Made a lot of progress, car looks great, love the BBS's

 

awww yes i thought you were never coming back, in for more

 

good progress. Keep it up.

 

Thanks all, some more progress. Had some annoying issues- speed sensor started working intermittently- figured it must be some wiring issue. Also had the rpm signal cut out random at the worse times (going uphill on the motorway...) and then the engine still runs because I am in gear but there is nothing there when you give it gas. Started by replacing my ignition switch, then checked the speed sensor. Somehow the sensor bolts had completely worked them selves loose. Retorqued the bolts but still no luck so I new sensor is in. Still not sure about the random engine cut out... Only happened a few times at random and everything returns to normal 5-10seconds post cutting out...

Tried the Dunlop O3Gs but they came to an end fast (to be fair they were really old and dry) and still gripped well but not good enough. Figured Nitto NT555Rs will be worth a try.



Found some time to get some tyre fitment done- daily rim and tyres and drag rim and tyres sorted:



Nittos on. Unfortunately I need some 5mm spacers for the rim to clear the suspension...


Went for a drive to wear in/test the Nittos and took some snaps:















Some say I need more low, I think I have just enough ground clearance haha.


Still got a bit of a wait to go before a drag session but I am keen to see if I can get somewhere with the drag radials. It will just be a matter of not breaking something...

 

Well the M2A4 met an untimely end.

Did a fairly normal first to second pull- no trouble, then while turning at low speeds I hear what sounded like a fender rubbing. Pulled over, checked everywhere including the engine bay, all looked fine. Did a first gear pull to shake it off, seemed fine. Then as I slowly take off at a traffic light the gearbox grinds to a halt while making lovely noises.

Decided I was not getting stuck in on a high speed road so I tried first, nope, second, nope, third maybe with some heavy clutch riding. Seemed to want to just grab and lock up if I let the clutch out but it was moving..... Managed to drive ~5k kms to get it home, slight trail of oil drips...

Long story short my M2A4 went from open diff to no diff haha. Tidy hole punched though the case and lots of metal inside and out...



The fix- T2W4 with ACT clutch and pressure plate (HA3-HDSS):




Was not expecting to be back here so soon but hey...

Could not pry the powersteering sensor out- locked up. Will loop the fluids but not sure how that will affect power steering function.

Humble M2A4

Converted to LSD by the looks of it, bar is gone haha.


Step up from last time, engine support bar










Was never really happy with the OEM Exedy but it has given good service, no slippage.











T2W4 ready




Clutch is unused but old and rusty...









Resurfaced stock flywheel this time. Really wish I had got a lighter one already but I had not planned to do this task yet...









And back in place- same day as removal.



Better look at the M2A4 carnage, seems strange that it broke here only a week or so after fitting a cheap ebay speed sensor.




Still a few things to sort but nearly drivable again...

 

yes! one of the first build threads i ever saw keep up the good work

 

Cheers!

The job is done. Discovered right at the end that the slave cylinder's mounting holes were stripped... Dam. Rethreaded and used longer bolts and it seems it will hold.







Perfect match.


First impression- my old box was really old! Shifting now feels really firm, heavy and slow. The old box let me just throw it through the gears haha. Shorter gear ratios in 2nd and 3rd did not do much but I need to shift a little sooner as expected, sitting ~50rpm higher at freeway speeds in 5th. Clutch grabs and does not like letting go and has good pedal feel too. Looping the powersteering means I have little to no powersteering now. Heavy steering is heavy- might end up deleting the powersteering in the quest for weight reduction- and now I have a good excuse- it is barely working haha. And then there is LSD. My first LSD box and lets just say corner acceleration will never be the same again.

 

Ok so the trans started to grind in basically all gears! Figured the most likely culprit was the trans oil. Picked up some OEM MTF and that fixed it up but there is some damage to synchros.... Bizarre that the M2A4 survived on that trans oil for so long... Anyhow, nothing but Honda MTF from here on in...

Rereplaced the sump gasket... Cheap gaskets are nasty.


Oil change + HAMP oil filter for more oil pressure







And to wear everything in, a decent cruize:







And a quick muffler clip. I got the tuner to set up the launch control with the ability to disable it if I create a break in the VTM wire. I still need to sort that but the muffler sounds amazing for 5.5k rpm haha.

 

nice

 

Quick drag session done. No proper time slips, just 1/4mile time and trap. A bit puzzled as to how I manage to run slower with drag radials and T2W4 + LSD than with random tyres + M2A4 haha. Best run was 14.6 @ 98mph. Drag radials were ok, they actually seemed more grippy on the street than the strip but I suspect the track was not that well prepped.


