Alright Readers, the moment you've all been waiting for. By the end of this post at least one thing will be for sure... Phase 2 is complete on my project and Phase 3's parameters and goals become much more apparent.
The day started out at 9:00am when the apartment began stirring. Our goal was to start at 9:30, so we probably weren't going to make it on time, but we did after another tiny bout with the CPK sensor throwing another CEL. A quick reset actually cleared this problem for good but something tells me I know what caused this problem at the end of this post.
We arrived at 9:50 at Evolution Motorsports and we actually had to wait until 10:30 for the owner of the shop, Gabe, to show up. For the record I have never seen a DynoJet before, just a DynoPack at some Subaru Shop I bought my first exhaust from years before. But this was cool because you put the car on a lift and then it raised it to the level of the giant roller. Here's some pictures for those of you who are like me and are relatively new at this:
The rollers
The lift including the Lamba Meter plugged into the exhaust.
Gabe in the drivers seat
How the Dyno finds your timing parameters, just like a timing gun
So we basically jumped right into it after strapping down the car. We took out the Hondata ECU from behind the carpet and ran a line to the Dyno Computer and my laptop. We also hooked up the Lamba Meter to the exhaust and also a sensor around the last spark plug wire for timing purposes and away we went.
The first dyno pull showed a disappointing baseline (to me at least) of 196 horsepower and 212 ft/lbs of torque. The torque seemed impressive, but the top end left more to be desired. It was our first pull and it sounded really wild because we were reving the engine to 8,000rpm (because of my dual valve springs, we figured it was fine).
Okay, so we had our baseline, Bob did his thing on the laptop to adjust fuel maps and away we went again, 208 horsepower this time. A gain of 12 horsepower.
I could go on with all of our adjustments and runs, but we did probably 20 separate pulls on the dyno over 3 hours. The hardest part was trying to find (and keep on) the VTEC point. Sometimes the VTEC would just stop. At one point when it had stopped, Bob turned it back on and it killed the power curve and torque curve until the last 500rpm and then spiked hugely (literally from 140hp to 208hp in an instant). Since VTEC hit so violently, we also witnessed a puff of smoke come from the engine which alarmed everybody until we looked in the engine bay and noticed the oil dipstick had shot out. Radical.
But after some resetting, it got back on track and we witnessed a jump to 225 horsepower. At this point we stopped to examine the plugs and I decided to give up the Denso Iridiums (IK22) that I was saving for a special day (which had no date in particular). With the same settings though, we ran it again and picked up one (1) horsepower. The next run we made 229 and the final run we made 230 horsepower and 201 ft/lb of torque. At this point, we were noticing our Intake Temperatures to be around 155 degrees, and although it would probably be an accurate representation of the streets, we went to the gas station next door and grabbed a bag of ice to see if we could lower it.
I had a hard time finally finding a set of sparkplugs that were one heat range colder that could fit the prelude. But for the record, here's the kind you should all be using, Denso part number IK22. (IK20 are the stock heat range)
The surprising thing is, that with the bag of ice on top of the supercharger and intake temperatures at 105 degrees now, we ran it again and the horsepower went down to 228 HP. This was puzzling until you look at the big picture that we only ran 5psi on that run. For some reason, even with the next run hitting 230HP again, we still only topped out at 6psi.
As I mentioned before, I've seen this thing hit 9psi, and i know it's not slouch. I don't know what the problem with the supercharger was, the belt seemed sufficiently tight and relatively cool to the touch. But this is when we called it a day. The gains we made were impressive and I'm guessing that even more horsepower will happen once the exhaust gets fixed and expanded. I might even try to add on a larger throttle body to the mix to increase some airflow.
But the car runs hard and hits with a powerband that most cars on the streets of el paso will be afraid of. It's no turbocharged monster, but the whine of the supercharger should be sufficient in making others think twice.
With some spray, this car could really come alive, and the engine block can handle it. Can the transmission though? I don't know... but all of this is for another day. For right now, I'm going to enjoy what I've got.
...Or will I? After paying $100 for my 3+ hours on a dyno (quite the deal!) Kevin opened the gate for us to go out and he wanted to see me let it out on the road as I drove off. Well I showed him but then Bob saw the dummy light for the brake came on. The pedal ran soft and sunk to the floor quickly and suddenly the realization that this car still retained the nickname "White Diamond Disaster" just didn't come with engine.
