Taking some of the motor apart to go through the bottom end. Going to keep the rods and pistons in their bores and remove the crank.

Because of my oil issues, I am making a simple baffle....just a flat plate.


I laid the pan flat and marked where the fluid levels were just for reference.







I bolted the pan and the pump to the crank bearing cap to start making a template for the baffle

















And the final piece was cut from aluminum.....I think around .080". Just whatever I could find in the garage really.









The speed sensor seems to work so far. I have only tested it with the car on jackstands, but it seems to register with the abs ring ok. Initial setting of 300% on the speedohealer has it in range, I'll have to fine tune it was I can get the car driving again.




Made a clutch stop since its using a hydraulic throwout and the manufacturer recommends it. You can make something to work inside the oem clutch pedal assembly, or you can make a stop pad that sits on the firewall. I opted for a stop in the pedal assembly. I made a "U" tab to try and help against the flex. I use a honda transmission bolt and the stop is adjustable.

Clutchmasters recommends it to be .25" passed the point of when the initial clutch disc release. You can find this by trying to spin the driveshaft by hand, and having a second person help with noting the clutch pedal position.

 

Here are some of the disassembled pics. The motor has about 115,000 miles at this point. The original turbo setup went on around 40,000 miles. And I have been on ethanol for maybe 20,000 miles.
















Didn't find anything much with the pistons or cylinder walls. The minor visible scratches that are there do not catch a fingernail. I did find some marks on a couple bearings. These were deep enough to catch a fingernail, but only seemed to wear on the top coating of the bearing. The crank journals were unaffected.






Rod #2 has a large wear mark





Thrust bearings didn't look too bad. Some wear on the top of the picture, but the crank endplay was well in spec. Either way these will be replaced. I have bypassed the clutch to start the car since I've owned it (about 30,000 miles).







Some more of the rod bearing pics. This was initially done with the motor in the car. I had to be careful to position the crank to not contact the rod.


















Also remade my hanger to be all bar instead of a mix of plate and bar. Mainly just for aesthetics.









Welding the bottom side, but keeping it bolted in so it doesn't move as much when welding.

 

Very cool and nice to see you're still around and modding things. Mine has turned into a long project that I hope will be done soon.

 

Hopefully I will always be working on a Honda. I know what you mean with long projects. One of the biggest disappointments with this project is receiving new parts that don't work quite right. Over half of the components I've bought needed modifying or I just didn't trust using them. Part of the grind I suppose. It can be mentally exhausting.

Would be nice to see your progression with the t56 etc. I kind of wish I went that route sometimes.

 

More driveline progress. I know that driveshaft angles on an IRS car may not be as important than on a solid rear axle, but I'd figure I'd try and get it close.

The 8.8 kit offsets the rear end horizontally. I did not measure the difference, but the pinion center is probably around 1"-2" offset to the right/passenger side. This will create its own driveshaft angle, and you really cannot change this unless you get a different mount and axle lengths. I was able to work the vertical angle with shims and modifying the rear mounting points of the diff mount.....ended up "moving" the holes up about half an inch. I also spaced the rear mount of the transmission downward about .75".

My angle from the output shaft of the transmission to the pinion flange was 6.5° (spacers were needed to drop the front of the rear end to match the angle of the motor/trans...they were roughly .5"-.75" thick). Recommended angles are from .5° to 3°. I have zero experience with this and is just what I have read online to be the norm. You do not want 0° (the needle bearings in the u-joints won't move around).

Here are the parts I used and some driveshaft angle vs. offset.




And just a generic drawing to help me narrow down spacer thickness and angles. On this drawing I am just rotating the motor/trans down at the trans mount, and the rear end is rotating with the rear mount as the center point. The red circles are fixed points and the green boxes are the approximate area where I will be adjusting spacer thickness.






I guess this brings me to the rear end mount. In addition to cutting and welding the rear mount holes, I had to cut one of the front "legs" of the mount to square things up. The first rear end I bought was from the junkyard, and when tightened to the rear mount, there was a gap on one side of about .040". I later bought a new carrier housing from Ford and it was the same. The vendor basically said every housing is different and eventually offered to build a new one if I sent my rear end to him. I declined and fixed it myself.















And the new housing, same issue.








Rear end of the mount has contact with the housing. Instead of clearancing the mount (in which there is plenty of space to do so), I have to clearance the rear housing. Its not a big deal as there are other places the housing needs to be trimmed, but for a $1k mount I feel it should have been addressed. Some of the welds and lack of welds bothered me. It will work, but the quality just isn't there.







I added some welds to this collar. There were only a couple of 3/4" welds on it. This is the mounting point to the diff mounts. The tube under and to the right has been welded almost all the way around on the other side (a quarter inch of weld is "missing" and not due to accessibility).




Finished and repainted








Here is the rear end being assembled. This is also another new thing for me. I bought some steel bar and plate to make a spreader. It still needs the lower bar, but it works at this point....I'll make the lower bar in the future. The case needs to be pulled apart .030" when final shimming the differential.




