannah and I finish the workshop mezzanine main structure mentioned in the last post. I know they should work but I wanted to skip ahead to other more fun bits. Sort of like eating your meat before finishing the vege. I needed to join these to assemblies together, neatly and most importantly - completely accurately. I had completed some rather fine looking sketches in pencil of how I might fabricate something, along with measurements compiled by the time honoured tradition of starting at set datum points and then using a selection of various rulers, verniers, bits of string, bluetack, tape measures and a bit of eyeballing to suss out the positions of a new flywheel, seal housing, clutch height, starter pinion position at rest and at full extension. It was all going to be made up along the way but I still needed some datums to work to and from. The main thing I knew the position of and that I could not change was the end of the crank and my added on adaptor with its seal landing. I also had a nice flat, square face on the back of the engine - the flange to which the old clutch and gear housing bolted to. I needed to start with that and work out towards the Subaru gearbox. The Subaru gearbox does not really have a full length bellhousing as such. It normally bolts onto another section of housing that is bolted to the Subaru engine. This was fine because I was going to make my own housing extension that suits both the Honda engine flange and the Subaru box, with a depth to suit a custom flywheel and the clutch. But the flywheel offset was not a known thing yet because I had not yet secured a clutch to use. That's another story and I'll cover that with the flywheel. I'll mention now though that I almost made a complete balls up in clutch pressure plate selection. An easy mistake because its not normally something one would ever need to think about when looking at clutches. See if anyone can guess it? Go on - have a go.... Anyway- back to my flange plate assembly. So the most important thing to keep bang on is that the input shaft is concentric with the crankshaft and this is how I did it. I started with a plate of 6mm thick aluminium, cut larger than the back of the engine and front of the box. I made a pretty damn big hole in it with a large holesaw. It had to be much bigger than the rear main seal I had bought to suit my crank adaptor... Then I machined down a big lump of alloy bar to fit into the hole perfectly. I machined it with a large flange so it could be bolted to the plate. Pushed into the plate and then drilled the flange and tapped the holes. The flange was dot punched while on so its always bolted back up to the same holes after removal. I fitted the flange back into the lathe, drilled and bored it out to fit the gearbox input shaft snug... Now I was able to slide the whole lot onto the box. Luckily these boxes have a decent bearing supporting the input shaft so there is no up and down movement (unlike the Imp box which has a two piece input shaft and wobbles all over the place) I machined a couple of centre punches that tightly slid into the gearbox bellhousing bolt holes, enabling my to accurately mark the bolt holes onto the plate... Now I had a plate that lined and bolted up perfectly concentric to the gearbox input shaft. Now to mark and drill another set of holes on the back of this plate to suit the engines flange. I removed the flange and bored it out to slide onto the crank adaptor seal land snugly. With the flange bolted back onto the plate I was able to slide the lot onto the engine, concentric, and repeat the marking process with yet another set of centre punches machined to suit. Then drill the holes to suit... I did have to add a little extension to reach out to one pesky bolt hole that refused to stay within my square... Now I had a plate that was bolted to the engine, bang on concentric, which had another set of holes to suit the bellhousing. I would connect the bellhousing to this plate with machined bars, of a depth that I was yet to finalise. I knew roughly what they would be, around 40mm, but could not confirm this until I had made my flywheel and the clutch to suit it had arrived. That'll be in the next update. In other news- I have been a little undecided about which ECU route to go down. I was planning to build either a Speeduino or go with Megasquirt again. I had started buying the bits for a Speeduino ages ago (I already had a board I had bought from @kws and from aliexpress I bought the main arduino cpu the runs it, an ATmega 2560, plus scored some other bits from @NickJ) but I still wasn't convinced about Speeduino for this application, as tempting as the possible sub $200 price might be. My Main reason against it was because I really would like to run this engine with full sequential injection. However the Megasquirt that offered this on more than 4 cylinders, along with a couple of other non big brand name options were just too expensive for what I want to throw at the project. But then last week I ended up buying a megasquirt 3 with an expansion card at a price I couldn't turn down. I'm stoked about this because I know Megasquirt well and I like the support plus I like using Tunerstudio (which is also used for Speeduino but with a couple of features left out) . I'll leave the Speeduino for something else in the future (the quad bike! ) Oh and after having ordered these uprated valve stem seals from Norway of all places in July they finally arrived yesterday. 2 months! Ha. My new headgaskets and cambelts have also arrived so I've pretty much got the bits I need to through it back together when the time comes.

