87 DX Sedan Project Log

[ShiRen]

I know I wont get all the rust, but enough it wont be structural for another 10 years. Im so torn about having a quick beater vs a straight up nice car. Nice car is winning hard now that Ive been dailying it, its such a clean single owner car and runs like a spotted ass ape, its just seen a deer or a few and some salty Missouri roads

Nice car or not, nobody likes losing a race to an old 4 door Honda.

[InAccordance]

I know I wont get all the rust, but enough it wont be structural for another 10 years. Im so torn about having a quick beater vs a straight up nice car. Nice car is winning hard now that Ive been dailying it, its such a clean single owner car and runs like a spotted ass ape, its just seen a deer or a few and some salty Missouri roads

Nice car or not, nobody likes losing a race to an old 4 door Honda.

I'm so quoting that last part.
Mine has been beat up so much over its life to fully repair it would take thousands. I'd just rather make it quick. I just like the fact that it was built in May of 89 which means it was one of that last ones made.
One cool thing is I do have a folder with every service ticket since 1989. One for each time it was taken in for things like oil changes and such. Last one is from 2016. I like having that sort of stuff.

[ShiRen]

I wish mine had a service history, but based on the fact that when I first pulled off the air cleaner to find the choke mechanics wired open, I'm going to guess it was serviced in the driveway for 30 years. Luckily thats the most hillbilly thing I ever found.

Also my plan to fix the rust was literally to sandwich 1" angle iron across the pinch weld and add a litte sheet metal around the filler neck. An old customer didnt pick up his welder so as of yesterday I have a Millermatic 35 for my own garage, so I"ll add a considerable amount of metal to this thing... Surely the weight will be made up for stiffness once I seam weld btis of the chassis right

[InAccordance]

I'm one of the lucky ones I guess, no rot around the gas filler. Pretty common thing in these and preludes.

[Dr_Snooz]

You should post pics of your car for us.

[ShiRen]

It hasn't changed a bit on the outside since the very first pic I posted lol. I will get some later this week for sure. Ive got some parts that will probably be here sometime next week that Ill post. Guess I can snap some pics anyway.

Real quick though... is that dinky little thing on the back of the intake (carb) with the bullet connector the coolant temp sensor for the gauge? I dont have coolant going through my intake and the yel/grn wire isnt hooked up. If thats it I need to relocate it, if its not I need to find it lol

Ive actually done some work to the interior though



Clean on the inside, clapped on the outside
I scream paint job

[InAccordance]

Yes to the dinky thing.
And high five for using an fi valve cover lol. They look so much cleaner than the carb ones.

[Dr_Snooz]

Pretty sweet ride really. Nice and clean with "theft-proofing" on the outside. It's the best of all worlds!

My first car was a '76 Accord with lots of "theft-proofing." It was a true pile, but it never got broken into, and that was at the height of the US car theft epidemic in the '90s. I was at an Iron Maiden concert and some drunk fool broke into a car right next to mine in front of a crowd of people. We all ran off and I wondered what might happen to mine, but it was fine. I could park that thing anywhere. That's the way to do it: nice on the inside, theft-proofing on the outside.

[AC439]

Pretty sweet ride really. Nice and clean with "theft-proofing" on the outside. It's the best of all worlds!

My first car was a '76 Accord with lots of "theft-proofing." It was a true pile, but it never got broken into, and that was at the height of the US car theft epidemic in the '90s. I was at an Iron Maiden concert and some drunk fool broke into a car right next to mine in front of a crowd of people. We all ran off and I wondered what might happen to mine, but it was fine. I could park that thing anywhere. That's the way to do it: nice on the inside, theft-proofing on the outside.

Mine was not only "theft-proofing" but also "wife-proofing". The paint was too ugly before my Rustoleum job and wife refused to ride with me...

[InAccordance]

Haha, my wife hates riding in my car, too loud, too smelly, too rough riding, too ugly, no air conditioning. All good by me lol.

[ShiRen]

I wouldn't know about any wife, but I havent noticed any women flocking to my retirement home on wheels.

