328FTW

This is not a question, this is an answer. This is not to be shown how to, this is to show what has be achieved. This is not to be told how to do it right, this is you being told how I roll. This is not some guy that walked into a speedshop and walked out with a car, this is a guy with a gasaxe and a ****ing welder. This thread is not for whiny bitches, this thread is for the people awesome enough to behold the greatness of an industrial slab of honda iron cut beyond recognition. This thread is not about the merits of leaving your car stock, this thread is about the pointless win of putting the engine in the rear of the car. It's not about my paint being ****, it's not about having no interior, not about the ricer gauges, not about how it is hard to start. IT'S ABOUT WINNING







So the short version is this, complete with epic music orchestra. Completely excessive, I love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-liNg86msM










The long version is every single thing on this car has been touched. EVERYTHING. I've fabbed my own suspension arms, brake adapters, lines, cables, wiring, mounts, fuel tank, shifter arms, shifter cables, subframe mounting, intercooler, underbody shields, battery tray just everything; it all adds up to a lot of work when the little things become one big job.

This car is function before form, no ebay chromed downpipe or anodised wheelnuts. Running:

• H22a (new zealand so it's JDM or whatever)
• t3/t4 turbo
• 2.75 inch downpipe
• stock head
• thicker headgasket (cop out till the built motor goes in)
• stock block (have a darton sleeved block with eagle rods and JE pistons on the stand)
• custom "hackbox" rear facing plenum
• walbro 392 external pump
• LINK standalone ecu
• M2B4 box, LSD equiped
• standard axles
• tein coilovers

I'll try put together a sort of dump of pics with what's going on if there is interest in me doing so. I can dump them anyway but it's hard to see detail and what's going on sometimes. I documented most things just in the interest of future repairs, part sourcing and whatnot



This was the car pre conversion, 8psi and 270-300hpish? Never been on a dyno, street tuned. Just guessing really, it was pretty quick and launching in second gear I'd hit 4th gear on most straights. Topped out at 150mph or so on the gravel, gearing limited, with the higher revlimiter it might of even been a bit more but really don't know for sure. Revlimter in 5th anyway.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs8hmiuzM30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ1PyRv-Z6I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKG0em7GIdY



I honestly dunno if the axles are going to explode the first race, if it's going to throw a brake caliper through the back of the car, if the engine will implode in a fireball. But it works and that's a great start to improving the platform. It obviously needs a bit more work but the huge hurdle of movement has been overcome, axles don't click or make noise, the clutch is smooth (made it myself, was somewhat tentative about it), the controls work, the gears work, fuel pump works, standalone works again, the fresh motor I had apart works, the fuel lines don't leak, clutch line works. That's all kind of a big deal.


Why did I do this? Because the car was blown beyond a simple fix. Clutch linings had exploded, gears had mashed into breaking, main bearing picked up and spun destroying the block (stoved in sump on a tree stump), ringlands were blown. Fuel pump was failing. Decided if I'm going to overhaul every component of the car I'm going to do something different, the engine doesn't NEED to be in the front, the back is a perfectly logical place to put the motor, using frontend components it could be made to work. The added bonus is I get RWD, mid engine mass/weight balance on a platform with double wishbones and wide track width which makes it pretty stable for jumping into the abyss at 100mph.



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And so it began Ask whatever you want if you are so inclined. And no this is not "fake", silly trolls.

Hawkze_2.3

That looks Photochopped to me..

JK, nice work! How fun is it?

jnv255

Nice..
I wish they would have rally style racing around here. The road to my family's farm would be PERFECT.... every time I go down the road I think to myself, this would be the perfect road for a rally.

horsepowerless

Anybody else picture Brucie Kibbutz from GTA4 saying his first paragraph? lol

Awesome project btw.. for me just having a prelude is out of the ordinary. haha

jdm_rb20

different is awesome! I love it. This is way more complicated than my Skyline-swapped truck!! Congrats on movement!!

--TJ

NuggetsBB6

Most definatley interesting. I would like to see on the track in person lol

Arthas

LOL

spoolinlude

Sweet project dude, but you could of skipped the first paragraph. Because now you come off like a *****. No one would of hated on you for creating something as complex as you have done.... awesome work, but skip the attitude from here on.

328FTW

I've copped so much flak for this thing it's unreal. To be frank I'm sick of people being ****** about it. Everyone had critisism or something to add "only a 6 point cage pffffft" "you should of put a sequential 6 speed in it" "way to build something when you could of gone out and bought something else" "what a waste of money" "what a piece of ****"

There has been plenty of hate, I just got sick of it. Besides it was more humour than anything That's why I did the completely over self indulgent music on the video.

