Blackhalo6

I'm aiming to get it done in time for the Honda tech meet in Seattle. Its on the 21st. If I was still on leave it wouldn't be an issue, but with work now, I only get 2 hours of real work a day. I can do mockups and bolt stuff after, but once the sun goes down I can't do any more cutting and welding and grinding. I live in an apartment and they call the cops if you make too much noise after sundown. Friday's my birthday so I'm gonna use that excuse to try to buy myself another day. I got some pics of what I did today. Not much but making progress. Ill post when I'm out of the shower, got grind dust all over me.

Blackhalo6

thanks, im trying to write this up so someone who might have been thinking about doing the same might be able to follow along.

So, yesterday i went to a friends house to use his drill press. The hand drill just wasnt cutting it. It still took the better half of 4 hours to get just right. those welds are hard as ****. I also picked up the hoses i need for the fuel cell. I still have to order some fittings to be able to set it all up, along with a mounting bracket for the pump. I ordered a walbro from summit, and it came with NOTHING. I slapped my springs on the crx struts, and it fits like a glove. i also got slightly oversized studs to fit the 1/2 inch holes i drilled in the hubs.

Today i ground the back of the hubs flat to accept the face of the studs. i ground the outside edge of the hubs down to fit inside of the rear rotors. I used a makeshift lathe by using the hub in the bearing and holding the die grinder. It came out nice. then i ground the face of the hub down flat. theres no flange which sucks, but there was no way of turning it down to make it fit inside the rotor and still have enough material to not get mishapen. eventually i may weld some pipe inside the rotor to make a flange but for now everything fits. (god bless acorn shaped lug nuts, work perfect to locate everything. i spun the thing up by hand and theres no runout so hoping for no shimmy. (fingers crossed)

Also today, i decided to tackle relocating the upper strut mount. Found out that the rear tire well is made of many many plates spot welded together. it makes for a solid well, but its a bitch to cut through and still have a usable edge. i got it mocked up and tack welded in a few places to hold it while i fab up the remaining pieces to make it solid again. Theres alot of filling to do, but im gonna use sheet metal for most of the holes and use 4 points of structure with the 1/4 inch steel. I need to get argon for the welder. even on the lowest setting, it blasts through the sheet metal if im not careful. also theres an *** ton of that weld filler **** honda uses, in the rear tire well. some places its a 1/4 inch thick. I ran out of time to cut and weld so i started mocking up pieces of sheet metal and identifying spots to anchor the steel plates. The drivers side seems to me much more of a pain in the *** than what the pass side will be. The well they use for the filler neck places alot of the metal i would be attaching it to much further inboard that what i need. its not the same on the pass side so i hope its cleaner and quicker.

Tomorrow I plan on cutting out the pass side and cutting up the 1/4 inch steel to fit the anchor points, hopefully for both but at least the drivers side.

Blackhalo6

so, yesterday i almost finished the strut mounts. They look a little rough , but their just about done, and they are just as solid as the originals even without the piece i still have to put on. i moved them both back 4 1/2" and down 1/2". today i was gonna go buy the last bit of fab material to finish the holes that where there, but apparently i gave myself a bad case of welders eye. i can keep my right eye open for more than a few secs, and look at this screen is excrutiating. but i felt the need to at least show im still making progress. The shift linkage bracket was not on the trans i got and was not on the shift linkage that i got either so i had to order it from majestic honda. i ordered it a week ago and they told me it wasing shipping out till this coming monday. not sure why the delay. i did get all the parts to install the fuel cell and pump, but i dont have the materials to fab up the new trunk, so im not gonna start putting it together just yet. i guess the next step is the brakes in the rear.

keoman

Haha I have the same plans for the mini. AWD is so much cooler!
Good job. I always fantasized about doing this to my 1st gen i had way back when.
What in the hell are you using to weld with? oxi-torch?

EDIT
Is this why your right eye is all burned up??

m4xwellmurd3r

His welds almost look like mig welds with no gas.

and dude, get yourself a full face mask if you don't have one already. I was welding my exhaust with my crappy flux core and burnt the ******* hell out of my face and legs even though I had a decently dark set of goggles.

Blackhalo6

Yea its mig with no gas. They look shitty, but clean up nice. Just takes more after weld cleanup. Yea I dropped them and apparently they were made of glass and the right one shattered. I kept it closed but apparently that's not enough. I know I know I should be using gas. It makes it nicer and a lil easier, but my manifolds busted and the tank leaked down. But its fine, its all getting ground down and painted. Also there's a lot of fill welds there too. I don't have the tools to make all pretty perfect shaped pieces.

Blackhalo6

Went to Honda tech meet today. Saw some cool stuff. Too bad it ended early for the rain. Didn't touch the car today tho

keoman

So no gas. But you are using flux core wire right? If your just using the mig, no gas, no flux core, I just gotta tell you that's not safe at all. ESPECIALLY to weld a shock mount, the place in your car that receives the MOST abuse over the lifetime of the car.
The weld will bubble and contaminate underneath while its cooling. Even if it appears fine on the outside, 9/10 times it will fracture before the steel. (don't ask how I know that )

Blackhalo6

So it is flux core. , but regardless, I'm gonna grind it down to make sure it made a good seam. It looks like **** I know, I wish I had more gas. I may wait till payday to fix everything that's wrong with the welder. The last bit that's not welded is the part that's going to bear the most strain. I may just wait to do that. I'm kinda sad that it doesn't look better, but I took a hammer to it and got nothing . I mean I wailed on it. Hard. On top of the normal probs with no gas, I noticed that the welder is more prone to punching holes in the sheet metal than it was with gas. Really, its not perfect I know. Ill make sure the welds are solid before putting on the road. But I'm gonna grind it down and do the shifter stuff and mock up the brakes while I wait for payday.

