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Well I'm not sure if today is a win or a loss at this point... I started to install the new(used) radiator and fans that I picked up. Also installing the new thermostat. So first hiccup.. I bumped the Vtec pressure switch plug and it came off... looks like someone broke the end of it off and just put the plug loosely on. Also I was looking and well... one of the wires had broken off... Pulled the vtec solenoid, replaced the pressure switch, new gasket since the old one was crispy, lucky I had a new one laying around already. I wired in a new plug and issue resolved. So back to the thermostat, I pulled the damn thing and as soon as I pull it, it looks much bigger than the replacement.... I check it and yup... the new one is the wrong size... thanks autozone. When I was picking up the new one I tried to get a new gasket but it was much larger than the thermostat, I guess we know why. Luckily the thermostat looked brand new, I cleaned the housing and the old gasket(which really needs to be replaced but shouldn't leak)(I know autozone has one. haha)
I pull the radiator and I realize... hey I can easily get to those auto transmission solenoids. So I pull them and clean them along with the front of the transmission. The screens looked nice and clean, the outsides were just caked with a good inch of crust, they are nice and shiny now but that's not going to make them work better. At least I know they look good. The old radiator was a Koyo, so not a bad part. The new(used) radiator and fans I took the time to clean them to a shine yesterday so they were ready to go in, as soon as I get the radiator in place I notice a drip... so I grab some water and fill it and sure enough the damn thing had a leak... My plan B was to order a new aluminum one from amazon but I figured I would just pull the one from the accord for now, I don't need two cars not running(err 3 including the civic in the garage.) So I pull the Radiator and slim fans from the accord, I decided to leave the slim fans on and I think that was a good call, its a tight fit with the 2 row radiator. Hook everything up and its good to go, I gave it about 30 minutes to bleed and put the cap on. Most likely it will need some fluid in the next few days but it looks good, the A/C was running and colder than ever, honestly I think the issue may have been the fans.
I did think ahead to get a Warranty on the radiator so ill go ahead and take that back, 40$ for the rad and 10$ core, ill try to take back the fans but they may not take them since I didn't get the warranty. There was a Leather steering wheel I wanted so maybe ill get that when I go, I couldn't get it off with my small impact gun so maybe ill take the big one and a breaker bar and give it a shot. I noticed a very small spot on top of my steering wheel starting to peel and its driving me insane. haha
In the end... everything fixed but the Accord is now another step away.
The Prelude does have small oil leak so I decided to freshen up all of the seals/gaskets on the head. So I pulled it apart yesterday and I did find that one of the valve cover mounts has the top bolt seized. I cant seem to get it off so I'm going to have to cut it and replace it. I replaced the Cam seal on the Distributor side with a Billet one which was more work than expected since I had to remove the cam holder. Not a big deal but now I need to torque everything to spec. I still need to pull the dist and cam gears. I ordered a new stock mount for the valve cover stud and also ordered a Civic Low profile kit since it looks like at least one of the studs is shared(The stud kit will come much faster than the stud), I wanted to try to piece together a low profile stud kit anyway. I think ill pull the valve cover from the H23A vtec in the accord and the stud for now so I can get this thing back together today.
Any suggestions on doing the cam seals? I was thinking I would zip tie the timing belt to the gears and just pull the gears. Hopefully the cams don't move and it will simplify things. I did buy the Crank pulley tool so worst case ill end up pulling the crank pulley and timing this thing again, or maybe ill take the time to get it at TDC before zip tying it.
I was able to get everything together today. I Just zip tied the cam gears to the timing belt and set it to TDC, I was able to remove the cam gears and get the new seals in. I ended up robbing the valve cover and missing stud from the accord. Now I have the nice blue H23Avtec valve cover, looks pretty nice.
I started to pull the distributor so I could replace the seal and there was oil inside. Guess the bearing is going out. I went ahead and ordered a new distributor, I also noticed the bottom bolt was missing so I added that as well. I cleaned everything up and replaced the seal anyway and it was bad, honestly I have never seen one as crispy as the one I pulled, it pretty much shattered into like 6 pieces.
