My old Honda - NA1 NSX

[chris432]

looks great!

if you dont mind, what kind of paint/color did you use for the volk wheel face?

[C2_mad]

i like this one more than the first one... by the forth and final wheel im confident you will have made (some) money back....lol

[cblock406]

OMG that table is sweet! I'm guessing height adjustable too with the coilover bottom mount! Very cool.

[becausephilchow]

Damn! That table is sick!

[hkz286]

looks great!

if you dont mind, what kind of paint/color did you use for the volk wheel face?

not at all chap, its a Nissan Blue code 715 (marine blue)

i like this one more than the first one... by the forth and final wheel im confident you will have made (some) money back....lol

yeah me too. This is a lot more detailed than the last one.

Ha, I should be so lucky. Might do something different with the final two I have left. Well see.

OMG that table is sweet! I'm guessing height adjustable too with the coilover bottom mount! Very cool.

yup lol, height adjustable from the body. Also you can adjust your spring preload if you have something heavy on it :P

Damn! That table is sick!

cheers bud, means a lot

[Nixxon]

Very cool table. How does it not tip over? It looks as though the coilover is not welded to the strut. Or am I missing something?

[hkz286]

Very cool table. How does it not tip over? It looks as though the coilover is not welded to the strut. Or am I missing something?

ah cool, wasn't sure it was coming across.

Yeah its welded, but on the inside edges just to be a bit more hidden and give the impression of it "floating"

[Dano]

Great build, liking what you got going on.

[hkz286]

Great build, liking what you got going on.

cheers

[hkz286]

Haven't really updated this in a while due to me messing about with other things.

However, there was a recent update on the paint that I thought was worth sharing.
If you have ever seen a black car in the sun, you know that this is where the very definition of paint swirls was born. As a matter of fact, just the sheer act of you looking at the car probably made another paint swirl appear.

As both mine and my brothers cars are black, and were made in japan in the early 90’s, the paint was in need of a good going over. A lot of problems with the paint occurs from people going over them with a polisher without realising they don’t really know what they are doing. Holograms, swirls, marring etc all were present on both cars and without a substantial coating of wax, looked somewhat neglected.

Just to give you an idea, these photos were taken at the docks, just before the car was about to leave Japan.



As you can see, not exactly ready for pebble beach. We both decided to get them done one after the other by the same chap. I found a person semi-locally that seemed to fit the bill. Plenty of work on much more high end cars than ours, was established for quite a few years and most importantly, seemed to delight in challenging cars (specifically challenging paint work).

http://griffithsdetailing.com/

I originally saw his work when he was doing a complete paint correction on a Bugatti Veyron (also black) which came out looking like it was dripping wet.

Anyways, he made a few short videos and took some pictures whilst he was undertaking the mammoth task. Originally it was supposed to be 3 days, but it took just over a week.

The paint on both cars is super soft, that even with the DA polisher and the correct compound, marring was still a problem. Still, it came out amazing in the end.

CLICK PICTURE FOR VIDEO AND GRAPHIC SWIRL CONTENT:



and finished shots.










VIDEO WALKROUND:


And the supra





Overall the process made both cars look better than new, and although expensive (relatively) I shouldn’t have to get it done again as long as I look after it properly.

[I_Haz.:R32]

oh my. wow. Both those cars look absolutely phenomenal.

[hkz286]

cheers bud

[hkz286]

Another thing I had notice on the car from when I first bought it, was that the cv boots on the driveshafts were letting grease out. The cv boots themselves were fine, but the grease had broke down so much, and was so old, that it was escaping out from under the edges of the boot.

You can see what I mean here (tie was removed a this point)




ewwww.




Obviously, cv grease shouldn't be that colour and generally is considered to be best placed in the joint itself and not leaking outside of it :S

So the first job was to crack the big 36mm nut that holds the driveshaft on. For some reason Honda decided to use a staked nut as a locking mechanism, instead of a much better and easier to maintain split pin and castle nut arrangement. So an inordinate amount of time was spent un-staking the nut and trying to loosen the large nut.

