This is going to be a huge post, I've only remembered to update my thread on Honda-Tech and not this one so here's everything from the past month or so.
11/9/2016
The whole car has moderate paint swirls so all that needs to be corrected. So to start off we washed the whole car using a soap that can remove wax and then clay bar'd the trunk since that's my test area. Then I ordered the 7 pad kit from ChemicalGuys along with the 4 compound kit from them and started experimenting with different combinations of buffer pads and compounds.
For the polishing, we found that the following yielded good results.
Pass 1) Green pad, "36" compound.
Pass 2) White pad, "38" compound.
Pass 3) Blue pad, "38" compound.
Also seen here is a good friend of mine who is a total wizard when it comes to detaling, he's been helping me out a ton and has taught me pretty much everything I know about keeping a car clean and looking nice. Thanks Carter, I owe you Chipotle burritos for life.
11/16/2016
Just a photo I took at the parking garage at work.
She's going under the knife. My parts aren't supposed to arrive until Wednesday but I had some time so I started on the disassembly process for the timing belt job. Things seem more thought out than on the Integra but overall it's more of a pain in the ass. For instance, there's jack points in the middle of the chassis as well as near the front and rear wheel wells which makes it super easy to get the car up on jack stands and plastic parts have metal inserts to keep you from over-tightening bolts, but everything is so much more cramped that it still sucks to work on lol.
11/18/2016
I received a large package from Delray Acura this morning, and they forgot a part. It was a $2 part though so I guess I'll just live with it, but that's two orders in a row that they've messed up so I doubt I'll be ordering from them again.
I ended up having to work pretty late today so I didn't get anything done on the engine but I did turn a Maraca into a shift knob for my Integra (lost a bet...) and installed the easy parts on the NSX. First I swapped out the generic parts store gas cap for the OEM unit. The guy who filled the car up apparently forgot to put it back on right before I picked the car up so I had a parts store cap on there, he was apologetic and offered to pay for the replacement so I'm not mad.
Then I went ahead and installed the new rear glass lifters, the existing ones sort of worked but the new ones are great, you barely have to push up on it at all now.
Replaced the antenna mast as well. I unplugged the antenna motor immediately afterwards since I never use the radio but it makes me happy that it works and is 100% OEM.
And finally, the front tow hook cover was missing so I picked up a brand new painted one. Granted it doesn't match perfectly since one has been driving around for 22 years and one has been in a warehouse, but it's won't be too noticeable after I clean and buff the front end.
Hopefully I'll have time to get a lot done this weekend.
11/22/2016
I think I might have figured out why I'm having so much trouble polishing some panels. Apparently it's not unknown for an NSX to have different hardness in the clear coat across different panels, I was pointed to a video by AMMO NYC on water polishing cars with ridiculously sensitive paint so I'm going to give that a shot next.
The ****ing crank pulley bolt has been driving me crazy. My 650lbft impact wouldn't touch it. I tried PB Blaster overnight, then the impact again and no dice. So I tried torching it, still no dice. I borrowed an impact from a coworker and it didn't touch it either. Finally I bought a Mac Tools 1200lbft impact second-hand and that STILL wouldn't touch it. So I gave up and am going to take the car to the dealer to have them break it loose before I either destroy something or spend a ton of money on more crap to try to break it loose. I guess the only upside is that I got a pretty sweet impact out of it, the "650lbft" was a cheapish Husky impact from Home Depot.
I did get the valve adjustment finished though. Rather than buy the expensive Honda tool I just got the $15 one from Amazon and cut the end off with a hacksaw, worked like a charm. I did valve adjustments on B-series motors without it and it's definitely worth it even on those cars, it's much easier if you can hold the screw in place while tightening the lock nut, and with the V6 it would be virtually impossible without it if you don't want to pull the engine.
I also replaced the rear window molding, the original one was cracking and discolored from sun damage. I didn't bother using adhesive because it really doesn't need it to stay firmly in place and that's just more mess to deal with.
(Rear trim is missing here because I had it off for the valve adjustment.)
11/26/2016
Finally got the trunk struts replaced. For some reason Honda doesn't give you new ball bolts with the trunk like they do with the rear glass struts, so I had to reclaim them from the old struts or pay another $30 and wait another 3 weeks for stuff that's backordered. The process isn't too bad, just mask around the bolts to keep them from getting scratched if the saw slips then carefully cut the socket in half. There's enough space between the ball and the socket wall that there's very little risk of hitting the ball with the saw if you're careful. (Marks on the bolts are not from the saw.)
