Bango San Rio Aka EE8

[Pablo13]

Lets update you all with my quest to get a nice rex free of unwanted handling quirks

Attempting a quick fix, I got hold of a ebay special intermediate shaft. You may have seen the advert on there "GOOD USED CONDITION 100% WORKING" the advert said.

And I toyed with the idea, an still am, of a traction bar. As the bushes are only £20 I got hold of a set. The final bushes to make the front end fully rebushed

Oh my car has settled back to its slightly too low for my liking position. I'm pretty sure these are meant to be circular all the way round


Got the subframe out. It is pretty easy to do too.

I wanted to give it a quick paint, but did not have anything suitable to hand. Still, its pretty easy to get out so can always come back to it.

First time on a ramp IIRC. All looks ok apart from the oil leak around the bell housing area.

So the results. Comparing the old and new intermediate shafts they both appeared to have the same amount of play, not good. Still I thought I would stick it on and see if there are any differences. Now the grinding noise is still there and worse even. It seems to even on it now on high compression left handers too. Before I had a slight 70 mph steering wobble, now its all over the 70-90 range Luckily I haven't left feedback yet so will be firing off an email shortly. You'll have to excuse the pictures as I got someone else to take them while I was holding the shaft, but you can just make out the movement in the bearing.



I'm pretty I sure read on the crx forum that Honda wont sell you a bearing on its own. They will only sell you a complete intermediate shaft set up which works out expensive, although when I called up my local Honda they said the don't do the complete shaft, but can sell me the bearing for £33 Pretty sure my local dealers are a bit strange. Again a while back I read on there that vtec indicators are hard to get new now, yet I walked in to my local one an snapped one up. Guess the moral of the story is don't believe everything you read

Subby bushes though seem to be pretty good, steering feels more direct and planted and a little bit more twitchy, in a good 16v crx type way Also the self centring action, what I felt was a bit lacking, seems to have improved somewhat too, most likely down to a castor change I would imagine.

So there we are. The next port of call is honda for a bearing, rebuild the original and refit......again

[Pablo13]

Got honda'd

Can this little bearing be the answer to my problems?

I also bought new circlips and rear seal. the only thing I couldn't get was the front seal. Then I set about rebuilding my original shaft that came off the car. I also managed to get a refund from the ebay seller which was nice

Carfefully popped the front seal out (it flew about 15ft in the air )

Then you can get to this circlip that holds the shaft in place

Remove shaft

Which allows access to the rear seal and a larger circlip holding the bearing in place. Bearing taps out pretty easily btw, no need for a press when doing this, just a hammer and a selection of large sockets.

Then your left with the iron mount bit which is made up of the inner bearing casing and the outer mounting which has a rubber insulation layer inbetween.


This does have a bit of flex too, so I decided to fill the gaps with a bit of tiger seal to try an minimise this as best I could.


The old bearing did have a tiny bit of lateral play, bit it was literally 1mm, 2mm at most. Once the tiger seal had gone off I popped the new bearing and bits back in

Ready to go

I had also aquired a pair of unwanted exhaust resonance one just over 2k and another about 3k. A bit of poking about and I found that the lower mount on the manifold heat sheild had rusted right though.

Removed that for now. it got rid of the 2k noise but not the 3k one

So the results. Did it cure my issues? Well I'd like to reserve full judgement just yet. So far right handers are a lovely smooth affair once again. I only went though 3 or 4 roundabouts on the way back, as thats when it seems to happen most. Only one of them was what I would say was at a sufficient load to do it, but so far so good I'll be glad about that as I have worked my way though everything in the drive line and suspension it could have been, next on the list would be the diff bearings.

Will report back later once I have driven it more

[Pablo13]

After further cornering investigation it is much better, but its still there. Right up at a high loading point, grrr. I can take right handers at a better pace than before. Further investigation is needed. Its the main gripe I have with this CRX, and I will not be happy until is has been cured

Over the Festive season I seem to have gathered a reasonble amount of CRX related bits and bobs

Started with the easy stuff, bulbs

The ones already fitted were already 50% brighter than halogen jobbies, so the PIAA ones didn't look massively different in daytime comparison pictures....I still took some though

After

I can confirm night time vision has improved though

Will hopefully get a few more bits done in the next few days.

[Pablo13]

Some of you may have noticed the high level SI spoiler I got hold of.

Back in my younger days when I owned my first and second CRX'es I always wanted this spoiler. You dont see them very often these days. Now though I'm not 100% on it, especially on a vtec but I got hold of one for a reasonable price, so I'm going to give it a go and see how it looks.
Ordered some paint

The paint wasnt too bad on it, so I just gave it a good key and rubbed down a few of the deeper scratches


Then gave it a light dusting

And then a first coat


Left that to dry properly and it showed a couple of imperfections that needed more attention so gave it a light rub down in a few areas, then another coat of red and a coat of laquer

It was looking quite good had a nice reflection

And then I noticed a bit of a run in the laquer I have left it for now and will come back to see if I can fix it later.

[Pablo13]

Well I left the spoiler to dry overnight in my shed and when I came to it the next day it was still tacky. Not a good time of year for painting really. I brought it inside and let it cure properly.

Meanwhile for some reason I had an urge to put a flare on my christmas list and someone bought it for me


Fitted. If I ever get stuck on a snowy mountain pass I'll be a bit more at ease


And I got these


Mainly to stop my undertray and subframe from scraping on speed bumps and the occasional bottoming out I that I still suffer from. Think this is the first time I have had to raise a car I own. Don't get me wrong I love the way it looks, but as its a daily it just wasn't practical enough.


Plus the springs are too soft for that height in my opinion so the helper springs should increase the preload on them making them a bit stiffer


And, after all was said and done it looks like this, excuse the shocking night time phone camera pictures


As ever, I'm sure it will take a while to finally settle into its final ride height.

