Prudz_lude

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Well Honda-tech i've been an active member on this site for many years along with several other sites. I've got a long running build thread on another popular prelude site. I never posted the build of my current prelude here however. I started a thread years back when I first got it but never bothered updating it and eventually let it die. I'm starting a new one since the car was finished but is about to go back under the knife. This is a story of a 1994 prelude.

In the summer of 2011 I began getting an itch to buy another 4th gen prelude. I had, had many preludes by this point, my first one being in 2005. I spent the summer searching kijiji (craigslist of Canada) for a decent chasis. That isn't the easiest task since most are rotted out from our winters and the salt used on the roads. To make a long story short the cleanest one I could find was on the opposite side of the country (3500km drive) all the way in Hamilton Ontario. I put a deposit on the car, booked a ticket, and flew out the next week with my gf to pick it up.

The car was in much rougher shape than I ever expected when we arrived at the airport. I bought one way tickets, no time to turn back now. I said "yolo babe, we are driving this back to Alberta. If it blows up we are leaving it on the side of the road and taking the bus back home." luckily it didn't come to that. A misfire, a little over heating, and a slow leaking p/s wasn't enough to stop us.

This is the first picture I have of the car. It looked clean from it's good side...



The reality was far from that on the other side.



With finally at my place the first order of business was to clean the interior a little bit and get a nice shift know and short shifter installed. I had bought the shifter and **** years prior and finally had a chassis to install them into.

Prudz_lude

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When I got the car up on jack stands and had a chance to inspect the suspension and brakes I was greeted with years of untouched bolts, rusted out power steering lines, blown ball joints, worn out wheel bearings, a cv joint that fell apart into a hundred pieces and much more. I decided at that moment to commit myself to far more work than I had planned. I went to work the next day and started ordering parts. The first to arrive was a new steering rack.



Some mugen pedals, lug nuts, and my fully restored Konig imagines followed.





The next order of business was removing the altezza tail lights and getting some OEM lights back on dat ***.





The motor was in really rough shape. To much work to bother trying to salvage. I planned ahead for this and had a fresh motor ready to be installed.

sxysweed

Post MAOR.

Prudz_lude

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I started working on the brakes and suspension. Like I said, it was dirty and much more work than I had anticipated.





The rear reinforcement bar needed replacing as well.

Prudz_lude

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With the car starting to look more and more stripped by the day I figured it was time to turn my garage into a bigger mess and began pulling the heart out of this bitch.



The engine bay was an utter mess but in due time this would change as the years passed by. Looking back it would have been easier to just clean the bay up then and there but knowing I soon would be without a garage I didn't want to risk any big delays.



During the same week I had some tires I bought a year before mounted on my wheels.



I mustered up the energy to detail the mess that was the engine bay. It was an ultra pain in the *** with all the lines, wires etc still in there. With years (possibly decades) of grime it was required before I started putting in any clean parts back in.

Prudz_lude

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After many frustrating hours fighting with oxidized bolts and blow ball joints I got all the suspension removed.



Afterwards I drove it down to a car wash and cleaned it up.





The next step was getting it all prepped, painted and cleared. I also needed to get all the bushings pressed out. I called around to some friends and was referred to a tech at a local Honda dealer. It turned out he had a 4th gen prelude as well that needed a bunch of random interior pieces. I just so happened to have a bunch left over from a parts car. In trade he pressed all the bushings out, seemed fair to me as I didn't want to deal with that headache. I am happy to say almost 4 years later the paint is still holding up fine.







I ordered up a complete ES bushing kit from my prelude. I wanted the car to feel new with no creaks or squeaks. The final product turned out very nice.

Prudz_lude

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I had bought a fuel filter from Honda years prior. Finally had a use for it :p



Got the transmission hooked up shortly after and got the motor prepared for install. Innovative motor mounts, water pump, timing belt, plugs, wires, solenoids, gaskets, seals etc. Looking pretty!

Prudz_lude

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With most of the grunt work out of the way I was starting to focus on adding some nice parts to the build. I ordered up a new exhaust system. This combo ended up sounding incredible on the car.

The brand new (at the time) Vibrant V2 header





Vibrant 18" resonator, magnaflow high flow cat, OBX twin loop muffler (didn't want to spend a fortune on a used Mugen)

Prudz_lude

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I should mention at this point the suspension parts had mostly arrived but were not installed. That headache was not finished just yet. But the motor was ready to be installed and so it was.





