21st Century Restomod, Part 2: Tearing Down To Clean Up

"interstate366, now In The Industry" (interstate366)
03/28/2016 at 17:55 • Filed to: 21st Century Restomod, Honda Prelude

Welcome to 21 st Century Restomod, the chronicles of the still-ongoing transformation of my 2001 Honda Prelude from a junkyard rescue to an autocross superstar. To check out the first part of the story, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

January 2014. I’d just bought one of the last Honda Preludes ever made, with several beneficial parts and some of the model’s rarest and most desired options, for a three figure price. There were, of course, several catches. As I wrote in the first part of the story, the car had had its engine rebuilt poorly, by a shop that didn’t know what it was doing. Honda’s H-series engines have fiber-reinforced metal cylinder walls, which have to be honed properly. The shop didn’t do that, so the car burned oil. The valves were also out of adjustment and it had an idle surge. Outside of the engine bay, the interior was grimy and the taillights and trunk held water. I was planning an engine swap, rather than rebuilding the H22A4 a second time, but first I wanted to get to cleaning the insides.

I took the car on a single drive around my neighborhood before starting the teardown. It didn’t do well. She was an angry one that day.

I know the wheels were backwards. That’s for a future entry.

I parked the car in the driveway, where it stayed for a few months until the garage was free. First order of business was taking off the rear wheel well liners, which are infamous for holding water and causing what’s known as Honda rust or Honda cancer. Next I took out the lower portion of the back seats to clean them.

That’s disgusting.

Eventually I decided to just take out the back seats entirely. They’re vestigial at best. Also, weight reduction, bruh. To solve the watery trunk and taillights, I had to completely gut the trunk. Drilled a few holes to let the water drain from the trunk and took the taillights off to let them dry out, using some Target bags taped to the inside to keep water from leaking into the trunk in case it rained. After new gaskets and some new sealant, the taillights have stayed dry since.

This is not product placement. The “10687" is the build number.

The next step was getting another engine. If I had an infinite budget, I’d swap in a K-series engine, but for simplicity’s sake I was going for a direct fit. I had a few choices. I could get a regular H22A as it’s essentially an H22A4 (why Honda chose to add numbers at the end of the engine code only for export markets, I have no idea), but that’s no fun. A Type S H22A wouldn’t be an ideal fit for a car without ATTS, and S-Spec or Accord Euro-R H22A’s are always sold with transmissions attached and were thus out of my budget. That left two choices, both from variants of the 6 th generation JDM Accord. The first was the iron-sleeved F20B from the SiR and SiR-T sedan, a 2.0 liter engine that’s the most affordable of the group but different enough to the rest that a few different parts that would have to be sourced from Japan are needed. It also had the least torque of the group. My choice was the SiR wagon’s H23A, a 2.3 liter motor that is essentially, but not exactly, an H22 head on the block of the H23 engine from the mid 90s. It had a longer stroke than the other engines, and most importantly, while the power numbers are only slightly better than the H22A (200 hp/163 tq for the H23 vs. 200/161 for the H22), the H23’s torque curve is significantly better. Unlike the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the H22 in and out of VTEC, the H23’s power comes on more naturally and at a usable RPM, almost like the Nissan SR20DET. With a good driver, a stock 5 th gen Prelude with the H23A has a 0-60 time in the low 6 second range, and a 13-second quarter mile time. While I’ve come close on the former in my (admittedly lightened) car, I have no intentions of taking it to a dragstrip.

The project had started in winter, but I wasn’t going to start taking the old engine out until spring. I ordered the H23 in February and it arrived on a snowy day in early March. The black 4 th gen Prelude has been my daily driver since 2012, and the red 3 rd gen was a car I flipped to fund the build.

We pushed the engine up the driveway into my backyard garage. My black Lab Coal investigates the strange object.

Just beginning to tear down the engine. We were following the Honda service manual.

The teardown took a few months due to how busy I was. In this picture, Coal wants me to pay attention to him instead of lift the car off the ground.

Me and one of the pieces I got for the car, JDM Honda Access fog lights. I still haven’t put them on yet.

In addition to prepping the car, there was prepping the new engine too.

Finally, after three months of working on it, the engine comes out.

My dad’s strategically hiding his face.

Up next was restoring the headlights and cleaning out the engine bay.

Before...

...after.

After that was finished, I got a hold of the experts, a pair of guys who had done this particular swap before, and we set a date to put the H23 into the car.

DISCUSSION (9)

FerioDreams > interstate366, now In The Industry
03/28/2016 at 18:13

Badass! Can’t wait for the next part!

And I guess I should read the first installment now, I’m hooked

interstate366, now In The Industry > FerioDreams
03/28/2016 at 19:12

Thanks. The first installment is mostly just some background on the Prelude in general and the 5th gen more specifically. Part 3 will be along sometime in April and focuses on the engine swap.

FerioDreams > interstate366, now In The Industry
03/28/2016 at 19:28

Cool! Looking forward to reading that!

A dream of mine is to do a swap/build on a 92-95 civic sedan or a first gen insight. So seeing someone go through it is good motivation. The more DIY, the better.

interstate366, now In The Industry > FerioDreams
03/29/2016 at 10:32

Either of those would be cool. The 92-95 sedans are pretty cheap right now and that generation still has a solid aftermarket for pretty much any 4-cylinder Honda engine you want nowadays. I’ve seen them with H’s and K’s, and the B-series is of course a direct drop-in. I don’t know much about the 1st gen Insight other than it was available with a manual and that you can put a K in it somehow. Either way, let me know how it goes if you go to do one.

MonkeePuzzle > interstate366, now In The Industry
03/29/2016 at 11:24

blue valve cover? mmmmm.

loving it so far, keep the updates coming. always love this gen of prelude

interstate366, now In The Industry > MonkeePuzzle
03/29/2016 at 12:51

Yeah, the H23A and the F20B came with blue valve covers for some reason. I don’t think any Honda before or since has had one. I ended up reusing the black H22 valve cover because the blue one had a surface crack that looked like it would get worse. Part 3 will be along sometime in April and will focus on the engine swap.

MonkeePuzzle > interstate366, now In The Industry
03/29/2016 at 12:55

tis a shame, the blue always looks so good. but yes, uncracked would be preferred over cracked.

did you repaint the peeling black one? I redid mine and it made my engine bay look about a decade younger

interstate366, now In The Industry > MonkeePuzzle
03/29/2016 at 13:17

No, the black one’s still peeling in there for now. It was a last-minute thing since it seemed to have cracked when we were doing the swap. I got another H22 valve cover at a junkyard a few months after the car was on the road. I’ve stripped the paint and it’ll get powdercoated at some point. Haven’t decided on H22 black, H23 blue, or Type S red yet.

MonkeePuzzle > interstate366, now In The Industry
03/29/2016 at 13:20

certainly an easy mod to do later. and I can see why getting the car working took priority over the cosmetic issue of peeling paint