We pulled over into a Checkers Autoparts store and examined the brake fluid, which looked fine, and then the engine bay, which also looked fine. But when pressing on the brake pedal and checking all 4 corners, we found the culprit to be the brake hose on the passengers rear wheel. It sprayed a fine mist in our face to boot. Nice. So we had to take it easy going home, careful not to get ourselves into any situations where having no brakes could cost us the car. We did make it home but now it sits in the parking lot, waiting for the time when it can come out again to play. Tomorrow it will be dropped off at a shop before I leave town so it can get fixed while I'm away.
*Sigh* and this is the life of a car nut, a real enthusiast who pours life and money into the car he wants so badly to run right, and at the moment he finally gets his power back, it's taken away because he can't control that power.
But the Prelude shall live to rule the night, that much I'm sure. The interior now must be cleaned up, my new floormats, door panels and roof need to be put on as well as the Recaros back in their rightful spot. The engine will get sprayed down and rechecked. The exhaust will get that last 8 feet or so of stainless steel pipe and muffler in 2.5" and then, and only then, will Stage 3 begin...
To be continued...
Now hold on! I promised in the previous post that I would whine if i didn't hit at least 250, but I'm not down about it. First of all, I believe in order of accuracy, DynoJet will be the most accurate (see: lowest) and something like a dynopack will be the highest (see: least accurate). But to start out from a base of 196 horsepower and increase 34 horsepower is something to be proud of. Yeah, I lost some torque, but wait till you see this power curve!
Shazam!
And yes, this is with VTEC on, and it's so seamless, that I lose no power at all. It kicks on at 4000rpm by the way, which may seem early, but at any other part in the powerband it wouldn't make sense because the lower cam was dropping power dramatically after 4,000rpm.
I'm guessing that although heat soak made a significant problem with power production, finishing the exhaust, adding on that throttle body and perhaps getting an intake to match (could this be the end of the top Fuel intake?!) will be next on the list to getting the power back. And also finding out what happened to my other 4 or 5 psi will also make a difference too!
Hey, remember when I said that the engine was getting a CPK sensor? Here'sa theory... When the new head got put on the car, I used a brand new MSD Red Cap distributor cap. I liked the last one I got because at night you can see the individual sparks through the transparent cap and it's an interesting conversation starter.
But the new one I put on showed all the signs of a defect. First, notice how each terminal (post?) has warped and began to expand outward and away from the center, they're all not facing straight.
Second, this threw off the metal pieces in the inside of the cap.'
And third, there even began a "melt mark" on the side of the cap closest to the front of the car, although there was no significant heat source anywhere close to it!
see the posts? all over the place
just terrible
There's no reason for this melt mark at all! Why did it happen MSD?
Perhaps you should all take warning... my MSD Cap was great the first time, but this batch maybe has some defects...
Got a quick question, what was the price to get the CF hood painted like your sisters car?
Sister's car after the hood was refinished and painted like mine (that was my parent's birthday present, I got her the OEM front lip and painted it to match and it will be attached soon [/quote]
__________________ "2001 Type SH" "We are the people our parents warned us about"
I can't give you an exact number, but I will put it at around $250 to $300 and here's why:
For my sister's birthday, I bought an OEM Lip from HandAaccessories.com and my sister had the pre-existing carbon fiber hood, but it was all f-ed up because the sun made these huge ugly spots on the clearcoat like you see other cars have on their regular paint (I call it sunburnt).
The parents agreed they'd pay for the hood to be refinished and painted in the pattern you see and I'd pay for the lip to be painted pearl white.
So if you cut the roughly $550 it was down the middle, you'll get something between what I quoted, although since the hood was a larger object to do, it might've been more.
I did all my bodywork at once so that's why I can't give you a price either (because my hood is painted the same).
So what's everybody think about the results about the car? No comments? No criticism? No poking fun?
great setup man! alot of hard work payed off! what tiens hood dampers did you use? cause i know they dont make them for the prelude but i heard the 94-01 integra hood dampers will fit the 5th gen?
Yes, the hood dampers are from the 94-01 Integra. In my opinion, they are worth 3 times as much as they were (already $130). You can throw your hood prop away, unclutter your bay, give it some bling and it opens the hood higher than the stock location.
I'm going to recommend that you follow the writeup somebody posted on PreludePower (or was it PreludeZone?) either way, search for it, the guy did an awesome pictoral writeup and you'll want to listen to every bit of advice he gives because it's totally reliable and fits incredibly well.