After carefully removing the "Made In China" stickers that were on the new OEM parts...
Hopefully paint correction will be done by the end of next week, time permitting.
11/27/2016
I made a good bit of progress this weekend.
I reinstalled the wiper sprayer nozzles after cleaning them out, they were pretty gunked up.
Before
After
My main project this weekend was the front end, after finally coming to terms with the fact that my paint is soft, I just decided to polish it as best I can (which is pretty darn good but not good enough for my OCD) and wax it to take care of the fine micro-marring that remains. I was planning on regularly waxing the car anyways so I can live with it. So far I've polished and waxed the driver side quarterpanel, trunk, wing, roof, hood, both fenders, and the upper front bumper.
At the beginning the bumper was pretty messed up. There's some pitting which I unfortunately can't do much about, some bad touch up paint job that looks like it was done with a 3" paint brush, and there was some bad surface oxidization on the top. These photos were taken after clay-barring the surface.
After first trying a fairly stiff foam pad and a course compound I realized that the paint isn't particularly flat so the reflections look like trash, so I decided to wetsand the bumper to even it out. The process I used was 2000 grit 3M WetOrDry (do NOT use lesser brands such as the Gator shit that Autozone sells, you will ruin your paint with that crap) using Meguiar's Quick Detailer as a lubricant, then after that I made another pass using 3000 grit 3M paper as well with the quick detailer as lubricant again. The badge, sadly, did not come off without incident. In the process of removing the adhesive, it took some of the clear coat with it. This won't be visible once I replace the badge, but it still bothers me.
To buff the sanding scratches out, I started off with a course pad and a course compound, then progressively moved to finer pads and finer compounds until. You can see the pitting in this photo as well.
And this is after wax has been applied. I'm using Meguiars synthetic paste wax, but if I take the car to a show or something I'll apply a coat of carnauba wax on top of it for a bit more shine. This is the first car I've ever actually waxed and it went on very easily. Just wipe it on, wait for it to haze, and wipe it off with a microfiber cloth.
After letting the wax haze I wiped the excess off but it's too dark to get a good picture, so I'll post tomorrow.
I'm also thinking I might have the wheels media blasted and powder coated the factory color. They were refinished recently and they look pretty nice, but the color is a bit lighter than the factory color and they were redone using paint. And nothing beats a freshly powdercoated set of wheels lol.
11/28/2016
I drove the car to work this morning and took some pictures in the sun. Turned out pretty nice I think.
12/2/2016
Relatively minor update: I took the car to Sterling Acura here in Austin on Tuesday and they were able to break the crank pulley bolt loose and torque it back properly so I could get it off. They told me not to worry about it when I went to pay and I was in and out in less than 30 minutes! They have excellent reviews online as well so I'll definitely be going back there if I ever need to have the dealer work on the car.
Anyways, with the car back up on jackstands I was able to back the properly torqued crank pulley off with my impact with almost zero effort, so I've started on the engine maintenance. When changing the timing belt you need to lock the cams in place and it's recommended to use 4 5mm punches to do this. I don't happen to have 4 5mm punches laying around, and no store near me sells 5mm punches by themselves, so I bought a 3/16" (4.76mm) steel rod and cut it into small pieces with a cutoff wheel on the Dremel and it worked out perfectly for $5 and 15 minutes of work.
Shortly after taking this picture I started trying to remove the timing covers and gave up after an hour or so. I was able to get all the bolts out but there is just no room on that side of the engine bay, I have no idea how the rear timing and middle covers are going to come out but I'll worry about it this weekend. Working on this car sucks compared to the Integra, which I'm pretty sure had a much bigger engine bay and a much smaller engine.
12/5/2016
I finally got off my ass and made some progress this weekend. On Saturday morning I went shopping and picked up 4 gallons of Honda coolant, an OEM filter, 6 quarts of Mobile 1 10W30, and 3 quarts of Honda MTF.
I started off by giving the valve cover gaskets a good wash in hot soapy water. I threw the originals out the first time I started taking things apart but then had to put it back together to take it to the dealer so I had to use my new gaskets. This way they'll be ready to seal with the Hondabond around the corners.