Ask @maxted about a drive shaft- he might have a spare

Wow!!!! swoon. So jealous (well except the 4 door bit)

yeah this whole hunting tooth thing was new to me but its makes sense eh. I like learning stuff like that

Just a small update to say that there wont be much work taking place on the engine for a few weeks because the workshop is now full of timber, wood shavings and dust as we build a rather large shelf (some might say a mezzanine floor but no Mr councillor, this is just a shelf to store stuff on...) I'm pretty damn excited about this shelf project it must be said. A chance to properly sort out the workshop and move all the non- engineering like stuff and various car spares upstairs. Its all a bit hectic though. There is loads of paid work on that we are putting off for a bit plus the housetruck sale has gone too contract so that is another load of things to sort out. But fear not- I am still mega excited about finishing the Imp off and luckily because the updates on here are a bit behind I still have a few more stages I can post up. I shall eek them out though, buy myself some time.. In the meantime I'm going to post up few vids I have found on youtube. Ones that keep me enthused about the build- mainly because of the sounds I hope my Honda engine should emulate. This one here I found recently. Now I imagine the aircooled 911s do have a lot more engine noise but the exhaust note is what I'm loving in this vid... This next vid from Harry Metcalfe has some nice bits (in between his lovable waffling on) and the car is just lovely!... And finally here's a clip of a Goldwing that gives an idea of the similar exhaust note when extended. It sounds lush! ... I'm looking forward to the exhaust stage of the build but I do need to learn what's the best layout for sound. I'm also doing continued research into Itbs and injection, plenum chambers feeding itbs, remote air feed etc. That's definitely more of a subject to discuss in the injection thread though. Excited about that stage though!!!

yeah pretty much that. I think it can have any tooth combination (so long as the cam sprocket has twice as many teeth as the crank one) but the chain has to have a number of links that cant be evenly divided by either sprocket. Does that sound right?

Oh you guys. Lol. When this engine explodes I'll post up some fantastic vids and then start planning my Fezza f40 engine install which I'm totally happy to be gifted...

All I need to do is stick some tape on my headlights and I'll have a race car!

I think it needs a thread on here! Can you persuade him to join up to oldschool?

Ohhhhhh were you now. Easy to say that now eh? Too late - you cant claim that one barryboy

Yeah good idea on a little sight window. Or better yet - a little peephole camera which connects to a 7" screen on the dash for real time chain wear watching. With a strip of warning leds that light up progressively as the chain wears out. That will appease Anton I can use some sort of etch a sketch with one arm connected to the chain tensioner then linked via gear cables (shimano sis because that's my flavour) to the sketch pad on the dash. Real time graphs for @Roman @Spencer the chain barries on Retro Rides forum are good too... Until last night I had never heard of a 'hunting tooth' and then one excited Barry who thought he'd catch me out quipped in ... "have you added a hunting tooth for each chain run?" Fuck me! Here we go again ! I looked it up... "In design of all kinds of power transmission gearing, also applicable to design of chain or toothed belt drives. A "hunting tooth" is used to avoid gear ratios where the tooth count of one gear is an exact multiple of a gear it mates to (e.g. ratios 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 ...). The reason for avoiding integer gear ratios is that in such a design each tooth of the smaller gear always contacts exactly the same tooth or teeth in the gear it mates to. This in turn will cause accelerated wear, usually into an oval shape. Thus if designing an (approximately) 2:1 gear ratio, the designer uses gears with 49 and 24 teeth respectively, then every tooth on each gear comes in contact with on it's mating gear. This in turn causes minor variations in wear to be propagated across all teeth. In sprocket design, it is desirable to design for the chain or belt having a number of links which should not be evenly divisible by the number of teeth in any sprocket," Needless to say I hurriedly put down my evening cup of Horlicks, donned my best slippers and popped out to the workshop to check it out. By pure luck my combination of sprocket tooth counts vs chain link count happens to work out with an effective hunting tooth. Thank fuck. Must have been a birthday present from the engine god (yep- I was one year older yesterday) Although in reality if there was not a hunting tooth I'd probably have left it anyway... Its all shits and giggles

I've already lined up some pretty sweet 13 x 7 wooden cart wheels.

Neither chain is very long and are as short as I can go - if I remove a link the teeth will clash.

There's no room for double row. Anyway- the chain I have selected and bought wont be snapping in a hurry. Wear over thousands of miles is more my worry but I'm not losing sleep over it. Its all just a fun toy to play with. Next time you need a chain fitting please let me fit it for you- decent quality chains on bikes should not snap if fitted correctly. They'll only give trouble if mashed up in a previous situation like dropping down between the rings and chainstays etc. Then you can go riding with me again Mazda rotary chains are single row- well at least the 12A ones are that I'm familiar with.

yeah sort of like that - definitely tensioners. Possibly a guide on the longer chain. Interestingly ford removed the guide on their later duratec engines because whip is not really a thing on oil pump drives- the oil pump acts as a buffer (always a consistent resistance) and so takes away the pulses that you get on the cam chain setup for example. So ford found somewhere they could save money.