It took me and my friend probably an hour and a half to do it, because we took our time and made sure we did it everything by the "book".
I encourage everyone to get these if for no other reason than how easy it makes it to work on the engine bay.
thanks for that info man, I enjoy seeing the bits and pieces we all can overlook when paying attention to the bigger picture...
I might just try and use some Vinylex on it or Armorall or something first, I don't know if it's truly as faded or if I just need to take good care of it like I do my interior parts.
I tell you what though, before the carshow I was in this past February, I took each wheel off and put an extra coat of that stuff inside the wheelwell haha. The rear ones needed it more than the front but I thought it made all the difference
thanks for that info man, I enjoy seeing the bits and pieces we all can overlook when paying attention to the bigger picture...
I might just try and use some Vinylex on it or Armorall or something first, I don't know if it's truly as faded or if I just need to take good care of it like I do my interior parts.
I tell you what though, before the carshow I was in this past February, I took each wheel off and put an extra coat of that stuff inside the wheelwell haha. The rear ones needed it more than the front but I thought it made all the difference
I tried Back To Black on it and it works for a while but just fades again. There is this stuff called Forever Black that is like a dye and lasts a while but it's really messy and hard to work with. Little things like this really do make a difference like you said, but most people dont think about them when they're trying to spruce things up a bit
very nice, but i cant say its the best, cuz ive seen a 780whp lude, and there is probably faster and better looking ones than it, but urs is still really nice
Finally an update! These will become a little more rare I have to say because money is drying up and so the little things will have to do for now, but I promise, I will continue to make a huge deal out of the little things
So this weekends agenda was all about getting the SIR interior installed. I must tell you though, that I had everything planned so that the minimum of work would have to be done to complete everything, so since I wanted to install my new C-Pillar Bar, I was going to install the headliner at the same time and since the rest of the interior would be SIR then, I wanted to do my doors, but first, the headliner...
I looked up the thread on this site that talks about the headliner and its removal. The pictures are down and I've got to admit, since I was on a limited schedule today, I couldn't take as many pictures as I wanted, but basically, I took the C Pillar plastic pieces off which were very easy. In fact, I didn't even need any tools, I simply pushed the headliner up on the very farthest corner towards the front of the car and began to give a firm tug at each one and I listened as the clips that held it all in place popped out one by one. Nothing was broken or damaged when I was done with it.
Then, after the instructions said to remove the B and A Pillar trim, I decided to go the lazy route around it because I didn't want to have to hassle with the removal of the Sparco Harness Bar or messing up the wires on my A Pillar Gauge pod, so I simply tried to unsnap the piece at the top (they're joined together) I couldn't bend the headliner in the middle, so I slid it backwards until it almost all came out and then bent the rest anyway, nothing folded or left a mark and I was left with a perfect gray headliner (for sale now!)
Now the trouble began, I also had the sunroof sunshade to install and after yanking on it a couple times and moving it back and forth, I pretty much knew what had to be done... remove the entire sunroof assembly.
The black metal piece is all a single unit, and yes, the glass comes out with it too. A total of ten 10mm bolts supports it.
This was as big of a pain in the ass as it looks. After unbolting 9 out of the ten and supporting almost all the weight with one hand, I knew I was gonna need some help, so I picked up the phone to give good ol' John Dunlapp a call. John has helped me out on numerous projects to date and pretty much has no choice when I call but to help me, haha, just kidding.
I put 4 out of the 10 bolts in and drove over with a sunroof that looked like it was falling in and 3 wires hanging from the ceiling. I got some stares for sure while I was driving to his house, people probably thinking "well that nice car sure has a piece of crap interior going on." Its probably true that the car has spent more days looking torn apart and disgusting than all neat and tidy.
So anyway, me and John manage to unbolt the entire sunroof assembly and since its getting caught on the plastic trim that I was still stubbornly not gonna take off, I had to give in and unbolt one side of the harness bar as well as remove the "oh **** handle" (does that thing even have a proper name?) so that I could pull the B Pillar back much more than it was. We did the same trick as I did with the headliner, which was sliding the whole assembly back and then turning it so it came forward and we took it out the passenger side. All of this was accomplished with only the passenger seat removed from the car just so you know, I recommend at least that one taken out if not both.