Apparently when the dealer changed the oil they didn't bother with replacing the drain washer. It's way flatter than a single use, properly torqued washer should be. This combined with a broken antenna...It wouldn't surprise me if they used recycled dino oil of the wrong weight.
With the timing covers successfully removed, the first thing I did was mark the timing belt and gears with a permanent marker. When I copy the marks to the new belt I'll just line them up on the gears to set the timing. (then verify it four times using the built in marks of course)
When copying the marks from the old belt to the new make sure to verify that the marks are correct at least 4 times as well. Contrary to popular belief, P2V contact is a VERY bad thing.
Before I put the new belt on though I dropped the oil pan to replace the gasket. This turned out to be a massive pain in the ass as one of the exhaust nuts decided to destroy the stud rather than back off peacefully, so I'll have to figure something out for that. I'm going to try to find a die of the correct size to repair the stud and just buy a new nut I think. I cleaned up the oil pan and lined up the gasket.
Oil pan studs installed and gasket surface cleaned. Normally the pan only has 4 studs and a whole bunch of bolts , but since I had a ton of B-series oil pan studs laying around and they're the same thing, I installed them instead. This makes it way easier (and looks better IMO) as the gasket will stay on the studs while you maneuver the pan in underneath it.
Oil pan reinstalled. The torque spec for the oil pan nuts/bolts is 8.7lbft but I couldn't go past 4lbft before the gasket started to bulge out the sides too much and there's plenty of reports that 8.7lbft is too much so I left it at 4lbft.
The previous guy to change the water pump used Hondabond, so I spent 45 minutes scrubbing that junk off.
Old vs. new waterpump. The old one only had 20k miles on it but since I was here already I might as well replace it for peace of mind, it does really look brand new though...
Rather than pay for some more obscenely overpriced new bolts like the manual suggests, I cleaned off and applied new Hondabond sealant to the existing water pump bolts.
Pump installed and all the bolts torqued to 9lbft and 16lbft for 10mm and 12mm respectively.
And finally I put the new belt on and made sure the marks all lined up.
At this point I forgot to take pictures and it was just more boring stuff. I tensioned the timing belt, reinstalled the timing covers with much cursing, installed the AC tensioner and new AC belt, installed he alternator and new alternator belt, and then called it a day. It's looking like a few more days of work at this point before it's back on the road as I still need to drain the rest of the coolant and refill it, replace the transmission fluid, and reinstall all the crap on top of the engine that had to come off for the timing belt.
12/9/2016
I've been trying to work on the car an hour or so a day so I've made some progress this week.
I ordered LED bulbs to replace pretty much every single lightbulb on the car because the fade in/out of incandescent bulbs annoys me, but I was two red 1157 LEDs short so I had to place another order that should be here Friday. SuperBrightLeds is a great company to deal with, the one time I had an issue (that was mostly my fault) they sent a replacement bulb and a prepaid box to send the old one back.
I also removed the factory CD changer to free up a bit of trunk space and make it look cleaner. I'm planning on holding onto it for when/if I sell the car but I'll never use it.
Transmission fluid replaced. Getting the new fluid in the transmission required a waterfall of funnels.
Finally reinstalling the valve covers along with all the other plastic covers and clips on top of the engine that i had forgotten existed.
Funny thing about the gold badges, I didn't realize the gold wasn't normal until my new badge showed up in the mail and prompted my post about it in the gen 1 discussion forum here. Turns out the front badge, both exhaust tips, and the antenna nut were gold plated at some point.
I picked up some metal polish at AutoZone and went to work on one of the exhaust tips to see how difficult it would be. Turns out not very, in 15 minutes or so I was able to completely remove all the gold plating by hand on one of the exhaust tips.
I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but when I was removing the nuts holding the A-pipe to the front exhaust header one of them had fused and ruined the thread as I backed it off. Rather than deal with trying to remove the also very stuck stud, I opted to repair the threads with an M10x1.25 die and just replace the factory nuts with aftermarket stainless nuts. Threading the new nut on and feeling it go on perfectly smooth was a great feeling after laying on my back for an hour messing with it.
I got lucky and was able to thread the die on perfectly to what was left of the existing studs and it all worked out quite nicely. So then I loaded up the studs with anti-seize compound and put it all back together.
Anyways I'll try to do a better job of updating here in the future.
I use ONR no-rinse cleaning solution in one bucket, rinse water in another bucket, and microfiber sponges and waffle weave microfiber towels for cleaning and drying.
