dylspil

the car starts and runs!

yesterday i took off the fuel rail a few times to try and fix the leaking issue. double checked none of the o-rings were torn, then re-seated them all while swapping injector 2 and 3 around to see if that changed anything. reinstalled the fuel rail and tightened it all down. primed the fuel system and saw fuel spilling out of the rail at injector 4, leaking more than before.
took the rail off and removed injector 4 to see if if i'd damaged the o-ring but it was fine, and felt tight in the fuel rail when pushed all the way in... didnt know what to do so i had a look at a stock injector, tried to fit it in the fuel rail but the old o-ring was so flattened it didnt even touch the sides of the fuel rail. i then removed the oem intake fuel rail spacers, even though i'd read that with jdm b16as you need to retain the spacers, whereas all other b series engines you dont need the spacer. removing the spacers and placing them on top of the fuel rail bolts instead of underneath the rail allowed me to tighten down the fuel rail a little more. primed the fuel system and again saw injector 4 leaking, but just a slow drip this time.
had a look through my spare parts and thought i'd check the fuel rail box and instructions... where i found 4 new injector o-rings. the ones i was using came on the bosch injectors and look identical really. could not tell the difference between the bosch ones and the aem ones. but i switched over to the aem o-rings and now no more leaks. clearly i should have used the aem o-rings in the first place but i forgot it had even came with them.


at that point i wanted to try and start it up so i opened smanager in the car and changed a few things around. put in the stock map sensor to avoid that contributing to any issues, started datalogging and tried to crank it. let it crank for a few seconds but it wouldnt start up. no cels or anything, got out and had a look for any leaks but only saw the slow thermostat housing leak, got back in and tried to crank it again but just heard the starter clicking noise. gave up for the night and put the car on to charge overnight in case it was just the low battery not giving enough power to crank.


got back in the garage today determined to do whatever troubleshooting i had to do to get it to start. disconnected the battery charger, double checked the ecu map in smanager, started datalogging and cranked it over. after about 5 seconds it came to life and held a steady idle without me doing anything to keep it alive at all. i was just about pissing my pants at this point because it was all working
air-fuel was way rich, like 8:1 at idle so i got scared and shut it off haha.
looking at the datalog i made the overall fuel trim about -35% and started it up again. this time it started immediately and sounded a bit more healthy. i tried to adjust the wideband offset voltage a bit to match gauge display to the smanager readings and then changed the fuel trim a little bit again until it held a ratio of around 14:1 while idling at about 900 rpm. oil pressure was reading about 90 at start up. i let it run for about 10 minutes and gave it a few little revs to try and track the state of the fuel map as i checked for leaks. found a dripping oil leak coming from the sandwich plate, and only let the coolant temp get to around 70 before shutting it off because i wasnt sure if the radiator fan would kick in.

let it cool down for an hour or so while i had lunch and then came back, jacked up the front and got under to find the oil leak. it was coming from the oil temp sensor at the sandwich plate which was good because thats right at the bottom of the sandwich plate, easiest to get to, and didnt leak on anything else at all. gave it a quick wipe down and tightened it up. it was pretty loose to be honest, i must have only done it hand tight when i was assembling the engine.

started checking the radiator fan wiring, as before going obd1 and hondata the oem radiator fan would start up as soon as the key was turned... i thought this must have meant it was hard wired in but when i was redoing all the wiring harness it looked like it was wired correctly. the thermo fan switch may be bad, but i figure rather than chasing that issue i'll just trigger the fans using the s300. i grounded out the signal pin on the fan relay in the RHS fender and the fan came on so at least the relay works. i tapped into the obd1 ecu pin A12 for fan control. enabled the "protection" setting in smanager to ground out A12 when coolant temp is above 10 degrees (just to test this works without having to run the engine) and the fan came on. then i edited the setting to trigger the fan at 80 degress and uploaded the map to the ecu.

i'll try to get a video up soon. next time i start it up i'll be running it to operating temp to check the radiator fan switches on, and then setting base timing and idle before i do an oil change.

dylspil

havent started the car since my last post, i'm cautious to run it any more before i can drive around to seat the new rings properly. i'll be looking into registering it on monday morning so hopefully i'll have some good news then.
anyway it looks like the coolant leak from the lower thermostat housing has slowed down a lot, and i've made sure the system is topped up... don't know what's going on there. still waiting on those water pipe o-rings.

in the meantime, i completed tucking the wires for the lights, horn etc. it's funny how scary it was for me to partially tuck the engine bay a few years ago (just the accessories harnesses). now i know what everything is so doing the LHS only took a few hours last night, all wrapped in braided sheath and heatshrinked neatly.

today i took out the front fenders and bumper to clean them up ready to put back on the car. also cleaned up the windshield cowl and put that in place ready to screw down.