I'm still quite far behind on the updates so that bit has just yet to be posted up. After lockdown ended and I kind of 'went back to work' with paid work coming back in the goldwing project went right to the back burner so to speak. In fact I have spent more time in the last few weeks typing out these posts than I have working on the engine! Something to do with it being warmer inside than out in the workshop. Now we are right into the start of building a mezzanine so engine fettling is going to be put aside again. Lucky I have a few 'updates' still to be released eh

yeah just an oil pump. Previously there was a smaller chain that ran two oil pumps plus a water pump! So as far as torque loadings go the chain I have selected is pretty burly and compared to the torque a strong rider can put through a chain its nothing. Wear over a long time is the issue but yeah- oil bath. Certainly going to find out over time how long it lasts. Treat me and my engine as an interesting experiment in the testing of bicycles chains.

Feel free to explain to me what's so scary about it? Its not finished yet. What you've seen so far is a mock up. @tortron yeah i considered using an 8 speed cassette and having a variable oil pump speed. Campag for max italian street cred. Or shimano because it works better....

" Shimano? " you say... Well its not really that exciting. Please don't expect a Heath Robinson like contraption using XTR derailleurs, in the lovely pewter colour that the 965 series came in. Or better yet - some mint deore XT thumbshifters used as tensioners. Oh yes- the bike geek is strong in this one! But I'm jumping ahead again. First off - I needed a way to take drive from the crank while at the same time beef up a problem area. Now have a look at this next photo... See that big splined shaft sticking out. That was the main drive to the original clutch setup that resided in the removed rear casing. It had to go. So I chopped it off. I did have a photo that Hannah took of me chopping it off with a cutting disc (there was no way our bandsaw would have touched it) but I cant find the photo. However- here is a photo of that bit removed and now residing on our shelf of random bits.. Now luckily there is actually a flange on the crank. This was one item I had been trying to check before committing to buy an engine ages ago. I didn't know how think it was though, nor had I confirmed what the size of the six bolts were although I was fairly sure they were 8mm (but really hoping for 10mm). I was not going to be happy taking power off the crank, albeit its only 100 bhp propelling a little Imp and so I had a little think about it. I needed three things here. 1: a decent flange with 10mm bolts for the flywheel 2: a surface to run a main crank seal against because my engine design was going to have a sealed up oil bath for the oil pump drive 3: a larger flange to put a sprocket on. The design I came up with was an adaptor hub to bolt onto the existing flange using the six m8 bolts. But instead of just relying on the bolts to hold it I would machine it to a shrink fit and really make sure it wasn't going to move. Probably a bit overkill but why not. So I machined up this out of a rather large lump of steel (so filling my steel bin with a lot of swarf) It has two axial surfaces to shrink onto the crank- the flange outer and the stub I left over from the original splined sticky outy bit and clamped in place while it cools with nice new stront cap screws. Here I am tapping the threads for the flywheel hub.. Here's a small benchtop oven making things grow in size with heat and in the back ground is a crank just having recieved its new hub... In place and cooling down. Would be a bugger to remove now.. You can see the larger flange to which a sprocket will attach to. Now I needed to sort out a nice flat, removable surface to mount a potential idler sprocket and tensioners on plus an square surface to mount the oil pump driveshaft support on. I cut a piece of 6mm alloy plate in the faithful ( and noisy) tablesaw. I had several useful threaded bolt holes left over from a variety of the original