'99 BB6 "nut and bolt" restoration.

[wurlycorner]

Not seen a plastic rad tank go brittle like that before?

[Vtecmec]

I have, mine did the same thing, genuine Honda too.

[mart609]

Inspiring words

[Ferdie]

So

I loveee this kind of threads!!!!


NICE NICE NICE

[BlackShadow]

Thanks for the kind words guys. Knowing that people take an interest in this work I'm doing, makes it all worth while.

I was shocked at the rad coming apart the way it did, especially since it looked fine from the outside. The really flaky part was inside the hose so I guess I wouldn't have seen it without taking the hose off. Two of my friends, one with a Civic, another with an Integra both had the plastic tops of their radiators blow off where they are crimped together. Just a heads up I guess.. I don't want it to happen to any of you.


I have a Mishimoto rad and shroud on order. I should have it sometime next week.


I was working on more polishing of bits and pieces last night:

This is the power steering pump reservoir bracket. It is badly corroded... probably the worst I've seen on the car so far. I began scraping it down, but some areas are pitted pretty bad. I will most likely ceramicoat this, along with the other brackets.



Before:



After:

[nucleustylzlude]

I can appreciate the efforts of polishing parts and the finish you get, but how sustainable is it to keep it that way? Surely it's just more prone to corrosion?

[wurlycorner]

First engine I re-built when I was 17 (on my Sunny) I went to town cleaning/polishing stuff up beautifully and clear-coat engine lacquered everything hoping that would sustain it.

It didn't

Hope you have better luck than that blackshadow

[Edson]

Clean efforts mate !
Sure looks good.
But to maintain this state... good luck !

[BlackShadow]

It's been a few days since my last update. I am not making as much progress as I would like. People and things keep getting in the way.

On Monday, I finally ordered my Type-S pistons, and rings. $495.00 (US) all in.

I was really annoyed by the pricing of Honda parts locally.

Honda Canada:

130511-P5M-013 RING SET, PISTON (STD) (TEIKOKU) $101.28 (EACH). That comes to $405.12! Also, they are apparently "discontinued" in Canada.


South of the border:

13011-P13-004 RING SET, PISTON (STD) (RIKEN) $36.30 That comes to $145.20.

Getting them to ship to Canada is difficult, so you'll have to call around. H-motorsonline was willing to ship to Canada, but they wanted $175 for them. Who am I to quibble? The other US distributors all seem to be locked into some agreement to not sell to Canada (I'm not sure about the UK). I was told it has something to do with "licensing". It probably has more to do with the the Canadian Honda parts racketeers.. oops! I meant Canadian Honda Parts distributors, getting their panties in a bunch because everyone was taking advantage of the lower prices in the states. They *****ed that another crew was taking over their turf, and they were losing sales. Now with a blockade, they can proceed to bilk us dry. Well, they can try. I'd put a Ford motor in my lude before I'd pay them $400 for a set of rings that I know are being sold for $150 somewhere else!

H-motorsonline is not bad to deal with. The on the phone ordering is a bit of a throw back to the old days though. I'm sure they have their reasons for doing things that way, but it does seem to take longer, and I was worried something would get lost in translation. I like the personal touch of actually talking to someone, but on the other hand, if I know what I want, I prefer to go get it myself, rather than tie someone up on the phone.


I went back to rust removal this week. I decided that since I chewed up a lot of the rubberized undercoating, I would remove the rest of it and replace it all with fresh seam sealer and rubberized undercoating from 3M. The problem is getting that rubberized undercoating off. My solution was one of these:



For those who don't know what it is, it's a needle scaler. How it works is those needles on the end basically go nuts when you pull the trigger. They vibrate like mad and dislodge rust, scale, paint and anything else you want to remove. Don't use it on body panels, as it is an impact tool. It will leave little dings in the surface. I picked mine up from Princess Auto on sale for $24.99.

This was about half an hours worth of work. As you can see the surface is bare metal but not smooth. If you push hard enough on one of these while working with sheet metal, you can poke through it. Again, DON'T use it on exterior body panels!



Another use I found for my needle scaler was my steering knuckles. These are heavily corroded. There is a picture of them somewhere, possibly in this thread. The picture isn't the best, but the shiny area is 100% bare metal. That was around 60-90 seconds of work.



With that type of progress, I should be done and ready to paint my wheel wells, right? Absolutely! Unfortunately, my compressor decided it was time to retire. No air = no needle scaler. F$*^!!! So I am faced with a choice. Scrape it off by hand, or bite the bullet and buy another compressor.

Soapbox:

Those of you who have done builds before know all about this. You've been there, done that. For those who haven't; you will run into this stuff. I don't care how prepared you are. I have planned this down to the last detail and I'm still running into walls. Fortunately, most of them I saw coming with enough time to brace for impact (or to grab my wallet).
I don't mean this to discourage anyone. The amount of problems you encounter is probably about 75% up to you. If you dive in without the proper tools, without the knowledge, without the money, without the planning, it will eat you alive. The car will still be a vicious b!tch and fight you every step of the way, BUT the 25% resistance you get from the car will be on top of the 75% you brought on yourself. The more prepared you are for the project, the more likely you are to complete it.

I know all of this sounds super boring. Researching? Reading? Not spending every minute in the garage? Lame right? It's not fun...it's boring... it's porridge, when you want chocolate cake. Trust me, on something like this, if you don't eat your porridge, the chocolate cake you get, will come with rocks in it.

[wurlycorner]

Needle guns are great for removing built up rust etc. Rather aggressive for car body panels though as you say...