vacuumed out the floor pan and wiped it all down and put the driver's seat in, along with the door sills/kick panels


getting closer, but man now that the engine bay is so clean it makes the rest of the bodywork look like complete ****. i was debating whether or not to pull the old carbon vinyl off the hood, and respray the RHS fender, hood, and front bumper in black just to clean it up... but it's probably more effort than it's worth, considering i'm going to move on to the bodywork and respray when it's all running right.

dylspil

been really busy with final reports at uni so havent had as much time as i'd like to spend on this.

got the car registered on monday. since then i've spent a bit of time each evening this week getting the front end panels on and aligned, and lots of other little bits and pieces. i had to bash in the hood support a bit because it was hitting the radiator cap

today i finally got around to starting up the car and getting it up to temp, confirmed the radiator fan control works, set the base timing via Smanager.

changed the oil and oil filter and checked the coolant, which doesnt seem to be dropping much at all. the slow drip at the thermostat housing is still there, but it's not leaving puddles under the car or anything. i did get the new o-rings for the water pipe so that's on the list to do now.

gave all the windows a good wipe down to clear away the thick layer of dust and then took it out for its first drive in 2 and a half years!
the engine feels strong, but afr's were still a bit all over the place and the engine wanted to stall when under braking at low speed in neutral or with the clutch in... i had to rev it up a little bit at a stop to make sure it didnt stumble.
the power steering delete feels really good too. not as heavy as i thought it would be, so as long as it holds up over time i'll be happy i did it.

i'd enabled the on-board datalogging for the s300 so it was just a 10-15 minute drive to get some fuel and do some laps of the neighbourhood to start building up the low speed fuel map.
got it back home without any problems and let it cool down for a few minutes. had a look under the hood and saw an oil leak from the vtec solenoid. put that on the list
checked the datalog, altered the fuel map a little bit, and realised that the rpm readings in Smanager were different from what i was seeing on the tachometer.
i uploaded the calibration to the car and started it up to check the idle settings, and saw the rpm displayed in Smanager was higher than what the tacho was showing by like 200 rpm, figured this could have something to do with the idle issues
in the datalog it showed the max rpm from the test drive was like 6000, but from watching the tacho i dont think i went over 4500. so now i dont know if hondata is wrong or that tachometer is wrong.
it seems to be running pretty well and tracking properly in Smanager, so i assume it's the tacho that is off slightly. anyone have any experience with this?
i changed the idle speed in smanager to 1100 before going for another drive just to see what happened to the stumbling issue.
just from driving around the stumbling issue was gone and there wasnt really any hint of stalling at idle.. the idle doesnt sound that high though, so now i really dont know what's going on with the rpm between Smanager and the tachometer.
brought the car back home and did some more updating of the low speed fuel table after checking the datalog, and gave the car a half assed wash in the driveway



i forgot how good this car feels. it was good before but now it feels more raw. a lot tighter, and more responsive too. looking forward to tuning the high speed fuel map and getting into vtec again

feck

Looking and sounding great! Even the doggy approves.

dylspil

thanks mate.

i've noticed a few more little issues over the last few days, more to add to the list.

made it out to an ITR meet that one of my buddies invited me and a few other crx guys along to, should have some pics of that in the next few days

feck

I have zero doubt you'll not get on top of any little issues D. Your attention to detail and your near genetic Aussie Petrolhead birthright will cover all the bases.

dylspil

not the best quality since they're just stolen from facebook but here's a few pics taken at a small meet on sunday. i was late in getting there so i didnt get to properly wash or detail the car at all.
the main thing is that i made it out. not a bad effort since the first time i drove the car was only the day before so i didnt have much of a chance to road tune yet.
havent grabbed any engine bay shots from anyone yet but there were plenty taken so maybe i'll get some soon

dylspil

bit of an update.
So i had a pretty slow but constant oil leak coming from the vtec solenoid area... i had used a brand new gasket when i installed the skunk2 billet solenoid housing many years ago, and by the time i took the car off the road to do all this work there was a slight leak there already.
when i assembled the engine this time i put some gasket maker around the outer edge of the solenoid housing but clearly that didnt work. a few days ago i took off the housing and examined everything to find the gasket maker and oem solenoid gasket/filter was still intact, and the gasket was soft just like new. however the oil pressure switch going into the housing had the o-ring blown out a little bit.
i found my old oem solenoid housing and examined that to see the difference between that and the skunk2 unit.
The skunk2 housing looks to hold the gasket a little awkwardly, like it wanted to pop out of the recessed area. and the pressure switch that screws into the housing seems much more solid and leak-proof on the oem unit.
decided to test out the oem one. i still applied some gasket maker around the outer edge of the housing and then installed it and left it overnight.
gave the engine a good run the next day to do some more fuel map tuning and no more oil leak.