Fast forward to the end of the install and this is what I ended up with. A couple nice goodies were installed along the way.

Prudz_lude

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The suspension list at the time was as follows



-New re-manufactured brake callipers
-Brembo blank rotors all around
-ES bushing kit
-Tein Super Street coilovers
-OEM Honda Axles
-OEM Honda brake pads
-OEM Koyo wheel bearings
-OEM lower balljoints (5th gen prelude part number fits 4th gens if you did not know)
-ES sway bar end links

Even more suspension was added over the years to make sure it was solid and the best it could possibly be.

Prudz_lude

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Eventually I installed the suspension back on the car and planted the wheels back on the ground. By this time it had been almost five months of work day in day out. I know most will say that is working slow but working long hours at work followed by countless late nights wrenching definitely takes a toll on the body. It seemed almost every time I worked on the car something went wrong, a piece was broken and needed replacing (odd bolts/nuts etc) or i'd need something which required waiting until the next day to order or go buy. Of course part order wait times didn't help either, but eventually it got done and it put a big smile on my face.





This cooling plate had been in storage for over 3 years. I bought it when FM was doing his group buy before he shut down his business. Finally it got to be installed.









A shot of the rear suspension all finished up. The rear megan toe arms turned out to be huge piles of trash. I ended up throwing them in the garbage shortly after installing them. They made horrible clicks due to defective joints. I replaced them with brand new OEM honda solid toe arms from the 5th gen preludes. They fit perfectly, are a solid design vs the flimsy 4th gen ones. I could not be happier with them.



The interior was starting to come together as well. I wanted to do a triple gauge cluster on the dash. I did finish installing it but shortly after opted out and removed them. It did look cool at the time but without power it was just to ricey for my liking.



With winter on its way the nights were getting darker quicker, the garage was getting much colder, and the will to work on the car began to die off.

Prudz_lude

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During the winter months I ended up changing the valve cover. I've painted so many over the years. This one was one of my favourites though regardless of ******* up the colour scheme and having the green and yellow backwards lol. It would end up being changed shortly after.

Prudz_lude

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I wanted to delete the butter fly plates from the stock H22 intake manifold. I had previously owned a few different versions of the Skunk2 intake manifolds. They were quiet the pain in the *** imo to install and on the 4th gen they sat far to close to the fire wall of the car. They were designed for the roomier 5th gen engine bay after all. So to try and help get a bit more air into the motor this was my solution. At the same time I deleted the entire EGR and EVAP systems from the car. I used Rosko Racings block off plate.

The Intake manifold



Opening it up



Fresh gaskets and IAB spacer



Now some may ask why I painted the IAB spacer blue. I did it because it lets people know there is something aftermarket there. If it was silver like the rest of the manifold people would assume it is stock and unmodified. This is a nice indicator.



And finally the finished engine bay before the first fire up! The car had come a long way at this point. It was now April 2012 and time was getting closer to hitting the one year mark of the build. Due to weak battery cold cranking amps the battery relocate was short lived and a few months later the battery was put back up front. Some may also take notice of how fresh everything looks. Almost everything in that bay was replaced with new OEM stuff, even the p/s high pressure line.

Prudz_lude

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During those cold early months of spring I started replacing small odds and ends that needed to be freshened up. One of the biggest eye sores was the rear weather strip by the trunk. These are notorious for rusting away on 4th gen preludes. So a stop by Honda helped remedy that.



My ebrake button was also looking worn over years of use. I was lucky enough that Honda was able to track down one of these in a warehouse across the country. I'm very picky when it comes to small details like this. It's the small details that make an old dated car like this feel new and fresh.



The trunk carpet was finally re-installed



And I snapped a few shots of the car.





And when the snow cleared up it was finally time to pull the car out and start diagnosing some check engine lights and the Christmas tree that was my dash lol. There was 3 abs lights, 2 srs lights, 3 check engine lights, the DRL light, and headlight/lights lights.

Here is the first movement the car experienced in almost a year. It had a vac leak and no exhaust at this point.

IMG_0702.mp4 Video by prudzzz | Photobucket

Prudz_lude

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After a year of sitting in my garage the car needed a bath. I drove it a block over to a friends garage and I gave it a rinse. Some may notice the retro fitted one pieces I installed







As you can see the car was in need of some fresh paint. I had to replace the bumper that came with the car as the previous owner destroyed every clip on it along with some deep body damage I didn't feel like dealing with. That would come all in good time.