So new billet Cam Cap. New Cam Seals, New Did Gasket, new valve cover gaskets.
I also decided to pull the CAI from the accord and install that as well, took a bit of massaging to get it in, I created a new mount for it and its nice and solid.
I tightened my PS and AC/Alt belts and hopefully the occasional squeal on startup is gone. I have been trying to figure out where the transmission was leaking from and after wiping it off I noticed that there was a small buildup around the drain bolt, I tightened it up a bit and if it continues to leak ill order a replacement with new washer. Hopefully I am got the leaks sorted, there isn't many more areas left to leak.
One new problem, the rear left shock is definitely blown, the car handles like crap when I put any pressure on that side, I wanted to install the suspension from the Accord but it looks like the rear shocks wont work. I may just order a replacement shock for now while I look for a set of used struts. I don't feel super safe driving with that shock blown.
With the CAI installed the car feels much smoother, I'm not sure the stock intake was working super well. It sounds much better also, I'm pretty happy with the change.
Just in case you are wondering... I'm not in a rush to get rid of the car, I think the plan is to drive it until the motor dies or the Auto Transmission dies then Manual swap it. I still have the H23vtec so worst case ill swap that in.
I did finally order a single Strut, I ordered a Tokico HU3559 it was $80 after shipping, not too expensive. I know its not a super idea to have mismatched shocks but I need a single shock for now and honestly I don't think one of these cheap brands will hold up long. If I don't end up getting a full set ill just order a matching shock for the other side. The Tokico is designed for a drop so it should hold up, I do intend to lower the rear at least another inch so ill need a camber kit as well. I think I can use my skunk 2 Accord Struts on the front.
I'm feeling really happy with this car right now, adding that CAI really woke things up. There used do be some dead spots in the Acceleration and now its smooth. 90+MPH is a little underwhelming but i think that's just the auto transmission gearing and shifting.
The car is.. pretty unstable at the moment and i don't want to damage my rear tire so i will try not to drive it until i get the new shock installed, its crazy how much one bad strut can affect the handling. I may pull the skunk 2 Coils off the Accord so i can lower the rear a bit. looking to stiffen up the suspension, still has some body roll.
I picked up a Rear Camber kit for the Prelude. SPC kit. When I replace the Strut on the passenger side I'm going to lower the car a bit. And possibly install the camber kit. Rear Camber kit was expensive, like $180. The civics and accords only cost about a dollar for some washers. lol.
Installed the new shock and camber bit. I think I need to order the other rear shock soon. Will have to see how it drives but it seems like one side is sitting a bit higher. Ill drive it and see if its just how the car is sitting at the moment. Camber kit was a bit of a pain. I was struggling to find the rear kit so I ordered one I thought would fit, well it didn't quite fit as expected, I ended up modifying the rear control arms a bit so now it fits nice and snug. I have never done this style of camber kit, honestly I'm not a huge fan.
When I drove the car for the first time I heard a bit of a pop shifting to 2nd. Car seemed to drive just fine, when I got home I noticed that I had thrown a few transmission codes. Hopefully it had something to do with being at a incline with the rear jacked up in park. Anyone else ever have that issue. Worst case.. I go ahead with that manual swap.
Car is running great. No issues, no tranny codes. The suspension settled in pretty nicely, I'm very happy with the ride height. I have heard a slight, very slight rub in the rear so I may end up rolling the fenders, I bought the fender roller tool a while back and I have a heat gun so it should be easy. Also I still have the rubber molding on the wheel well so honestly if I remove that it may be enough room.
I bought a leather steering wheel, it was pretty worn and had some bad spots, I bought the Leatherique kit with the cleaner/dye an clear and refinished the wheel. It came out pretty good, it did take a few weeks to really dry tho, I have had it in the back seat for a while so it could cook. Its a little too glossy now but I'm sure after a few weeks of use it will be perfect, ill post some pics once its installed. I may install it later once it gets cooler, I cant stand the stock rubber wheel, once it starts to come apart every time you touch the wheel a small speck comes off, drives me crazy, I have installed leather wheels on all of my cars, its a nice update. I also grabbed a leather shift **** from a CL and I was going to replace the shifter grill for one from a CL as well but I forgot the lettered inserts. Doh. Ill try to find one again next time.
