Another 1st gen Accord: 1977

[79cord]

Some progress.


Welded the plenum holes, seam-sealed the front cowl panel seam & painted, followed by the application of more bitumen sound-deadener from a tin.



Painted the rust free under panels.



Here's the state of the front fenders once I ground out the cracking fiberglass & body filler.



So some metal bashing ensued to make a new lower corner; though the thin metal did warp about as I welded it so some filler is still required.

At the top corner the shapes are a bit more complex & faults more obvious; so after drilling out the spot welds to remove the corner reinforcement I welded the holes closed since they were small & widely dispersed.

Now for the other side....

[2ndGenGuy]

Sweet man! Good progress. Bodywork is what most people seem to like to do least. But you are definitely not afraid to jump right into it! Gotta stay on top of these cars.

[speedpenguin]

This is very impressive. (Subscribed)

[Daddy]

Wow great deal! very thorough in your details too!

[Ichiban]

What kind of welding setup do you have? I've found that the weld will shrink as it cools, so what I do is hammer and dolly each weld to stretch it back out flat, and the panel returns to it's original shape. If the metal begins to work harden, simply warm it red with a propane torch, allow to cool slowly and continue beating it.

[79cord]

Welding with a 130amp MIG welder & 0.8mm wire.
Front panels seem to be 0.8mm thick.
Unfortunately not great access for much reshaping since I didn't separate off the rear edge reinforcing close-out panel... though I have had a go with a little propane bottle torch where possible...
Especially required for the other side where I tried welding in a patch to retain the original front & rear formed edges rather than making up a complete section ( rust reached further up & I didn't want to affect door gap), so warpage was even more pronounced.
Winter cold & rain here has slowed me up.

Should really strip out some filler from minor dent repairs to the front corner of left guard too. Still looks good but doesn't feel quite right. White hides imperfections well...
Not well enough for other dubious shapes behind left door but I'd rather leave those for the moment.
Also want to wait on applying filler until panels on car so it doesn't crack in the usual battle to get them fitting nicely.
My '75 Lancia's expensive factory 3mm door gaps has me hating Honda's generous gaps of the period.

I also found I have an old tin of '77 Accord white I was given with my S600 basketcase.... hope it's still good.

[79cord]

Time for an update!

The tin of paint I had wasn't a great match so took the cowl grille/vent cover to an auto-paint shop for matching in automotive acrylic paint.

The fenders in primer: the left side had a few subtle professional semi-repaired dents left in it after the bumper had obviously been pushed in to it.



Inspite of relatively minimal repairs getting the fit and panel gaps correct after things were painted still took some effort and a several tries!
I also cleaned and painted the hinge areas white since though thoroughly primed, Honda's colour application was sparse there: only painted once all panels were attached.

The bonnet needed a little work on a small dent on the left side of the raised area; I tried to push it out as much as possible first but access was limited by reinforcements, so some filler was needed, whilst spray primer/filler was used to fill minor hail (?) damage scattered over the panel & surface rust around the bonnet emblem.


I never noticed before: '76-78 emblem on left, '79-81 on right!

Both still need their cracked & dull clear red logo backgrounds repainted.

Repainted the Grille; Previously it looked to be a metallic dark grey, Unless that was just from sun exposure?, with slight overspray from painting the central grille surround silver also covering the central grille grid (probably factory) that had then been gone over by hand! The painted portions of the end chrome pieces also badly needed painting. Explains why '79 & on grilles continued the full car width with separate new chrome pieces.

Now in satin black...though it polished up a bit more than anticipated removing imperfections.

Sorry I don't have any painted & assembled front photos yet. There's a sick Integra in the way.

The roof paint has also polished up reasonably but betrays minor hail dents & terribly miss-matched touch-up paint used along the roof weld-channels.

Rear hatch also polished up ok, though the lower half has previously been repainted, probably from fairly typical surface rust under the window rubber. And scraping the black paint(!) the owner had applied along the inside sides was a pain! Equivalent to polishing the exhaust stains from the right side hatch gutters. Found a tiny bit of body rust just below the left hatch hinge also.

This is about the extent of rust in the doors!

The left side already thoroughly attended to previously, (though with terrible paint). I used a metal filler on the right side & cleaned & painted the inside of the door (revealing that the right door glass has been broken & replaced before).

Surface rust under the mirror mount had been attended to before (again with terrible paint, & note the extreme rearward mirror location of '76-77 Accords) so I figured I may as well primer/fill slight door dings while I was at it.

