My old Honda - NA1 NSX

[nsogiba]

uh oh...the pesky "while you're in there" bug...

[hkz286]

uh oh...the pesky "while you're in there" bug...

Yeah it's what killed my 240sx build. With this one I'm repeating the mantra "it won't kill you to take something apart twice"

[hkz286]

So onto the other side, oh how I wish these things were straight forward. It could of been worse, but then again, you could think the same if you got a bout of crabs, so perspective isn't really helpful in a lot of cases.

the shaft itself, came out pretty quickly (...nah thats too easy)



As did the heat shield. This is supposed to offer some protection from radiated heat off the manifold. It runs really close and obviously the grease breaks down much quicker under high heat. I may add some more thermal protection but undecided yet.



Stripped everything down as per last time:



...and boom, found two of the six bearings had quite a lot of wear:



This is due to the breakdown of the grease not providing enough lubrication (god damn I'm setting myself up too much). If its not too bad then they can be reused, but this is to far gone.

So two options; I buy a new cv joint from Honda (£450!!!) or buy a new driveshaft from rockauto, which is considerably cheaper. However, the aftermarket shaft uses a standard ball bearing arrangement, as opposed to the needle bearing arrangement used in the Honda joint. I don't really want to mix one side to the other. I would rather find a new shaft I can rob parts from in order to finish the rebuild of these.

This unto itself isn't an ideal situation, as everything inside the bearing is hardened steel (as per most bearings) and wears in a particular way with respect to the parts that its in contact with, which means that everything should go back together in the same way that it was taken apart. Obviously using other bearings, from another shaft, would mean this isn't the case.

Call me a badass who plays by his own rules, but I'm going to do it anyway (if i can find some and after I finish crying over my poorly dirveshaft).

Whilst this shaft is in limbo (giggaty?) I thought I would get on with other things. I painted the housing in por15 after they were cleaned:



and cleaned up the heatshield:



...and then painted the shaft and partially reassembled it, mostly so I wouldn't forget how it goes together (I have a memory like a....errr...whats is called....)



I also bought a new crank pulley from Honda, which means I need the special tool for holding it (I'm honestly not doing this on purpose) whilst I crack the nut. This would be the sensible, quick option. So I decided to make one instead :S



Basically took a thick walled stainless steel tube (304) and 36 a/f nut I had kicking around and stuck it together.



Honestly, so much overkill on the construction (it will probably outlive me) but its what I had to hand so...meh.

Onto the brakes.

I needed to get everything into a model so I can look at the packaging constraints, and work out what bracket and rotor hat to use/design. The Wheels are a fixed point as I went through murder to get them and refurb them, so they are staying. The bearing hub, and mounting point is obviously fixed, and the caliper is fixed. So that's where I started.

Now, most people who do this sort of thing, produce some very lovely looking models, spend a long time rendering them and posting them up here.

This means your going to look at what I've constructed and think "well that's a piece of crap, this guy hasn't a clue what hes doing"



"well that's some attitude you got there mister!"

But realistically, unless your trying to impress customers, you should only really model the areas that you are interested in. In this case, the outside dimensions of the caliper, mounting points of the caliper to centre line, inside profile of the wheels, wheel offsets, pad thickness etc . A lot of my models will be simplified, so not as pretty as they can be, but as a general rule, you don't put detail in where you don't need it (this wastes hours, and therefore money....that's if my time was worth anything.....which it isn't.....not a sausage)





A few final dimensions and I should be able to start putting a decent bracket together. I'll get to that when I've finished dicking around with driveshafts though. I don't really want the car in more pieces than it needs to be.

[I_Haz.:R32]

As always, excellent stuff! I can't believe a new axle from Honda is only 450 bucks. I think the one for my Civic is about the same price... you'd think the halo car would cost considerably more... I guess that's the beauty of Honda's engineering (at least in the 90's).

[hkz286]

As always, excellent stuff! I can't believe a new axle from Honda is only 450 bucks. I think the one for my Civic is about the same price... you'd think the halo car would cost considerably more... I guess that's the beauty of Honda's engineering (at least in the 90's).

lol I wish, its just the joint that's £450 (about $550) the whole axle is the just over a grand I think ($1200-1300)

there seems to be very little commonality between this and other Hondas bar a few gaskets and seals here and there.

