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1988 Honda Prelude 2.0Si Ordered a new blower motor resistor, should arrive Tuesday, then I can try to fix the heater blower. I think the resistor is partly fried because the motor and the the mix control both work, but nothing happens on switch settings 1 and 2, but 3 blows, and 4 blows harder. Apparently the switch itself is a horrible bitch to replace, so I'm hoping my $30 lump of electronics will do the job. Since the weather was nice and I had planned to spend my time mucking up the dashboard anyways, I cleaned the interior. The previous owner had apparently suffered a coke-can explosion in the passenger seat, because there was a distinct spray pattern all over the back right side of the interior. Plus I cleaned all the glass inside and out, and put on new windshield wipers. I should be able to see at night and in the rain now. This also involved me sitting in the back seat for the first time - there's no way 2 full-size adults could sit back there.
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Oct 18, 2009 01:22
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Sponge! posted:
Yeah, but it's noisy at 3, so I need to take it apart and maybe clean the fan anyways. If this fix doesn't work, I'll probably just live with it.
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Oct 20, 2009 01:47
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I can never remember if I'm supposed to check my headlight fluid levels when the lights are flipped up or not. The dipsticks are tucked away in an awkward position on these older Hondas. I always get weird readings, is it time for a full system flush? Edit: I almost forgot - never put taillight fluid in your headlights! You drive through an orange fog and smoke comes out of the turn signals. Learned that one the hard way... 
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Oct 22, 2009 02:17
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Pulled out the blower motor to remove the dead vegetation and a bit of dust. Replaced the blower's resistor.  Old & Busted, New Hotness. Now the fan blows at all 4 speeds, but it's still a bit buzzy. Still, I'd been meaning to do this for a couple of weeks, and I think this was successful.  All this happened in an awkward position from the passenger seat. To get into said awkward position I had to move the car halfway out into the alley, which annoyed several of my neighbours. Go the other way if you don't want to squeeze past! The alley's only about 40m long, it's not like you have to go far out of your way. Quit honking at me, old-man-in-Caliber 
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Oct 24, 2009 23:15
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Sponge! posted:Brushes are on their way out. Autozone sells a suitable replacement for a lot less than Honda wants, and it's thinner so its easier to get in/out. I still have to unbolt the whole blower box from the firewall to change mine though... The price of having A/C. Ungh. I didn't actually manage to remove the blower box. I got everything disconnected, but there's no room to "lower from the vehicle" like the service manual and the Haynes manual both say. I yanked and twisted that thing all over before giving up and dropping the motor assembly out of the bottom. The resistor is mounted on top and close to the passenger compartment, which is the only thing that allowed me to swap it out. The only way I could see to get the whole blower box out would be to first remove the heater core, which requires draining and disconnecting the coolant system. Which I suspect requires removing large objects from the engine bay, first. Where are these brushes? If they're in the motor assembly (the thing I pictured), I can get to them. If they're buried in the white plastic housing that the motor fits into from underneath, there's no way. Can these things be accessed from above, by removing the dashboard?
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Oct 26, 2009 05:42
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Sponge! posted:No, I'm saying I have to remove the blower box from the firewall to even drop the motor out. You're lucky you can drop yours out in-situ... The brushes are in the heavy part under the spindle that you had out. You can't replace the brushes, the whole motor goes. Sponge! posted:You do it the same way. Unbolt the blower box from the firewall, and lift the whole thing up just enough to sneak the blower itself out the bottom. So you're not lucky. You feel my pain. "Factory manual" says to remove the AC evaporator. Those without AC just unbolt a duct and then the whole thing can be moved 4" to the left and drops right out. We with AC don't have those 4 inches. I was wondering why the picture in the manual of a simple, rectangular plastic duct was so far off of the giant black box I encountered. That would be the AC evaporator, and I have no desire to gently caress with it. 4 inches would have made 4 miles of difference. Sponge! posted:Also, I had to unbolt the impeller from the motor to remove it. You have enough room the whole shebang drops out the bottom. I put the nut back on with a pair of 8" long needlenose through the grillework...  Sponge! posted:2nd edit: That little black hose goes from the blower box to the base of the motor. Make drat sure thats always hooked up. Thats what cools the armature and also blows the bits of worn off brush out of the mix. If its not there it'll basically grind itself up in a few months from grit and heat. They have a nasty habit of getting unhooked if you transport kids with long legs and a penchant for kicking the underside of the glove-box area a lot.