"new gearbox" same issues with second gear synchros...

A few more exhaust clips- this time with the Powerpro Euro muffler.







Wheel toe was out on both wheels- I had to fit new steering rack ends the day before drags and the best I could do was to "align by eye"... Went back and tweaked the alignment and now it seems fine, had toe out on both front wheels haha.

 

it's got 13's in her

 

I hope 13's are not too far off but it does not seem like I have made any progress with recent mods...

Not too much on the cards because time is limited at the moment...
Picked up a new titanium tip muffler- 3" inlet.




Still not quite ready to get the exhaust sorted... so some more pics will need to do.

 

Some maintenance and some "light tuneup" haha.

Installed some new lost motion assemblies (PCB305's) along with some EuroR camshafts and Skunk2 Pro cam gears (1' advance on intake, 1' retard on exhaust to begin with- life is too short to run stock cam gear settings haha).









So it begins...
























Test drive vid haha:

Cams feel amazing and it seems my tune has not gone out by too much either. Advancing the intake cam might not be the best as the air fuel ratio is riching out heaps above 7k rpm (~11.5:1). Something to fine tune.

 

Some drag time to wear the cams in:



And no chance for anything faster, 14.5 was the best run...


Tweaked cam gears but any change from where I was increased 1/4mile time by ~0.2sec.

 

Living up to the thread's title, long haul.

Update, only been a few years since the last one.

Photobucket really knows how to mess with the system, 2016 no photos, 2017 photos, 2018watermarked, 2019.... I give up there.

Where to start, I guess 2016 somewhere.

Fitted my Mugen side skirts, still need to work out when I will get to painting them. Still need to fit the Mugen wing.











Picked up an auto slushbox, does this qualify me for a 4WD in 2WD mode?







Arouse the senses with:











S2k seats + BB4 seats = BB4K seats.









Done BB4K
















Something a little different, carbon fiber work. Yes, not a perfect finish and yes my first time handling it but I like it.lol











What was my template you ask, cardboard.... haha.











Canards - because race car.















Reworking and refining























New Tablet for Tunerview (1st one was a little slow… Windows…):























Truck delivered stone chip ran on me, out with the windscreen. Yes, DIY created removal tools.











As seen in 2 Fast 2 Furious - Roman Pearce:







Glass out









Glass in







Finally got the 3" mandrel exhaust done with help from a Lude brother.





















































Slight tweak of an ex-show car valve cover I picked up:

 

Long haul but slowly getting to the goal.

Innovative Traction Bar, Check.





Fitment













Some Mugen shocks and springs. Meant to be good for a slight drop…







Well at least my shoe fits snug… Will have to do for now. Might need to work towards coilovers...

 

Some general upkeep items:

New Catchcan



New rear rotors ended up being a disappointment. At least they are 114.3 lol.



Sigh, seems to be front rotors for a Non-vtec or maybe for an Integra.









Hinges developed some play, and apparently some rust. (not as bad as it looks, surface only!)







Powersteering pump leak finally solved. Picked up a low mileage pump and rebuild kit.











Wheel coat.







New boss kit, last one was a little too DIY lol.









New Blox stack, went up to 4inch stack. Also adjusted the intake connections to give 4inch staggered to 2.75inch at throttle.



Whey fed.

 

New dash because black just looks that much better. Also did some minor weight reduction where possible on it.

Thank you donor Lude, RIP.





Broken by someone who was after something behind dash but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.











That also made me less worried about taking out some meat. A fair bit lighter. Left out the center metal bracket also.





This one you’ll either hate or love… Purists might not like it but this is what I always wanted to do with a Mugen wing, drag spec lol. (Note the test fitment was on my other more neglected Lude.)













Quick paint:





Bracket rework – aluminium plate





New tail light covers:

 

Now some more serious mods.

Ferrea S10070 Valve Springs (80LBS @ 33; 190LBS @ 23)

Ferrea E11000 Titanium retainers (7degree)

Ferrea K10034 Keepers (7 degree)

Ferrea SL1003 Seat locators

Supertech and Ferrea Valve Stem seals (long story lol).

Supertech valve guides (not used yet)

Jun Stage III Intake and Exhaust cam shafts.

New timing bits and OEM water pump.