So now we had the whole assembly out and laying on the garage floor in the "closed" position. We thought we would be able to take out the sun shade just like that, but nope, nothing on a Honda is ever that easy. To tell you the truth, we unbolted two bolts near the front and took out 6 screws from the sides as well as removing a small metal piece that goes under the sunroof on the rear of it before John's wife found a way to remove the old piece. With the new one slid in, it was almost maddening how much time we spent to remove a somewhat pointless piece. But as all enthusiasts know, cutting a corner now will only draw your eye to that one place in the future.
So now the fun part of bolting it back in happened and it too, was a pain in the ass. There are two tiny metal tabs that stick off the rear of the assembly near the sunroof motor that need to go inside of the actual roof of the car and act as a kind of "keep" to keep the assembly from moving around I suppose. We were almost done bolting it up when we realized we had to undo it all to put those two keeps in place. The total time this all took when we were done was a good hour and a half. But by that time, I had asked enough of John and went on home.
I put back on the headliner, the little red rubber sealing dealie and the sunvisors and maplight with a little better time than it took to remove them all. It's pretty straightforward.
This piece fit rally nice and gave it all a nice touch. I love how OEM fits...
Why yes, that is a RAZO broadway mirror, I should've gone with the 300mm, this is as big as the stock one really...
Now came time for the C Pillar Bar. I also referenced the thread on here on how to install it although I was quite mad that they didn't show the correct placement of the two pieces that bolt to the seatbelt assembly. For anyones reference, you will take the aluminum piece and position it at the 1:30 position (like on a clock) on the passengers side. I know, i wished I would've taken a picture, but you'll figure it out as quickly as I did. Of course, you have to cut your C pillar trim piece, but its really not that big of a deal. For me, I forsaw the fact that the trim piece was black and my cars metal was white so a quick spary of some black rustoleum took care of any "unclean-ness"
I used newspapers to prevent overspray
Now the bar installed fairly easy, but one last thing I want you all to know, I cut my seatbelts off in the rear. That's right, didn't even reinstall them. Wasted space and added clutter in my opinion. If anyone even dared to sit in my backseat now (which is more like a metal deathtrap) they wouldn't be able to fit their legs facing forward, much less wear a seatbelt, so with that in mind and remembering the nightmare the Sparco Harness Bar was to install with a seatbelt, I gave them the ol' heave ho.
With C Pillar Bar installed, I decided to get right on back to the SIR door panels. And yes, they were a son-of-a-yeah. I have aftermarket Infinity front speakers and had to recut the speaker basket as well as retape all my wires and unscrew the small corner piece on the inside where my crossover is. I'll include those pictures tomorrow. I only had patience enough and time enough for the one side tonight, but here's a little quirk about the SIR doors...
The SIR door handle assembly is SMALLER than the USDM door assembly! Who made this!?!? I literally had to take my dremel outside and continually cut into the door panel to lengthen it enough to get the door handle assembly to fit! It was something I never saw coming, but I'm gonna be prepared for it tomorrow when I do the drivers side.
these are side by side, the door handle assembly is NOT closer to the camera
I got it to fit though...
So that is where I've stopped for now... Tomorrow I am putting in the last SIR door panel, and both Recaro Seats as well as giving everything a head to toe cleaning on the inside and out. This will probably take most of my day, so I'm not looking forward to it, but for the sweetness my car has just gained, it's all been worth it.
One final look at the new C Pillar Bar, I'm kinda wishing it matched the Sparco Harness Bar since they're both so close to each other
Ladies and Gentlemen, the SIR Interior is in the house!
Well, not literally, it was in the house, but now it's out in the car. Today wrapped up my entire weekend project of completing the SIR interior and I must say that it was quite the task!
I'm going to tell the full story of the interior from start to finish, because my project did not begin just today, it began a couple months ago when I discovered the SIR center console on EBAY from the seller jdm_pro_store. I decided to take the plunge on the last part of my car that I had desired since seeing another person with it at NPM 2007. So I bought it up for something like $300 shipped. It came from Japan pretty fast so I figured I may as well not stop there and I got the sunvisors and maplight too for another $150 shipped. I saw the seller was also selling the rear and front seats but I did not buy those because I am perfectly happy with my Recaros and the Type S rear seat. But when I noticed the rest of the interior was not posted for sale, I began to inquire to the seller when they would be put up for bid. I asked him if I could buy the headliner, carpet and door panels. He told me that apparently the car had been shipped off to a junkyard and he wouldn't be able to find it. He did, however, tell me that he would go to Honda of Japan and see if he could order any of the items I requested. It turns out that he could only order the interior carpet but I said i'd take it (at least it would be brand new!) the cost of that set me back quite a bit ($700 shipped). So when I got all three SIR items, I knew I could begin on assembling the interior.