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Oct 27, 2009 02:38
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lil bip posted:Replaced the radiator in my poor old 93 Civic, hopefully the new one wont disintigrate. I did it in the carpark at work too about 10 minutes after it arrived. How long did it take? Did your boss/coworkers get annoyed at you working on your car there?
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Oct 29, 2009 04:32
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Replaced a blown turn signal bulb. I wanted to replace the bulbs for the license-plate lamp, but could not. I took it to a mechanic a couple of weeks ago, they noted a problem with the license bulb. They failed to note that the entire license lamp assembly is missing! I guess it's time for another run to the junkyard, but I am highly confused - why would the license lamp be missing? 
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Oct 31, 2009 23:43
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PopeCrunch posted:Gave up and had it towed to the shop. poo poo... I've been there. Years ago, loving timing chain of doom. AFTER $1000 in chassis electrical - they charged me half on labour because they felt sorry for me.
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Nov 4, 2009 05:45
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Went out to the junkyard and pulled the license lamps for my '88 Prelude. Literally pulled: the mounts on the wreck were so rusted I just yanked them free. The corresponding bits of metal on my car are probably also absent due to rust, so I put together a mount using some 1 1/2 inch #6 bolts. You can see the holes where I ran the bolts, through the bumper above the plate. I couldn't get my car started from the junkyard until I fiddled with the battery terminals. So, I grabbed a new positive terminal on my way home.  The old one was utterly corroded, but the battery post is in OK shape. Another nice weekend like this one seems rather unlikely, so this is probably the last work I'll be doing on the car for a while. But the quest for cupholders continues.
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Nov 8, 2009 00:48
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Had the tow truck drop it at the transmission shop just a couple of blocks over from my apartment. Went in this morning, told them "that's my Honda", and now it's getting a new clutch. *sigh*
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Nov 10, 2009 03:01
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Your Scout looks amazing. How did you do that? I mean, what compound did you use, and how long did that take?
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Nov 26, 2009 04:17
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tobu posted:I drove my car into a ditch. I took it up a dirt track up in the mountain ranges behind my hometown. I came around the corner and noticed a large rock buried in the road. I moved to the left to avoid it and the rear left fell onto the soft leaf mulch on the side of the road. I'm happy to hear you're not too upset about this, and that nobody was hurt. I have an unreasonable fondness for your Skyline, though, so I hope she gets fixed up better than before soon! 