Its a bit of a kick in the bollocks when you want to buy parts but at least it justifies the huge purchase cost (I think :S)

[cult45]

Holy attention to detail. Good on you mate

[hkz286]

Holy attention to detail. Good on you mate

Cheers bud

[hkz286]

So after much fannying about (that a technical term btw) I managed to get the other driveshaft rebuilt and back together



The main issue was wear on the bearings which I wasn’t happy with so had to get some from Australia for an eye watering price. But such is life. The important thing is its back together and only cost about twice as much as if I bought a aftermarket cv joint from rockauto :S

So moving swiftly on I put the gear oil back in and finished off everything nicely with a magnetic project mu drain plug which I lockwired in.



Now some of you may be asking yourself “why in the name of the space pope, did he decide to lockwire the drain plug”. There are numerous well thought out and sensible reasons, but I couldn’t think of any. I did it mostly because the drain plug already came pre drilled for lockwire, and I had the lockwire and pliers to hand (from another part, which I’ll write in huge detail later…..you lucky ducks) so thought I may as well.

As the cv joint is right next to the exhaust manifold, this heat breaks the grease down quite quickly ( I may already have mentioned it before, but honestly who the hell reads this anyways, and if you do, repetition should be the least of your concerns) so I thought I would try and beef up the heatshield a bit.

Started out with a sheet of Numbus aluminium heat shield.




Using some black card, I made a template of the original heat shield.



And cut it out with some tin snips.



I then skipped a few steps, but here is the final product fitted up to the car (driveshaft removed for clarity)



Not entirely sure how much difference it’s going to make, but there wasn’t a considerable investment of time or money, so again, why the hell not.

[laextreme5]

Heat kills everything. Every bit helps. Honsetly prolly putting some gold reflective tape on the cv joint end would work great at heat reflection. Used it on my wrx TMIC and it worked amazing. 20 minute drive without and could barely touch TMIC endtank. WIth gold tape could hold hand there all day. The TMIC end tank was within 6" of the Turbo.

photo (3) by lawrx, on Flickr

[DeltaAlpha9]

As someone who works on airplanes I have to say your lockwiring skills need work haha. That being said I have seen far worse from people who do it on a daily basis.

[hkz286]

As someone who works on airplanes I have to say your lockwiring skills need work haha. That being said I have seen far worse from people who do it on a daily basis.

Christ don't I know it :P you can only learn so much from ECI technical notes and you tube tutorials :S

This was my first attempt and tried something fairly simple. Ill keep at it hopefully it should improve a little.

any tips? I'm never quite sure what to do with the ends once I'm done with the actual locking.

[hkz286]

Heat kills everything. Every bit helps. Honsetly prolly putting some gold reflective tape on the cv joint end would work great at heat reflection. Used it on my wrx TMIC and it worked amazing. 20 minute drive without and could barely touch TMIC endtank. WIth gold tape could hold hand there all day. The TMIC end tank was within 6" of the Turbo.....

I might give that a shot as well, thanks

[DeltaAlpha9]

Christ don't I know it :P you can only learn so much from ECI technical notes and you tube tutorials :S

This was my first attempt and tried something fairly simple. Ill keep at it hopefully it should improve a little.

any tips? I'm never quite sure what to do with the ends once I'm done with the actual locking.

If you already have lock wire pliers you're off to a good start. Twisting by hand is a pain in the ass and usually ends up with twists that are all over the map because it varies with how far apart your hands are. The pigtails are the hardest part because it can make a tight hold sloppy if you don't get it right. I always use more wire than I need just so I don't come up short at the end then cut of the pigtail about an inch and a half long and double it back to the fastener with the right length so it's not touching the fastener head but also so it's not sticking out. I just tuck it under the tail. At school we had a teacher that would fail your project if he could catch his finger on a pigtail end or a cotter pin so that helped to learn fast. Also if your lockwire strand is loose when you're finishing it off you can twist the pigtail up but before doubling it back you move the pliers in kind of a conical shape to get the first twist to suck up tight to bolt hole and it makes a world of difference. It takes some practice but the pay off is worth it if you're worried about loose lock wire.

You can also check this out. It's basically just standard practices but the safetying bit starts on page 7-311.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC43.13-1b.pdf

[AntB]

The main issue was wear on the bearings which I wasn’t happy with so had to get some from Australia for an eye watering price. But such is life.

As an Australian I appreciate that you used one of the most colloquial Australian saying.

Your attention to detail in this is fantastic, I like that as you pull stuff apart you clean the misc parts along the way.

& as a turbo Subaru owner I can agree about heat killing everything I'm just about to fit gold heat proofing to my process west tmic.

[loekaaz]

All this effort, attention to detail, money, blood sweat and tears, AND IT IS STILL WORTH IT. #NSXLife