Together with my friend John, we took on a weekend project back in the beginning of August to assemble the interior and it was very hectic. There are alot of little quirks about the JDM SIR interior that I will try to point out as I go along...
With the stock seats, front and back, removed as well as the center console, it was time to remove the carpet. This part is fairly easy because the only thing it takes is to continue to pull the carpet out from behind the pillars and trim. There is one spot on the center console where the carpet overlaps, or actually, goes under the two cable from the parking brake. We chose the easy way out both installing and de-installing (that's a military word actually) by just cutting the slim piece of carpet that goes under it. Nobody's gonna see it anyway. The new carpet fits up pretty well, but since the SIR is made for right had drive, there is actually more carpet on the USDM passengers side than the drivers. It just made it a pain to stuff it all up and fold it so it looked presentable. I've yet to find out how to truly get the carpet to lay to the contours of the floor, but if anyone has any ideas, let me know (steam cleaner? Hairdryer?). One last observation, the trunk release/gas release on the Prelude in Japan was on the passenger side in the US, so the carpet has a pre-cut hole on your passengers side, the drivers side does not have that, however. I chose to cut the same size hole to get it to fit on the drivers side and plan on stitching in that piece of carpet under the hole on the passengers side. It won't look the best, but it's what you've gotta do.
uuuugly
So with the carpet installed, it was time to install the center console, which couldn't have been easier. No fuss, no muss. Only thing I noticed about the center console (besides my sweet JDM rotating cup holder) was that the little "change box" has like a bottomless pit. So it's not going to hold anything unless you never want to get it again.
brand freakin' new
With the visors and map light, yes I did put them on with the grey headliner still there, sue me
So that's how I roled around in town for a while. I sent emails to countless JDM specialty sites where I asked if they could find the door panels and headliner for the SIR interior. Most chose to blow me off, some said they'd try but came back with negative answers. Then I happened to ask around here on PO and sure enough, I found some guys with them! The condition they were in were fairly good, nothing used is ever perfect, but when I got them all fitted up in the interior, it is a beautiful thing. So this is where the story of this weekend takes place (well, after the last post is where it picks up).
Today I finished up my last door panel and I wanted to show you all some of the inticracies of the SIR door panel and my speaker setup. For those of you without aftermarket speakers that may want to install them yourself, this is the ins and outs of the Prelude door panel. I personally have all 4 speakers hooked up to an Alpine 4 channel amp in the rear and my fronts are component Infinities, so they need to have the crossover. That's not a problem because there is alot of working room inside the prelude door panel. See how I've mounted everything?
You'll need to cut this basket out if you want to fit in any kind of aftermarket speaker with a good magnet
I attached the speaker with 4 wood screws... meh, nobody will see em' anyway, oh and make sure to take the metal cutting piece of your dremel and cut down the long points that protrude through! It'll interfere with reinstalling your door!
where the crossover goes
It is possible to fit an aftermarket tweeter in the door, unlike the first time best buy told me they couldn't
And now here is the same stupid problem that haunted me yesterday, not getting the door handle piece to fit in the SIR doors, so I had to get out the trusty dremel once more...
stupid small opening!
Now don't it all look so nice?
Okay, so moving on. There are a couple of little "extras" I threw into the interior mostly because I'm trying to get my minimum of 15 pieces of flare. I went with the company RAZO because on the level of rice-ness, they're probably not that bad. I got the cigarette lighter, the broadway mirror and some pedals.
Pedals and oh yeah, a small little tidbit from the SIR dash that still fits on our prelude, that piece that goes under the steering column...
This mirror is more for just looks because as the car vibrates, so does the mirror since its heavy and simply clamps onto the stock one.
eh, you can't really make out the lighter, but I think it's one of my more favorite subtle touches...
Mini Dampi-chi is gonna hang out with me for a while. No, I don't have Tein Coilovers, I have those gnarly hood dampers, remember?
