Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Tail Light Swap

As seen earlier, post crash Ceras Victoria had some damage to the tail light.

Now, even with that damage I'd been driving around Miami for half a year and had no issues.
But upon moving back to IL for law school I got pulled over one summer night for having "white light show through."

Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Headlight Swap

As seen in the other photos Ceras Victoria had suffered damaged.
To make her street legal I needed a working headlight.
This is the install.

Nausicaa (Honda Prelude), JDM Headlight Swap

As stated in the previous post I needed to put a pair of headlights on Ceras Victoria. The JDM ones would not fit, so, I put the JDM ones on Nausicaa and removed Nausicaa's for later use on Ceras Victoria. In the end I wound up with a spare headlight housing. Yay!

JDM Headlights

As the pictures show... Ceras Victoria had busted up headlights.
Nausicaa had a good pair.

A friend of mine had a pair of black housing JDM headlights for sale for a reasonable price, so I bought them from him, figuring those are what I wanted in the end on a finished car anyways (probably HID retrofitted, but I'll get to that one day, I hope).

So... here's the picture of the headlights I got before being installed, and the harness I bought so that the USDM harness in the car worked with JDM headlights, which us different bulbs.

Nausicaa (Honda Prelude), Walk Around

Ceras Victoria, being wrecked, at least in terms of body, was looking to be a $6,000 repair according to some local shops because they thought the frame was bent. Considering that it drives straight and was not even out of alignment (as I found out recently), I doubt this.

Either way, Ceras Victoria was to be a project car, and I decided to get a new platform to start from.

I bought Nausicaa, a 1993 Honda Prelude VTEC.

Here are the initial pictures from the first walk around.

Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Post-Crash Walk Around

This one is pretty self-explanatory. These are the pictures post smashing into a guard rail at 55+ MPH.

I won't mention who the driver was, it was not me. I was asleep in the passenger seat while on a January road trip to Miami. The person at the wheel hit a patch of black ice and committed the two biggest mistakes you can when you hit ice: broke and steered.
When you do either, or both, what happens is as soon as the wheel that was slipping meets pavement and friction is the car turns, and at 55+ MPH it turns hard!

Anyways... on to the pictures!

Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Pre-Crash Maintenance

So... unfortunately all that I'm going to list here was done before I was using a camera to document the work...

New A/C Condenser.
Had a shop put in a rebuilt A/C Compressor and had them Recharge the A/C system.
I also swapped the original white roof panel with the silver one that had no rust.
Switched to a K&N Air Filter, the kind you can clean and re-oil, which is with me today.

The following winter I did the Rear Main Oil Seal.
Replaced the Clutch, Flywheel, and Pressure Plate while I was at it.

The car was crashed shortly thereafter, I was not driving at the time, though it was one hell of a way to wake up in the passenger seat.
Next Ceras Victoria update will include the crash pics.

Also, I've done many oil changes.
Just to give a sense of what I use on my 170,000+ (now 190,000+) mile engine I'll list what I typically use:
Valvoline MaxLife 10W30 (or 5W30) Synthetic Blend & Lucas Stop Leak
Lucas or Valvoline Fuel Injector Cleaner (every once in awhile, once a year or so)
Wix or Fram Tough Guard Oil Filters

Back when the oil leak was worse I used to use regular Valvoline 10W30 or 5W30 just because it was cheaper.

Post-crash pics next... (for Ceras Victoria)

Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Pre-Crash

So... this is Ceras Victoria. A 1994 white Honda Prelude Si. She's been through some tough times.

Cloud (Subaru Forester), Engine Reinstall

Cloud is my parent's 1999 Subaru Forester.

We got her a few years back, and found that she was losing compression in one of the cylinders. So, we pulled the engine, sent it to a shop, and got it back.

We don't exactly move as fast as we could in our family regarding projects and having things put back together, but here's some photos of making Cloud run again...

I'll also intentionally leave out dates... progress was shamefully slow.