08/22/2010

Well over the past week I have not gotten done nearly as much as I would have liked, hoping to make up for that this week. To start off with I finished getting all of the vales cleaned up and finished the last little cleaning that the head needed.



I put all of the valves back in the head and also put in the new plugs since there is less space when it is back in the engine bay.



At this point I decided to get the head gasket out and make sure everything was going to line up… good thing I checked because it did not. Turns out the gasket set that I bought did not have the right head gasket in it, however, all of the other gaskets fit fine. Well after a day or two of hunting I managed to track down a Fel-pro gasket which, from what I understand, is the same as the OEM. So, another $41 and I finally had the correct part.

I managed to also pick up an original Honda service manual from ebay for dirt cheap, this will come in handy I am sure.


During my head gasket issues I also discovered that the engine was not the original as I had thought, I was told it had been rebuilt.




While I believe that it is the original style engine, the numbers on the frame and block are different. I am hoping to track down a little more info on exactly what the engine is here soon.

The past few day the garage has been home to a few more thing than usual so I have not had room to work on it. However, that should be cleared up tomorrow or Tuesday and then I can get back to it and hopefully have her running by the end of the week!

08/13/2010

Well I got the head back from the machine shop today and overall I am happy with the job they did. The tooling could have been a little better and I am not really happy with the tooling marks all over the gasket surface. I don’t think it will be an issue as far as sealing goes but it just seems like they could have done a better job. There was also some confusion about the exhaust manifold bolts that they took off and then forgot to give back to me, and the threads on them are pretty mashed which I am not happy about. Regardless, time for it to go back together!



Look, shiny!


The valves are proving to be very difficult to clean properly. I really wish that I was able to replace them but as it stands I am already over budget for what I really am able to spend on the car right now. I am sure the old ones will work fine for now they are just going to take some time and effort to clean up properly. Should have them all cleaned up tomorrow!

08/10/2010

Brought the head to the shop today and soaked it in the solvent tank for a few hours and then was finally able to remove the CVCC valve assembly. The head cleaned up pretty nice although I am likely going to end up getting it professionally cleaned and machined here soon.

I cleaned up the block a little more and am very happy with the way the cylinders look. The pistons were a little cruddy but they cleaned up pretty easy and they move so nicely that I am not worried about them. Cleaned up the cam shaft a little as well though it really didn’t need much besides a rinse off and a coating of fresh oil on the critical surfaces. The bearing surfaces have some scoring but not something I am very worried about considering how little the forces are on it.

More soon, my last day of class is tomorrow and then I will have lots of time to finish this up!

08/05/2010 and 08/06/2010

So it seems that the only get a chance to work on the car is Thursday and Friday so unfortunately most of the week it just sits. However, I will have time off from school starting next week so I should have lots more time to work on it. I would like to have it running by the 20^th at the latest. That will give me a month more to work out any other problems before the terms starts back up and I will be way too busy to do much with it.

So, I have managed to get the gasket surfaces mostly cleaned up and it looks like I should be ok to put it back together without getting it machined, thank god! I am about half way through cleaning the parts and have made a lot of headway on the head. It looks like aluminum again and except for the CVCC valves, all of the valves are out and although very dirty they look workable.

Amazing how dirty some of this was, I am beginning to wonder if it was really running before the head blew!

Going to try and get the CVCC valves out and anything else off of the head on Monday night so that I might be able to take advantage of the solvent tank at school before the term is over. The rest of it I think I can clean without the tank but there are so many little places for grub to hide in the head that I really need the tank.

I am starting to really look forward to hearing it run!

07/30/2010

Lots of work done today, I spent almost six hours on it. Got the vacuum issue resolved with a set of colored zip ties and a little faith that my pictures will help if I am stuck getting it back together.



I decided to follow the manual for the overall method which involved removing the carbs, intake manifold and head all in one piece. This all seemed to be working out great until I discovered that the combined weight off all of that was too much to lift out of the engine bay by hand. Since I do not have access to a hoist I decided to just take the pieces out one by one the way I had always done it before. The carbs had some very tricky little bolts but once I figured out how to get to them it came off easy. The intake was pretty much the same, just a few pesky bolts and it was off.



The head broke loose like it was not even attached which was not really a surprise considering how much antifreeze was in the oil. I went to lift it out only to discover that I had not disconnected the temperature gauges and so had to dink with the damn oily wires for longer than I would have liked. The problem is many of the connectors are so old that the wires break because the connections are frozen together. I have a few connections that will need to be worked on when this is all going back together.

Overall the head seemed like it might be workable, however, I am worried about the pistons/rings/bearings/seals/etc. There was standing oil/antifreeze in more than one of the cylinders and everything is very, very dirty. I had been told that this engine was a rebuild engine and not the original but I am questioning that now. If it was rebuild it seems like a very sloppy job and likely the cause of all of the issues that it was having. Seeing the bottom end in this kind of condition makes me wonder if it might be worth it to get the block bored and just rebuild the whole thing. I need to do some research on some of the options at this point...

07/29/2010

Today started by removing the front grill to gain access to the bolts for the hood and then removing the hood. The hinge on the hood is in the front and so it was just too much in the way and needed to go. From there, off came the air box which was actually kind of a pain since there is a lot of stuff bolted to the bottom of it. At this point I decided to drain the oil some of the other fluids before they became an issue.

I had the oil catch pan in one had and was removing the drain bolt with the other as it crossed my mind that if some of the antifreeze had gotten into the crank case there might be a lot of fluid... too late. The drain bolt come off suddenly followed by a fast stream of grayish fluid that overshot the catch pan and made a mess before I could adjust the pan. It was under a lot more pressure than normal and I quickly realized that the pan was not going to be enough. I managed to get the bolt back in long enough to grab the second oil pan before continuing to drain. There look to be nearly two gallons of oil/antifreeze mix in the bottom of the engine – good thing I never tried to crank the engine!



With most of oil and antifreeze out of the way I proceeded to disconnect the fuel line and throttle cable from the carburetor. I removed the spark plug wires, top side of the radiator hose, heater connection, and a few of the vacuum hoses before discovering that there were many more than I had assumed. After that it seemed like a good stopping point for the night so that I could get some tags before disconnecting all of the vacuum lines. The last thing I want is to not be able to figure out how it goes back together!



More tomorrow!

07/27/2010

Got started on some prep work yesterday, and picked up a few tools that I was missing. I put the front end up on jack stands for stability and to get it a little higher off the ground. Checked the battery and it looks like it might have actually regained almost all of its capacity, at least that is what the battery tender was indicating. We will see if it keeps the charge over the next few days.

Today the goal was to get the air box, carbs, wiring, and guards out of the way so that I can get access to the top end. However, a long day at work and other things came up so it looks like that will have to be started tomorrow. The gasket set is due in tomorrow and so maybe I can get that going over the next few days.

I did notice that the outboard drivers side CV boot was split but it looks like it has not gone dry so hopefully only the boot needs replacing, those are only $45 or so. More to come soon...