thumper64

Since OEM parts are generally the best to use, maybe it would be beneficial to establish a list of who makes what for Honda as OEM parts or what brands can at least be trusted to work as well as OEM. I know Honda started as a piston ring manufacturer, but is that still true?
Gates makes the timing belts. I believe Wagner makes their brake pads, but I need confirmation. I did a brake job on my mom's Odyssey and the pads had large Ws on the back. I know Wagner is a division of Federal Mogal, who makes a lot of parts for different auto manufacturers.

Anyone know who makes Honda's water pumps, oil pumps, head gaskets, O2 sensors?

What would YOU consider best if you aren't using OEM?
I use Felpro gaskets, Dayco or Goodyear belts, Energy Suspension or Prothane suspension bushings, Moog suspension parts (ball joings and tie rod ends), ARP fasteners, grade 8 bolts for suspension stuff like shocks, B&M shifters. Currently I have GSP axles, so I'm seeing how they work. My Apexi exhaust seems decent.

NOFX

I have a thread with links to OEM parts sellers. It's linked at the top of the FAQ too.

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=2059889

Do you mean you want to start a list of who makes all the OEM parts in particular?

NOFX

As far as the history of Honda (you mentioned the piston rings), I got this from a book I have.

Sorry it took so long, I had to type it all up.

I'd have to look around for more manufacturers.

page 96
Aspirations and Dreams

Art Automobile Service Station

After graduating from junior high school in 1922, Soichiro Honda began work in the Yushima area of Tokyo at an auto repair shop called Art Shokai, or in English, "Art Automobile Service Station." The owner of Art Shokai was Yuzo Sakakibara, himself only twenty-nine years of age. Soichiro was only sixteen. At that time, Japan was still without a domestically produced automobile and his time was primarily spent repairing imported Fords. The following year, Tokyo was suddenly visited by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, resulting in disastrous fires. As flames of the conflagration spread, Honda - who had never received any training in driving - found himself rushing to move customers' automobiles to safety from the approaching flames. It was his first thrilling experience at driving. Later, while continuing to work as an auto repairman, he also become involved in building a race car.

Soichiro contributed to the building of a racing car called the "Curtiss," which first appeared in competition in a rally held at Tsurumi in November 1924. The Curtiss surprised the competition by taking first prize. It was from this time that Honda's devotion to racing and the spirit of competition become a moving force in his life.

Invention of the Cast Spoke Wheel

In 1928, when Soichiro was twenty-one, he convinced the owner of Art Shokai, Yuzo Sakakibara, to allow him to establish an independent shop under the name "Art Automobile Service Station, Hamamatsu Branch." While continuing to work as a mechanic, he demonstrated his creative potential by working to develop his own unique electrical generators, motorboats and other inventions.

A formative experience along the way was the difficulty he had encountered at Tokyo Art Shokai trying to repair the burned wooden spoke wheels of a car which was damaged in the earthquake-related fires. Taking that as a starting point, he had the revolutionary inspiration to switch from the conventional wooden spoke wheels to cast metal in 1931.

This invention received high acclaim at a nationwide industrial exposition, and as trading companies took notice, the wheels were exported as far away as Southeast Asia and India. The royalties Soichiro received from patent rigts alone amounted to an enormous sum, but he unfortunately squandered much of the money with a flashy lifestyle. In part because of such notoriety, he came to be widely known in local circles for his audacious manner in both work and play.

Dedication to Piston Rings

Tired with mechanics work, Honda set his sights on the manufacturing industry. He knew that the age of the automobile had to be just around the corner, and he wanted to be involved in some way with that new development. It was just at that time (1937) that the Toyota Group had established Toyota Motors in their move toward entering the automobile industry. For his endeavor, Honda settled on piston rings, a small but highly valuable part of an automobile's engine, and he established the "Art Piston Ring Research Center" in Yamashita-cho, Hamamatsu City. Honda had unwavering faith in his ability to make things, but piston rings were a tough nut to crack. The know-how he had gained in his research to produce a cast spoke wheel was sufficient to produce piston rings in name only. The first trial samples he produced were unusable - rigid and hard, lacking any flexibility whatsoever. Realizing that he lacked the proper technical knowledge for this task, he enrolled as an auditing student at the Hamamatsu Industrial Institute (present-day Faculty of Engineering at Shizuoka University). Soichiro was thirty at the time. From that time, he would return home from his classes at school and work all night, trying to apply whatever theoretical learning he had gained to his work. And each night, his sympathetic friend, senior managing director Saikichi Miyamoto, would work beside him.

In 1939, Honda sold the Hamamatsu branch of Art Shokai to his employee Suekichi Kawashima, and established Tokai Seiki in order to devote himself to research on the manufacture of piston rings. At that time, Honda was already widely known in the Tokai (Shizuoka) region as an inventor, and word of his work came to the ears of Taizo Ishida of Toyota (later to become president of Toyota Motors). Ishida wanted to take3 the precocious Honda onboard his operation, and arranged for Tokai Seiki to become a supplier for Toyota.

Honda's first task at Tokai Seiki was to establish a research laboratory and conduct even more in-depth work on piston rings. One day, from the countless test samples he had fashioned, he selected the fifty best results of his piston ring work and sent them to Toyota for evaluation. But of that fifty, only three passed Toyota's tests.

