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, long story short, the gearbox was leaking excessively and me not realizing the seriousness of the leak continued to make a 200 mile road trip. No oil for approximately 95 miles at 80 MPH = Gearbox Ca-Boom!This however gave me the opportunity to do some much needed repair work which I am about to share.
Initially I contemplated rebuilding the gearbox, it really sounded like something got broken or destroyed completely inside, however, I decided against it. I need this car for work, school, and to get around (Public transportation sucks here) so I decided to go with a much quicker option of a Synchrotech re-manufactured gearbox. It was a bit pricey. Unfortunately I have no pics of the new gearbox or the old, my bad.
I was always aware that all the outside seals on my 165,000+ mile engine were in need of repair, but I also knew It was a lot of work and continued to top it up with oil continuously
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. Here are some pictures depicting the evidence of my statements.This is the rear crankshaft seal, of course after removing the clutch and flywheel and gearbox.
Something funky was also happening at the front here
There was also a lot of oil residue all over this engine. The steering pump, alternator was a bit dirty and well the block was about 15 years old so it accumulated some build up of gunk. While the gearbox was in transit, I decided to address these issues.
First order of business, address the engine block and cylinder head... can it be cleaned? Lets find out.
Before:
After:
Their were some area's that were a bit pitted but, eh.. it wasn't located at any focal points of the engine. Chances would be that I would be the only one who will ever noticed it. Seeing such a transformation on the block and head... I became motivated.
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Among other things addressed was the bottom pan which I resealed. Also removed the oil pump to reseal it as well along with changing the seals and cleaning. I did not take as many pictures on this project since it was a race against time and the evening sun (90-100 F). The pictures I did take tho can be seen below with annotations.
This is your H22A1 Honda Prelude oil pump. It has been cleaned, not perfectly but it will do. All the seals have been replaced with genuine Honda seals and upon reassembly was also resealed with gasket maker.
Before:
After:
The rear main seal was also addressed.
I don't have an after pic but you did see the before earlier. It did look like this when I was done (taken after preliminary cleaning)
The parts that are not exposed were not cleaned completely. Just enough to not affect functionality of surrounding components and enough to receive a pass from me (due to time).
As I mentioned before, a number of important bolts holes had stripped threading. I address all of these issues. Every single stripped threading has now been repaired. As will be shown in the pics below.
One of the threading repair kits needed
Drilling the new diameter for the heli coil inserts. This is one of the bolt openings for the gearbox. Three of these openings had to be repaired. Yes three lol, the gearbox was hanging on by a thread.
After drilling
After drilling, you re-tap the hole using a lot of oil and patients. This is a bolt opening for the front engine mount. I have a tap and die kit but due to some tight spaces I had to work with I got a ratchet adapter.
Then you use the heli coil tool to insert the heli coil
And there you have it. Completely repaired threading. Which theoretically should be stronger than the original.
This was done for each stripped threading on the engine.
On to the next one...
One of the focal points on the engine is the power steering pump since its situated at the top of the engine bay. Mines was as nasty as one could have gotten. This is what it looked like after some initial cleaning.
And this is the after:
I also addressed the alternator among many smaller parts that made up the accessory drive. Ok Ok.. I had my wife help me on the alternator and a few others since I was falling behind schedule. unfortunately only have a before of the alternator. The previous owner had an AEM pulley on it. Makes me wonder what happened to the pulley for the power steering pump. Here are some random pics.
Alternator before
Gearbox mount before
After:
You get the drift.
Various parts sanded and ready for spray. Unfortunately no after shot. Maybe you will see it in the final engine shot.
I also decided to get some energy mount inserts. Only required for two mounts the front and back since thats the mounts that experience the most torque from the front wheel drive. MADE A HUGE difference in the feel of the car handling, gear changes (feels more direct), and unfortunately ... more vibration in the cabin at warm idle.
This is one of the inserts installed into the stock mount.
On to the next one...
So I also decided to address other areas of the engine. The valve cover was already removed for a timing belt conversion from hydraulic to manual tensioner which will be seen later. I did a sloppy job with the first paint job, at the time I didn't care. This time however I decided to use something I stumbled across called VHT wrinkle paint.
Before kinda
Valve cover preparation:
Preliminary sanding
Final Sand Ready of paint, one or two deep scratches, didn't matter due to the nature of the paint.
3 layers of very thick coats in specific spray directions as shown in the directions. Then you let it dry for 24 hours, pop it in the oven at 200 F for an hour and resurface your raised branding with a block and sanding paper. And you get this wrinkled paint job...almost look like the stock surfacing.
On to the next one..
So I decided to get headers...
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...Ebay headers, balling on a budget.
The idea here is function over form, I believe the manufactures placed heat sheilds around the oem exhaust for a reason. Also in engineering you learn the consequences in terms of energy loss through heat loss. In certain cases you wan't to contain heat within a system to increase efficiency. The exhaust system is one of them, not forgetting your more delicate components in that surrounding area you would want to reduce the radiating heat to them. All this to say I decided to heat rap it.
DEI heat wrap. I soaked it in water to take the form of the headers better and wrapped them while the heat wrap was wet. (youtube how to video).
Then I decided to spray it with a protective coating.
And the end result. Boom chooka Waw Waw!
I am so getting ready to conclude this post. Sooooo.. here we go. Lastly I decided to change my timing belt from automatic tensioner to manual tensioner. I read tons and tons of horror stories on Honda forums and my experience with this car is Murphy's law. If something can go wrong it will, so I tried to take a step ahead of the game.
This is a write up of the job I did on my car. Below is a link to a writeup done by someone else..good pics so I decided not to take pics of mines..
http://mr22.tistory.com/tag/tensioner
But this was after it was done.. anyways
The gearbox got here... It was time to close up...damn those tight spaces, gearbox took forever to go in. Got help and then it took forever again to go it. But got it done.
Quick pic of removed axles to install gearbox..lolz.. Got Camber?
And this is a sot of the finished product.
Before Kinda:
After:
Oh just a side note, one of the CV joints popped out and took forever to get back in. In the process I cut another CV joint rubber which spread grease everywhere when the axles spun. I picked up this two sided boot cover..lol you glue the two sides together... now this is my lazy way of working.. oh ya.. no need to remove the axel.
More info: http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp ... _5830000-p
This is where I am at for the now. The energy mounts made a hug difference. The car feels solid, now I litterally just go on the highway in the night to rev it out.
, there was no urge to do that before. All what you just seen took 7 days to complete and took place in my apartment parking lot lolz. So ghetto.. ya ya ya. It ended up going 2 days over schedule, I initially planned to complete the job in 5 days. There are parts of the engine bay that are still dirty and haven't been addressed. In keeping with the original outline of the project I would say that the engine bay is about 80% complete.
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