It's almost done now except for tidying up loose ends and adding covers to everything to firewall it in. I'm unsure what I'm going to do with the polycarbonate rear window. Mould it with the bootlid and make a full lift up rear end? Maybe just make it flip up onto the roof out of the way with pins. My only worry is the angle of the axles, they aren't maxxed out but it's enough to perhaps stress them. From a weight point of view I wanted the motor forward, if it doesn't work out then I'll move the engine a bit and tube frame the rear a bit more. The rear chassis rails have been cut so a lot of the strength is in the cage that triangulates with the strut towers now.

MeGustaLaBoosta

VEEEEERY COOL! one of the nicer builds ive seen. One of my co-workers is starting their mid engine project (1991 EF hatch w/ a J32A1 mid mounted) its only in the very early stages but il try and get some pics up soon. Anyway we could get some pictures of the rear suspension set up? especially the upper control arm and where its mounted, thanks!

Whats Up DOHC

Very nice!

MUGENBB4JDM

Very Nice! Have you thought or do you have the Vtec brake rotors and calipers? you would get some better braking power.

328FTW

Sure, for now I've just chopped up a stock frame. This is the only pic I have at the moment looking from the rear forward







I basically welded tabs on and added on a little bit of beef to the back to account for the extra torque on it cause of the extra length, this pic is old, doesn't show it; basically it makes the holes the same placement as the front making for even trackwidth, wheel offsets can then be used to slightly change that. The bottom arms are old front arms and the shock is a front shock cause it's short with the CV hoop on it. The top arm uses the standard location only I made a new arm with a different length that bolts to the hub which is a front hub with the top arm located differently to a rear hub. The arms that control toe had to be made a little longer and if you're sharp I've also flipped them upside down, the rear hub had them come in from the bottom, front hubs have them come in from the top so I undid the balljoint and bolted it onto the other side of the arm.

The other main bottom arm, trailing arm or whatever you wanna call it that holds the wheel in the forward/back axis I just made another end for it and welded it on so it bolts up. The brakes I made brake adapters and put the rear brakes on the front hubs on the back. The rotors fit on fine but the hole spacing and hub offset is wrong but it's all adapted now, handbrake works. I dunno if it will allow me the braking power and bias I want, may upgrade in future if I find big brakes off a lexus or something that I can redrill/adapt



Also this frame is more for testing. If the angles and things gel and allow me the handling changes I want and the axles don't explode then I want to build a full frame using threaded arms and spherical bearings later. It will have that "I know what I'm doing" look. It will also allow more custom arm lengths. At current it's not bad though, it's almost like the front setup only in the rear, I definately think it's not a horrible start. Typing this I found a couple other pics, I spent 2 hours cleaning the car before I started this project, serious. This was clean compared to what it was













Has the vtec rotors and brakes. Just stock rears so they are kinda tiny, I have a brake proportioning valve installed next to the driver controls. The brakes can be adjusted on the fly

MeGustaLaBoosta

Very impressive work sir, and thank you for going into detail. what was the hardest part of the conversion? oh and do you have any pics with the axles in?

Skillet09

Wow! Nice build. I wish I had a shop like that at my disposal. Keep up the great work.

328FTW

Only one I have right now. I broke the screen of my laptop with most of the pictures, I'll hook an external screen to it at some point.






Hardest part would of been fixing the broken ****. The reason putting it in the back was appealing was all the systems needed work, the radiator needed replacing, the hoses were leaking, the fuel filter needed doing, the fuel pump was shot, engine was dead, the front subframe under the motor had broken in 2 from bottoming out and having an engine mount on it, wheel bearings broken etc etc. I built and rivited my own clutch, put together a shortblock from a self pull yard, for now I've used whatever spare bits I had to fix the gearbox enough to test it out, every gasket needed doing. Might as well fab new stuff for the back of the car

As for the hardest part of actually converting it would be to control yourself. Mounts are just welding and thought, plumbing is just steel tubing and rubber bends, cables are just a matter of length. The hard part is to try not halfass everything and get it in place. It's amazing how much time it takes to make everything removable, you could just weld pipes for the cooling system to the body, the underpans you could just rivet on but to make the car somewhat user friendly I've drilled and tapped everything and it all unbolts/bolts up. May look a bit industrial but it's a racecar so I'm not worried about using chromed bits to hold things in place.


When the engine was in the front it was basically welded in there, hard to service anything, didn't want that again.