I'd love to say I just "tossed in" the Recaros, but since they've gotta be huge and nonflexible, it took me probably a little over an hour to get them both in. Part of this problem comes from the harness bar's lower floor mounts and getting them all to fit in the same hole. What a PITA.
red roof too,oooohh
But the result was well worth it! And then for the final touch, since JDM SIR floormats will not fit in the car (well, the drivers mat won't) then I tried to find my own personal way around it. I bought a pair of tan floormats on EBAY back in August and finally found a place in New York (yeah yeah, I'm in El Paso) that dyes clothes. I asked them if they'd be interested in dyeing my floormats to the color of the red piece of carpet that I had to trim out for the trunk/fuel hinge release and they said it all depended on what material the carpet was. Polyester no, Nylon yes. So I sent it in with my fingers crossed and sure enough, it turned out they were nylon and they could dye it. But through a long and stupid series of events, the products I received back (albeit 2.5 months after I initially hit the "buy it now" button for the mats on EBAY) were kinda not cool with me. The red is too dark, so I've been trying to put them in the tub at night with warm water and scrubbing them with a white towel. It's bled out some of the red, but I need it to bleed some more to get a good match. In the meantime, I'm going to be purchasing another set of mats and finding another place that'll do it.
Trust me, they're darker in person...
So with the car all bolted up, I took a quick spin over to John's house to get some pictures since John has an awesome camera and is becoming less of a Novice photographer and more of an Ameture. He does good work, now sit back and marvel at my beauty!
Who likes the look of this black roof?
Nevermind that little nick on the bottom of the front lip, it's what happens when your car is as extreme as mine, haha
very nice, but i cant say its the best, cuz ive seen a 780whp lude, and there is probably faster and better looking ones than it, but urs is still really nice
I'd like to make a comment that based on the things I've done so far, and for the rest of my future plans for stage 3, that once I'm done I believe I will have what will amount to the best prelude in the world.
I don't base the title "best" to be based upon a horsepower number or a "better looking" number, but more of a sum of all the parts. I think this car has it. If there is one thing I notice when I go out for little import get togethers or even viewing others cars on here, it's the fact that most people only concentrate on one area of the car. And if they choose to do all areas of the car at once, usually their focus is very loose and their budget has to be stretched across alot of areas and the minimal parts they have show it.
I think that once a couple more engine mods get done (to include the ones in the trunk) and the car gets some side skirts, new headlights and a little touch up paint, it's going to be something to be feared on a track, dragstrip, carshow and best of all, as a daily driver.
Besides, if all else fails, at least I can claim the title of most entertaining and intriguiging story, save for that one Slovakian BB8 out there.
But I can't argue with you because I clearly said in my first post that praise or criticism was something I wanted to hear...
You know what the best part about my car is? That if anyone really wanted to steal it, they'd have a 50% chance of doing it because it only works 50% of the time! GRR!
So this morning I'm all set to jump in the car and take it to work to show it off and gather up some praise when lo and behold I turn the key and only hear the sound of the fuel pump churning. No starter turning the crank. After searching around for 20 minutes of wires or fuses that could be shorted out, my mom gives me the advice on the phone to tap the starter solenoid with a wrench, which I do and get the car to turn over for maybe 2 seconds then it dies again. After this, the car won't turn over anymore or at least crank like it wants to.
My dad later tells me to try jumping the positive and negative bolts on the starter but after seeing sparks fly and nothing happening, I know it's a lost cause.
So now I have to call the tow truck AGAIN, which is soon becoming a number I have to set on speed dial and now the car is in the shop again because I have too much work going on to swap out my starter.
What sucks the most about it is that the starter is under a year old. I don't know why these parts keep failing on me arrggh!
By the way, just a quick reminder that I've posted 3 new pictures at the bottom of page 1 that show what the Megan Racing Headers looked like installed. Always remember that periodically I go back and update old pictures so keep checking the entire post! A special thank you to John Dunlapp for the photography skills on them!
Dude, with the OEM side skirts to finish off the lip kit, some nice retrofits, the super rare Prelude door sills...I would definitely vote for it if there were a competition for best prelude in the world lol. Keep up the good work dude!
Oh and get the windows tinted man! It looks so much better that way
But if I tint my windows, how will anybody be able to see the beautiful interior?
And I have my eyes set on a set of door sills that are for sale, but I currently don't have any money Ah the things I could do right now with another $1000 *sigh*
But if I tint my windows, how will anybody be able to see the beautiful interior?
And I have my eyes set on a set of door sills that are for sale, but I currently don't have any money Ah the things I could do right now with another $1000 *sigh*
I bet that extra $1000 would go a long ways.
