Building my perfect 4th gen. Mint BB1 VTEC with ATR swap

[wurlycorner]

Cleaning up nicely there.

If I were you, I would look very carefully at the power steering pipes before putting the engine back in. At the front, passenger side. They rot there quite badly and they are pretty impossible to replace with the engine in situ.

[hoppi05]

great build/refurb and good luck going forward buddy.

[Jack]

Looks like one of the best shells left I'd say, what are the rear arches like?

I reckon so, yeah. There's a hole on the inner arch on the passenger side but because it's on the inside I should be able to get away with just getting it cut out and welded without affecting the exterior paintwork. There's a couple of bubbles on each arch but they're really minor and won't need attending to for a while yet as I won't be using the car when the salt comes out.

Cleaning up nicely there.

If I were you, I would look very carefully at the power steering pipes before putting the engine back in. At the front, passenger side. They rot there quite badly and they are pretty impossible to replace with the engine in situ.

Cheers for the heads up, I'll have a poke around but don't recall noticing anything too bad. The power steering cooler on the rad support is in a pretty sorry state, but that's easy to replace.

great build/refurb and good luck going forward buddy.

Cheers mate.

[Jack]

Some more progress over the last few days.

Decided to give some bits of the engine bay a lick of paint, Honda's efforts were pretty crap to be honest! Primer showing all over the place and not lacquered. I decided to paint the chassis legs, engine mount cradles and some sections of the strut towers.

Rubbed down ready for primer:





Etch primed:



As you can see I've used a gun attachment, they're about a fiver from Halfords and just clip on to any spray can, really simple and make spraying so easy!





And with the colour on:



It looks glossy here but was matt by the time it had dried this morning



And today with the lacquer drying in the sun!





Overall I'm really happy with how the bay paint has turned out, I just wish I'd gone to the extent of doing the whole bay as it's really obvious where I've left the OEM paint (the stuff I've done is actually much glossier and nicer, it seems Honda don't lacquer the engine bays. I've not got time to do it properly now as I got back to work in 3 days, so I'm just gonna concentrate on getting it back on the road and worry about the engine bay at a later date (possibly over winter).

Didn't fancy putting the engine in today as the lacquer is still soft and I don't wanna damage it too much! So I got on with modifying and fitting my 5th gen glass moonroof.

Cut a section from the rear to fit the smaller 4th gen roof as per the guide on there (vtecmec I think). It's a bit rough but nobody's ever gonna see it!



I didn't cut the section out of the sunroof panel that it says in the guide, instead I modified the light itself. Maybe this isn't possible with imports; both the 4th gen project car and 5th gen VTi donor car are UKDM models. I drokked it up a bit; cut a bit too much off and didn't end up using this one, if anyone wants to see how to do it ask me and I'll post pics. It's pretty easy to work out though.



As you can see I've redrilled the holes a bit further up, this enabled the light to fit perfectly in the aperture in the headliner.



Sunroof all built back up with the blind in place! Headliner placed over the top to see how it looks.



Dead happy with this, it took some thinking when I trimmed it all, but the images all line up to create a seamless version of the original image



Time to get rid of the old sunroof. It's in perfect condition, but I hate metal ones so it had to go!



Prelude Del Sol!


5th gen roof panel installed:



I'm surprised how easy it was - a few people on the how to thread said it was a complete nightmare to get it lined up properly; it took us about 5 minutes! It sits a little high but a couple more washers and maybe some slightly longer bolts should see it right. It's mega awkward though, took a bit of swearing from 2 of us to get the first couple of bolts in. They're a heavy old thing when you're trying to get them in position! Easy once the first 2 bolts are in though.

Crap pictures but the finished-ish article:





Also I picked my loom up from VTECDirect the other day so it should be pretty much plug and play. There's a couple of wires that need extending but it'll run without them supposedly - better to extend them once on the car so they're the right length. They also modified my Prelude VSS by fitting the ATR gear, so this SHOULD work now. It goes into the gearbox and seems to mesh with the VSS drive gear, so hopefully there won't be any problems there...

Intend on getting the engine in later today, if it goes really well it might even end up running within 24 hours. We'll see eh.

[Vtecmec]

Nice.

[mercutio]

looking cool although i am not feeling the fabric on the trim either side of the screen if it graduated from black up to the pattern i would like it more

[TheHondaTuner]

Nice Prelude and good job on the work. I personally dont like the look of the glasroof. Your roof panel is beautiful, id just do something to ths a piller covers to slowly tend into black on the bottom, so it would match the rest better.
Nice work & keep it up

[wurlycorner]

Blimey you don't hang about!
Dibs on the mint old sunroof please!

[Drax]

Dibs on the mint old sunroof please!

dammit....

great work there Jack, love all the regular quick updates - top job mate!!

[Jack]

Blimey you don't hang about!
Dibs on the mint old sunroof please!

Dibs on the mint old sunroof please!

dammit....

great work there Jack, love all the regular quick updates - top job mate!!

The updates will likely slow down a bit now, I bought it on the first day of the 2 week summer shutdown we have at work - another reason why it made so much sense to buy it as the timing was perfect! Back at work now and due to my shift times I won't be doing anything until the weekend, although I hope to have it running and driving by this time next week....

I'm keeping the sunroof for now unless I get offered very strong money for it; I wanna keep all the original bits from this car just in case I ever decide to put it back to how Honda intended.

Grandad likes it! There used to be a red 3rd gen at the bottom of his road, he always used to say he wanted one.



In my natural habitat....





Rats nest of wiring, pipes and vac lines - not looking forward to sorting the vac lines...



Dropped the loom onto the A7, drained the old oil and replaced the filter. There's a few wires that need extending/need the sensors changing still, but it should run without these for now. Better to do this once it's in the car as then the wires will be the correct length.



Finally in. Took quite a bit of wiggling and poking to get it in, but I don't think I've broke anything...



Haven't fitted the mounts properly yet - something came up. Really not looking forward to the rear mount, so hard to access!

Had to notch the front subframe to clear the ATR manifold, took quite a bit of trial and error and the subframe has been on and off about 4 times now!





So that's where we're at now. Shafts are fitted. Engine is in. Mounts need tightening up, rear mount needs fitting. Front subframe needs to go back on. Engine loom needs plugging into the interior loom. Need to swap ECUs. Fuel line needs fitting. Mostly just simple stuff! Coolant hoses. Power steering lines. Fill engine and box with oil. Connect battery. Send car to VTECDirect when it doesn't start

I have a Skunk2 Megapower on the blue one which I'll be fitting to this - just need to get an exhaust shop to join the ATR flexi (it was cut at the flexi due to knackered bolts) to the Skunk2.

I have the use of a Hondata S300 for now, when I have to give it back what am I best using? I have a chipped P28 that's mapped on Crome, fitted to my Civic with a B16 chip at the minute, should I just take the car to get mapped with this? I'm told the 4WS and cruise etc might not work with the P28 as these ECUs came on Civics which didn't have outputs for these functions.

Also, seeing this had tempted me to keep the Pacific Blue one too: