After going back to Iraq and leaving the Prelude behind once again, I immersed myself totally into the ideas of what to do next. I thought I would take a break until maybe after I redeployed from Iraq to do anything more, but at the beginning of October, 2007, I came across a fairly well built cylinder head on Ebay. It was from a 99' type SH and was mildly ported and polished, had Supertech Stainless Steel Valves, bronze valve guides and brand new camshafts, seals and OEM springs. I bought it because I knew that my Prelude liked to go through the oil and I figured it was either blowby with the piston rings or some kind of leak in my valvetrain. Either way, a quart every other fuel fillup was getting too much, although I never saw blue smoke coming out of the exhaust. I later learned this was probably on the edge of normal consumption for an H22A4, but I bought it anyway.
The seller of the cylinder head had contacted me and it turned out he lived one town over from my parents and was selling his fully prepped Golden Eagle Block as well. It had been sleeved with ductile Iron Sleeves, decked, stuffed with Arias 9.2:1 CR Pistons, Golden Eagle Big Bolt Rods, balanced and blueprinted on the crank, and all new seals and bearings had been put in. He said for $4400 both the block and head could be mine (he ran out of money after that to actually put a turbo on). Oh yeah, and a new set of ARP head studs and H23 Manual Tensioner was also thrown in to sweeten the deal.
This was the point of no return...
So $4400 of paypal transaction later, the whole setup was mine. With an estimated time of redeployment from to the States to be before Christmas, 2007, I knew I had to make big things happen if I wanted this to be in my car before I came home.
Out with the old... (225,000 miles old to be exact)
So back to the forums I went...