to summarise:
skunk2 billet solenoid housing - pros: looks cool, cons: ****, cost me like $150
oem solenoid housing - pros: everything, cons: nothing


onto the next thing... the radiator fan is acting up. so i already know something doesnt work in the oem fan control wiring system, but i got it working using the fancontrol function in the s300
after i wired the fan control output wire from the ecu to the existing fan relay it worked for the first few test drives, came on when it needed to and turned off after it cooled down below the trigger temperature.
then all of a sudden i started it up after a couple days of not driving it, and the fan came on as soon as the ignition key was turned to power accessories. hondata showed fanc was on... ect was only like 20deg C. no idea what's going on with that.
at least it still runs, just constantly. i'll deal with it eventually but it's at the bottom of the list for now.

back to the leaking coolant. the leaky rear thermostat housing is still persisting. but now the lower radiator hose is dripping very very slowly from where it attaches to the radiator.
my plan is to drain coolant, take off thermostat housing and replace the water pipe o-rings that i've got ready to go, and replace the oem radiator hose spring clamps with t-bolt clamps.
hopefully that solves all the leaks but we'll see.

tuning issues. there still seems to be a small offset in RPM shown by the tachometer and the reading in hondata but after a few more test drives i think that it's not as big of a deal as i originally thought. i'm blaming the tachometer for being inaccurate at this point.
now i've noticed a problem with my Innovate MTX-L wideband o2 sensor/gauge. it seems like when the car is first turned on and the wideband enters heater mode, the gauge sends a solid signal of 7.5:1 AFR to the ecu, so no matter what adjustments i make in Smanager i cant get it to run leaner until the o2 sensor has finished heating. once it's finished heating and the wideband gauge starts displaying AFRs instead of "HTR" then there's no problem at all. i dont know if this heater override issue is by design or if it's a fault. i havent been able to find record of anyone else having this specific issue though.

ShinsenTuner

iTrader: (1)

Super late update but I saw you were calibrating your TPS on an earlier post. For my car I just used the TPS calibration settings on Hondata and was done with it. My sequence was setting the TPS correctly with a volt meter first (at closed throttle) and then used Hondata to recalibrate the closed and opened voltages.

Did you try a new fan switch?

signalpuke

What seat rails are you using? Looking for some for mine, and no one seems to make them.

dylspil

yeah i set my tps before i had uploaded a calibration to the hondata, didnt even think about calibrating it through Smanager at the time. once i got into messing around with things on Smanager i did set the tps through there too so it has been working fine.
nope not yet. i havent had much time since it started acting up, but later this week i'll try to jump the thermo fan switch wiring to see what happens. i'm hoping it's just the fan switch. it could have been stuck closed or something which is why the fans never came on in the beginning.. and then stuck open which is why they wont turn off. makes sense to me but i'll report back when i look into it


for the seat rails i just used my stock crx rails, and cut some flat bar to bridge between the oem rails. the mounting points on the recaros are a bit narrower than the crx seats, so i used one side's mounting holes in the stock rails and then drilled a hole on each of the bridging rails to line up with the other recaro bolt holes. i actually cut and welded up some fully custom brackets to adapt the recaros to the floor pan seat bolt holes but they sat the seat a bit too high up and i was just about hitting my head on the roof liner so i ditched that idea and looked into working with the oem rails.
sorry i didnt get any pictures of them unfortunately, i could draw up a diagram if it helps?

signalpuke

That would be appreciated. More than likely I will have some custom made, I want to keep as many OEM parts on the chassis original as possible.

dylspil

this is a pretty rough and simplified representation but it was easier to make than taking the seat out of the car to get a picture would be haha.
basically the parts i parts i made are the 2 cross bars that go from one oem seat rail to the other (the oem rails are the parts with the angled ends at the front where they bolt into the floorpan).
where the cross bars meet the oem rail on the far side in the pic, the bolts go straight into the recaro rail mounting points under the seat. on the near side, the cross rails just bolt to the oem seat rail. the hole on each rail at the outer edge is where the cross rail bolts to the other recaro rail mounting points under the seat.
so i was able to use all of the bolt holes on the underside of the recaros. you just need 2 extra bolts and 2 nuts per seat to connect the cross bars to the rail on the near side, and a bunch of washers since you'll need to drill some good sized holes and maybe bore them out a bit to make everything line up.


hope that helps

signalpuke

Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for the drawing. The middle hole on the cross bar, was that closer to the doors or the center console?

dylspil

my bad dude, i looked in the car for you and realised i drew it up wrong... i've now updated my previous post to show the correct setup. and to answer your question the hole (now on the outer edge) is closest to the centre console. so the picture in my last post would be for the left seat

Josip.

Hey, shouldn't your first start be without sparkplugs?

dylspil

it's good to remove spark plugs and disconnect injectors/fuel pump/distributor and then crank the engine to circulate oil and build oil pressure before a first start of a freshly built engine.
good luck starting an engine without sparkplugs

Josip.