[MEL]

I've still got the flare from my stagea kicking around somewhere, you could of had that if i'd known

[alanjuggler]

It's amazing how attached I am to the flare that came with the 180

good work chap - I do like watching this progress, the suspension/driveshaft work helps with knowing I'm inevitably going to have to do this to keep my wife's EJ8 on the road

[Pablo13]

I've still got the flare from my stagea kicking around somewhere, you could of had that if i'd known

So have I got a spare cicking around, but I didn't have the mount which is all I actually asked for.

It's amazing how attached I am to the flare that came with the 180

good work chap - I do like watching this progress, the suspension/driveshaft work helps with knowing I'm inevitably going to have to do this to keep my wife's EJ8 on the road

Thanks, glad its of some use to you

[Pablo13]

My rear discs were not warped, but looking a bit old and had a bit of a lip on them. With ten tenths braking force they would make a bit of a grinding noise so I ordered some standard size brembos to replace them with and go with the pads I fitted about a 1000 miles ago.

The old with lip

And the new

Now it time for some nice gentle braking and bed it all back in

[Pablo13]

Suspension seems to have settled a bit now. I can also confirm that the grinding noise when turning right as completely dissapeared since raising the front, so I can only deduce that the spring rates were not sufficient and putting excess stress on the driveshafts and subjecting them to angles they are not designed for.

I also bought these. No big named make, but they do appear to be of a half decent construction

This is the bushing from the near side.
You could press the metal insert in and out with your finger, so well, well worn out

Lined them up with the old for now

And fitted

Bought a new downpipe to centre section gasket as the old one was looking a bit tired. While I was fitting it noticed this random crack so got that welded back up too.

As you can imagine, it feels and sounds much better

[Delboy]

Coming along nicely fella

[Pablo13]

Lack of power steeing and air conditoning ultimately prompted the next purchase


Its a Pulley from an EK9 Type R N1 race car, standard Honda part yo!





And then a little snag I wasn't aware of. The standard size belt no longer fits. I had to nip down to a local motor factors and grabbed another one that was one size smaller. Big thanks to MEL for the lift there It got me out of trouble but is basically maxed out on the adjuster, so two sizes smaller than standard would be better.



Keeping an eye on the weather, I also had a feeling this was going to happen


Which prompted me to switch the AD08's to the back. lucky I did, as when it was time to leave it was 5 inches thick

[MEL]

http://mahdavimotorsports.com/?p=763

Interesting

[Pablo13]

Popped down to see a guy with a stockpile of crx bits and grabbed a few bits last week. I got a new passenger window motor, a drivers wing in red and an ecu. I fitted the window motor in the other day, and then got on with adjusting my valve clearances as it was sounding a bit tappy.

Unfourtunately my feeler guages only had 0.15mm and 0.20mm which is in spec, but a bit off the ideal 0.16 and 0.17 your meant to aim for. I did what I could and went for a slightly loose inlet with the 0.15 and a tight and snatchy 0.20 for the exhaust. It seems to have improved things as in the car on the motorway you could make out a tap and you cant anymore. If you stick your head over the engine with the bonnet up at idle it doesnt sound perfect though, possibly LMA's, but if I manage to get hold of a more accurate set of feelers I will do them again.

Anyway, here is the new wing as collected


Its not perfect and has a bit of rust here

and a little bit of a bubble starting where the side skirt meets. It also has a little car park dent and the paint had these little dots over it that looked like a paint reaction. So I did what I could, wet sanded it with 1500...

And attacked it with a selection of products

It did look alot better afterwards

I nearly fitted it as is, but a nagging reservation stopped me and I'm going to try and sort the rusty bits first then get it on

[sxbaz]

good work dude, still need to do my clearances. If my feelers are more precise we'll have a bash with them and my tool of awesomeness.

[Pablo13]

So time to take a closer look at the wing, little car park dent I already pushed out a bit

The rust




Started to it grind back



This I knew would cause me problems down the line when I rolled the arch, but needed to fit it to be able to roll and pull it, then fix it later so I just did what I could with it.








Sanded down

Then gave a good covering of Zinc 182 in affected areas to try and make it last a few extra years





Drips don't matter to much inside

Then I added some filler primer

And a guide coat

Which would help me see the high and low spots, like this

So I could continue to sand it until i was happy enough with the surface

Then painted

[Pablo13]

And then finally today I could get on with the fitting. Firstly though the offending wing to be removed



One CRX in bits


And back together


Although all did not go smoothly. Once fitted the wing showed up how pink my door was quite badly I tried a bit of mopping so blend it in, but the car has had a serious mopping session before some point in its life and the paint was too thin to cope leaving me with this white patch on my door. Its not the only area on the car like this, but the most noticeable.


As expexted the arch lip was weak and caused a ripple on the arch when rolled.


So I swapped my dents and scrapes for a ripple and a pinky white spot

I will have to blow the door in and smooth the arch lip out next methinks.

[Pablo13]

Not great deal has been going on, I fitted the throttle body I had

Like so

Its definitely more responsive low down, but feels a bit flatter around vtec. I think I could do with a chip to go with it. I also have a catch tank fitted, but no pictures. She also got a service the other day and a new rear bench upright as the oldie was ripped and one of the release buttons had broken.

[Pablo13]

Got myself a manifold off the crx forum to finally complete the exhaust system.

Bit tatty, but was only £70, so I enquired how much ceramic coating would be.....£345 Little bit more than I wanted to be pay to be fair.

So I broke out the wet and dry


240,320,800,1200,2000 by hand later


Good enough to fit now

[Stoo_pee]

Just read this from start to finish. Epic build thread mate, wheels suit it down to a tee. Keep up the good work