I had not compression tested the motor at this point and with a list of issues plaguing the car I figured it was time to do one and set the base timing on the dizzy.

Compression test was solid with 210 across the board.



With the timing set one code cleared and the car was idling and running much smoother. However my vtec was still not engaging. After hours of trouble shooting and testing I discovered there was a wire split in the main harness for the vtec solenoid. I ended up running an external wire directly from the ecu to the solenoid and just like that vtec was engaged! With all the codes cleared for the check engine lights the car was now finally running great.





Here is a picture with the gauges installed and the Christmas tree lit up in the back haha.

Prudz_lude

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Finally it was time to get the exhaust installed. I dropped the car off at this shop, bunch of hack jobs. The welds were chit imo for the money paid. Either way it worked out but I would eventually have a friend redo the exhaust and clean everything up.



At the time I decided to snag a few photos in good lighting





After 4 hours it was finally done







After that I got a call from a friend who agreed to paint the car in exchange for a car I had for sale plus some cash on my end. So off to the paint shop I went to buy some supplies.





More to come soon.

Prudz_lude

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I painted one of my preludes in the recent past and I did not feel like doing it again. Luckily my friend did all the prep work and paint work and I got to sit back and see the final results without all the work.

He spent a weekend working away on the car and managed to get it completely finished by the end. 2 coats of paint and 3 coats of clear. I still have yet to wet sand it, probably because there is next to no orange peal on it. One day i'll get around to it.

I do need to still clean up the bit of oxidization under the side skirt and toss some por15 on it.

Prudz_lude

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I drove the car home after the weekend of painting but noticed a couple flaws. The gas cap needed to be redone, the front lip, and the rear bumper needed to be redone. They were taken care of a few weeks later.















Eventually they got finished up and this was the end result.





The car was back up on jack stands getting the lower ball joints done since the first time around I used some cheap chinese crap. I instantly regretted it as i've never bought anything cheap for the car but couldn't find any part number for OEM. Eventually I found out the 5th gen prelude part number is the same and works.

I was sick of having people call my prelude a civic at lights since most of my previous preludes were shaved badging. So I ordered up a fresh badge.





During all the body work I made a custom rear lip. I think it turned out very oem looking.

Prudz_lude

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Round two of suspension followed shortly after the paint. By this time my mom has put her house up for sale and the garage she was letting me use was about to go away. Sadly the condo life does not include a garage

The front and rear wheel bearings were taken care of along with proper lower ball joints.







Some small details were attended to during all this. LED light bulbs were added and I fixed a damaged centre console cover and installed a shift boot after a year of not having one.

Prudz_lude

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Prudz_lude

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Finally after another long summer of work the car was back on all 4 and looking better than ever.









An interesting fact, the floor mats in this photo are the last confirmed set of black OEM mats that were for sale from Honda. They are still to this day one of my favourite things I purchased for my car. It really helps make the interior feel new. Sadly they look pretty dirty there :S





Cruise control was also deleted that day

Prudz_lude

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By this point I had the car running well, codes were almost all gone (one abs and srs remained causing the car to fail inspection) and I was beginning to get an itch for some proper power. I sourced a nice nitrous kit and pieced a couple extra things together for it. A week before I planned to install it I backed out and decided to hold off and boost the car. This is where the car spent the next two years, a state of down time and incredible enjoyment caused by boost.

This is what the kit looked like.



Of course by this time I was actually enjoying taking pictures of the car so I tried to get a couple nice ones here and there. These were the final shots on the final day before the car moved once and for all to my new place, underground (heated) where it would collect a lot of dust over the next two years.







This became it's new home and my new garage. Thankfully I at least landed a corner parking stall with a storage cage beside it so I could still work on the car even if it was in a stall.

Prudz_lude

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Slowly parts started to trickle in to prepare the car for boost in the near future.

Prudz_lude

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So dusty...



The car was starting to get a real nice film on it. It would only get thicker as it would spend the next 5 months almost untouched by me. It was now going into the 2nd winter of owning the car.

Here is the end result of the decal work

Prudz_lude

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More parts showed up over winter.







A little bummed on this one, rad cap turned out to be fake Oil cap is legit.











pg 27 pp ref