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Nov 30, 2009 05:38
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I'd planned to drive my car to an underground, heated parking lot today to get under it and maybe replace the thermostat. It was -28*C out there this afternoon, which contributed to the battery failing to start the car. It was old and a couple of goons here on these forums had told me to get a new one ASAP to protect my alternator, so I'd bought one yesterday while running around getting other stuff. Good thing, too, I wasn't about to crawl under my car at those temperatures. New battery in, but not strapped down properly because my fingers were freezing solid inside my gloves trying to hold the bracket and turn the nuts. The new battery was able to start the car without any serious complaints, and after the engine had a good 10 minutes to warm up, I drove to the underground parking lot. They charge $3 per exit on weekends, which is a fair price to be able to work in a t-shirt, amongst puddles from melting snow. I got under my car for the first time. Yesterday I'd also bought a new 4-ton bottle jack (they were sold out of the 2-ton model) and a couple of jackstands, so I learned how to lift my car. The bottle jack is about 1cm too tall to get into the jacking point for the front wheels, but is fine for the back. The scissor jack that came with the car is in quite good shape and worked well to lift the car enough to get the hydraulic jack in there. Pumping a hydraulic jack is about 10 times faster and less annoying than turning the screw on a scissor jack. The good news is there was much less rust than I'd feared. Everything was covered with a layer of crusty brown dirt, certainly the result of my foolish hobby of driving around on gravel roads. But the rust was restricted to body panels, and I didn't see any on frame components, brake components, the exhaust system, etc. The bad news is the "partial" crack in a CV-joint boot reported by my mechanic a couple of months ago has expanded, and now cuts right through the boot. There was grease, obviously from inside the boot, splattered lightly around the inside of the front right wheel.  More bad news at the rear, but less serious. The mechanic had also reported my rear sway-bar links had rusted out completely. He wasn't lying!  This is the right side. The left looks the same. I gather these link kits are about $10 each, and don't look too hard to replace. I haven't noticed a problem with the handling or the rear suspension, so I'll probably wait until the weather turns nice or I'm really bored before trying to fix this. I decided not to try to replace the thermostat today, and I just topped up the coolant reservoir - it was quite low. I need to have words with my mechanic, they've done a couple of rounds of work on my cooling system, and it's not working properly, yet. Because everyone else was doing it and I just want to be popular, I wired some cardboard onto the grill to cut the very-loving-cold airflow past the radiator.  Hello, ladies! Finally, an aftermarket Yoda install.  The first thing he said after I put him on the dashboard was "You must... feel the Force around you!"
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Dec 14, 2009 03:55
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Sponge! posted:No, no, no, pop the hood and slide it down between the body and the radiator. Those little bits ont he grille won't do poo poo... :-/ The current setup is indeed ineffective.
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Dec 14, 2009 05:26
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Replaced the thermostat. Old & busted, new hotness. BUT. On my way to my friend's house to do this, the yellow "engine" light came on. I thought "meh, it's just because the engine is cold, I didn't warm it up long enough before I started driving, and the temperature gauge is wobbling around every time I slow down for an intersection". We swapped the thermostats (surprisingly easy, the hardest thing was driving up onto his ramps), then I parked it on the street. I was sitting there letting it idle for about 3 minutes, then went inside. It was surging a little, running between about 1200 and 1800 rpm, but calmed down after a couple of minutes. Again, I'm thinking cold engine means some odd behaviour until it warms up. Driving home, the "engine" light came on again. Crap. Good news: temperature gauge now behaves like it should, though even with the new t-stat and the large pieces of cardboard I wedged in front of the radiator, at any speed above 80 km/h the needle goes down, I guess my car is still overcooling. The light came on after the needle dipped below the C mark as I accelerated on a highway, the temperature slowly rose to just over the C after that. So I'm thinking the engine light reacts to too-fast changes in the temp gauge, but why it's only started doing that tonight is beyond me. 650 km drive tomorrow, hope I don't die. '88 Honda Prelude 2.0Si and it's about -10*C (about 14*F) out there.
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Dec 18, 2009 05:41
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kimbo305 posted:Threw some Dunlops on my car today. 
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Dec 19, 2009 19:41
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needknees posted:Turned my lovely headlights from this: Nice. Mine aren't quite that bad, but once the weather warms up (late April) I might do the same. 3M you say?
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Jan 17, 2010 04:33
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Sponge! posted:Aren't yours glass front anyway? Flip-ups, right? Do headlight-restoring kits work on other bits of plastic, like the brake lights? Or do you need something special to avoid wrecking the red or amber plastic?
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Jan 17, 2010 23:47
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Got it stuck, 20 metres from my parking spot. Then it took almost an hour to dig it out and put it back where it belongs. I'm a moron.  
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Jan 24, 2010 20:29
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Commodore 64 posted:Last Monday a bump on a railroad crossing did this to my car: The new one looks really good, well done! I can't tell from the picture, was the old piece made of plastic? If it was made of steel, what the hell kind of bump did you hit on that railroad, a ripped-up rail?