New Crank Pulley (non-OEM but with harmonic balancer)

205 55 16 Vitour Tempesta Enzo Drifting Tyres



Yes it says Integra.lol



Been waiting to fit the Juns for 12 years! Yes they have been in a box for that long without action.



Here we go











DIY timing belt or negligent garage? Dropping the engine is kinda important… Finally binning this one.





Just got use to the Euro Cams… Never even got to a dyno with them… But my valve stems were leaking badly so these had to go.







Somewhat under covered for the H but I did the rope method for replacement of the valve springs. Logic is the rope is dropped in while at BDC and the piston then moved to TDC. The rope is meant to create a blanket to protect valve to piston contact. In my experience, one madly dodgy method lol. The rope would not actually cover all it needed to cover and would prove too soft. Refined the method to get something that works at the end. Used a Zenith Polypropylene Rope (4mm).





Ebay valve stem tool let me down. Plus I could not get the stems of no matter the effort placed into them…



Internet research, MR2 guys run into issues and use a chisel to get the stems off. That was the only way I got mine off. Likely baked on after 360k kms… Yes that means metal fragments, and delicate hammer action…





The money shot







Finally understand the Covid toilet paper craze, great for cleaning up oil when rebuilding the engine during a lockdown… lol





After endless struggles with the valve spring compressor tool and the rope either not protecting the valve or the rope getting stuck behind the valve, or the rope literally tying a knot inside my cylinder (heart attack), I tested a heap of other ropes to find one winner. The winning rope was: Zenith Sash Cord No 6 (Polypropylene, solid braid)





Mistakes were made… Colour coding sometimes isn’t enough lol



Spot my error lol



Done bar a few, needed new valve stem seals…



New seals obtained. Also switched to a different valve tool. Hammer action worked much better than the spring compressor. Likely just because the rope is too soft to absorb the valve tension with the spring compressor.



Validating the rope, this one coiled up well in a bottle and had a good rigidity while also being soft.



Organised chaos





Done done





Stem death



360k kms and now retired



Euro R vs Jun Stg III



Slight ware on the Euro’s but to be fair they were worn when I got them about 50k kms ago.









Torque wrench won that round.







Never felt worthy of a red cover but now I’ll make the exception. Not entirely black top any more lol.





Exhaust port cleanup. Burning oil means…







Had more soot on the ports with leaking stems, about twice as much soot!





New unit:





Ran the engine in and started up fine but then on first run after reaching operating temp it started with a loud internal metal on metal slapping sound… Feared the worst… Valve lash was set to Jun specs and checked like 8 times, including a 0.01mm larger feeler gauge to confirm the lash.

Cover off, all looked ok, keepers were still there…



Block teardown maybe…



Decided to work backwards. Stethoscope indicated the noise was coming from the head junction, so likely valves slapping. Could be worn guides on the previously leaking stem valves. Removed all auxiliary units and just left the timing belt and balancer belt. Started her up and the noise was gone!!!

Refitted one by one and the noise has not come back. I presume that means there was maybe some rope or something that messed with valve seat. Or something off under the lower cover, who knows… Run-in complete. ~500kms. Saw Vtec a few times. Tune is ok, bumped fuel pressure and removed adjustments on Safc II. Retune soon, but also keen for some intake manifold porting before that.

Jun first impression. Beefy primary/secondary. Noticeable increase over Euro Rs. Vtec not that impressive so far but its running super rich and I haven’t gone over 5600rpm.

I guess the Jun Lemon Prelude would be the best point of comparison. The Lemon Prelude had 12.3:1 compression (I am still on 10.6:1), a big tube header (45mm primary, 50.8mm secondary, 60.5mm outlet), Euro R intake manifold, likely 2.5 inch exhaust, stock valves and uprated Jun head gear. If they had 269ps / 7650rpm and 27kgm / 5500rpm, I would hope to get to 249ps and 25kgm on the current setup. Likely only revving to 8k max given the well-aged bottom end.

 

Run-in completed ~450kms of <3500rpm. Engine sounds fine and runs well enough.

Made a clip of the valvetrain modifcation process plus extras:

Did some checking of the AEM wideband readouts (with a new sensor) and made adjustments to the fuel pressure and SAFCII to get to a safe looking tune.
Then went for proper run-in lol:

End result:
Best of 15.2 @ 93.4mph (~152km/h).


That's slower than it ran in stock trim
Considering what to do next. Likely need to degree the cams. Dyno could help but not sure it's worth getting dyno tuned without degreeing the cams first.
Working to redo my intake manifold to get better flow.