Did you read the title of this post? Be sure you do, it's a clue about what lies ahead in these next posts.
So fast forward a couple of weeks... It is now December 19, 2007. I get off the plane in Ohio with the feeling you get of waking up on Christmas Morning. I desperately want to go see my car, because I've been hearing that although the engine is out and the new one is prepped to go in, it hasn't been done. Obviously I want to make a personal visit to Honda Bob to see if I can help. My deadline is set though, I tell him I'd like the car before Christmas so I can enjoy it as my "Christmas Present." I am on 30 days of leave and must report back to Fort Bliss in El Paso Texas on January 19 (keep in mind it's a 2 day drive minimum).
I arrive at the shop which has no heat and it is December, so that means that yes, there is snow and ice on the ground. This is what I find:
"Feed Me"
Engine Dangling, and that's my dad in the background
Here is the interior, at least the Hondata S300 is wired up
The next couple of days I pay 2 or 3 visits to Honda Bob, an hour trip each way is required to do this. But he seems to be moving slowly but on the 23rd, the engine is installed, the laptop is hooked up to the Hondata and the key is finally turned...
It turns over immediately. The gurgly rumble of the engine shows that it's not purring like a kitten yet, and the thick black exhaust make opening the door to the bay a necessity, even though I believe that the door always should've been open because the shop was colder than the air outside... But the cylinder head is making a clicking noise and the oil pressure is showing next to nothing. Not good.
We turn the car off. Oil is leaking where the AN fitting running from the oil filter relocation kit connects to the oil cooler
Just a sample picture of where I mounted it
Okay, no problem, we'll take care of one problem at a time. First the oil. We loosen and retighten the fitting and start it back up.
More oil comes out, oil pressure is still virtually nil.
We scratch our heads. The clicking valvetrain is also pretty annoying too.
It was late at night at this point, so after I realized we weren't going to get around to tuning, and with Christmas Eve and Day the following two days, the car was going to have to wait.
When I came back to the shop on the 27th, we decided to try to attack the clicking valve train. It kinda sounded like the noise a sewing machine makes when the needle hits the base and breaks, only over and over and over. Honda Bob hypothesized it was the lost motion assembly being out of spec, and went about placing washers that were .004 thick underneath all 8 lost motion assemblies. It shimmed them up and all rocker arms were level with each other and we bolted everything back up.
It didn't work, and the oil still was leaking, despite the desperate attempt by me to change out, and then JB weld the one oil leak that continually occured at the oil cooler.
Bob proceeded to pull the block again and when he unbolted the oil pan to inspect what was wrong with it, he noticed some metal shavings. It turned out to be from the balance shafts grinding due to lack of oil pressure.
The block now had to be cleaned and rebuilt as well as a brand new set of ACL rod and crankshaft bearings being ordered at my expense and overnighted. I was running out of time, but Bob promised a miracle that he could get it put back together in time. (oh yeah and I also had to get a diamond hone for the cylinder walls to increase that expense). I didn't have to reorder the one balance shaft that was destroyed though, because bob had an F23 he pulled out of a 98-02 Accord and used that (it works!)
To cut out much of the bullsh*t, I'll fast forward to roughly January 14. Out of time and stressed out, my dad and I had been doing an emergency overhaul on my sister's old 1989 Honda Accord DX (carbeurated, haha). It needed a new head gasket, alternator and 3 different ball joints. Ever seen the movie Apollo 13? This was our lifeboat Aquarius, because the Oddysey (my prelude) seemed dead in the water. (the space jab is appropriate because everytime we installed the engine into the engine bay we'd say "the eagle has landed" *golden eagle, get it?*)
Then a phone call came from Honda Bob... "So this is what torque feels like" I could hear a canister muffler drone in the background and I asked "What are you talking about?" Apparently, when Bob unplugged the fancy oil cooler system I had spent so much money and time on, and just put in the factory filter in the factory location (a non-permanent, but necessary attempt), the oil pressure showed normal. Sucess!
At this point, I was going to miss my return time to Fort Bliss, but with a forgiving Commander, I was granted an additional 3 days of leave to wrap it all up. We had our work cut out for us though... Take out the engine, install just the oil filter relocation kit, put it all back in, and tune it.
