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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/05/2020 in all areas

  1. Right! here's a proper update for a change. It's been a bloody long road but got there in the end. So after the last real update the rebuild began. A friend who had promised me that he was capable of doing the job started ripping the engine apart in his shed, I was extremely limited in what I could do as in the middle of this I had to move to the other end of the country. Anyway, work commenced and the engine was stripped and cleaned ready for re-assembly. Things moved pretty slowly for a while until I had an opportunity to go and lend a hand, so over the course of a couple of days we got the engine re-assembled and back in the car. Bonus points if you can spot the mistake in the pictures above, the answer will be later in the post I was out of time and had to go home/back to work so I left it with my mate. roughly 6 months went by and he eventually admitted defeat, it wouldnt start and he couldnt figure out why. As he had thrown the towel in I took it to a garage that had a good reputation, the owner had "supposedly" built race cars in the 80's. They assured me they would get it going and I'd be able to come and get it in a few weeks..... .....Weeks went by..... and more weeks.... every time I spoke to them there was some other excuse as to why they couldnt do any work on it parts missing or wrong (which they were not). I eventually lost patience and took two weeks off work to go and put some hours into it myself. after spending 3 days on it I figured out that the distributor was naffed and the new ignition switch I had got for it didn't work. I managed to get a new Dizzy and bypassed the ignition switch and managed to get it to turn over for the first time, and it felt like we were getting close. Remember that mistake I mentioned..... it was at this point we noticed the fresh engine oil seeping out between the head and the block.... Yeh the head gasket was on upside down. So I pulled the head off and sadly the gasket wasnt saveable. I managed to get a new gasket overnight and put it all back together. Also in the middle of all this some n*****ts put a multipoint socket on my ARP head studs and rounded two of them off so I had to replace them and I could only get genuine honda bolts in time. And once again I ran out of time and had to leave the poor girl at the mercy of the morons in the garage. fast forward one month and distributor number 3 (they broke the new one) and I get a call to tell me that its running and I can come and get it. The garage put it through its MOT, some welding was done on the sils and a couple of small things (track rod ends etc) and her new wheels were put on. managed to get there on christmas eve 2018 to pick her up and finally was able to drive her away, she was running like a bag of spanners on the factory ECU but she was running. At this point I was finally able to try and get her cleaned up. she was absolutely filthy after having been neglected by various mechanics over the last 3 ish years. the back seats were folded down and the back was full of old parts and other crap, while emptying it out I discovered a 5L bottle of oil with no cap lying on its side.... and the seat backs of the rear seats were full of oil. On top of that the seats were covered in mould and she was generally in a pretty sorry state. Luckily a friend of mine who used to work as a mobile car valeter kindly agreed to come out of retirement and give her a proper interior clean, I unbolted the steats and he spent a full day with the steam cleaner and other gadgets in the car. He did a fantastic job and it looked like a new car when he was done. I gave her a good wash once he was finished, starting to look like a respectable car again! So next job was mapping, I decided rather than risk driving it a few hundred miles to get it mapped it would be better to trailer her. so we hired a car transporter and drove her down to Triple H performance in Irvine. So, I had to leave her there and Henry at Triple H put her on the Dyno the following week, and she filled his workshop with smoke like a coal rolling diesel. at that point we feared the worst and thought there was a problem with the piston rings that meant it was going to have to come apart again. I had to wait a few weeks for Henry to have the time to investigate properly and after spending a few days on it on a hunch he had the injectors tested and it turned out that 3 of the 4 injectors were b****red and were putting full fuel rail pressure into the cylinders. Over the rest of the week Henry installed new injectors and tidied up a lot of little things, (Adjusting tappets and several other things that needed done.) and at the end of last week she was mapped properly. 192HP and 131lb ft of Torque. I went and collected her on Saturday and drove her home, she is still smoking a bit under acceleration (and a lot in vtec) but the guys at Triple H performance reckon that its due to the bore not being properly honed and it should clear up after about 5k miles. They also think she could pick up another 10HP by the time the engine is run in properly. it was great to finally drive her properly and she's going really well, and it was cool seeing the workshop over in Irvine, they have some really cool toys I took her for a long drive on Sunday as a shakedown and my Fiancee came for the run on her new Bike. It's been a long journey but she's finally driveable again and the next job is going to be trying to make her a little prettier again.
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