That is what I thought, just didn't want to write that all down because of my bad english.
Anyway, did you crank it or did you just started it?

dylspil

all good. it's running now, check out the video further up on this page

dylspil

not too much progress here, but i've just finished my last exams for university so i'll have a good amount of time to work on the car now.

last week i replaced the rear thermostat housing/water pipe o-ring with a genuine honda part.
i didnt want to remove anything i didnt have to, so i just took the intake arm off and unbolted the sealed thermostat housing, pulled it off the water pipe and threw the new o-ring on.
inspecting the generic o-ring i used, it looked just about identical in every way that i could see, so i didnt have high hopes it would be fixed.
anyway i put everything back together and topped up the coolant, took the car for a drive, parked back in the garage and saw coolant dripping from the thermostat housing still.
not sure what i'm going to do now, might have to try to get a new/replacement water pipe to see if that's the issue. i'll also put the oem radiator cap back on, since the skunk2 one is rated to 1.1 bar.
im thinking since the leak only starts once the coolant stops circulating after the engine turns off and the pressure builds, a lower rated cap might let coolant flow through the overflow instead of the o-ring.

dylspil

got a few more pictures from the meet a couple weeks back. car still hasnt been washed/detailed properly... i probably wont bother haha. i've since installed the cusco strut brace and fixed up the few paint chips in the engine bay that occurred when installing the engine and suspension parts

feck

Looking really well. The Rexies were always a great looking car in my humble.

GameBoyeas

I'm pretty OCD when it comes to building my cars, but dear lord man! The amount of detail! This build is fantastic, keep up the good work :thumbsup

dylspil

thanks guys, much appreciated!

the weather has been pretty wet over here so i havent taken the car out for a little while now. just waiting for a nice day so i can do some more road tuning

dylspil

did a few bits and pieces over the weekend.
took off the valve cover to adjust valve clearances since the head sounded pretty noisy with a lot of ticking sounds since i've had the car running after the rebuild. adjusted all clearances toward the tighter end of specifications for both intake and exhaust sides.
dropped in a new set of copper spark plugs, ngk heat range 7.
removed the catalytic converter to check the condition of its internals. couldnt see any hint of light when looking through it so i just uhh made some "adjustments" to the internals...
installed the front cusco strut brace to match the rear one. its not new or anything, i just never reinstalled it until now because i didnt want to have to work around it while fine tuning things in the engine bay.


got the car out of the garage today since we've finally had some clear weather for the first time in over a week.
started it up and the head is a fair bit quieter now after the valve adjustment, still not perfect but way better than before. honestly cant tell any difference in exhaust noise after messing with the catalytic converter.
checked for leaks while letting it get up to temp, seemed to be ok.

cant remember if i'd mentioned this previously - since getting the car running i was always having intermittent stalling issues when decelerating hard, or coming to a stop. until today i had been thinking it's due to the lack in throttle body adjustment of the skunk2 alpha 70mm that i'm running. i'd read a lot about others having idle and stalling issues with it too.
i had a thought a few days ago that it might be stalling due to fuel starvation from all the fuel rushing to the front of the tank under braking or deceleration. this made sense seeing as i had issues even with the oem fuel pickup sock fitted to the walbro 255 - i wasnt getting any fuel pressure until i had a third of a tank full. at this point since i'd had the stalling issue i was at a bit under half a tank full.
so i filled the tank and drove it around a bit doing some more datalogging today, and didnt stall once. idle has been perfect too, so the fuel pickup has got to be the problem. looks like i'll have to drop the fuel tank again to see what i can do about lowering the pump or extending the fuel pickup so i can make use of all my fuel instead of relying on only half a tank.

after getting back from the drive i made further attempts to diagnose the thermostat housing leak. after installing the new water pipe o-ring a few weeks ago i never really looked at it properly because i just saw coolant under the car and walked away pissed off. so today i looked around and couldnt see and coolant anywhere up under the water pipe, so it looks like that o-ring did its job after all. but there is still a slow leak coming from somewhere else nearby. i took some video using my phone of angles i couldnt see from above or underneath the car, and saw that it looks like the leak is coming from either the thermostat gasket seal, or where the lower radiator hose meets the thermostat housing. i messed around with the radiator hose clamp so we'll see if that fixed anything when i get to work on it next.

almost forgot - after getting back from a drive today i checked compression numbers. Cylinder 1: 150 psi, Cylinder 2: 153 psi, Cylinder 3: 148 psi, Cylinder 4: 150 psi.
at this point the engine only has around 100km on it since the rebuild, so i cant be sure the rings are fully seated yet but i'm happy with the close proximity of the readings. the numbers are a little low but i am using 9:1 pistons. should be fun with a bit of boost in it