1996 Integra GSR Sedan

i'm getting for real frustrated with the electronics with this car.....

regular updates first. all the brake hoses, cables, etc.. are finally mounted where they are supposed to be. these pics suck, but they are there.



just need to trim the one fuel line and bend it in the correct direction and the fuel tank is ready to go in. i clear coated the areas i "roughly" painted with duplicolor close enough color lol. it doesnt look great, but it will hold me over if i cannot get the entire car resprayed next year.



it matches pretty good for a ford color


pics of tailights in from last weekend, i need to adjust the trunk lid. the tailight lines dont match up.


glued this bastard in! when i do the driver's side, i WILL NOT be doing it the same way. this was a nightmare to deal with. my plan for the driver's side should go much smoother.



back to all things electrical that hate me. i went through my wiring diagram AGAIN(third time now?). from what i can see, everything is where it is supposed to be. granted, it is a little hard to tell with some of the wires since they are the exact same color. BUT, when i initially swapped plugs, i de-pinned and re-pinned each wire one at a time. so here is what is happening on electrical-i still have 0.5 volts or some minuscule number going to the vafc harness. not enough to power it on. so i have completely disconnected the boomslang harness for now. i plugged the ecu plugs back together and now as soon as i turn the key on, i get a repeated clicking from under the dashboard and the CEL light is faded and blinking very quickly with each tick. i'll try to get a video of it tonight, probably easier than trying to explain what is going on. so that is all screwed up. also now, my low beams do not work at all. no power to the harness. this shouldnt be affected by the ecu though, they worked before when the ecu wasnt even connected. i double checked my fuses and both are good. high beams work, but no low beams.

i'm getting all kinds of frustrated with the car's electrics...i'll still move forward so other items are done and out of the way. i hope to install the fuel tank friday night. hopefully the filler neck too, if not that will be done saturday. i'd really like to bleed the brakes and cllutch and then fill the tank with some gas and test for leaks IF the ecu will let me. this will of course be around the work i'm doing to my truck this weekend too, so we'll see how it all comes together. at this point, i'm not sure if i should reach out to boomslang about the harness since there is no power going to the vafc unit, or if i should hold off because there is obviously something else wrong.

 

oh man, i never did upload the pics of my wiring de-pinning and re-pinning fiasco

 

the electrics in this car is making me really lose steam at this point. i'm trying to get everything else done, but i'm really just procrastinating and putting off the difficult stuff lol. also annoying... i went to finish up the fuel tank install over the weekend only to find that i am missing some oem clips and such for the fuel connectors. so, placing another order to acura today. ugh..i feel like every week for the last month i have been placing $20 orders here and $15 orders there for oem stuff i didnt realize i needed. the last 2 times i went to install parts on the car and i was held up by not having some clip or bracket or something lol. oh well. i went over everything i need to put back on the car so i can combine stuff i know that i need into one order, hopefully. thats the plan at this point anyways. i also seam sealed the replacement arch and started the fiberglassing to smooth out the patch panel. this looks a lot thicker than what it is, but me and my DA sander will still have some work knocking this down before i move to standard body filler. this is short strand bondo-glass.

 

Very pleased with how the quarter panel replacement is turning out.

 

semi-finished quarter repair and mounted rear bumper. i will finalize the body work whenever i get ready to repaint the entire car. still fighting with my electronic issues at the ECU though...




and the rear bumper installed. i'm super happy with how close the fitment is. i was really worried it would be way off somehow during the cutting out of the rusted panel and splicing in the new one.

 

i've been bad at updating this. I fixed the electrical issue, installed the fuel filler neck, fuel tank, connected all of the lines and hoses and pressurized the fuel system today. fixed one leak (a line i forgot to tighten at the fuel filter), and found more rust on the quarter panel i need to replace. the replacement patch just got bigger....bah. but, i'm getting very close to firing up this car for the first time in nearly 2 years, with a little luck it should happen this week.

 

Here's my 4th Gen prelude from 10 years ago.



Here was my bro's.

 

ah, that generation of preludes were probably my favorite. A lot of people liked the next gens better, but to me they just didnt look as good as these ones.

 

Yea definitely don't see them around anymore. Wish I never sold it.

 

Yea I had rare yellow fogs, window visors and super rare never to be found again spoon mirrors. Other stuff was easy to find on ebay. Really wish I couldve atleast kept the mirrors just because of how rare they are.

 

It's ridiculous how much that older stuff has appreciated. Like the Spoon stuff, the Mugen stuff. I was happy i was able to find the Neuspeed strut bar i had always wanted for this car the first time around i had it but never had the funds to purchase. they don't make that part anymore so i had to search the forums to track one down.

 

<------dummmy

It was completely my fault....I was the electrical gremlin lol. no matter what i did, every component checked out and i was still getting zero power to my ecu. then randomly i decided to go back through my manual and double check my under hood fuse box. when i pulled the fuse to repair the few bad wires at the ecu's harness, i put the freaking fuse back in the wrong slot. i had my diagram upside down so instead of putting the fuse back where the ecu fuse needed to be, i put it in the slot for extra fuses....ecu got no power because i'm dumb and didnt put the fuse back where it was supposed to be lol. so glad i wasted like 4 weekends of trying to figure that out.