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Feb 1, 2010 00:25
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thewheelsteve posted:I got a membership to a local auto club, which means I how have cheap access to a garage, hoists, welding equipment, paint booth and gear, and all the tools you can imagine, not to mention the expertise of the half-dozen other guys that are there at any given time. Hopefully that means I'll be making some fixes to my RX7 soon How does the club work? I'm asking because if it's reasonable in terms of time commitments and costs, I'd like to have access to somebody's garage at some point. My one good friend in town with a garage doesn't have heat in there, and has to negotiate with his girlfriend on my behalf if I'm going to put my car in there. He's not particularly enthusiastic about me working there - he was a great help when I changed the thermostat in December, and he *says* I can come over and do simple stuff like an oil change whenever, but I don't want to strain the friendship. How did you find out about the club you joined?
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Feb 4, 2010 05:18
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ynotony posted:Now I'm contemplating a black kidney grill swap for fun (only like 30 bucks), but I'm hesitant. Thoughts?
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Feb 18, 2010 05:52
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Raced it! No pictures (yet), sorry (not as sorry as I am, I wanna see the pics!). Drove down to a small, shallow lake near Regina, and drove around on the narrow track carved into the snow. I did not win. But I had more fun than I thought possible while wearing a seat belt. Well, I do have ONE picture. This is the only picture I was able to take as a driver on the lake today.  Before we got everything organized and set up, I had a chance to zip around (the wrong way, as it turned out) the track just to test out my car on real ice (rather than that fake ice that forms from compacted snow on roads). The rest of the time, I was too busy driving to handle the camera. More pictures to come when they get posted to the racing club's boards. I'm really hoping there's a good shot of me in my Prelude sliding sideways around a corner with snow blasting out from under the wheels.
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Feb 22, 2010 05:13
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superv0zz posted:Uh, where is this? I live in Regina and would love to take my jeep out for some spinney fun on a lake! https://www.qcma.org Next event is March 7. Bring your jeep, and a friend if you like, and for non-members it's $30. Winter tires are essentially a minimum requirement. Studded is better. It's at Oyama Lake Regional Park. Drive southeast down highway 33 (Alcona road or something like that) until you get to Kronau. Turn left. Follow the weird white-on-brown stylized triangle thing sign to the regional park. It's about 4 or 5 km down that grid road. The park is basically permanently closed, but the QCMA has an agreement with whoever the local committee responsible and has a key. Talk to the club, through the forums there. And if you've got a tow rope, bring that too - pretty much everybody got stuck at some point, and got yanked out of a snowdrift by the recovery truck (i.e. a big red GMC pickup with a tow rope).
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Feb 23, 2010 01:22
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Washed it! I took it to a self-serve car wash, where they charge by the minute. The pressure sprayer didn't have a cranked tip for washing underneath, but I was able to blast at least some of the grime off of the underbody. Apologies for the cell-phone picture.  I made it the half-dozen blocks home without losing the shine. If you want to know what it looked like before, simply apply a layer of medium-brown grime to every surface.  Late-80's Hondas lack cupholders, so I bought a cheap one at Crappy Tire and stuck it to the door panel. Now I won't have to shift with a bottle in my hand!
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Feb 28, 2010 01:33
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Took down to a dirt parking lot 250km away, and proceeded to drive foolishly around said lot against a stopwatch. I did OK, and had way too much fun. Then, on my way home, I noticed my right-front tire was rather deflated - down to 15psi. The cause of this was a collection of pebbles that had wedged in against the bead on the tire. I couldn't get them out there at the gas station, so I pumped up the tire and drove home. It took me about half an hour to dig all those little fuckers out, after pulling the wheel off and deflating it to nothing psi.