I installed a pioneer subwoofer and new pioneer media player a while ago, not sure if I posted that. The Media player is pretty inexpensive and the small enclosed woofer is mounted under the seat so it will be extremely hard to steal, its not super bass or anything but it really fills in a lot of the missing bass without a 10/12 inch woofer.
With the car lowered in the rear I have been seeing a lot more of the roof.... it was pretty weathered. Tons of white clear and some burned thru spots. So I decided to work on that today. Its pretty sunny out today and not in the shade so honestly... not the smartest thing to do. I washed and degreased/wax removed the roof then used some wet rags to cool it down a bit, it was super hot. I had some leftover paint from the other painting I had done so I thought I had enough.(nope) I sprayed the roof and got one coat on it, I mainly wanted to cover the problem areas and I went really light around the edges. After one coat I ran out of paint.... well darn. The coverage is decent, it could definitely use another coat or 2 but since I will need to order more paint I just carried on. It was a little splotchy, so I wet sanded the base with 2000 grit to smooth it out. I know there is a lot of discussion about sanding base coat. pretty much everyone says NO but with opposite reasons, one group says no because you will see scratches and the other group says no because the clear wont be able to stick... Well honestly... wet sanded 2000 grit is pretty smooth and applying the clear to the base without sanding would actually have less to stick to. lol So whatever... this is a pearl paint and not a candy so we will be fine. I sprayed a thick 3 coats of clear over the base and it looks... well better than when I started. I honestly rushed the paint job, maybe an hour in total so not a lot of time for drying. It was in direct sun light so it dried quick. I did notice a bit of a darker green in a few spots. I'm not sure what caused that but its not bad, its not too noticeable. I only let the base dry like 20 minutes before the wet sand so.. yea. I'm going to give the clear some time to dry, I'm not sure if ill do it later today(I'm impatient) or wait until tomorrow and give it a wet sand. It should turn out decent. Its already much better then the weathered paint. Taped around the sun roof, back window and roof moldings with a single strip of tape, pretty lazy. I had some overspray so I used some break cleaner and a rag to clean it off, worked excellent. I hit the windows with some rainex cleaner and its good to go now.
I was looking where I started this thread and the car has made a huge transformation from when I purchased it for $500. I don't think I am going to sell it unless I get solid 3000+ offer on it. I really need a 4 door but I really like preludes so we will see.
I forgot to add, next addition is a front lip and maybe a rear one. The front bumper cover has a dent on the bottom, I used a heat gun and smoothed it out but you can see its not smooth because of the old wax in the cracks. A front lip will cover that up and make the front end a bit more aggressive. They are not too expensive, maybe $60-$80 on Amazon. I just want the OE Optional style one. I was not going to touch the rear but I was looking at it and its a bit warped. I think the addition would clean it up a bit and make it look a little more aggressive, I'm not going full body kit or anything but a slight change.
I wet sanded with 800, 1500, 2000 then used rubbing compound and wax. The Clear looks perfect. The base paint is.. well we will say at maybe 70%. I'm not disappointed tho, the paint was only at like 20% before I started and almost no clear left. Honestly... if I waited until I had some shade and was able to do 3 coats it would have been near perfect but since all the paint I has was the bottom 2% of 2 cans... I feel good about it. You can see a bit of a dark spot near the sun roof, not sure what happened may have been due to the heat. Ill see if I can find some before pics, I always shot pics from an angle or cropped the roof out. Honestly... I can live with how it looks now, from 10 feet you cant even tell, before you could most likely see it from space. haha
The car gets a little better every few weeks. I had a little time this morning and wanted to work on something quick and I purchased this 3m headlight restore kit a while back so I figured I would work on one of the headlights. Here are the results. I only did one side for now but ill do the other later. Before, not too bad but not too good. After using the 3m kit, basically just 500 grit, 800 grit, 3000 grit, rubbing compound and I finished it off with some wax. Not perfect but no longer yellow.
I didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to make it perfect but pretty decent. I thought about spraying some clear coat on it but I decided to just follow the directions.
