Jag! The Ghostly fleet thread

[ghosty]

Rock Auto's response was 'we've looked into the problem and the wrong parts are listed in the kit, here's $80 in store credit so you can order and ship the right ones'.

Now that's customer service. It won't get delivered for a good while now being the May bank holiday, but if it means a better gearbox then I'm all for it.

[Eddie Honda]

It's possible (not easy doing searches on mobile away mind you) to get the individual clutch friction and steels for the 4 clutch packs for this gearbox. The only thing is the parts costs soon add up with four or so friction plates per clutch times 4 clutch pack at a fiver a pop. That'll be a ton gone easy.

Junkman makes a good point about getting a workshop manual for the gearbox to be worked on in question so you can compare all the tolerances and with careful examination and measurements you can determine which parts are in spec and which aren't. That way you will avoid unnecessary replacement of perfectly serviceable parts and ballooning costs. You can do a certain amount using skill and judgement, but it's always better not to fly blind.

[ghosty]

According to Rock's research I need 12 clutches @ £3.24. This sounds about right as I know there was a revision to the ML4A gearbox for fifth gen Civics that added a third shaft IIRC - that'd necessitate a fourth clutch pack (I wonder if these are the larger clutches I was sent?). I do have manuals and schematics for the 'box and know how it goes together so no worries there. Honda stuff is very well documented on the net, full OEM manuals are available for free, and I have a good few Haynes manuals too, including a manual for third and fourth gen Civics that is only available in the US, that I got in a charity shop for pennies a couple of years ago (complete with original order invoice from Haynes) - I always get Civic stuff when I see it.

I can't easily just buy a later gearbox as they have different codes and wiring that goes to the ECU, so can't be sure if/how they'd work. As such it's important this 'analogue', so to speak, gearbox is rebuilt. This is the first Honda gearbox I've had that slips/misses shifts - usually a fluid change has them right as rain, but somehow this one managed to damage a clutch plate.

[ghosty]

Late Monday night the store credit was authorised, via a code I was emailed, for the precise amount to buy twelve supposedly correct clutches, and ship them to myself via FedEx, no less. I suspect this is as I had the previous kit FedExed as it was the cheapest way, but even so that's bloody decent of them to shell out for it and not leave it to the US Postal Service. It was the second most expensive of five options! VAT paid too so no customs. Rock Auto never disappoint and I'll keep using them as long as this keeps up.
Anyway they've been ordered and dispatched from Phoenix AZ, and based on the last package should be here Thursday or Friday. Progress is pretty much on hold until then, the only things that have been done in the meantime are boring bits of cleaning up the engine bay and trying to deduce where the electric fuel pump might fit, and a couple of other minor things:

1: n/s engine mount bracket. (I know the pictures for this aren't good but this is what happens when a 70 year old takes your pictures on his six year old iPhone 5c).

The mount is made up of two pieces: one is a bracket bolted to the engine block, and the other the bushing. The mount from the new engine does not fit the car, it is too wide, so this needs to be swapped over. Alas the brackets on each engine have different bolt patterns for the bushing and need to be swapped over. As the engine isn't in the car yet this is fairly easy - first, unbolt the rocker cover. This is necessary as it locks the plastic cambelt cover in place.
Then unbolt the two piece cambelt cover (two piece for easier removal in situ), and the mounting bracket can be removed.




This is revealed.




There are two bolts on the underside of this mount to remove it.



^This photo just about shows them (black thing top left, the rest is the big end and cambelt tensioner).

Anyway, as Haynes says, refitting is the reverse of removal.

2: driver's door rubbing strip.



There's a bit of filler in the door, and a piece has snapped off the rubbing strip revealing the trim clip behind (more on that later). While sourching a trim piece I coloured in the gap in the trim with a marker pen, because ten footer. (I cleaned this off before fitting new trim).

Can't have this. The front wing part of the rubbing strip, as seen to the right of the picture, was held in with two screws identical to the one pictured in the door piece: the wing had deformed due to giffer damage, and whoever fixed it was a lazy fucker that made holes instead of pulling the damage out. The trim clips had also broken but thankfully Old Man had spares from previous Hondas he'd owned before I'd even had a car, that did the job perfectly once I'd sourced new unblemished trims. I fixed that previously and didn't have any issues.