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Mar 22, 2010 00:55
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Two weeks ago I did this: So it needed a wash. After that, of course, I drove it down some dusty dirt roads and ruined the effect, but now my mirrors are useable again and at least I managed to blast off almost all of the caked-on mud on the wheels. This is important, because the dirt roads led me to a junkyard, where I pulled 4 wheels off of this old Acura:  because I want to keep my good winter tires in decent shape for next year. $100 got me 4 "sporty" (my neighbour's reaction) aluminum wheels and half -decent all-season tires.  The four tires fit in the trunk, surprisingly, though with basically zero room to spare. Got 'em home and swapped everything out, with the help of my neighbour who loaned me his impact-driver and a proper tire-iron.  Now I can drive on clear, warm pavement without worrying I'm painting it black with winter-grade tire rubber. Also, I don't what junkyards are like where other people are, but today I was very glad to be wearing my steel toe / steel shank work boots.
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Apr 4, 2010 02:59
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MATLAB 1988 posted:Installed a public address speaker for my XT's 1988 CB Radio. The more amber LCDzzz, knobs and tiny calculator buttons I can put in my car, the better. Not sure what I'll do with the speaker, perhaps I'll scream German into it when pissed or something. If ever there was a car that wanted one of those multi-colour, twitchy "graphic equalizer" screens from late-80's home stereos, it's the XT. EDIT: http://cgi.ebay.ca/SUBARU-B9-TRIBEC...=item5d289f872f ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Apr 11, 2010 |
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Apr 11, 2010 21:29
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Is this something that might be possible to pull off a wreck in a junkyard? Did BMW use the same door-handle-assemblies for a range of cars, or just in 8-series like yours?
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Apr 12, 2010 01:31
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Fats posted:Not my car, but I spotted a stolen Jeep in a parking lot today and got it returned to its proper owner.
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Apr 15, 2010 02:05
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Turns out the police blotter in the paper is good for more than just laughing at drunks.
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Delivery McGee posted:
 I don't like the air intake plumbing in my car. I might try to do something similar, not necessarily for any power or efficiency gains, just so I don't have to see those goofy looking pipes every time I lift the hood.
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Apr 16, 2010 04:01
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CornHolio posted:Hey! Hey guys! Wanna see something gross?! I flushed my power steering fluid! My dashboard had a light for the past week showing "Brake Light"; holy gently caress my car tells me when the brake lights are blown! I took advantage of my neighbour's cigarette addiction last night and got him to tell me which bulb was out. Turns out the reason the bulb died was probably the puddle of water inside the brakelight housing. Both sides were wet, but on the right, where one of the two bulbs was dead, was about 5mm of standing water. I guess I need to get out my drill or something to keep this from happening every time I wash the car. Also, I attempted to install a cupholder. This would be attempt number 2, and it failed.  sooner or later I'll get this figured out...
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Apr 19, 2010 05:26
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Cupholder install. On my third try, success! I mounted it pretty high to make sure it would never be in the way of my knee when driving. On the door is pretty much the only place on the driver's side where a cupholder can be mounted. On the passenger side there's one or two more options, but I wanted to evaluate this idea for a bit before adding any more. So far, so good - no spills of my 600mL bottle today, even with over-aggressive accelerations and taking corners a bit quick.