Well, I did some wiring today. I wanted DRLs so I decided to run the parking lights with the ignition and while I was in there I wanted to fix Honda's mistake of not using any headlight relays. Good news is the DRLs work, even added a diode so you cant turn the ignition on with the parking light switch, I'm sure this car is easy enough to steal. Bad news is that the headlight switch's workings are an anomaly. You can see my wiring diagram for what I did, I know I didn't do anything super wrong, it must be the way the switch bridges the contacts, maybe I'm missing one little thing. The problem with the way I had them wired up was the low beams did not work, that really stumped me, another problem is the high beam indicator did not turn on. I put an led bulb on the third brake light tonight as well, it did't work at first either, and I'm pretty sure that was because the wires were backwards from the factory (repinned and fixed), so I'm not too surprised about the relays now. Luckily, I totally planned my wiring out and didn't just get super lucky by being able to unplug the wires coming from the switch to the relay and plug them back into the plug going into the fuse box, I'm just that good. I also left a little spot on my bracket for a fog light relay and unpinned the stupid dimmer wire in the clock.

[ShiRen]

Well here's the summary for this weeks adventures:
I got a bunch of leds in... over $150 worth of them. This is about everything excluding the dash lights because I like the incandescent green and they're already bad enough about throwing a glare on the windshield. I got 6 194 whites, 2 194 ambers, 4 1157 whites, 6 1156 whites (and I bought in pairs, but forgot the front blinkers, not that I really care because I got corner lights. I'm actually only missing one because I put one in the third brakelight, it took priority) and one 3022... But also, I found these babies, projector, glass lens, h4 bulb, under $20, oh hell yes, h4 bulbs got added to my superbrightleds cart right away and I have no regrets. This became completely necessary because I get up at 5am and drive to work, its sometimes dark when I leave my driveway, I often have foggy windows, and I couldn't turn the halogen headlights on until I have warmed up the car (very rarely do I give myself time) or at least after I'm rolling, but usually after I've stopped to get breakfast or something and have left the car run in the parking lot because I'd probably kill the engine at the stop signs down the road. So, that's why I made drls last week and the leds make sure they're bright and not tri\ying to kill the engine. I haven't put many bulbs in yet because I had a few more parts to gather up like a brake light strobe module and some load resistors so it stops telling me that I have a brake light out, I already changed the blinker relay... i don't remember the part number, if you need it I can go dig it up though.



My msd 6a came in, don't know if I mentioned it in this thread without looking back, but I will update the msd thread later with the install procedure once I actually get around to doing that. It was really ugly when I got it, my shitty wrinkle black paint job looks a tad better, or at least matches the rest of the engine bay. Everything looks good in here, but I didn't really bother to run any tests on it, this old 6a is a little more robust than the digitals and visually it looks new, I just soldered in new wires on it.




Today, I started by breaking my glove box, epoxyed the hinges back together with some washers to hold it. Then I bought the other 3g, its an 89 and has very little rust, I have more sheet metal than I ever imagined I'd ever get to fix this car, among other things like all those golden parts like the headlight motors. Also, this is a Japanese vin car, my main car is a US, they have different distributors, is the Hitachi any better than my TEC? Anyway, I'll be trailering it home tomorrow morning where it will sit in my garage where I will barely touch it because I don't want to put the nicer body panels on my car because a white and brown car is extra ugly. Later today I went to get some groceries aaaand as soon as i pulled into a parking spot I hear a spooooosh. At first I thought I was having a funeral for my 10yo tires, but no, the vacuum cap that I put on the small nipple of the coolant crossover pipe blew. Imagine that. So, I put some duct tape, water, and water wetter in my grocery cart, made a patch and made it down the road to Oreilly's minutes before closing and pulled the coolant temp sensor out of the intake and told them to find me a union and a barb and some 5/16 hose. Hole plugged and now I have a coolant temp sensor that makes contact with water now... although I forgot to ground it, I'll figure that out in the morning.



Hope you didn't think I was joking about the adventures...

[ShiRen]

RIP my water pump. It was raining under my hood today. I got the coolant temp sensor grounded, but I haven't seen it read anything on the gauge yet.

