Sutterlude

whats up with the color coated bearings in the helms book and how do you know what is right for your car

supra-n-civic

it has to do with the stock oem honda bearings. they use a color code at honda dealership swith genuine honda parts. it goes ont eh number on the rods to corrispond with the correct bearing. say you have two rods with a 3 on it and two rods with a 1 you need two of one bearigns and two of the other. i dunno why they do this as when you can get aftermarket bearings they disreguard this system. call a honda dealership with the numbers on your con rods. they will be able to tell you what ones you need. or just order a set of acl race bearings save 140 bucks over oem bearings and move on with your life haha. good luck i figured this out the hard way.

Hybrid96EK

Why did you even bother to post this??? Let me clear things up since this information isn't going to get you very far. You'd be calling the dealer with half the information you need. On top of it all, you would have NO understanding as to what you were doing or why Honda uses the color system...

The codes on the rods are only half the equation. You need the other codes off the crank. You will notice the crank has letters and numbers... You will need the 4 letters. Each letter matches with a number to give you a color. Typically this translates to either Green or Brown with the occasional Yellow. Anyways, the colors indicate thickness of the bearing. Thicker and thinnner. A thicker bearing would decrease journal clearance, a thinner bearing would increase journal clearance. There is a tolerance you need to be within that is defined in the Helm manual. You will need a Helm if you don't already have one. The easiest way to check clearance is with plastigauge. The more accurate was is with micrometers. You will need to clean the crank journal and then insert the bearing, rods, piston assy. into the block (there is a procedure for this as well as proper ring gap placement). The bearing must be dry to plastigauge, do NOT touch it with your bear finger,make sure you torque the rod caps to the correct specified torque also, or the readings are crap. The oil from your hands will etch the top coating of the bearing and ruin it. Remove the cap again taking care not to move the crank or rod and then check the thickness of the plastigauge. If its in spec, your good. If not, you make the appropriate adjustment using the color chart. This is just a quick run down of whats involved. If you don't know what you are doing, leave it for someone who does..From the sound of the first post though I would say you are a little in over your head already.

Aftermarket bearings are typically offered in three sizes. "Standard", "oversized", and "undersized". You don't get any choices inbeween like you do with Honda bearings. For this reason, its a lot harder to correctly control clearance if you need to. Typically if the codes on your crank/rods decode to Greens and Browns you can get away with a set of standards. Yes, aftermarket bearings are a LOT cheaper then the Honda parts. Are they any better or worse? This leads to huge arguements. IMO I have had tremendous success with ACL bearings. I clearance everything to double check obviously, but I have had no negative problems to report from the use of ACL's. If the cost was closer, I would choose the OEM parts hands down. It just depends on the build and where your budget is in the end.

Sutterlude

ya i kinda had an idea of something to do with the bearing thickness and the oil clearance im going with oem parts and just rebuilding the bottom end of a stock b16(my dd). its not torn apart yet so i dont have any of the numbers on the rods or crank.