Hello Honda-Tech.
Haven't posted much, but I have spent the last two years going through countless build and DIY threads. I got into Hondas a couple years back when a guy in my town had just bought a 99 ek hatch with a type r swap, boosted making 340 whp.
I'm by no means a Honda guru. Everything I know, you guys have taught me through your posts on this site. I live in an extremely small town in Oregon, where either you drive a box Chevy, Mopar, or a commuter car. I've only seen probably 4 or 5 modified Honda's around here, and usually they're just passing through on their way to the coast.
I started out in the honda "scene" (if you want to call it that) as most stupid kids do, I didn't know anything about authentic parts, what was good and what was garbage, and I made a few impulse buys that I'd come to regret. But hey, we all gotta start somewhere right?
Enough with the life story, here's my 1996 si.


I know I'll get flamed for the wheels, and trust me I don't like them anymore than you guys do, but it's what I've got right now and they didn't cost me anything so.. it's what I'm sticking with until I'm in a position to drop money on some RPF-1s, what I really want are some spoon sw388's but the chances of finding a set in good condition are getting slimmer and slimmer.

And then came the impulse buy I mentioned earlier... Megan Racing Header, I've heard good and bad things about their suspension products, but nothing but bad as far as their headers go. And I've since learned if you actually plan on gaining horsepower from a header, you're going to have to go with a much, much more reputable brand, and a much, much higher price tag. I haven't decided which header to go with on the h22a yet, the Logic Tri-y rep is pretty nice and has proven hp gains, so right now I'm leaning towards that.



Then I decided to replace the stock air intake.
Went with a pretty good brand on this one.


I know, my engine bay is disgusting.


Thought this was kinda funny. Cali's strict.
After I installed the CAI I had an idle issue because of one of the vacuum lines was plugged due to there not being any mating point for the line on the new intake, so instead of leaving it capped, I jimmy-rigged my own filter to throw on it, and it took care of the idle problem, I highly doubt this was the correct way to fix the problem and if you guys know of a better/more professional way to take care of it, please let me know!!
Here's a shot of the filter...


After that I picked up a few more cosmetic upgrades that also could have waited until I was a little more educated...




They look nice, but I kinda wish I would have went with a Nardi wheel.. but this will do for now.

Some Recaro reps I got for DIRT cheap. Again, these are temporary, none of these no-name parts will be permanent.



Also upholstered the door inserts with red suede.. looking at it now I feel like it's just too much.. kinda ricey :/
It feels/looks alright, but I dunno.. too flashy for me I think.

After all that crap was done... I started really putting my time into research. I had jumped into the Honda game completely blind and ignorant. So I decided, if I wanted to end up with a respectable build, I had to put the time into learning how to do that properly.

I became fascinated with the h23vtec Frankenstein builds I'd seen Shawn and a few others do on here. And I figured since I already had an h23a1, that would be a pretty good route to go. So I sourced an h22a4 head for pretty much free. It was torn apart, and painted some god awful colors, but it was clean.
(Sorry for the crappy cell phone pix)

The head was "ported and polished". Now I'm no professional, and I could be wrong, but this looks like a pretty half-assed port n' polish job to me...
Ex side..

Intake side...


For some reason it just reminds me of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....




There was a guy in town that had a 93 prelude that had a bad water pump. He was trying to sell the whole car for a grand, and seeing as how it's the same chassis, I decided to go and take a look and see if there was anything worth salvaging.
It had some no-name adjustable coils on it, picked em up for like 20 bucks..
His lude had the stock spoiler, mine didn't. So I took his whole trunk lid too, because I didn't want to drill holes in a perfectly good trunk lid. I'll restore and paint it when I do the rest of the car.




I know those coils are garbage, and believe me I won't be sticking with them.
So far I'm sure you're all thinking, "wow another ricer build, this kid should probably just push his car off a cliff", but Just stick with me.

So I continued to look over the car, wandered around front and popped the hood. Wasn't expecting to see what happened to be under there.