328FTW

I got all the intercooler pipes done today, fixed the idle, held the rear mount down properly.

Everything was working fine, spooled it in the driveway a bit. Was genuinely excited and about to line it up for it's first hard launch then the cambelt lunched itself. I wasn't immediately annoyed, it was more a gradual build up.
















Anyway I finished fixing this today so I'm going to sell it, take money from it and throw it at the prelude. I'm going the stripper route, throw money at it in the hopes it will give me the ride of my life.








Just had all new paint, cleaned injectors, reconditioned rack, new PS pump, new tyres, reconditioned gearbox, new clutch, new fluids, new filters, genuine carbon fibre boost gauge holder that replaces the coin tray, new speakers, working A/C, 70,000 miles. If I can't get more than $2500 for it I'm going to dump on the hood for the new owner and **** in the airvents.



I swear this prelude is going to be the death of me with all the problems it's throwing at me. I forget how many things I've replaced at this point.

328FTW

Ok so I've done near nothing to the car lately, had huge troubles with the cambelt walking. In the end I made my own guides for the belt because even with everything down perfectly right as per the manual it would walk. I googled and googled and the answer seems to be "some engines are just ******" which is nice.

But today I was finally confident I overcame that. Then it wouldn't start cause the enrichment maps are still off, also it runs quite cold plugs gapped down quite a bit which isn't helping. It was so bad I thought maybe I'd blown the ringlands with starter fluid so compression tested it. 200psi across the board.

Last ditch effort to start the thing was I got the welding torch out and used it to heat the sparkplugs right up and burn off all the oil and fuel which was choking them. Put them back in and hit the starter. Instantly started then. Went for a short drive and managed to get it up into 3rd gear.


Punched it in second on the driveway and managed my first bit of wheelspin doing a mini powerdrift in the grass. Got it up to about 7k in first around the back of the shed.
















Ordered a new regulator for the welder cause I'm converting to CO2, cheaper stronger welds on the heavy stuff. Want to brace up the rear a bit and finish the front engine mount then I might go for broke and do some donuts to celebrate.

I'd like some bigger rear brakes now to. A lot more rear weight bias especially since I haven't set the ride height properly and it leans back, feels like it's trying to do wheelstands when you stamp on it. Still need to tidy the wiring and stuff up. Been slowly sorting it with amalgamation tape.

slob20ef

i love it, im almost completed with my mid engine 89 civic hatch, gives me more ambition seeing stuff like this! who cares what it looks like, as long as it performs!!!

328FTW

I've always been of this opinion. There are lots and lots of expensive build threads with massive following pages long. And that's great but the average at home garage guy is what most people are, I'm slightly advantaged in having 2 car lifts and welding, pipe bending and all sorts of other gear at my disposal but it's still not rocket science. In the end it's an old street tuned prelude that can keep up with the best of cars.



I've since actually finished off the mounts but without an exhaust I wasn't game to do to much more cause it's too loud to even sit in. But it's a lot nicer to drive without the engine trying to flop around. Coolant system is ready to bleed to.

Samuraij

I'm impressed.

Most of the forums I go on are packed full of people asking how to do something like this or saying they're going to do this but they never do.

It's nice to see somebody actually pull it off.

cifer6425

i'd buy that celica off of ya.

328FTW

It's for sale $1 reserve winner takes all right now after a couple of other buyers fell through. No more time to waste, let the market decide and take what I get, had quite a few people bidding on it. It's only up to $1600 thus far


And yes internet forums are full of talk. I prefer "and this is me welding the bitch in!". And it's fun doing new things that I'm often told can't be done. The thing is lots of people want the attention but are afraid of the work and once they sit down and think the ease of attention is one thing, solid information and being your own test pilot with 100's of work hours of your free time is another. I could of worked 50 hours a week for a few weeks and just bought a premade car straight up but you won't learn anything from it or prove anything to yourself. It's also not going to be as unique either.

prelude_h22vtec

That celica is nice man!

slob20ef

i am a guy with ambition a nice welder and some tools, i do however have a generious brother with a nice *** 4 car garage with lift, ect, ect. I dont mean to jack your thread or anything however my linkages and coolant lines are done all bled and the car is running, i used some tandem bike shifter cable and the aluminum cable crimps from homedepot, however when i press the throttle it just moves the entire cable and doesnt pull just the inner cable, moving the throttle.. If their is anyway possible how can elaborate on how you extended your throttle cable, and mounting brackets for it that would be a huge help to me man... and once again love the build that turbo h22 should be fun? I went vitara d series on boost.