Edit: also I'm not gonna lie, this isn't my introduction to welding, but it is by far the most extensive welding project I have ever done. Welding exhaust is by no way the same as this. And btw I watched as the weld quality degraded as the gas ran out.

drmix

Yeah that was a pretty big meet! I definitely had a good time. That "Rod Father" car was crazy!
Keep up the build!

Blackhalo6

I took some friends who had never been to any kind of car event. They had a blast till the rain came.

GraphiteAcc0rd

https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...85442&page=821

https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...85442&page=822

Blackhalo6

Lol pretty funny. We'll see though. Everyone's a critic. I wouldn't have left it if I wasn't sure it would hold. Seems like more motivation to get it finished. After looking at all the other similar builds, I knew trolling was inevitable.

keoman

As long as its got flux in it, that's fine. You can weld flux w/o gas all day long. You should be able to get a better flow than that though, play with the settings a little.

Blackhalo6

Ill mess with it later. I checked to see it will hold the wait of the car as is, and it did no prob. No death pops or anything. When I get paid I'm gonna snag a new manifold and refill the tank. Trying to weld the sheet metal is tough, and after I finish those of be doing the trunk, so I'm just gonna wait for gas for the rest of the welding and start on the shifter for now.

Slash621

Great job on this build! Here in florida we had the Braille GSR that was AWD / RWD depending on the event he was running (rallycross or drift) and that thing was pretty sweet! Definitely see how you can make use of it in the northwest!

Blackhalo6

Thanks. I'm kinda just fixing things as I move along. Seems like the work is gonna slow down some. One question, is it preferable to have the rear caliper on the front side or rear side of the disc. I can do either at this point with the same amount of work, just wondering if anyone has any input.

S2BumpsticksGSR

Factory, its in the rear. I would guess if it was beneficial, honda would've put it in front on the gsr and especially type r?? But if you think of centrifical force-wise in the front would plant the tire harder under breaking, right? In the rear would lighten tire patch under breaking and promote weight shift I would think.

Blackhalo6

I was thinking the same thing. Not sure which to do. I agree that if there was a benefit they would have put it in the front, but I was looking at a rx8 and a vette and they were in the front. I don't want to muck up the braking geometry.

m4xwellmurd3r

I looked this up real quick for you. Calipers being in either front or rear of the axle make absolutely no difference in braking or suspension feel, and are simply a matter of packaging restraints or trying to adjust the weight balance. They could even be on top or bottom of the rotor, makes no difference.

So I say stick with the OEM placement. It'll save you a lot of headaches.

Blackhalo6

I think your right. Placment will be a bit easier to leave it where it was after looking at it again. Thanks for lookin it up.

JcoDC5

Amazing work bud.

Blackhalo6

Noticed I'm getting trolled pretty good on th GDD forum on the funny pics thread. Seems like they are very opinionated or misinformed. There's a guy on there that tried to defend me, but you can't poke a hive and fight all the bees. Kinda felt bad for him. Their just lookin for a quick laugh. Didn't realize trying to do something different by yourself is so funny. Gonna **** with the brakes this afternoon.

Rushintegra

Don't listen to the haters man if your doing something you enjoy it's not funny at all!!! But anyway many props not many people would even attempt something like this on thier own.

m4xwellmurd3r

Well, they're trolling you partly because of your use of a threaded rod and nuts welded to your diff. It's actually quite an unsafe method, despite its apparent ability to hold right now. Threaded fasteners like what you're using for your front mount aren't meant to hold Shear loads (sideways) and are meant to be strong in tension (being use two say, clamp to objects together) If I were you, I would revise your front mount by either finding a stock one to use, or making a new type using a plate to bolt to the front mount, steel tubing to form the upright, with another thick plate on top. Make a cross bar between the rear frame rails for support, drill through them, and weld nuts on the top side. Then run bolts through the cross bar support. It will be a much stronger, and safer mount, and will look a lot cleaner and more professional.

Your strut towers irk me a bit too, but I understand it's because of a lack of forming materials. I do wonder though, as to your method to ensure your strut towers are indeed square? Out of curiosity mostly. Definitely double check on all your welds, make certain they are all fully penetrated throughout the steel.

I'm not trying to bash on your build at all. It's very ambitious and I really like the idea of an AWD integra. But I also want you to make it safe.

If not having a rubber mount is your concern, I would suggest using a transmission mount from an integra, turned sideways, and modified so it has a plate suitable to be bolted to the diff. Modify the cross bars you have to have more front/back spacing between them (to make it so the front bar is ahead of the transmission mount) then add two more of those angle bars directly to the left and right of the transmission mount. Drill a hole through the size of the transmission mount hole, and use the same bolt that you would normally use to hold the transmission. Basically, you'll have the two bars you have, plus two additional bars welded to make a box around the mount, then a bolt going through it held in tension. That would probably work as the best solution to make sure your rear end is secure