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Apr 25, 2010 07:21
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Yesterday, I bought all this, for the princely sum of $4.75 through the magic of gift cards. Thanks to my sister and my parents, who bought my car christmas presents (seriously, the cards were addressed to "1988 Honda Prelude"  ) Pictured: WD-40, PB-Blaster, 4 x brake bleeder screws, 946mL of DOT4 brake fluid, new HVAC blower motor, Fram  air filter (it was the only one they had).Brake fluid drain-and-replace will be next weekend. But today was "air day"; I replaced the air filter, and the HVAC blower motor. The old blower was noisy, the new one is much quieter. I also tracked down and fixed a minor fuel leak that was causing fuel smell inside the cabin. But my engine's air intake system is weird, and I do not understand it. Ye olde air filter  The filthy, filthy housing it came out of  Notice the hole in the back wall there? That leads to a very short pipe, about 2 inches long, that just opens to the airspace at the back of the engine, near the firewall. I don't understand. Air is supposed to come into the housing and get filtered via a big pipe from the front of the engine, that has two branches (one above the radiator, the other vertically down next to the battery). But the air filter housing has this back door! WTF? The fuel leak source  The hose closest to the firewall had come off of the metal pipe. Given the proximity of the cabin air intake (just off-camera above) and the fact I saw no major change in fuel mileage or engine sound / performance, I'm going to agree with my neighbour who thinks the detached hose is a "standby" fuel supply, and doesn't normally carry much gasoline. Plugging it back onto the pipe solved the fuel smell problem I'd had earlier. I should have looked for something like this before
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Apr 26, 2010 05:02
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A wider view of that part of my engine bay The lines I'm holding in that earlier picture lead along the firewall-side of the Fuel Injection module and plug into it on the right side. They run between the EFI and that black box bolted to the firewall. I don't know what that box is, but the charcoal cannister is directly behind the air intake pipe (the big black bent-90-degrees thing); the top of it is barely visible in this picture. This is my current working assumption about the layout of the engine. There's another, similar cannister below and a bit to the right of what I'm calling the charcoal cannister. Sorry if this is obvious to you guys, I spend a lot of time staring at my engine and scratching my head.
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Apr 26, 2010 05:46
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Sponge! posted:Does yours have A/C? Blower motors are funnnnnnn. I'm on my 3rd one now. Last one I replaced when it was 5F out, at night. Bleh. I have the shop manual for my car (yay internet PDFs!), and it has been helpful. That's how I guessed at the identity of my charcoal canister, and I was leaning towards "fuel filter" on that other thing. I find the illustrations remove so much for clarity that it becomes difficult to locate things. Could you leave something in for context, like the firewall or the suspension towers or something, please?
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Apr 27, 2010 01:56
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Sponge! posted:Yes. We can share the pain of unbolting the blower box from the firewall, the cursing as we try to wiggle it enough to drop the blower out. Also the anguish of dropping the drat nut from the cage spindlefor the 5th time trying to put it back in... My blower motor is held in place by 2 of the 3 big brass screws because back in October I dropped the third one behind the kick-plate (or whatever it's called, the passenger's feet rest against it) and I've yet to feel energetic enough to pull out enough carpet to get that stupid thing off and fish around in the space behind it. There are at least 3 different screws back there, but I never hear them rattling around, which I interpret as they're good and stuck in some deep dark hole. gently caress it.
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Apr 27, 2010 04:11
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Sponge! posted:Dude, that's where your ECU lives. Might as well make it handy to pull that carpet up. When your Check Engine light comes on, you read the blink codes out of the ECU via a little porthole to the circuit board that an LED blinks through. Its not hard to do. I don't know exactly what's different between your car and mine, but my blower motor is really quite easy. I don't have to unbolt anything except the motor itself, once the glove box is out of the way (and that's held on by 5 screws, counting the little cover panel thing). The motor drops about 2/3 of the way out, then I just have to push the wall of the plastic electrical connectors against the firewall back half a centimetre while pulling down and back on the motor. Is the reason there is no 20-year-old Honda megathread simply because it would be occupied entirely by you telling me what to do with my car, and Black88GTA dropping in now and then to tell us about how he misses driving his Prelude when he drives his V-12 BMW?
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Apr 27, 2010 04:32
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Black88GTA posted:The Prelude got some love today.  Looks great, and I'm glad to hear the handling improved.I'm impressed you can get any jack at all under the front center lift point. I haven't tried, though perhaps rather than a jack I should just put together a lever with a long 2x4 and a large brick... Thanks again for suggesting I buy such a great little car. I'm still really enjoying mine.
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Apr 28, 2010 03:31
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