I believe I started with a pinion shim of .030". I bought 2 bearings so I could clearance one of them a little bit so it slides on the pinion. Otherwise I would have to pull and press them on with every change. I also used a shim style solid spacer instead of the crush spacer. I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing. Hopefully there aren't any issues long term. Once the shim/pinion preload were set, I shimmed the carrier to fit snug. The carrier preload will be added when I get closer on the pattern.

Initial marking of the ring gear. The pattern sits a little high on the tooth, and maybe a little close to the inside.




Coast side




The only changed for the second try was a thicker pinion shim, pushing the pinion into the ring gear more. The pattern seemed to come out decent...maybe a touch too deep?
The third try I took about .0015 out of the pinion shim and left it there. Carrier was then pulled and the carrier preload shims were put in. Everything was torqued and then pattern and backlash were checked one last time.












After installing the axle stubs, I found the passenger side to be a bit loose. Eventually found that the axle bearings were in too deep....and not even consistent left to right. The differential had to be pulled back out again so I could push the bearings out from the inside. I tried to make a tool to pull them, but it ended up bending instead of moving the bearing.









And pushed back out so the axles engage them

 

Very cool man. You are really thorough just as myself and thus part of the reason why my build is taking so long. LOL

Really enjoy reading through your progress.

 

Good stuff. Did you have to cut into the shifter area with the fb cd009 kit? Is that the X performance 8.8 setup?

 

Yes, it is a Xperformance kit. In my opinion though, none of the vendors look into the driveshaft angles with their kits. I would make all mounting points adjustable so driveshaft angles can be lined up correctly.


And I don't know if full-blown's shifter works. I set it up on the transmission out of the car and relayed the issues I had to full-blown....and they only responded to one issue (out of about 5 total). And their fix to the one issue didn't work.

The problem with their shifter is it has a bit of play. It has almost 1/16th" of play in the pivot ball, and maybe .040" in the 5th/6th/reverse lockout design (its an aluminum sleeve that slides along the shift lever).











The shifter uses a set screw (rougly 8mm diameter) to set the guide to shift into 5th/6th gears. It rides on the aluminum cylinder (yeah the one that has play in it) to "guide" the shifter. There is not near enough of a flat surface to ride on this set screw (a semicircle flat spot that is .5" long and .13" at its tallest point). The set screw starting to shave the aluminum of the lockout cylinder.

The lockout is important because you can go too far to the right and miss 5th and 6th gears, even shifting casually.





And the only thing they return-messaged me about was the set screw. And they sent a replacement set screw with an even smaller riding area. The bottom edge of the shifter ended up cutting into the plastic of the new set screw.











I ended up buying a serial nine shifter. It seems a lot simpler, has a steel on steel guide plate, and it is a lot tighter. With it set to be the furthest forward (there are 4 positions that change fwd/back location) there is about 3/8" space from the shifter to the metal in the car (In 4th gear). I can get a pic over the next couple days.

 

Taking some pieces out of the engine bay and mounting them behind the fenders. I moved the EPS box to the driver side. Seemed to make sense since the fusebox that supplies power to it is already there. And the run of wires are shorter because the connectors on the steering rack favor the driver side as well. I had to extend a few wires on the center connector from the passenger kick panel to the driver fender area.


I cut open this raised area to use a grommet and run my wires through.








I had to move the cruise control module a little forward so I could mount the plate that would hold the EPS module and the fusebox.











Getting the components mounted so I could start planning the wires out.








Trying to use terminals instead of soldering pigtails when I can. I bought a japanese crimp tool to crimp these, but go figure, my ebay cheap crimper seems to work better and more consistent on terminals this small.








This is the driver side harness. Contains everything from the main ABS connector, headlight connectors, wiper relay.






This is the middle connector for the EPS box. You can find the opposite side of the connector on a lot of mid-90s hondas. A lot of civics and integras use them on the shock tower areas. So I just used that and ran the small amount of wires to the driver's side.






Pretty much complete. Even with the modules installed, there is enough room for the depth of the sidemarker light.







Adding things over the years. From alarm wiring to adding sensors/modules to the AEM ecm, it was getting a bit cluttered.





I prewired the evap and secondary air modules (I plug them in every 2 years to pass emissions) to one of these connectors. I don't have new ecu terminals, so I ended up just using pigtails and adding on. Usually I try to solder, then tape, then heatshrink the wire. I have found if you just use heat-shrink, the wires can sometimes poke through.






Most of the wires cleaned up in the kick panel.







Also made a plate for the fuel tray in the tank. It was easiest to cut with scissors. I guess I could have attached it to something thicker to help cut it.






Wanted to simplify the oil return for a while. It used to go around the outside of the downpipe, and was maybe 2 feet long. Now it will go over the downpipe. I will have a heat resistant sleeve on it. The downpipe will have its own heatshield around this area.










Driveshaft also came in. Seems to fit fine, probably the last piece needed.

 

Very cool man! Such a nice and clean build. A lot of time and patience going into that wiring for sure.