This piece was slightly more troublesome as the frontmost trim clip on the replacement rubbing strip broke very easily when I tried to fit it, and is partially moulded into the trim so borders on irreplaceable. It was a different colour plastic to the other clips (blue, when all the others are white), so I wonder if that somehow tied into it failing. I had a spare clip from the old damaged trim but it wasn't possible to transfer it across to the new rubbing strip without damaging it in such a way that it would retain the rubbing strip: I'd only been able to retain the spare clip as the rubbing strip was damaged - the damaged area pictured above met me pull it out, but it seems this part wrapped around the clip body. Instead of the clip, I mounted that part of the rubbing strip on with some foam based double sided tape meant for mounting numberplates, and it has held so far. Without the screws it looks much tidier and enables me to have an unbroken red pinstripe on the trim. (This red pinstripe was fitted to performance model Civics, such as the 1,6i-16, VTECs, and SiRs - various international specs. Mine's just some eBay stick on stuff, but it breaks the car up nicely, I thought it looked a bit dull without - for all you purists it's easy to remove though).

Interestingly as well, the rearmost fitting for the door rubbing strips is a 10mm nut, that runs onto a shaft moulded into the rubbing strip - this threaded shaft goes through a hole in the door skin and the nut sits in the dead space behind the door seal and below the catch. Odd, but thoughtful - stops things catching on the rear end of the rubbing strip and pulling it out of the door, which would bend it and irreparably damage it.

Annoyingly I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but it wouldn't be much different anyway.

However, a lot of dirt had manged to accumulate behind the trim. The adhesive foam strip appeared to be a factory addition as the replacement trim piece had identically placed foam residue.



3: the VTEC controller.



I stuck it in a convenient place where it isn't in the way, again with the numberplate tape. The reason it isn't in line with the choke knob is that it is positioned to line up with gaps in the dashboard moulding, and it fit perfectly there between two panel gaps, one for the centre console and the other for the steering column shroud. It doesn't interfere with the driver's knee, either. The wire goes out the back of it, to the bulkhead, through an unused bung that I drilled a hole in, and into the engine bay for the various inputs and grounds it needs. No pictures of that as it'd be indiscernible.

In other news, having discovered the questionable steering wheel appears to be wood rimmed under the paint, I'm having second thoughts about it. It seems that the paint, while seemingly some sort of metalflake/metallic, might not be original: it was badly masked off from the stainless centre - there is paint where there shouldn't be and at funny angles, and said paint chips off a little too easily for a factory finish: the wheel is date stamped 1991, how could it last that long and still be in the condition it is?! It doesn't make sense.

I might have a go at stripping the paint and refinishing the wood, then selling it on for a profit, and reinstate the old MX-5 wheel.

That's about it for now, it's back to waiting for parts.

[Hooli]

You've got a pedal missing for a hot hatch.

[captain_70s]

You've got a pedal missing for a hot hatch.

He's going to blip the VTEC YO button with his foot to simulate gears.

I'd be concerned the reason the wheel was painted is because the wood is utterly fucked, and that stripping would render the (already hideous) wheel worthless. I kept my Dolly Sprint alloys in their painted silver state for the same reason...

[ghosty]

The new clutches have landed in the UK (at Stansted of all places, somewhere I've been a fair bit as my dad worked there for a few years), suspect they'll arrive tomorrow or Saturday. All being well the car will be back together in the coming week, partially as I've sold some bike tat, and partially as I'm working all weekend, thus funding another week off to work on it.

[Hooli]

It's crazy you can get stuff quicker from the US than most companies in this country.

[LynehamHerc]

And a better service
Not long ago my youngest left his laptop here after being home at the weekend.
He needed it for his research so I/he paid over £30 for guaranteed next day delivery from near Cromer to Oxford.
3 days later it arrives. The Royal Mail 'guarantee' is that they'll try to deliver it by then.

[Eddie Honda]

It crazy it takes so long to get something over to Ireland from the UK when I can send car parts from Glasgow to Maine in 27 hours.