Do you have any plans for doing a retrofit on your headlights?
You are looking at my new Honda Access Front Grille by the way. The color doesn't really show it but it's gunmetal colored and the Prelude is either silver or gold, I can't really decide...
Any opinions on the look of that compared to my former ATTS grille (which is for sale by the way) would be greatly appreciated.
Or should I just switch them back and forth weekly?
I'd just like to mention that I am starting a new thread in the "Product Reviews" forum where I go more in depth on allll the parts that I have had experiences with. It promises to be a long read just like this thread, but it's going to take me a while to get it all updated. So keep checking back here and also check out "Prepreludesh parts review" for more info!
Hey thanks for all of this and all the updates with all the pictures.
Your lude is really coo.
I like the exterior and interior and all the performance parts.
Its an awsome progress thread .
Hope the best of luck and paint your gauge bezels! lol
its a cheap and easy mod that you will appreciate alot.
lol. i didnt notice that you had painted them.
And btw the whole way that you made this thread with the stories and all the pics it makes me look at it with a whole different perspective.lol
Most of the the time i go through a thread see pics and be like eehhh coo .
But this one shows so many more details anywayz thumbs up.
Thanks for the support though, I do appreciate it. And I've always enjoyed writing, I strive for a style that is easily relatable no matter what age or reading level you're at. I know I can get long-winded sometimes but I try to go into enough detail that the person who just is getting started can relate or the scrupulous grammar hunter won't immediately get turned off and look elsewhere for their information.
Overall, i just want to spread the love of the sport and show others that to learn off of my mistakes will save them time and money. I also want to show that if you devote yourself and all your money to a car, you can have a car like this with nothing else to show for it!
you should get some better pics of your new grill btw..
IMO both of them look equally good but your going to get rid of atts anyway so thats a reason the new grill is better.
I just took a couple of pictures today after finally getting around to seeing if I could take one of the two 10mm spacers out from my front wheels. As you'll recall, when I put on the big brake kit on the front wheels, there was not enough room for the stock wheel studs to accept any kind of lug nut because the big brake kit had pushed it back too much. So I had to stick 2 10mm spacers on each wheel and put an ARP wheel stud kit on the front hubs. The wheels stuck out disgustingly from the front for quite a while making me not as happy as I should've been with the appearance of the car, but I recently bought some Muteki Lug nuts (with the open ends). The plus side to all of this is I've just reduced my "unsprung mass" by maybe 3/4 of a pound, haha.
I just went out today to do this and I'll let the pictures do the rest of the story telling...
You can clearly see the spacers are double stacked, so I'm gonna try and pop one off and see if they'll fit...
Here is the best picture I could take showing the sizeable gap between the wheel spokes and the caliper
And from a straight angle, here is how much the tire jutted out from inside the fender well.
Afterwards...
Now the new gap (you can barely squeeze a piece of paper in between the spokes, but it does not touch the raised "Wilwood" lettering)
And finally, a shot at the Muteki Lug Nuts doing their job
Since I had a request to see the new front grille, here it is. I also threw in a picture of the ATTS Cooler (which is now pretty much defunct) to show how I replaced the front harmonic balancer bar (or whatever it's called that weighs 15 pounds that was in its place before this). I'm doing a writeup on it in my section under product reviews soon, so keep posted.
I wanted to show you all a problem that's been plaguing me ever since I got the supercharger installed and it's only gotten worse. If you're like me and have this supercharger, you know what I'm talking about, and it's the leaky power steering pipe extender. Since it's a metal to metal contact, there is no surefire way to seal this, and they don't make a gasket for it. So you will have to make your own. The items I used here are all self explanatory except the material I used for the actual gasket...
I went to a Pep Boys today after being unable to find any rubber mat in Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart. But when I found a floormat that worked, the worker actually cut off a lengthy piece that was shown that you had to cut to trim anyway for free and I didn't even have to pay!
So now that I got all the items together, I'll do what I love to do and let the pictures do most of the talking...
The parts you'll need
Take the power steering return off from the extender, look at low the power steering fluid has got after not filling it for a while!
clean both surfaces from power steering fluid
cut the floormat to cover all the surface first
Now trim it down and mark with a black marker where you can feel the hole
I don't know, I never really knew there was a specification. This thing has leaked from the start though, any idea how to get it to stop? Metal to metal isn't an ideal combination to keep leaks from happening so I needed to try something.
