My Hoopty

[conozo]

Car looks new again for the 5th time. Good job.

[Dr_Snooz]

Some new developments on trim rehabilitation.

Your Guide to Trim Restoration (3geez.com)

[Dr_Snooz]

Front plastic all looks shabby again.



Headlight surrounds and corner lights are oxidized and faded.













The blinkers are similarly degraded and hazy. The fog lights are a horror movie.






It's all kinda underwhelming again.

There is still Maaco overspray on the headlight surrounds. Say what you want about Maaco, but this paint job is 11 years old now. It's failing in a lot of places, but it STILL looks better than the blown our clear-coat mess it covered.

[Dr_Snooz]

On my first San Jose run, I scored a relatively new corner light for one side of the car. I came home and found a new corner light for the other side on eBay. Yay for eBay!!




They aren't a perfect match. In fact, all the front headlight trim is a calico patchwork of colors that have faded in different ways.

[Dr_Snooz]

If someone wants to buy these new blinkers on eBay, it will remove the temptation for me to buy them.

NEW 86-89 Honda Accord LXI SEI Front BUMPER Turn Signal Marker LEFT& RIGHT | eBay

Thank you!

Anyway, I'm going to try the same stuff you'd use for a hazy headlight to see if I can breathe some new life into these old pieces. I'm not building a Concours car and whatever I do is still going to be subject to stone chips and sun and all the other hazards of my daily commute. I'm not looking for perfection. I only want to keep my car from looking so shabby it bums me out.

So I'm using Meguiar's Headlight Restoration Kit...




...followed by their Headlight Coating spray to keep things from turning hazy again. You have to re-apply it yearly, but it beats pulling everything apart again to restore it.




Here is a blinker before and after.




Call it good enough.

I worked on the corner light and it's close enough to matching also.

[Dr_Snooz]

Car looks new again for the 5th time. Good job.

I know right? ROFL! That's how it goes if you're going to keep driving it. You can lock it in a warehouse like a time capsule and keep it looking new that way, or keep fixing it up as you go along.

[Dr_Snooz]

I'm not sure what to do about the headlight eyebrows. The one is really bad. I'd like to use paint, but I worry it will look odd. Maybe I'll get some sacrificial pieces from the yard and play around with them.

The rubberized filler that rounded out this chrome piece on the front grille has long since crumbled to dust and blown away.




I'm tempted to fill it in with Alex Plus silicone caulk and paint it. It's not UV resistant at all, but maybe the paint will preserve it.

Anyone have any ideas for finishing this piece out?

[Dr_Snooz]

I yanked all those crummy plastic retaining clips from the front fender liners. M6x1 threaded inserts fit nicely when you drill out the existing holes to 3/8". I used aluminum inserts with stainless countersink bolts to eliminate rust. Then I used 3/8" bonded sealing washers, like you'd use for screwing down a metal roof.

Here are the sizes for reference.




Hardware installed. I painted the screw holes with some terrible rattle can paint I have here. It's black because... meh.




All finished.




I'll paint the screws later but even if I don't it's still better than those stupid clips.

[Dr_Snooz]

Gee. Do you think this might explain my clutch chatter?

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[conozo]

Pretty awesome clutch fail there. Can't imagine how that felt driving.

[Oldblueaccord]

I think what ever that style is they all do that pretty quick.

[Dr_Snooz]

Pretty awesome clutch fail there. Can't imagine how that felt driving.

The clutch engagement was not consistent. If I wasn't very careful, the clutch would bang hard when it did engage. Reverse always ground into gear. I couldn't figure out if my clutch fork was failing or what was going on, but this explains it. That's a 60k mile clutch that completely failed.

The new one I have here from O'Reilly is the exact same kind, and does not match the picture I ordered on their website.

It's going back and I'm buying an Exedy.

[Oldblueaccord]

That last exedy I had went 220k I think on mine..downshifting all the time. I dont know if there made the same anymore. I got a pile of old parts ill dig thru.

[ShiRen]

The clutch engagement was not consistent. If I wasn't very careful, the clutch would bang hard when it did engage. Reverse always ground into gear. I couldn't figure out if my clutch fork was failing or what was going on, but this explains it. That's a 60k mile clutch that completely failed.

The new one I have here from O'Reilly is the exact same kind, and does not match the picture I ordered on their website.

It's going back and I'm buying an Exedy.

Do you put it in a forward gear before going into reverse. Mine will always grind if I don't stop the trans from free wheeling.

[Dr_Snooz]

The Exedy doesn't fit right. The pressure plate won't nest nicely into the flywheel. It goes in a little, then wedges and gets stuck. It's more like a press fit, which means the clutch isn't going going to release if I put it back together this way. I'll have to pull it out and grind some material off of it to get it to work. That's right. Just like that dumb CV axle that wasn't made right and I had to grind material off of it, I have another precision balanced piece I'll have to grind down in my yard by hand because no one is capable of doing anything properly anymore.

Why does everything suck so much now? I guess I should be happy I can get parts at all, right?

[ShiRen]

Does the clutch seem like the right size otherwise? I don't know what other part they would get it mixed with. Maybe its your flywheel to blame... you know the last clutch didn't fit right either.

[Oldblueaccord]

Disc seems to measure 214 mm or 8 7/16 inches..

[Dr_Snooz]

It could be the flywheel. I don't remember the brand I bought. The old pressure plate fits it nicely, but this new one has a lot more material around the outside. It's easier to grind the pressure plate than to pull the flywheel and wait another week while the machine shop sits on it, then charges me another $65.

[Oldblueaccord]

I got 3? before I got a decent flywheel. That one above is the original flywheel as far as I know. Ill try and find my metric tape today and get some good old fashion MM measurements.

[Dr_Snooz]

Disc seems to measure 214 mm or 8 7/16 inches..

The clutch disc fits fine. It's the pressure plate that binds.

I got 3? before I got a decent flywheel. That one above is the original flywheel as far as I know. Ill try and find my metric tape today and get some good old fashion MM measurements.

How do you screw up a flywheel?

[Oldblueaccord]

I know one the pressure plate wouldn't go over the pins they were indexed wrong and I think the 2nd was the bolt pattern was off. The original one was cut down to far already.

[Dr_Snooz]

You're right. It was the pins. I pulled it back apart and inspected it and everything seems to work fine. I wasn't sure the first time because the whole thing kept wobbling around and not seating nicely. It wasn't anything like the old one, so I assumed the worst. It's in again and seems to have a nice pedal feel. It's so much thicker that my cable is now at the end of its adjustment range though.

If I can get some time this week, I'll fill it and go for a test drive.

[Dr_Snooz]

In the meantime, I'm having fun geeking out with my Nutsert installer. It's utter crap, but works, so I deal with it.

[Oldblueaccord]

Cool glad it worked out.

[Dr_Snooz]

Well the transplant was successful. I have a slight gear whine in 1st and some clutch shudder, which is probably the silicone grease I used on the input shaft slinging onto the clutch surface. Duh. It will burn off I hope.

Oh, and it won't go into gear when it's warmed up.

I'm a little flummoxed on that last bit. The clutch isn't releasing fully, somehow, which makes it not go into gear. Clutch adjustment doesn't seem to have any effect on it. I pulled everything apart a second time to check the movement of the clutch plate on the input shaft, which is smooth when it's vertical, but hangs up if it isn't. I'm not really sure what's going on with it, but I'm going to have to deal with it for the time being. I need to get the engine rebuilt in the Gold Car so I don't have a 13 MPG truck as my only backup vehicle. Once that's done I can resume tinkering with the Red Car. Fortunately, the old trans is a good core that I can rebuild if needed.