Naratechwin's 1981 Honda Accord

[Naratechwin]

Had this old Honda for over a year now, bought it from Avengertiger here on OS and had plans to rebuild the motor (from worn out piston rings) in this old girl as my first automotive project:

The project started off brilliantly, within a couple weeks I'd given it a hell of a clean and polish, rebuilt most of the rear breaks and had her running around as my weekend cruiser

 

Though as all my plans go, I procrastinated waiting on things to fall into place as the rings got more and more worn, it wasn't until she was vaping up clouds that I was sure the dodgiest of WOF inspectors wouldn't pass did I think of doing something. It was a few weeks ago that I had the opportunity to buy a 5-spd running donor from Waimate. So with a couple hundy in hand I took the drive to pick up a parts car with never seeing the car or knowing much about it at all. Turned out It had been used a daily by a lovely old lady on some long gravel roads for the past decade; having started to rust intensely and failed a previous WOF on a tie-rod end she thought it was time to move it on. One hell of a fun road-trip later I had two old Honda's in the driveway and many pissed off flatmates.

 

This project post starts here; with a week before I'm due to move flat and no space to store the parts car its time to rip her apart! It'll donate Engine, Accessories, a Manual swap (ie most of it's soul) to my beloved Yellow Accord. With minimal experience working on cars I'm sure this'll be an adventure, though I'm itching to get started this New Year 2018!


Discuss!
https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/57907-naratechwins-1981-honda-accord-discussion/

 

[Naratechwin]

First day in:
Think I'm all set to drag out the driveline! Everything disconnected, most parts needed for the manual trans out and bagged. Tomorrows job to disconnect the shifter linkages, all motor/trans mounts and lift it all out.

[Naratechwin]

Weekend ended well!
Got the engine & trans out, a ton of small things needed for the manual swap then finally pulled a pile of parts for other Honda nuts. One of these Honda Nuts was a local and wanted to strip out the body to build up his parts bins, so luckily the rest of the car is off to good use! Now focusing on moving flat and in around a weeks time the yellow Honda comes apart!

[Naratechwin]

Done moving!
Promptly trashed what was a pristine garage floor tearing apart the Yellow Accord, and had the driveline out by the end of my first weekend here. Found some rust on a chassis rail under the battery that'll need some attention. Will spend the coming week after work sorting out that, fitting out the interior with manual specific bits and hopefully next weekend I can drop in the replacement driveline!

[Naratechwin]

Yet another productive week!
Spent the weeknights after work cleaning up the engine bay and reassembling the interior, in some spots I'd found almost 1/2 inch thick of oil on the cross-member, so totally worth while!

Dropped the motor & trans in Fri evening and spent the weekend putting everything together, gave it a hoon around the block sat evening without the front end fascia on, got many odd looks but one hell of a rewarding experience. Sunday I'd put the last few things together and she ran great! Still need to work out a few minor things (like getting a WOF).

 

Been surprisingly simple working on this ol' Honda, probably the ideal car to learn on, and looking forward to learning more on it in the coming months when I rebuild the original engine and touch up exterior/interior things.