Further, Honda was expelled from the Hamamatsu Industrial Institute on the grounds that he had ignored every single test given in his classes. Honda, though, decided brazenly to continue attending classes without paying as an auditing student. As the final results of his bitter struggle, Honda succeeded in perfecting his piston rings. He had obtained a total of 28 patents.

Invention of the Automated Propeller Cutter

With Japan's entry into World War II, Tokai Seiki was transformed into a military plant. Taizo Ishida, who had already anticipated so much promise in Honda, decided to put capital investment into Tokai Seiki. With the condition of broadly increased capital investment, Toyota took control of forty percent of Tokai Seiki's stock, and Ishida became an outside director of the company.

Tokai Seiki's range of activities continued to expand steadily; it came to supply parts for the navy and Nakajima Aircraft and eventually to produce machine tools as well. Soichiro was approached by Kiichi Kawakami, president of Nippon Gakki, a large corporation in Hamamatsu, and asked to develop a copy milling machine for propeller of air craft. Until then,producing a single aircraft propeller had required a week's work. However Honda's new machine could not only machine two at once, but it would do so in a mere thirty minutes. Honda was highly praised for his research and development abilities and he was quickly made the focus of attention by the press. Kiichi Kawakami lauded Honda as the "Edison of Japan," and made him a special adviser to Nippon Gakki. He also instructed his company executives to "learn whatever you can from Honda." No one could imagine that this same Nippon Gakki propeller plant would later become the manufacture of Yamaha engines - one of Honda's most important rivals in the motorcycle industry.

A Year of Leisure

With the coming of aerial bombings in 1945, the entire city of Hamamatsu was left in rubble. Tokai Seiki's Yamashita factory was burned down, and Honda continued production in a relocated factory near his hometown of Iwata-country. With the final end of the war, Honda sold the last of Tokai Seiki's stock to Toyota for 450,000 yen, and said that he would "take a year off to observe what direction Japan was going to take." During that year, Honda played the Japanese shakuhachi (bamboo flute) and enjoyed shogi (Japanese chess), bought large quantities of medicinal alcohol and made moonshine whiskey through his own special process, operated an ice cream machine, and at the beach used an electrical salt manufacturing process to make salt which he then traded for rice. During this time, Honda recieved invitations to work with Toyota, Yamaha and other corporations in the Tokia region, but he refused them all, insisting on maintaining his own independence.

In October of 1946, his year of recreation was finally at its end, and he moved to reopen his business at the site of the old Tokai Seiki Yamashita factory. Inside the rough building were a mere ten machine tools, including a belt-operated lathe, shaper, drilling machine, and vertical milling machine, and he began with only twelve employees. On the door was a sign reading "Honda Gijutsu Kenkyujo" (literally, "Honda Technical Research Institute"). But this modest machine shop was the kernel that would later grow into the Honda known throughout the world.

page 30
1948 ~ 1961
From the Engineering Design Department of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. to Honda R&D Co., Ltd.

The Founding of Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

It was a time when anyone in Japan would have exhausted themselves wondering, as they faced their devastated land, how they would manage to go on living. It was October 1946, only one year and two months after the war ended in defeat. No one could have imagined that the Honda Technical Research Institute, which was first established in Yamashita-cho, Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, would eventually develop into an enterprise that would cross the seas and sweep the world. No one could have imagined it, with the exception of its founder, Soichiro Honda.

Even in those difficult times, he and the men who followed him thought only of moving forward. Two years later, on September 24, 1948, they founded a new company, capitalized at one million yen, out of the Honda Technical Research Institute. This was the Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

In February of that year, operations were transferred from the Yamashita Plant to the 130-square-meter Noguchi Plant previously purchased in Noguchi-cho, Hamamatsu City.

There, expanded production began of the 2-stroke, 0.5-PS A-Type engine. Determined o create an engine that would run even on poor-quality fuel, that had plenty of power and had good fuel consumption, Soichiro Honda had designed and patented a "chimney" engine that was the precursor of this auxiliary engine for bicycles.

The moped-like bicycles that had this engine installed were called "bike motors" (or popularly just "batabata," from their distinctive sound). The populace at the time, who had only plain bicycles, flocked to buy them. Heard whizzing along the streets, the new engine became a part of the sound of Japan's reconstruction.

As the Type-A engine started to satisfy people's demand for speed, they began to ask for additional horsepower. This lead to the improved and ever more powerful B-Type and then C-Type. Still, the body for these improved types was ultimately no more than a remodeled bicycle frame, a structure that set limits to further improvement. The engineers grew more and more eager to build a real motorcycle that would bring both greater speed and safety. They began work on designing the D-Type as early as the end of 1948, and by August 1949 had completed a prototype of this 2-stroke, 98 cc D-Type motorcycle with a channel frame. Nowhere else in the mini-motorcycle industry of the time were machines being built with integrated engines and bodies. This was the very first.

Placing his faith in his unlimited dream for the future, Soichiro Honda named this motorcycle the "Dream." It represented a first step toward the company becoming a full-fledged motorcycle manufacturer.