[2ndGenGuy]

That's funny about those emblems. The Honda badge just kept getting bigger and bigger, and now the H is huge. But that's how you know it's a Honda! Great update! Get pics of the finished product when you get a chance!

[79cord]

Polished the paint, new & old so its now shiny enough to show up my '79 apart from its dowdy & slightly rusty wheels.



I also painted the roof weld channels to eliminate previous miss-matched touch-ups, happy to leave off the shrunken original rubber trims that usually fill them so I can see any impending trouble coming, rust not uncommon there.


The window surrounds are now dark grey under the roof gutters & around door frame. The (surface) rusty window trims had faded from dark grey to silver, I chickened out of an idea to paint them in silver so they are now somewhere in between. (My small hobby airbrush & compressor has proved surprisingly usefull for these little jobs !)



The door is still not perfect but much better, and has its proper '77-8 mirror after I cut a $1 mirror glass to fit the housing with glass-cutter, pliers & sandpaper.


Rear wiper & washer are now giving problems though: Pump operates but cannot generate ANY pressure. While switch & wiper motor works when tested on my Prelude but not on the Accord so I suspect the wiring through the hatch. Front wipers also aggravating me by not parking at the bottom of their travel.


Oh I also found some '81 Accord plastic front wheelhouse liners to hopefully reduce the likelyhood of the panels rusting again.. The fitted easily with after drilling two small holes near the strut tower to wire them onto, the '77s not having the factory mounting holes my '79 had. I also had to drill new holes in the liner to suit the mountings of the slightly smaller '77 front mudflaps.


Unfortunately the otherwise good tyres are suspect with cracks in the sidewall but I took it for a little drive which reminded me how loud its engine noise is without the extra firewall/cowl insulation of tne '79... & how lock-prone the rear drums are when you jump on the brakes sharply (too soft brake linings fitted ?).

Not sure what to do yet about side trims since I'm missing left rear & door side trims are starting to bubble with rusty steel reinforcement within the rubber as my '79 had. Cut apart to attempt de-rust or replace with generic aftermarket trims?

I've bought some generic aftermarket trims for the moment but would like to space them out a bit further from the body since the bodies upper crease still protrudes out further than the trims (like the originals) negating their usefulness. I'll have to get some strips of 6mm(?) plastic cut to achieve that.

[eduardo i.]

Nice car, its very instpiring to see a restoration job like that.What paint brand did you use?

[SZfiftyfour]

Looks pretty damn good. Im lovin the white on tan color combo too.

[2ndGenGuy]

I've got an occasional issue with my wipers not parking as well. I have no idea how they even work where they stop at the same spot. Some effin' magic I guess. Most of the time they're ok though. It's annoying when you set the wipers on the intermittent, and they stop half way down the window, then stop at 3/4 then stop in some other random spot ugh...

Car is looking great though man. The window frames look good that color actually. The paint polish came out great too! Nice work!

[79cord]

I guess we must do some research on wiper motors...

Paint is Standox Automotive Acrylic, Acrylics generally quick drying, an advantage when painting outside... but perhaps making it harder to get a perfect finish "off the gun" so needing more polishing afterward to get nice... & I guess might not survive as well as some finishes without being looked after.

[Hazwan]

I suck at explaining things but heres what the wiper motor looks like inside


Basically how they work is they stop moving when the contact stopped umm... contacting and mine have the same issues with them stopping at the random place. I tried cleaning them up but one of the contacts broke

And heres me with my OCD to keep things clean cleaning them up before I put them back together again





Anyway 79cord, that paint looks nice!

[79cord]

Goodness it has been a while but it's update time!

Like the front bumper indicator lamp housing the Rear lamp housings were also suffering from sun exposure -especially reversing lamps whose clear lenses didn't block as much light & were thinly painted, so were starting to crumble & no longer able to retain their globes. So the rear lamps were dis-assembled and the remains of their housings glued back togeather, before being thoroughly filled & painted.

I also removed the rear bumper to repaint areas behind that were leaving stains from surface rust ( & fill hole of removed rear wiper while at it)... Unfortunately I placed the bumper trims in the boot and they were MELTED by the summer sun! I suppose I'll have to replace these now and fit a rigid luggage cover from a later Accord. Apparently a vinyl one was sometimes offered as an accessory for these early examples before the rigid one was made standard for our market in '78.

Regarding the cars body side trims,
for the moment I've bought some adhesive generic aftermarket trims of a similar size to the original for the moment but wanted to space them out a bit further from the body since the bodies upper crease still protrudes out further than the trims negating their usefulness. '80-81 Accords received different, thicker trims for some markets but ours only became deeper & ribbed. I had some strips of 10mm thick plastic cut; tapered away at the front tip of the doors to allow for their opening, and used these behind the trims.