transmission bearing holders, shafts gubbins and shifter wotsits. I machined up a little pointy bit of steel with an offset slot. Then I was able to screw it into a hole leaving the pointy end just proud. With my plate lined up where I needed it I gave the plate a smack with a hammer just over the pointy thing below, thus leaving an indent I could drill through. Repeat for the others and I had perfectly lined up holes... Cool. I could now support the oil pump shaft. I machined the end of it and tapped a new hole. Then machined up a bearing holder like so... Next little thing was to join the cranks rotating motion to the oil pump and make that rotate.... Hmmmm. I had to really think about this one. There was not a lot of room for industrial chains and sprockets. I thought about using a toothed belt that can run in oil like some of the later cars. But apart from the prices (!) they are not available in many sizes and are apparently prone to throwing their toys from the cot. I couldn't run a dry belt due to the bottom half of this area being part of my new allocated sump capacity, not to mention sealing it would be very tricky. So really- chains and sprockets were the best choice. Why 'chains' and sprockets? Not just one chain?... Because I wanted to drive the Honda pump at or as close to the original speed- which is slightly under driven. This way I would be sure that the pressure and volume would be about right. No ifs or buts. I didn't mind going slightly faster because the stock goldwing has a low oil pressure at an idle of 11 psi at 800-900 rpm. I'd be happier if that was a bit higher. With this in mind I had already worked out roughly what gearing I would need to be in a certain range. I had worked out the original gear ratios and then used a gear calculator to play around with ideas... But what chain and sprockets to use? I enquired with so many places and had done loads of internet searches but the answer came to me when I lifted one of my bikes down from the wall before going for a ride. Of course! Bike chain, chain rings and sprockets! At first I worried about the strength and durability but thought about the abuse my chains go through, especially on my singlespeed MTB. I have only broken one chain and it was after it had been jammed. Over about 15 years of being a bike mechanic in several different shops almost all chain failures I had seen were due to something else cause them- unless they were a cheap unsuitable chain. So I went through my varied collection of chainrings and cassettes (I have many) and selected out the ones with a tooth count that would work and fit. I machined up a spare shimano freehub to take bearings like this... Machined out a Shimano mtb chainring and cobbled together a mock up to see if it might just work... It looked good but I was not happy with the 3/32 width ring and sprockets. Even though they will be in a oil bath there was still not a lot of thickness to the teeth. I was not expecting this engine build to do Lexus levels of mileage but I wanted it to last long enough to do some good hoons for a few years at least. I had enough room to go up to 1/8th width chain but no more. I looked into BMX chainrings but very hard to get the toothcount I needed and sprockets were much the same- plus bloody expensive when going odd sizes. So a mate at a local engineering suppliers priced up some american sprockets that I could grind/machine down. Wow- cheaper then shimano stuff and tough as. I bought a set of four and set to turning them down. Not easy- in fact it took ages as they are induction hardened teeth. But I finally took them down from 5mm to 3.3 and they fitted a spare bmx chain I had perfectly. Much more sturdy... I have now got a very durable bmx/e bike chain that has flat straight outer edges on its plates- this will suit my tensioners. I have a couple of tensioner ideas to try and think I have nailed how to make them easy to fit and effective. Remember- I want all of this lots to be super easy to unbolt and swap out. Its all a totally unknown design with regards to longevity so it needs to be easily serviceable. More soon ...... Alex

