Fefelarue's 3rd gen Honda Prelude

[fefelarue]

But the most important update so far:

Pop-up Headlights On Drugs - 89 Honda Prelude 4WS - YouTube

[fefelarue]

sorry guys, been slacking, copying several posts worth of updates in one go:



I've had an ongoing starting issue for months now, and after 3 new batteries and 3 alternators that didn't fit, I finally solved the problem with a big-ass 100Ah battery and a nice shiny reconditioned alternator:



I celebrated my car's fully working electric system by going out and buying this:


and this:

for a total cost of £26

I then popped to carpet-right and managed to pick up this 6 metre roll of fluffy purple carpet for a tenner:

because why the hell not.

Then after lots of measuring, cutting, glueing and swearing, I made this:





Thanks for looking

Peace out









Hello folks, I finally have a fairly substantial update

So I drove to Amsterdam last month, and on the way back I got a flat tyre and had to drive the whole way with a space saver on! As all the tyres were pretty low anyway, I decided to just buy some new (used) wheels with tyres on.

So I picked up these 16" x 7.5J BMW fitment wheels for a bargain price, albeit with no centre caps at the moment. If anyone knows what wheels they are, let me know, as they seem to be unbranded.


They looked pretty rough and unfinished, but they got me safely back on the road:


Then came MOT time, and unfortunately it failed due to a small rusty hole on the sill:


So I started pulling the rust out to get some bare metal for the welder, and the hole became a much, much bigger hole:


At this point several people told me to scrap the car, I no longer speak to these people :P

I took it to a local coachworks, who did a fantastic job of rebuilding the hole and reshaping that corner of the car to make it look standard again. All this for a bargain price of £250. Unfortunately I didn't get any close up pics of this stage. The bad thing though is that they undersealed it all over the repair, as I couldn't really afford to get it properly painted. So for the next few days the car looked like this:


I then decided this would be a great excuse to wrap the lower of the car and get the 80s two-tone vibes going on. So I bought some wrap:


..and invited some friends round. They promised they would help as long as I'd let them add some wood-effect vinyl to a couple of parts of the car, and leave it on for at least a week..

I thought this was a fair deal, so we got started:




In the meantime, we painted the wheels in matte white:


Then it got really dark and we stopped. Now today it's raining but I took some photos of it (almost) finished:






I'm assuming a lot of people will **** this, but I love it! (maybe not the wood - although that is growing on me).

As always, thoughts/opinions/advice welcome.

Peace









Hello everyone, it's been a while!

So the other day I got properly underneath the car and had a good look round for the first time. I've got very limited knowledge of suspension components and all that jazz, but it needed some maintenance doing so I thought I'd crack on and polybush everything I can at the same time.

First up was the radius arm to chassis mount. This unfortunately doesn't make a good photo, and as I needed my car for work every day I had to just swap it over without painting anything or making it look good, but here's an old vs new bush.


Then it was ARB time! I took the rear one off and it was in a right state; cracked bushes and a fuck-ton of rust.




Even worse, one droplink snapped, and the mounting brackets and clamps both had rusty holes in them and were falling to pieces.



After failing to find the brackets anywhere, Honda told me I'd have to wait about 3 weeks while they imported them from Japan. I was like nahh mate, and took them to a local welder who sorted them right out


Then I gave them a nice coat of hammerite


The bush clamps I also couldn't find anywhere except Honda, so the best I could get was this "universal" ARB clamp in the right diameter which did nicely.


To get new droplinks from Honda is £90 A PAIR!! For what is essentially a long bolt, so I improvised.




Then came the ARB itself. I was happy to find that under the rust, there was actually some metal



The front ARB wasn't in bad nick at all, but off it came anyway.


Then they both got a nice lick of paint.


And I made up some front droplinks too. Front and rear, Old vs new:


old vs new bushes for the front.


Polybushed the rear.


Rear assembled.


Front assembled.


Rear back on.



Then got my trusty purple carpet out and got the front back on




And finished it off with a nice suede MOMO wheel


Thanks for looking!









My manifold has been blowing like a dutch hooker, and been getting worse and worse for months, to the point where exhaust gas is coming in through the heater, so decided it was time for a change.