I will try the paper gasket kit next from Pep Boys and maybe double-stack it to see if that helps. It's irritating to get the "smoke puff" from the vent in my hood when I'm turning a significant corner because the PS connector lets a fine mist of that stuff out right on the header.
I don't know, I never really knew there was a specification. This thing has leaked from the start though, any idea how to get it to stop? Metal to metal isn't an ideal combination to keep leaks from happening so I needed to try something.
I will try the paper gasket kit next from Pep Boys and maybe double-stack it to see if that helps. It's irritating to get the "smoke puff" from the vent in my hood when I'm turning a significant corner because the PS connector lets a fine mist of that stuff out right on the header.
For the gasket to work well in sealing you'll need to torque enough to compress the gasket pretty well. I'll check the helms to see what the torque specs are, but you would probably torque higher due to the gasket.
It is showing most of the components torques to 8lbs which is pretty dang light.
For the gasket to work well in sealing you'll need to torque enough to compress the gasket pretty well. I'll check the helms to see what the torque specs are, but you would probably torque higher due to the gasket.
It is showing most of the components torques to 8lbs which is pretty dang light.
well.. they're 10mm, which should not require a good amount of torque or else you'll break those bolts easily.
Well, that is quite the saga, so far! Congrats on the car being really clean!
I don't mean to be a buzz kill, and I only say it because I don't want to see your sh*t get toasted, but the A/F ratios on your dyno are rather lean. It looks about 14:1 in the low rpm, slowly going down to 12:1. I'd shoot for straight-up 12:1, if not even 11.5:1 considering IATs.
Also, there is definitely MUCH more power to he had, from your set-up. From what I've seen of other's dynos, the torque curve shouldn't drop off like that...I'd say 150 ft-lbs at redline, minimum.
Wow, I should've been in bed hours ago. Thanks a lot :P
I'm glad somebody brought that up, I was just gonna play it off until they did. Here's my explanation:
The DynoJet I tested on had some issues with it in the fact that the computer seemed to be messed up a little bit. The first thing that was wrong with it was that it was registering everything as 500rpm lower than what the tachometer on the car was showing. We don't know why, but we decided to take the Tachometer's word that 8,000rpm was indeed, 8,000rpm and not 7,500.
The second thing is that the A/F ratio you see printed out on the bottom is from the Lamba Meter stuck in the tailpipe. Well if you remember back to the pictures of the night before, we had used RV Copper Silicone to make two temporary gaskets on the rear part of the exhaust. Almost instantly they didn't hold up. Chunks of that Sealant would fly off every now and then. So with an exhaust leak that far back, it wasn't getting a correct reading.
So we went off my AEM A/F Ratio Wideband Meter. This was much more accurate because of where it was positioned, namely on the collector of the header.
So in reality, we were just using the Dyno to tell us a horsepower number and torque number, everything else we were tuning off of the cars tach and the cars wideband and the cars computer to tell us timing and such.
In reality, I do run around a 12.5 A/F Ratio at wide open throttle. I absolutely demand this and not something richer. I'm going to be losing power if I run something as rich as 11.5:1 I know people on here do it, but I saw it with my own eyes as we made progressively more and more power from my baseline of 196hp (with 11.0:1 A/F Ratio). It was simply a matter of leaning it out and watching the power reel in.
For something that'll really get this forum fired up, you should see my A/F ratio at a constant highway speed with extremely low load on the engine, I'm running 15.5:1 to 16:1 without a problem... let the debate begin (can you say better MPG?)
Well, glad to know your engine is running a bit richer than it originally seemed! Does your car have a cat on it? If so (as you probably know), an A/F meter post-cat will read much more lean than pre-cat. (Hence why OBDII cars have two O2 sensors.)
12.5:1 is a good accepted safe A/F ratio, and much more fuel than this won't even do any additional cooling, it will just take up space in the combustion chamber, and possibly even makes things worse. SO, 11.0:1 will not only make less power, but it won't make you any less prone to detonate, on it's own. However, tuning a little more rich than 12.5:1 will offer you a bit more margin of error, in the event your fuel pressure drops, an injector gets clogged, etc. etc. The candle that burns twice as bright only burns half as long!
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holy **** nice stuff man im sitting home drinking on Friday and this has been very entertaining good stuff man
because money is drying up and so the little things will have to do for now, but I promise, I will continue to make a huge deal out of the little things
!
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