It's been a bit since I've updated, but I'm still plugging away at it! I've got most of the engine mechanical all bolted together, I need to make a trip to a junkyard to get an ECU and some wire harness parts.
I've also got to do a timing belt on the van. Luckily, these are actually pretty easy to do! (at least for a Honda!)
timing belt on J35 in Ody is truly not bad. I'm sure you know to use the starter to break the balancer bolt loose, but just in case, here's how it works:
I did use the starter to break it loose. My process went something more like this:
-Start working on van at midnight when everyone else is asleep.
- make enormous racket using starter to loosen bolt. Like a seriously big "WHAM!"
-be glad that you didn't wake anyone else up, then progress to the point where you don't feel like laying on the concrete any more.
-Go play Mario.
I love me some Hondas, but their crank pulley bolts are the worst.
In reply to BA5 :
I've got an 8' section of 1/2" walled 3" diameter steel pipe that I put on the end of a 3/4" 2' breaker bar. I have to basically jump on the end of the pipe, but I haven't yet seen a Honda crank bolt that won't break loose with that much force. I've broken a couple loose with my ingersol-rand 1500lb impact, but even that only works about half the time. The pipe or the starter is the only sure fire method, but the starter makes such a racket and I worry about stripping the flywheel teeth...
Hmm what kind of tq do the Honda's call for? My GM LS2 250ft lb crank bolt spec necessitated me buying the biggest digital torque wrench the Hammer Store had to offer....
I bought a Milwaukee 2767-20 impact and a high-mass 19mm socket for my J35 timing belts. It's worked great for 2 so far, and I have another timing belt to replace in the next few months.
I use a 4' 3/4" breaker bar to reinstall. I have two 10" long 3/4" impact extensions to get outside of the wheel well and rest the extensions on a Jack stand.
It's actually been really useful having the engine sitting there on the stand as a reference while I'm doing the timing belt on the odyssey. I can easily look at where bolts that are a little more hidden while the engine is in the car are and see how it all goes together.
Went to the junkyard yesterday. It'd really been far too long since the last time I'd gone. I really enjoy going to the junkyard.
Right up front was somebody's old TT car. I didn't see any crash damage......
I do greatly appreciate it when someone has already pulled the engine. and it's just laying on the ground. Makes it easy to pull what I need! This is also why I went with the J series: these engines were everywhere in the junkyard!
I got about half of what I wanted. I need to grab a wiring harness, but that's going to take some time to extract from the car and I ran out of time. Shown is the ECU, intake manifold, a valve cover, and some timing belt bits and pieces.
Of course I rushed to put the timing belt parts on the car when I got home :)
In reply to BA5 :
Engine on the ground means 1 of 2 things: they wanted the trans (highly likely considering the reputation of that era of Honda autos) or they found a window in the block after pulling. I've experienced the latter after several hours of meticulous pulling...
In reply to maschinenbau :
ugh, that's gotta suck.
maschinenbau said:In reply to BA5 :
Engine on the ground means 1 of 2 things: they wanted the trans (highly likely considering the reputation of that era of Honda autos) or they found a window in the block after pulling. I've experienced the latter after several hours of meticulous pulling...
Woof that's rough. One of the blocks on the ground definitely had some major chunks taken out of the cylinder liner.
Been spending a bit more time working on the car. I was replying a bit to the 'emotion vs. speed' thread over in the GRM section, and it occurred to me that what I'm really doing here is trying to marry emotion to emotion. I love Honda Preludes, but I'm not necessarily the hugest fan of Honda's 4 cylinder engines. But their v6's? I don't know why I like them so much more than other engines, but I do. And I owned an LS powered car for a while. They just have this smooth, creamy power delivery that's just so good. So let's put here we are trying to put my favorite Honda engine in my favorite Honda car.
Added a few more bits and baubles to the engine.
The oil filter mount is on now, but I need to replace both the sensors on it. Yay! (seriously!) Another trip to the junkyard!
Finally got the coolant manifold attached. I have the EGR valve to go on there, but I'll probably just put a block off plate on there...
I also started looking at the ECU I picked up. Honda loves their immobilizers, but I read that a lot of them just have a chip that you can break off and it'll work.
I cracked mine open, but there's not chip in mine. It has an integrated immobilizer, so I'll have to get a key made and attach it nearby to the ECU. But that's still a little ways off....
Still chugging away on things!
I got the engine pretty well finished up!
It's a pretty nice looking engine. I need to get it down off the engine stand now, though! And I don't have an engine hoist! I'm going to have to rent or borrow one. Or buy one I guess. But I don't anticipate needing it THAT often....
I also bought the last couple of clutch components that I needed. In particular, the friction disk.
