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Unaturally Aspired's Prelude Thread

3rd Gen_ 
35K views 304 replies 63 participants last post by  LudeAEM 
#1 · (Edited)
Run_Away's Prelude Thread

Beware: this is a very long story, detailing my relationship with Ludes from my first one to where I am now.:-D

It all started with this car:

(taken a few days after I bought it)
'90 SR 4WS. Red, 5 speed. 175,000kms (108,000 miles)
I bought it for $2150 Canadian at the age of 16 with the money I had saved working on my uncles farm in Ontario.
It apparently had a new timing belt and water pump. I was going to drive it home 2000kms to Winnipeg the following week.
I drove it here and there around the property that week.
There was a wierd problem where sometimes it wouldn't start at all. I would leave it for a bit, and when I came back it would start right up.
I didn't think much of it, I was too happy with my first car.

I changed all fluids the night before setting off on my little roadtrip, and the next morning stopped at the Honda dealer to get them to listen to a slight rattle it had develloped. Of course, I could not reproduce the rattle for the technician, so I was on my merry way.
I stopped to fill up with gas, and the car would not start. I waited, tried, waited more, it was dead.
So $120 later in towing fees I was back at the Honda dealership, and they found that the distributor rotor had spun, making the ignition timing waaaaay off. $50 and it started right up. As soon as it started up, the car started the rattle it had develloped the previous day.
Poking around the timing belt cover, they found that the timing belt had almost no tension in it at all, the belt was slapping around.
The next day, they changed the timing belt that I had been told was new, for $450.
I drove for half of the day, and then stopped again for gas.
I checked my oil just to be sure, and I nearly shat myself. The dipstick didn't register any oil at all. I bought a couple quarts of oil at the gas station and topped it up. The brand new oil was already pitch black. I looked all over for an oil leak, because the car didn't blow any smoke.
Over the next day I drove the remaining 1500kms, stopping every 100kms to add a quart.
I made it fine, and other than the oil burning (settled down to about a quart per tank) all was good and I enjoyed the car immensely.


A few thousand miles later, the transmission started feeling notchy. So I bought a second Prelude at the insurance auctions for $400.
It had a damaged drivers side fender and a part only title, perfect for parting out. However, that transmission turned out to have a 3rd gear grind.
So over 4-5 months I gutted the car, and learnt alot about cars. I sold the engine and a bunch of other misc parts here, and made my money back.


In that time, my red SR now started to have a slight rod knock when cold. I promptly switched to 20w-50 oil and limited myself to 3000rpm and 3/4 throttle at the very max.
I looked around for someone in the local Honda scene to rebuild the engine, but all the guys that came with recomendations wouldn't touch a B21 due to the FRM cyl walls. I graduated from High School and got a job delivering pizza in my red lude, in addition to working at a grocery store. My diet of heavy oil, long warm-up times and easy driving was working quite well.

By now I was hooked on Preludes, so I searched for another car with a good B20 to part out. As luck would have it, the local garage my parents use had a total rustbucket '88 2.0Si 4WS outside. I made sure it ran, paid the owner $130 and towed it home. I now had 3 Preludes. I parted that car out in my driveway, with the intention of spending the $2000 I had saved up on getting it rebuilt with a few goodies, and a shaved head for higher compression.


Then out of the blue my best friend spotted a '91 SE (rare canadian model, leather, ALB and 4WS) listed at the same auctions I had bought my first parts car. I went to check it out, and was amazed to find that it was very mint, with only 150,000kms (93,000miles) on the clock, and overall in very good condition. A carfax showed it was a one-owner vehicle. It had been rear ended pretty hard, but I still had the shell of my first parts car, so I had all the parts to fix it. It was an automatic, but I also had the parts needed to "fix" that. Best of all, it had a Repairable title. I managed to be the winning bidder the day it went up for auction, and took it home for only $350 (auctionner missed someone else bid and gave it to us, that's why it went so cheap). The SE went straight from the auctions to a shop where my best friend's father took all his insurance writeoff vehicles (he's a mechanic) to get the frame straightened and everythign squared. I now had 4 Preludes. I chopped off the rear end of my white parts car, from the rear window back. Then I sent both of my now useless parts cars away for scrap metal.
I now had 2.25 Preludes, 1 spare B20A5, and two extra 5 speed transmissions & all related gear (pedals, lines, clutch master and slave, etc)


(those last few are after the frame shop, you'll notice alof of dents are gone. I don't have recent pics, but I drilled out the spot welds on the tailight panel and it's going to be replaced with the parts off the white car. Next is a before pic)


Meanwhile I was still driving my red lude daily as I hadn't had my replacement B20 rebuilt. Knowing winter was aproaching and that my red car couldn't possibly last all winter doing pizza delivery, I looked into my options.
I could buy another vehicle to drive during winterbuying so I could retire my red car from driving and give it some TLC.
I could get the engine rebuilt and take a week off from both jobs and swap motors, and fix a bunch of other things it needed (ball joints, axles, brake job, alignment)
I could get the SE repaired asap and drive it until I could fix my red one.