It broke my 6ft breaker bar, but my cheap chinese impact gun took it in its stride......yeah i didn't figure it out either :s

Then came the job of trying to remove the driveshaft from the hub, after never being touched for 25 years. These have a tendency to become seized, and in certain circumstances require removal of the entire assembly to be put into a press. Considering myself a clever chap, I thought i would plan for this and acquire this puller below:



This is the biggest goddamn hydraulic puller I have ever seen, for scale, that's a blue wheel spacer in the background.

Didn't even touch it, not a sausage, so to speak. At this point I was considering my previous thought of being a "clever chap" and giving up on cars all together, heading to the woods, and live off grid as a full time forest pixie (i'd inhaled a lot of penetrating fluid at this point)

I had previously been soaking the spline in the hub with plus-gas for a few days, however it was useless. I had read on nsxcb about someone using a mixture of acetone and ATF fluid as a pretty nasty, but ultimately badass, penetrating fluid. I have zero belief in penetrating fluid, however, I was considering become a fictional forest creature, so I figured what the hell.

here it is:



You can see how it separates quite quickly, so a thorough shake is required before each usage (oooh err) and how I stole mrs-hkz286 spray bottle for an ideal applicator.

Having applied it every 15 mins or so (acetone evaporates really quickly) for a few hours, I got to work with a cheap crappy hub puller (I had to give back the massive hydraulic one) and was quite frankly waiting for it to snap into a million pieces and have a small piece lodge into a sensitive part of my body (it had been that sort of day).




However, to my complete and utter surprise, it went "bang" and actually separated.

holy shit right? Again, after spending a lot of time now inhaling this weird homemade acetone and gear oil mix, I thought it might of been in my head, but no, here is proof I'm not crazy:



So after doing a small, but dignified (I'm British after all) happy dance and proclaiming to the driveshaft that I was master of the universe etc etc (remember, inhaling weird fumes) I thought I better crack on with the task at hand. So, instead of yanking out the shaft and storing the gear oil currently residing in my gearbox, on my garage floor, I drained it before hand (thats the kind of knowledge only gained from years of cocking up royally):



Which then meant I could take out the shaft itself:



...and making sure to keep the shaft clean I wrapped it up (remember this is the bit that is in the gearbox)




Taking of the spider and bearings from the shaft:




Because everything is hardened steel, its generally considered better to make sure everything goes back together the exact way it came apart:



so with everything marked, orientation and placement noted etc I cracked on.






and in pieces:




So I masked up everything and painted the shaft with a bit of touch up satin black:




Whilst that was drying I decided to repack the bearings themselves, with new grease.

this is what one bearing looks like in bits:



There are 3 of these per side of the shaft, 6 in total on each shaft. So...yeah, it takes some time.

All back together with each individual needle bearing placed back in the bearing with new grease. You will have to forgive the lack of pictures but this stuff is really gross and smells revolting, so I didn't want to get it all over my phone.

So after having repeated the above more times than I used the word "so..." in this build thread I moved onto cleaning out the cups:



...and then onto painting. I used por15 on this for durability reasons and that it makes it look nice and pretty, you know, for all the times I look at my driveshaft cups :S




cleaned off everything as best as i could:




...and then all back together with all new ties, grease, circlips, and snap rings




So now I just have to put it back in (waiting on a new oil seal for the gearbox) and repeat the entire process on the other side....or go live in the forest.

[nsogiba]

this thread should be renamed:
"My no longer old Honda"
"The Story of One Man's Spiral Into Obsession for his NSX"
"10001 Fun Weekend Projects for your NSX"

Awesome attention to detail, love the custom interior bits with the vinyl covering.

[hkz286]

this thread should be renamed:
"My no longer old Honda"
"The Story of One Man's Spiral Into Obsession for his NSX"
"10001 Fun Weekend Projects for your NSX"

Awesome attention to detail, love the custom interior bits with the vinyl covering.

lol thanks

I've been reading your build threads for a while now so means a lot coming from you