Since it was cool out today and sprinkling a bit I decided I could get some more stuff done.
First I got the Steering wheel swapped. The Airbag looks more grey than the wheel now but I guess its not that bad, I kind of wish I did the cleaning and sealant on the wheel but not the dye. Ohh well no biggie. Leather wheel cleaned and refinished, looks decent. Here is the reason I needed to replace the wheel, every time I drove small specs of the wheel would come off and drive me crazy.
Next I cleaned up the other headlight, I did notice that maybe some moisture had been on the inside at some point but its not bad.
Last thing I did was go ahead and replace the distributor. The bearing was going out so I had oil leaking into the dist then down the engine. I cleaned under the dist area with some brake cleaner in hopes that ill be able to tell if I have another leak. I still have a leak I have not identified on the transmission side so maybe this was it.
Sanded and painted the bottom window moldings this morning. One was completely metal and the other one was painted black but has some crazy fish eye. I sanded one with 800 grit and it came out... well not awesome but ok, I put on like 5 coats so I can try to clean it up with some wet sanding. The other side I used I think 320 grit and it came out slightly better but nothing I really want to call attention to. lol. Ill try wet sanding both with 1500 and 2000 to hopefully smooth them out a bit. I wish I had some flat black but I had semi gloss. Replaced the parking lights in the front and am planning on replacing the Hids with some stockish bulbs. The hids are super bright so I do like them, I may just move those down to the fogs since my fogs have no bulbs installed.
No pics.
I finally snapped my main relay back in to place. lol its been dangling for months with no cover. I tried to snap it back in a while back but I did not unplug it first and got a nasty spark and called it a day. This time I disconnected it first and was able to snake my other hand around and hold the back side of the casing so it snapped in. One less thing to worry about.
I hate to say it but I'm thinking of snapping a few pics and posting this thing back for sale again.. Actually... ill get the new lips first then think about it again. Car is running excellent. I really like this car so that's why I think it should sell easy. But as always... I'm not letting it go cheap so most likely I'm not going to let it go at all. lol
I threw another Trans code last night. I was leaving Santa Monica Pier and stepped on it going up the incline and it had a hard shift. The trans is still good, it may need a shift solenoid. But.... I think its time to swap this thing. I'm going to go ahead and get the Clutch petal mounted and do the reinforcement as well. It really sucks that these don't come pre-drilled. Honestly I think this will be the hardest part about the swap. The good thing is that I can take as long as I need to get the pedals changed over since it wont stop me from driving it. Ill just pull the H23vtec from the Accord and Drop it in. I may need to order an oil pump, ill have to think about that one. I don't think the H23vtec has the mounts for the crank sensors. That definitely creates more work. I don't want to rewire, I'm over that at the moment. lol. I think I can use the stock ECU and change over to the Chipped ECU when I am ready just to keep things simple. Ill swap over the new dist I just installed on the A4 so I don't have to play with any wiring.
So back to the Master Cyl. Has anyone here used an AP1 Master? I installed one on the Accord but never go around to using it. The rod is shorter I believe, I had to add an extension on the Accord so it fit correctly. I could always swap the rod from a stock one to the AP1 master and clean up that distance. I was reading that the manual swap you should add spacers or else the clutch wont engage completely. If I use the AP1 it will be shorter already... I do have spacer kit for the master but it feel like it defeats the purpose. lol. Any ideas? Will the Stock auto break pedal clear the clutch petal? I may want to wait to swap the gas and break pedal.
Ohh... I have a pretty bad oil leak now, I thought it was the transmission but looking at the fluid it looks more like oil. I wonder what could be leaking, its not coming from the top or the front of the engine as far as I can see. That's one more reason why I'm motivated to do the swap now.
I have been parking my car in a different spot of the driveway and so far no new Oil leaking... I'm pretty confused at this point. Oil level has not moved, transmission fluid level has not moved. I need to double check my coolant but when I checked it a few days ago it was good. I don't understand where that oil spot came from. The spot was basically a wet spot on top of some old dried oil so maybe I didn't actually leak. I did use a lot of water when I cleaned my headlights, maybe I just wet the old oil? I jacked the car up and the front side of the trans is super clean, I scrubbed it when I did the radiator so I could identify any leaks. I did see a single drip from the bottom of the transmission and more concerning I saw a single drip of coolant as well but am unable to identify the leaks. I guess ill just keep an eye on it. for now.