 

i failed to update again. i suck at this game. we have power! we have fuel! we have spark (i think?) we have issues!!

i either screwed something up when i tore into the head to replace a couple of components, or it is just out of time. i have a list of things to check this weekend, but the car runs!

and i cleared some more space in my garage and mounted the bumper back on the car. the only down side is now i dont have clearance to walk in front of the car with the garage door closed now.

look at these panel gaps. i definitely have some adjusting to do.













i pulled the valve cover and set it to TDC to check to make sure i didnt skip a tooth on the timing or something. these look a smidge off, but i was in a hurry so i will need to recheck to be certain.





it still has a really bad miss. i took this video after putting the valve cover back on. it idles pretty steady, but as soon as a load is put on the motor it shakes really bad. i tried to get a good shot of this a few times with my phone, but its really hard to see how bad it is shaking. this is open manifold by the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kd7LX68Sik

 

i should update this. i tore apart a lot of the work i did in the head to double check and make sure i didnt miss anything. turns out i screwed up on my valve adjustment pretty badly on the exhaust side but that had no effect on how the car was running. i did get the car to run though. However, i found out what i need to do to get the car to run. there is an issue with one of the plugs at the ecu, bad connection somewhere. if i keep the wires tight, the car runs great. if i leave slack in the wires, it will run on 2 or 3 cylinders and thats just no good. so, i got the car to run well and i let in run for about 25 minutes or so to trouble shoot for leaks. the car got up to operating temps and the fans cycled on and off. I found 2 leaks. well 3 technically. i have a very very slight seep at the oil cooler with the oil filter screws into the base. i think the radiator has separated where the metal meets the plastic tank, and i have a leak at one of my rad hoses. not sure why i have one there though, new clamp and new hose.

anyways, after i checked for leaks i got the car back together and for the first time in like 18 months the car is not 2 feet up in the air anymore. getting closer and closer.



its sitting a little high in these pictures but it should settle nicely after everything compresses. its all new suspension components so i would expect it to take a bit to get to the real ride height.

 

oh, and a couple videos. This was when i was still working out the running good on all 4 cylinders. Also take note because this will play a part in the next video... notice all of my tools etc.. all over the floor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3XZFuPu1RQ

The car is now running just as it did when i bought the car back. so this next video shows the whole mishap lol. I was taking another video because the car was running better than before, no misfires this time. well, i tripped on my air compressor hose, regained my balance and then tripped on my jack stand and almost fell into my alley. Warning....this video will make you dizzy lol. I tried to play it off like nothing happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOF2iG8ybAw

 

Just seeing this thread.

The GSR is from the good old days when Honda built motors & cars.

I had a civic 1.6 with 160 hp and an 8k+ rpm redline. It was a great motor and you could feel the cam shift at about 5.5k rpm & it sounded & felt as tho motor enjoyed it. Only problem was the motor could over power the clutch when I was slamming thro the gears....it didn't like it when you didn't let off the gas between shifts.

My current fun ride, a TRX 450r, doesn't mind and still sounds amazing at max RPM.

 

I havent updated this for a while. yikes. so, the car is ever so closer to getting on the road. i've buttoned up a lot of different areas and poked a few other areas too much lol. the fuel tank is leaking from the seam now that i have a half a tank of gas in it. so that needs replaced. i'm redoing the wiring at the ecu tonight. well, at least starting on it. and i may not even use the green bumper now even though i repaired it. Its missing 2 tabs that must have broke off. oh, and i need the top part of the radiator core support. apparently it got tweaked too much when the guy i sold the car to got brake checked. i thought i fixed it, but i noticed a couple of creases that say otherwise. the front bumper and core support i'm not too terribly worried about at the moment, its just on my to do list.

 

so i spent about 90 minutes finishing up my wiring. I still haven't routed the mess back up under the dashboard yet, that is going to be a major pain in the ass. then i went to the driver's side and went to fire the car up. a few small hiccups aside, she runs on all 4 cylinders no matter which way i pull the wires, and is throwing one check engine light for the 02 sensor that isnt there yet.

here is the car running.


errrr, no wait a minute. it was just here.



ha! i drove it to the parking pad. and then i got ballsy and drove it about 1/2 mile up the road to the local grocery store and then back to the house. it was so great lol. runs very smooth, shifts like butter, no over heating, brakes and clutch pedal felt good, but the ride was a tad shaky though. i have no kind of an alignment at all right now since i completely stripped the entire suspension off this car during the rebuild. But it was quite nice to take that short illegal drive. It hasn't been inspected in almost 3 years now, so thats the main reason i kept the ride short.

a few things to note:
i have coolant seeps at the upper rad hose on both ends. i dunno how this is, i doubled up on the hose clamps and it is still seeping.

coolant seep at the block from the rad hose


coolant seep at the rad



when i first started the car, the abs pump buzzed non -stop for about 90 seconds and then quit. when i started the car from the parking pad to make my quick trip, it did the same thing. i just pulled the relay for now.

I need to do something about this alignment before i take the car anywhere far and that requires a speed limit of over 30 mph lol.

so, on to the remaining list (for this year anyway). Most likely in this order - change out the fuel tank, take the car to the muffler shop and get the catalytic converter fitted to the car so i can pass inspection, go get the car inspected and aligned, then finish some little things and drive and work out whatever bugs will be showing up as things settle in. Little things would include power window motor replacement, install new door plastics, fix broken rear door handle, install kill switches, replace ac compressor, and i'm sure other little things here and there i'll think about. Still trying to track down a replacement quarter panel for the driver's side.