So basically I'm trying to frankenstein the Honda engine onto a Subaru transmission. I'm using an Acura Integra flywheel and friction disk with an Impreza friction disk. I need the Impreza friction disk because it has the right spline to attach to the Subaru transmission.
The Impreza friction disk is only 1/4" larger OD than the Acura one. I figured if lady luck was on my side there would be at least 1/8" of clearance around the pressure plate for the friction disk. Unfortunately, it looks like there's right AT 1/8" clearance, so my friction disk is just a hair too large.
So I'm going to have to figure out a way to chuck it up in something and lathe it down just a hair so it fits. Everything else fits perfectly; it's just the OD of the friction disk.
I wasn't too worried about it, but the Subaru release bearing shoudl operate the Acura friction disk no problem.
I've also be working on finishing up the welding for the chassis, so I can actually drop the engine in for good when the time comes. But I'm also taking a couple week hiatus on the project while I do the timing belt on my Pilot and get my red '99 Prelude ready for the SCCA Time Trial up at NCMP towards the end of March!
The engine is looking great. Very interested in your clutch setup, looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
In reply to Number1Gaza :
Honda crank bolt.... that gives me flashbacks. They can be awful.
Unfortunately no pictures, but I have been continuing to work on the car. Mostly right now I'm finishing up all the welding to get it ready for the engine to go back in.
I've been racing the red prelude in the meantime at some time trials. I might bump this just to force myself to go work on it and bit and make some update-worthy progress.
Well, I finished the chassis rework. It's all welded up and everything is in place. I'm going to paint it, but after that it's time to start putting stuff back together.
I tried to get pictures of the chassis modifications, but it's hard to get the full picture and show the correct details in one shot:
I've been struggling to want to complete this project a bit lately, but getting over this hurdle and breathed some new life into the project for me!
So I've been making some more progress on this, although unfortunately I didn't capture some of the biggest updates, which is that I finished the chassis. It's all welded and painted up to my satisfaction. I did get a couple of pictures of the inside, which I painted and trimmed with some edging from McMaster.
A before picture and cleaning it up:
All painted up:
And all trimmed up:
I think it'll look good with an engine in there...
A brief interlude for something a little different.
When I was kid I used to build models all the time. I really enjoyed it up through my teenage years. I was never fantastic at it, but I made some pretty decent models over the years.
I can't remember how, but a number of years back I stumbled on a model of the ship from an old PlayStation game called Raystorm (anyone else play that? Just me?).
I really loved that game. Well, I found out that there was a pretty nice model of it made:
I actually bought the model back in 2018! I wanted to do a really bang up job on it. I've worked on it off and on over the past 4 years, and finally put in the effort to finish it out! It turned out maybe ~15% worse than I was going for, but I'm really happy with how it came out.
It lives on my desk at work now.
I've also bought a used wiring harness:
and a new lower timing belt cover:
I'm going to go back and clean it all up, but I fitted the wiring harness to the car to make sure everything looks right:
So at this point I just have a couple of sensors that I need to get from the junkyard to finish this guy up. Either way, it needs to *actually* come down off the engine stand now so I can reattach it to the transmission and stick it back in the car.
love seeing this wacky build on page 1
So this had been a long time coming since I knew I would eventually need something to get the engine down off the engine stand. So I bought myself a harbor freight engine hoist.
It's really a pretty nice item. And it made getting the engine down a piece of cake! There was a little bit of a quirk to work around, which was that the legs of the crane made it so I couldn't get quite centered over the engine
I wound up putting the legs over the engine stand, lifting the engine off, then I was able to pull the engine stand out from under it. Sounds sketchy, but it really wasn't at all.
I got the engine down, but unfortunately I only took this picture, which was before I put it on the little furniture dolly I rigged up to hold the engine.
I spent some time cleaning up some brackets and adapters I've made. It's a wonder how much a little time with a bench grinder and a wire wheel can improve the aesthetics of fabricated parts.
And cleaning up the transmission adapters:
I went to the junk yard and picked up a bunch of stuff!
So luckily for me, the way Honda does their electronic throttle bodies is that they have a normal throttle pedal with a cable that goes to a sensor (thing to the left of the throttle body in the above picture). I know a lot of other makes have the sensor integrated into the pedal assembly. But this way I can just use the existing pedal and cable. I'll just mount the sensor under the hood and plug the existing throttle cable into it. The wiring harness i picked up has the plug for the sensor integrated into it (the plug that's sitting on top of the coils in the above picture). I'll just have to splice in some wires so that I can run it all the way up front under the hood where the sensor will be located. Otherwise all the wiring will be stock and should be pretty reliable/plug'n'play.
Sweet!
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