AS our annual traveling car show was stopped for breakfast last summer a nice middle aged woman was admiring our collection. Casually tells me that she has an AWS Prelude that is mint with low mileage, I immediately ask if she is interested in selling, chuckles and says no.
My family passed around an 88 accord si 5speed for several years until someone killed it. We all loved that car.
The car recently just rolled over 250k miles.
Still in great shape!
My goal with this car is to have EVERYTHING on the car funcitonal. Every little doodad and what-have-you to be at least in reasonable functional shape. Luckily I'm starting with a good base car, but there's a few things that need fixin':
-Driver's side speaker. Only works when the door is all the way open. May be related to the above, maybe I just have a short somewhere in my door-body wiring harness.
-All the speakers are OEM. They're in pretty rough shape. They just generally need to be replaced.
-Some of the little dash lights and the light in the ash tray. I actually have the replacement light for the ash tray light, just haven't put it in yet.
-Replace the rear top shock bushings. They were too short from the factory and it makes a knocking noise. Again, I have the parts but just haven't done it yet.
Everything else works, so luckily it's a pretty short list!
Sounds like a pretty easy list, especially as far as money goes. Can you post some interior pics?
These are fantastic cars. I wanted one so bad in high school when they came out and they were just too expensive. I was able to save up and buy a bone stock 97 240SX SE which checked all the same boxes but RWD. In hindsight 15 years later, the Honda was probably a better choice stock for stock. Either way after F&F, all of those cars were hacked up so it's great seeing them stock these days.
I remember my buddies SH well. That light silver blue color, factory body kit, mugen wing, Greddy (dunk? iirc) exhaust and an Apexi VAFC with a dyno tune. That car surprised many people around Atlanta at the time and looked great doing it.
Besides all of them I still encounter using a little oil, they seem to be rock solid after all these years.
I really like that lunch-cruising thread in the adventures forum, so even though it was a pretty nasty day out I went and did it myself yesterday. I found some pretty cool semi-paved roads that are just around the corner from work. I stopped a took a couple of pictures and a cool little wooden crossing over a creek.
So I've begun to hunt down the electrical gremlins. That's turned out to be more of a project than I originally intended, but not surprising because the wiring harness on these cars is British bad. It looks like the door lock actuator is just bad, so that'll just have to be replace (on order). The speaker wire turned out to be the wires going into the door connector. There's a couple of bad wires there, I'm going to have to re-pin it.
Started down the rabbit hole. The first piece of body work to come off was the rocker cover, but that's ok because there was apparently 2 lbs of dirt in it.
But then the bumper and fender had to come off too...
All that to get at this little guy:
The door card came off to get at the door lock actuator as well.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to re-attach the liner? The adhesive has lost it's stick, and it was sagging like this when the door card came off. I actually think that's why the actuator went bad: the link to the door lock was tangled and gummed up in the liner, causing the door lock actuator to jam up when actuating.
Oh man. My first "fun" car was a 1999 Honda Prelude. I sold that car in 2012 with only 90k miles on the clock and in pristine condition. Have tried to buy it back multiple times...new owner won't let it go. Good luck with your car, I loved mine!
You can get a roll of butyl rubber "strip caulk" from advance auto to get the liner back in place.
So I definitely bit off a big chunk here. It's taken me far longer than I anticipated to get through everything.
I pulled both uprights so I could replace all the ball joints (Type SH's have a double ball joint setup)
All the lower ball joints are in pretty rough shape. Interestingly, only the lower ones were. All other joints are actually in great shape. Still stiff and with a full intact boot.
I also replaced a torn CV joint and repacked it with grease.
I also replaced a torn steering rack boot and replaced one tie rod end.
This is the most together the front suspension has been in months.
The headlights are known for cracking the top mount. I epoxied it back together. We'll see how it holds up.
I got a baggie of replacement pins for the door connector since I found a few wires broken right at the connector. I've repinned them. I was able to fix the door lock actuator with a combination of new pin and rebuilding the actuator itself. The motor was weak, I had ordered a new door lock actuator, but accidentally ordered the passenger side, which has a different connector and is missing some internal contacts. Luckily, I was able to simply swap the motor from the new one to the old one and presto, I've got a good door lock actuator. I buttoned everything up, but found that I've got some linkages crossed, I'll just have to pull the door panel off again and uncross them. Nothing too hard.
I need to get some pictures, but I'm really bad at taking them as I go.....
Oh wow. It's been longer than I thought since I posted on this thread....
I've had to battle a couple of leaks on this bad mf-er.
First is the oil cooler o-ring. On the type SH's the oil cooler sits on a little aluminum pedestal that angles the oil cooler up. I believe this is to clear the ATTS unit. But the o-rings in the oil cooler are prone to plasticizing, cracking, and then leaking everywhere.
I'd already done the one behind the oil cooler itself quite a while ago. I thought it was a little odd that I had to do it again already. But it turns out it was really the o-ring behind the little aluminum pedestal.
Not fun, but it was doable in the end....
The oil cooler itself is the tuna can shaped piece on the upper end of the picture. The pedestal is to the left of it. Coming in from the side is the best way to get at it, but there's definitely not much room to work with....
Next up was the power steering hose. I originally bought one from Rock Auto, but the pressure fitting was brazed on backwards. I decided since I plan on keeping the car forever I probably should just go ahead and spring for the OEM one, so I bought a replacement hose from Honda. Pricey, but it is nice that it looks all OEM. And fits.
I wish everything was that shiny. That's all the p/s fluid that's been sprayed everywhere....
The pressure sensor fitting. It's also in just the wrong place for reaching a little bracket that I have to remove to get out the hose.
Lucky for me this little o-ring is still in pretty good shape.
The new hose. Looks nice.
In the car and leak free!
Then I took it to one of those self-wash places so I could really clean all the p/s fluid out of the engine bay. I guess I should have gotten some engine bay shots, but the car is still looking good after all these years!
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