Long story short, the guy who owned the car was being evicted, had no means of moving the car, and no license, and the car didn't run anyways so we drove up with a car trailer and 200 bucks, went home with a new parts lude.

So I'll be pulling the motor here soon.
I had planned on boosting my h23vtec frank motor, buuuut with this new find, I think I'm just gonna do my very first build an all motor JDM h22a and see where that takes me. I figure, for my first build, I might as well make it easy on myself since there's a lot more that goes into building a reliable boosted car, properly.

Well that's what I've got for now, this is my first build. I've got nobody to look up to around here so I had to resort to the internet. Shawn, Cody, Zac, and Big Mike are pretty much the people I've gotten most of my ideas and motivation from. By no means am I saying I have the capabilities as of this point in time to compete with them, but this is all a learning/growing experience.
All opinions and criticism welcome!! I'm already anticipating massive amounts of flame, so have at it. You won't hurt my feelings, this is my build, built for me, and nobody else.
And also, sorry if the pictures are sized weird, for some reason it takes like 24 hours for photobucket to realize I've resized my pictures.

-Jay


Edit: This build has been put on hold.. I needed a reliable secondary vehicle before I could really do much to this car, seeing as it's my daily. I picked up a '99 SSBP gsr and started a mild build thread on it. Nothing too crazy, just some cosmetic upgrades, suspension and aero upgrades for auto-x. Once the integra is done, I'll start throwing all my money into the prelude. My ex decided to take out her anger on my car when I left her, so my work load had increased significantly. I'll update once my integra build is finished. I've still been collecting parts, but just don't have the time to work on two cars. The integra is almost finished though, and I'm anxious to get back to the prelude and finally finish it the right way.

https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...6561&styleid=2
That's the link to my integra thread if anybody cares to check it out.

 

Well, my buddy called me up and said he had enough free time and space at the shop to pull the motor today, so after I got done posting this up, I headed out to get my motor.

This is how professionals move cars...



Motor looks like dog sh*t but hey.. nothing some brake cleaner and aircraft stripper can't take care of.


Previous owner of the car had it slammed on its nuts.. so.. there was a little damage to the underside of the car, nothing that'll affect me though.



Got her dropped in less than 3 hours.




She's pretty dirty, but like I said, she's gettin a full flush and clean before she gets sent off to the machine shop.

I'll post up my parts list once I locate it on my computer, forgot where I saved it...

That's all for now, stay tuned.

-Jay

 

Good progress.

 

Thanks, I know right now it doesn't look very promising, but my next two paychecks have overtime pay on em so I should be able to get something major done here pretty soon.

 

I remember those days. Keep at it.

 

Just placed my first order for a permanent part that'll be staying with the car until the end.
Also contacted a company about some custom carbon fiber work. Should be getting a few quotes by the end of the week.

 

Haven't had time to do much lately, hopefully going to hang and drain the h22a today. If nothing else I'll have some pictures of the internals n' such when I pull the head off and start disassembly.

 

+1

 

Got a little work done in between the off and on rain we've had for the last couple days.


Got the motor hoisted to drain it.


This was a little disappointing.. figured the previous owner had at least changed the oil regularly.. Guess that wasn't the case..


Popped the IM off just to lighten it up during transport.


Once we had it loaded in the back of the truck we decided we should just get the tranny off while we still had some daylight and the sky was clear. We had already loosened up the flywheel bolts prior to loading the motor so the tranny wouldnt leak everwhere when we pulled it off.
Got the tranny off and threw it in the metal scrap pile.. it was automatic and I didn't get any offers on cl for it so it's gettin scrapped.
That's all for today, I'll have it on the stand and the head pulled apart and cleaned tomorrow. More pics to come.

 

Got 'er up on the stand today.. In my kitchen.. But I'll work with what I've got.


On the plus side, getting a nice stock of spare H series/prelude parts.

 

Great work with the engine, i love red seats in black or white Prelude. Definitly i will put red ones in my Lude.

 

Well I got sent home from work yesterday for being sick, I was well enough to work but I work in a kitchen so we can't risk spreading anything.
So I took the day to start some cleaning on the h22.




Started on the head too.



Still gotta LOT of cleaning to do.

 

Damn, gettin no love on Honda-Tech lol..
Buuut I didn't really expect to get much feedback.
Looked at some colors today and I've gotten it down to three choices. Either a respray of the stock color, I don't know the color code off the top of my head but I like how the black has metal flake in it already, so I might keep it that color or shoot the whole car Smokey Granite Mica, or find the color code for our local Sheriff's department. Their cars are all a shade of gunmetal that would look amazing on the lude.. but.. I dunno. We'll see when the time gets closer for paint.
How do you guys feel about PWJDM parts? I was looking at their intakes and with a battery relocation I can fit an EK intake on the h22a, I've heard they actually decrease power though.

 

PWJDM is expensive and slow. But most of their stuff is pretty good. I would keep your stock intake for now and use that money else where like suspension and some kicks so at least you can ball around while you build.

 

Yeah, I already swapped the stock for AEM and as far as intakes I guess that's as good as it gets for the price.
I was looking at some Ksport shock/coilover setups and I might go with a set of those, unless anyone's had bad experience with them.
I was trying to get some enkei rpf-1s before I parked the car to floss around on, but I decided that that 1200 bucks for wheels and tires is going to go into my block.
I'm buying a Chevy s10 next week to drive for the winter and haul parts around. The lude will be getting parked for the winter and tore down completely. Hopefully have paint and body work done by February.

 

Also, I've got a bunch of spare h22 parts I won't be using, I've got an h22a4 intake manifold, a bare h22a4 block with a small (VERY SMALL) imperfection in one of the cylinders that can easily be taken care of if somebody is building it and getting the cylinders bored, and other miscellaneous parts for sale if anybody is interested. If you need something just lemme know and I'll let you know if I've got it.
That white-faced SI gauge cluster is for sale too. Was gonna use it but I decided to stick with the one I've got.

 

Lol man its a process.

I dont get love either.

 

Yeaaaah right haha. You're a lot further along than I am. I'm shooting for the same type of quality you're building your 4th gen for so in all honesty don't be surprised if I hit you up for some info on your build. You sell that spoon lip yet?

 

nope... idk if i will... but i hate hoarding stuff from the community. i got a new lip i need to take pics of.

 

I would love to pick it up because its one of those authentic parts that might not come around again in that condition for a long time, if ever. But it comes down to buying a cosmetic, or saving for my 2500 dollar skunk2 bill hahaha.
Yeah man update the thread!!

 

Super jealous of Mr. Hotshot's new lip he got. Don't let that ish scrape Cody!
Nothing new for the lude yet, However I did source a set of wheels I've been looking for in my bolt pattern for the last 8 months. They're in their original finish, original center caps and valve stems, and absolutely NO curbage, chips, or bends!
Won't disclose what they are, should be a good surprise. Made a stupid mistake and spent part of my wheel fund because I hadn't had any luck finding a set worth buying for 8 months, and what do you know they pop up as soon as I dip into the account. That's what I get though, contacted the seller and he said he'd hold onto em until I get paid on the 13th.
Originally I had no plans whatsoever of buying any "JDM" parts.. I thought the whole infatuation with something being from Japan was a little played out and had no interest in hopping on that train. But I've gotta say, I think I've been bitten by the bug
Got some stuff ordered through ICB, nothing too big but all needed to complete the build to my satisfaction.
Probably won't have any good substance to post for a couple weeks but I noticed the lack of pictures of the car itself so I might go take a couple shots and post em up.
Kinda embarrassed of the 4x4 status of the car though haha.

-Jay

 

Some pics the seller sent to me while I wait for them to arrive.

 

Couple more

 

Happy thanksgiving to everyone that isn't posting on my thread.. Hahah.
Worked my *** off and got paid double time today, which means it's time to order some more stuff! Pedals, shift ****, shift boot and lug nuts should be here sometime next week. Then I can throw my coils and new wheels on and at least make the car look half way decent while I collect more parts.

 

Looks promising dude!