I also had to do something about the cracked engine support stay -from firewall to head, but had no success sourcing replacements from Honda or aftermarket parts suppliers, and most Accord seem to suffer the same problem. I had some urethane automotive windscreen adhesive so used that to fill a cracked example, (before covering in plastic food wrap pulled tight for minimal wrinkles & sandwiched by oversized washers to give a reasonable appearance once adhesive had set & these were removed).

I also had to replace the gearshift selector oil seal. (Similarly had no luck sourcing until I gave up & asked aftermarket suppliers about early Civic parts -Honda being even less useful.)

Removing the shift linkage from the gearbox proved a minor pain by being retained by a stubborn little pin that I finally forced out with an 8mm bolt through a large nut by a small g-clamp. I should have replaced it by a simple nut and bolt as Honda did for my '79. Similarly I should have sourced a '79 & on magnetic gearbox drain bolt.

Anyway I FINALLY got around to getting the car back on the road with limited-use Classic/Historic registration so here are some more pictures! (click larger)





The car certainly feels healthy & shows up my well-used beige '79 example in some areas like a crisp shift linkage (though syncromesh easy to beat), and the engine even feels more lively & elastic without the later upper-firewall/under-plenumn sound insulation and the later cars emphasized torque, even though later 1602cc engine has shorter stroke so "should" rev easier.

Would like to paint wheels - possibly darker grey like early Civic? I've fitted some later Accord trim-rings.

[2ndGenGuy]

Wow. She is a beauty! Nice work, and I love how your dogbone mount turned out with the filled poly! Looks great!

[eduardo i.]

Nice accord, alot of picture would be nice

Hey, is the 77 grill different from the 79 or is it just the picture? Also My 80 accord brought wheelhouse liners; perhaps it was from 80 to 81?

[79cord]

Yes the '76-78 grille is quite different from '79-81 (we only ever received those two types here), the early grille having more curvature when viewed from the side with deeper 'tunnels' to the more recessed lights, and only reaches to the middle of the outer lights, with the ends incorporated into different chrome side pieces which were partly painted black, later grille was full width. The silver outline around the central grille opening was just painted on, where later was fitted with a cast metal chrome piece. The grille "mesh" spacing was also revised & a thicker horizontal bar added to the middle of the later grille.

The grilles & different front fenders were all interchangeable between early & late , indeed according to some the later fenders would even be fitted by Honda under "Warranty" when some US owners of early examples found their fenders starting to rust within 3? years! I've seen too many Accords about with one of each style fitted (& recessed light brackets) though.
Not sure about the interchange ability of the front valance. Radiator support & lower member under the radiator was revised for '79, & radiator & rad. mountings revised again for '81.

Not sure when plastic fender liners were introduced to other markets but I've only seen them on '81's here... though my '79's had all the mounting holes to be able to fit one up!

More photos to come, should get some more with the '79 & with a white '81 hatch in the local club soon also :
'79 & friends '81

[openpulse]

Hi 79cord, the new accord looks very nice! And the coupe does have it's looks!
Question, did you buy the car for $150? If so, looks like a nice deal!

Congrats!


PS: Does the interior smell right?

[79cord]

Out & about with the local Honda club


Unfortunately that white '81 in the last picture didn't come along this time.

Also took it along to when I went to the Ballarat swap meet 100km? away (for car & motor bike bits; BIG- but spread out, estimated 15km of walking & walked 2 1/2 times), where I was hoping to get some '67-8 Honda CD90 bits.... bought another '76-8 side mirror & foolishly another old CT90...with another 3 ct90 parts bikes/frames. Fitted 1 or 2 in the '79 before but these will be delivered by a friend.
One of the heater hoses started spraying coolant about from a hole by the hose clamp so had to be shortened at a friends house before I left, but otherwise behaved well. Gearshift lever does sometimes "sizzle" with audible vibrations at speed unlike my '79's loose, worn linkage. And there is wind noise on the drives side from either the door or window seal. Since there were glass fragments in the door to suggest the glass had been replaced so maybe I should try adjusting its fit slightly.

[HON-DUH]

Man, I love these cars...

[79cord]

Here's that 1967 Honda CT90 bought at the swapmeet mentioned above.




and some more with the '79

[2ndGenGuy]

You have so many toys! I want more! About to add a CL-175 to my collection this week.