More great updates. I like seeing cars get taken apart revealing previous beautiful repairs like that... Hey- what's that fibreglass sports car shell at your mates place? Lotus europa?

Took the Imp for a hoon on Saturday. Went to visit a mechanic who works from home up a valley not far from us because he has fields of cars and I had spotted some Subaru Leones. Sadly he doesn't have an front wheel drive models because I wanted to nab any gear boxes that I can just as spares in case my decides to detonate. Top bloke though- he knows his scooby stuff having been a mechanic for Subaru NZ. He's given me a contact to try for boxes. So since it was a very lourverly sunny spring day indeed we thought we'd continue our drive further up the valley and check out a load of nice roads we normally cycle on. It was so much fun. I didn't drive super quick. Just enjoyed the nice handling and it feels quick anyway when you sit so low. I took this pic along the way. (some fellow oldschoolers might know the area because it was part of a circuit I lead folks on for a friday cruise on the weekend of the oldschool nats, Marahau 2014. We went to Mapua for lunch and hung out with all the posh people there. Then home via the supermarket to end a nice day out in the Imp. The day before I had picked up some carpet that local lady who makes funky cushions had sorted me out with for cheaps. Proper auto carpet, same as what I had used in my Viva... The workshop is finally a fair bit emptier having smashed out a few other jobs and got them picked up/delivered. One job we just did was build some hefty steel art deco styled gates and a large set of doors for under an outdoor cooking area for a customer in Nelson. We reckon the gates look really neat so I have to share ... Now going back in time to where I had finished off in the last post. The oil pump was now mounted and I had a oil filter mount in place. I had forgotten to take a photo of the inlet/outlet off the mount but picture two tubes coming out of its base and going through the wall of the engine block. I now had to link those two pipes with things. One had to make it way to the oil pump and the other had to work its way to the back of the engine (as positioned in the Imp) and link up to the main oil gallery into the block. I had to have a good think about this. Whatever I do to make it work has to be easy to assemble, through the bottom of the engine with the sump cover removed. Once the engines two clamshells are placed together I don't want to ever separate them again for two main reasons... 1 : Because that involves removing the heads so new gaskets required and that costs money and I dont like spending money. 2 : It also involves a tricky little system to fit three pistons into the bores, from the bottom of the bores, using removable piston ring compressors through a gap of about an inch inside. You'll see more on that later. I am NOT looking forward to that bit. Originally the Honda oil feed system used pipes and sealed everything with O rings. It works well and makes sense. I could work with that. I did entertain using lots of AN fittings and hose etc. However there was a few reasons why not. They are a bit pricey. They were not easily available locally, especially during lockdown. It is not at all easy to swing spanners inside this engine block. Did I mention they are pricey ? Ultimately if money was not really an issue for me I would dry sump the engine and run a external pump. But ugly, expensive, external oil tank in the way somewhere, driving the pump off a currently non existent belt drive pulley (not even got to that point yet for an alternator but I have an idea) So keep it simple with stuff I have to hand! With that I rummaged through the pile of alloy stock I had and found a few bits that would work... But O rings were going to be a bit trickier. The size used by Honda didn't match anything I had nor anything I could find on my suppliers website. They were odd. I looked through a Honda parts diagram online and found the Honda part number along with the exact size of the O rings. Nice of Honda to do that! Looked up sizes online and it turns out that they are a JIS standard Oring. I never knew of such things. Actually very common among many Japanese cars. Even better - when I searched through my suppliers website they actually had them! But wait - there's more!!! They were cheaper than all the other O rings close in size. Yay! But the shop was shut to public and I couldn't visit it anyway. Boo! Thanks Covid However- the shop was open for supplying engineering places that were considered essential services. It happened that one of the employees lived not far from me. He delivered some and left them in my mail box. Yay! So now I could start what Hannah refers to as the London underground of oil tubes. I worked my way from the oil filter and made various blocks with holes and tubes with grooves. All very carefully measured to fit just right and tight but constructed in a way that it could be taken apart from the sump opening. I was lucky that I happened to have a large drill bit that was spot on for the final pass on the bores to suit the pipes and O rings for exactly the same amount of 'squish' that the Honda factory pipes and fittings have. I made sure that all the bores were as big if not bigger than the Honda setup so not to increase restriction on the oil paths. You'll see later that I will be over driving the pump in speed by a notch but that's another story. I must add that the job of planning, measuring and machining up all these little bits was a super fun way of spending time during lockdown (in between going for heaps of bike rides on super quiet roads!) Here's some pics of my subway tube network. These are the two blocks that seal onto the in and out pipes for the oil filter... The closest hole will feed a pipe heading back to link to the oil gallery. The further most block has a hole that takes a connecting pipe from the pump. Here's a view from the side... Lets zoom out a bit so you can see where they are in relation to the pump... You can also see how the pump is bolted to an adaptor plate which is bolted to the inside of the block. My connecting pipe that goes between pump station and filter station is in two parts so it can be fitted easily from below... Together its like this (lighter for scale... because all the cool kids measure the dish of their hand machined oil pump pipes with lighters like this)... Then fitted in place... Connections man! So I had the pump to filter sorted. The filter to main gallery looks like this... That pipe sticks out through a hole that was originally for the shifter mechanism ( I think. But whatever... thanks Honda for your convenient hole) You can see the oil gallery below. I will make a bolt on block with oil ways to connect them. I will also design it so I have the potential to take off from there and add an oil cooler. I would rather run the engine without one. It never had one as a bike but the engine did have more air flow over the engine though. But my engine will have a well finned sump cover to pull off heat plus be free to radiate heat better than on the bike. I shall run it and see. Its not a race car so I suspect that with really good synthetic oil I'll be fine. Its a pretty understressed engine anyway. Maybe I can add an oil temp sender to my filter block and run that through the ECU so I can have it show up on Tunerstudio for evaluation? Hmmmm - I like little things like that. But either way- keeping it as an option is good. I have yet to make the cover plate (some alloy plate is under my bench for it) that will go over that end. All simple stuff that. Once that's in place I can make a union block to suit the pipes. That cover plate will also have the oil filler and possibly a centre engine mount to suit a cross member but I have not yet decided on that. Moving around to the flywheel end of the engine you can see where the oil pump drive shaft hangs out, waving about like an unsupported shaft with no attachments... That shaft needs some motorvation and that is going to be part of the next exciting instalment. It involves Shimano....

I knew that those indoor fountain things houses have would be useful for something!

Tell me more about that hino. What's its wheelbase and over all max weight? We have pretty much sold ours (awaiting contract to be done)