Either way, my parents were getting tired of my collection and told me I could only have one car in their driveway. So I rented two spaces at an indoor strage facility and said bye to my SE for the winter. Why 2 spots, when I only had 2 cars? Well, being the Prelude freak I am, I went with option 1 abd bought another lude.:p

I found a black '89 4WS with a blown auto tranny (no overdrive or reverse...1st, 2nd and 3rd worked fine) and after the compression test checked out, along with everything else I gave him $1100 and stuck it into storage beside my SE. Prelude count: 3


Which brings us to where I am today.
At this moment, I'm still driving my rod-knock red lude, and waiting for a new clutch to arrive at my doorstep (in transit right now) so I can do a 5 speed swap on my new black '89 and start driving it as my winter beater.

I'll use this thread to update you all the status of my ludes.:p

Random pics:

(engine on a wagon!)

(that also contributed to the condition of my red lude's engine, but it's mostly the previous owners IMO...I only had it for 10,000kms and in that time it develloped all those problems..I havn't told you half of them)


Comments/questions/eat a STFU + mayonaisse sammich/why do you still like these cars/etc?:)
 
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#5 ·
Chris.nl said:
Nice story :emthup:
Thanks guys, mean alot comming from the two of the biggest lude nuts here.

Chris, you're part of the reason I bought the rear ended SE, I saw your site where you did the tail panel swap and I figured this would be only a bit harder. I quit my grocery store job a few months ago and I now work at a body shop along with pizza delivery (forgot to mention that in the story), so I'll have some help from real experts.:)
 
#11 ·
dano said:
Damn....such a cool story. But the COSMIC QUESTION is....do any of them have clock control covers ????

You're having way to much fun and learning a lot about Preludes. Hope to see a real gem come out of all this effort.
YES!:grin:
The black '89, with the ugly ass-tan interior has one.
I basically threw out two good interiors when the other two got sent away, my reasoning being "I'll never need that" and now I'm looking for a black dash + 4WS door skins.

Hopefully the SE will turn out nice....I have the color picked out (pics on monday, there's a '68 Galaxie being painted the same color at work).:grin:
 
#14 ·
Yeah, it's pretty close to factory. I didn't want to go too far from the stock dark blue, because color changes don't look good. You'd have to strip the whole car to a shell to do a proper color change, and that's not worth it.
This way I can just paint the car and the door jambs and leave the engine bay, interior (undercarpet), trunk and undersides of the trunk and hood the stock dark blue.
I work at Dominos evenings, Dream Car Restoration during the day. On Brookside Blvd, next to the airport. I've worked there for about 3-4 months now I guess.
 
#15 ·
Some new stuff came in the mail this week:




Lotek gauge pod + gauges, courtesy of Danny. There's a small crack, I'm going to fill it with filler then sand it down and paint it. Anyone know the color code for the interior of our A pillars?


Sidemarkers + center + drivers side tail light to complete my set, courtesy of Neouka. He's parting his car out, help him out guys!



New exedy clutch kit from Clutch City Online (eBay seller), for my new black car. I also got the flywheel off, I'll be dropping that off to be resurfaced and perhaps lightened ~6lbs (depending on what it costs) on Monday.
 
#19 ·
GLUDE204 said:
i shouldve seen your driveway with the three preludes... :-D

keep us posted ben...
every other weekend theres 6-8 3rd gens in my yard. it seriously looks like a lude gathering. but its just that im the local 3rd gen mechanic, and i know several people that have them. gf has one, close friend has one, father's friend has one, and i have 2. and theres usually at least one or two more here on the weekends that im doing work too haha.

cool story though man, hope everything works out to form one seriously beautiful 3rd gen worthy of never driving in the winter
 
#20 ·
Alright, I pulled the black car out of storage and started work on it.
It's got new rear calipers and the auto trans is almost out.
I have all the swap items ready to install, got the flywheel machined.
I just need some new flywheel bolts, CV boots (going to split soon), front springs (cracked, need to pass safety), and maybe a new water pipe. I'll probably just trim this one though.
The tires on the black car:

:emthup:


Clock cover!




Trunk had some water in it at some point.


New brake lines.

Found this on the black car:


This came on Monday:

For the SE. It has a bit of rust, nothing major though. $50 on eBay + killer shipping.




The latest project at work:

'34 Chevy. Pretty much everthing is custom.


And I got a credit card yesterday. :twisted:
 
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