After scouring the interballs for a while, the only manifold - standard or aftermarket - available ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD seemed to be an OBX stainless jobby from california, for the facelift lude (year after mine). So two weeks later here we are


I was worried it wouldn't fit, but didnt really have a choice.


So here's my engine bay, stained brown from months of 26 year old exhaust fumes:




And here's what I'm replacing it with:



SHINY AS BALLS RIGHT?!

But you'll notice there's a pretty major problem, there is not one mount on the entire damn thing, let alone a hanger in the right place, or maybe a flange to bolt it to the rest of the exhaust?? NOPE

But I have welder friends, so I knew I just had to do an airtight bodge for now and I'd be happy.

Off with the old manifold, and a huge well done to the Honda engineer 30 years ago for this access point to the far right manifold nut



So here's the downpipe:




PRETTY SCREWED

And here's the old vs the new:




Spot the new gasket with one poor forgotten hole. Not sure how you get this wrong:



But it's on!





Woo

I also went over to Longlife Exhausts in Carshalton and got a full stainless system with twin exit 2.5" pipes

Their customer service was pretty terrible, although the workmanship seems spot on. Mandrel bends and great welds





And it sounds incredible

Thanks for looking!









LOWS!

Got some BC racing coilovers for christmas (from myself), so got fitting them





The fronts went on fine, but the rears literally took me 2 days - the lower strut bolt had seized to its bushing sleeve which had seized to the bush, which was all trapped, rotating inside the lower strut fork. NIGHTMARE. It was also way too big of a bush to blowtorch it all the way through without doing some serious damage to some nearby components, so after a day of drilling, burning, twisting and angle-grinding, the old bush looked like this:



And this is what was left of the motherflipping bolt:



Then of course the new poly bushes were another nightmare to get in - waaaaaaay too big. But after several hours the feckers got in there.



Then I decided I needed bigger wheels, and saw these potentially nice wheels, hiding under a shitstorm of disgusting blue powdercoat and multi-fitment shitness:




But they were only £160 with brand new tyres so I was happy to take the risk, but I wasn't gonna put them on in their grim blue state, so I did a bit of stripping:



powdercoat is SO FRIGGIN HARD TO GET OFF!

Anyway, I thought for a while how low I wanted to go, but then decided to just dump the thing to the bottom of the coilovers:







This is my daily driver as well, commuting is slow now haha, but I can still turn to full lock with all 4 wheels

I will be making custom centre caps for the wheels to cover up the multi-fitment mess.

Thanks for looking!

[Earl]

Really happy to see an update =) I miss mine a lot sometimes. The BMW wheels seem to look like Azev Type A's with missing centercaps

[fefelarue]

Really happy to see an update =) I miss mine a lot sometimes. The BMW wheels seem to look like Azev Type A's with missing centercaps

Thanks Earl

Yeah I realized they were Azev As a while back, that post was copied from a few months back. I've been waiting to post it here cos i didn't feel right posting on Stanceworks until I had a low car haha, so there was a bit of a backlog of posts all in one go..

[Queef|Chief]

i like the two tone. def works well with an older honda in my opinion! glad to see she got some new bushings as well, sure it feels much better

[baluzy36]

killing it with the 2tone, glad the rust didnt stop you!

[fefelarue]

Thanks guys! It's been hard work and a steep learning curve but I'm getting there

[hinrichs]

Love to 2 tone and how subtle it is.

[TheTynosaur]

I'm glad you updated this, it looks really good with two tone and low

[fefelarue]

Bought some new wheels!

BBS RS reps, 16" 9J & 8J









Whatcha think?

[Loaf31]

Love everything so far! Keep up the good work! Love that two-tone wrap.

[JHermes]

its amazing man, the ammount of effort you put in to it is amazing. love the whole build! Keep it up!
also for a daily grind, it can still go a bit lower

[fefelarue]

Thanks guys

And JHermes - I already scrape pretty badly on the driveway going into work haha, we'll see..

[Nagah]

I think this mesh style wheels are not really flowing with the car's design.

[anti.engineered]

Ohhh yes this just got legit

I came along at the right time. Good determination young padawan