Back to the Swap. I think I'm going to pull the Oil pump from the A4. I new OEM one is like $200+ and I'm not sure I trust an aftermarket one. I was looking at some of the reviews and I am seeing some that have pretty much grenaded after like 5k. Ill just order some new gaskets, if it looks worn I may just order an aftermarket one.
I want to keep the swap as simple as possible, I have a brand new OBD2 dist and such so there is no reason to go OBD1. I may.. may swap the oil pan, I'm not sure, I believe I need to remove the pan to do the oil pump so ill get a new gasket as well.
Ordered a new front and rear lip yesterday... it came today. lol Cost around $100 from ebay. Nothing exciting. Fit was ok, they were bent from being in the box.
As I was installing the lip I did notice another wet spot under the car. I backed up the car and did the quick taste test and its definitely coolant. Ill have to figure out where this leak is, looks like after 3-4 days I was about 1/2 quart low.
I went ahead and ordered a new Shift Solenoid B today. I kept seeing the engine code from last month and it was bugging me. I have not thrown a new code since Aug but I don't currently have a OBD2 scanner so I have not cleared it, it shows up on my insurance app and is bugging me. lol
Also... Completely opposite of the above I have started the 5 Speed swap. So far I am just working on the Pedal and Master Cyl. I am using an AP1 Master Cyl so I am struggling a bit to get the pedal lined up correctly, almost there, ill post pics once I'm happy with the Pedal install. I'm not in a rush to get to get it completed. I did order new Seals for the A4 Oil pump so I can use my old pump on the H23vtec. Other than that I'm just taking things slow. Just a note in case anyone else wondered, the clutch Pedal does not interfere with the Auto Break pedal so I can change that out when I am ready.
Clutch Pedal install.
-S2000 AP1 Blox Clutch Master Cyl
-2x Blox Clutch master spacers
-Accord/Prelude Master Push Rod
-5th gen prelude Clutch Pedal
-Braded line and fittings that came with the Blox Master kit Cutout for master Blox Spacer Blox Spacer fitment with pedal Using this as a template to drill the holes Test Fitment of the pedal to check the angle Drill bit I used Drill bit compared with Master S2000 AP1 Blox Master cyl Master cyl set up poorly as I had it in the accord. Top is S2000 and bottom is Accord/Prelude push rod First hole drilled Spacer as template After test fit I had to adjust the angle a bit Second hole drilled and secured for center hole Center hole drilled. Master mounted temporarily to test fitment Primary install of the pedal Had to add a second Spacer for properly spacing the push rod Pedal position With 2 spacers there was not much extra threads but it should be ok S2000 AP1 Master after install S2000 Ap1 Master installed.
Size is close with S2000 Master using Prelude Push Rod Blox Spacer gets it super close 2 Blox spacers... Perfect fit Zip Tied off until I move forward with the swap. I need to plug the fitting so it doesn't get any crud inside Here is the wiper mechanism with the cover removed. takes 3 bolts to remove it. Wiper mechanism removed Took a few tried to find the optimal position for the hole, I couldn't find any good references online. This seemed to be a good position. 5/8ths plate I got at home depot, 99 cents each Very sturdy Upper mount reinforcement Upper mount from a better angle. I added 3 more plates between the firewall and pedal mount so things would be very sturdy.
Looking at the above pics I feel like I should have done some wire brushing and painting but honestly this is how there generally look anyway.
I have not installed the wiper cover yet, I want to see if i can do something to make is look new again, also i need a new windshield so maybe it would be better to do that while its off so none of the clips end up broken.
I will be replacing the break pedal as well when i get around to it, I'm not sure if the gas pedal needs to be replaced but i have one either way. I knew the pedal install would be a pain so i did that ahead of everything else. I think ill swap the cluster as well just because.
07-17-2017, 04:18 PM
Re: 1997 Base EGP Flip project