[InAccordance]

Same problem I have, where I dont have the stock intake anymore, I cant find a good place to put the temp sending unit in. I've got it in the thermostat housing since I dont use that particular sensor anymore but it's not long enough to make contact with the coolant there unless there is good pressure like higher rpm. Isn't really anywhere else to put it. Only thing I can think to do is to cut my bypass hose in half and find a T-fitting I can screw it into and clamp the ends of the hose to it.
Something like this but I need to see what size I need: https://www.glowshiftdirect.com/suba...tting-adapter/
What size is that female end on the fitting you got?
Mine only has one wire running to the sensor. It's a yellow/green stripe.

[ShiRen]

I have no idea what size fitting it is, I was in a hurry and I just told the guy behind the counter to grab me a union. I think it fit in an m10x1.0 brake union though, you might be able to translate that, idk if its npt or bspt. the end of the sensor is perfect length for that union, I don't know why its not working unless because the coolant just dead heads there there isn't really any pressure and I didn't grab it to see how hot it was, couldn't rev the engine either because of the shower of rusty water coming from the driver side of the engine compartment. I'm not sure what bypass hose you have, I might have one too, I think there's a 5/8 heater hose running from the nipple by the pump on the crossover tube to the t stat housing where it used to go through the intake, the sensor is currently on the small nipple under the intake that I think ran directly into the carb. A tee is probably what it needs to have some flow to it, or if it didn't you'd always think it should. Problem now is my sensor is semi permanent on that union now that I soldered a wire to it to ground it, and electrically it should be working

and who the hell is cutting fuel lines and putting barb fittings on them lmao wtf glowshift

[InAccordance]

My bypass is just a length of hose to route the lines from the stock intake. I blocked off one and routed the other two.

lol ikr... I just used that as an example of what I was thinking of. A fitting like that would be perfect because the sensor would stick into the coolant flow so it could read.
Mine does work with the one wire, just not all the time cause the sensor itself doesn't sit in the coolant flow unless there is a good amount of pressure.

[ShiRen]

We probably have a similar bypass, I had one blocked off too and thats where it blew saturday. I think the hose on that bypass would be pretty big, the tee and barbs would be pretty big it might be hard to find a tee that also fits a sensor. Im assuming your sensor is screwed into where that vacuum thermovalve went into the thermostat housing, I thought about putting a sensor there too, maybe itd be easier just to find one thats longer

[InAccordance]

Yea, it's where you said, right next to the bleed screw.
Used a spare fitting I had lying around that happened to fit into the housing and the sensor is screwed into that. Just doesnt stick down far enough.
I think I used 1/2 inch hose to bypass the intake lines.

[ShiRen]

New water pump is in, boy that was fun. I didn't realize all the timing cover bolts had to come out!
Also the union I put in for the coolant temp sensor is stone cold... might be going back to the drawing board with that, maybe find something to fit directly into where the thermovalve goes on the tstat housing and is long enough to reach the coolant

[ShiRen]

There. I think that is a suitable replacement for the black box
Still waiting on a set of bus bars to finish it, but it is wired up and running. Smoothed the idle out some and you can stay in 2nd at a lot lower speed, but not much else difference. My carb causing hesitations doesn't really help it show its merits.

Edit: checked float level and found the reason why it felt like my hesitations got a bit worse. Accel pump is leaking again! Right back around the inside bolt or somewhere around there where you can't see on or off the car. I would like to fix it so I have a good stock carb to keep around, but I'm out of ideas. Guess I'll work on getting that other car picked apart.

[InAccordance]

Extreme energy!!!

[ShiRen]

Battery is +15hp, easily measurable on the but dyno unlike fancy ignition systems

[InAccordance]

Wouldn't know anything about those =P

[ShiRen]

So uh, I cracked my carb. Right on top of the accel pump... no wonder it wasnt working... even after I began sealing it up with jb weld and seal all, because I cant fuck it up any worse than it already is, it still wants to find little holes and leak from the mating surfaces of the accel pump. I have it down to a very small leak and decided to drive it to work today because Ive used all the gas in my truck and the Accord was just filled up before I popped the carb off.

Been working extra hours too so I haven't done much to the car and won't for a little bit, next thing I need to do to it is put a driver side axle in it and thats not very exciting

[InAccordance]

Axles are always exciting