Cloud (Subaru Forester), Fuel Filler Pipe Replacement

This is a project I'm not working on much, it's one my dad is doing (so the pictures are not so exciting).

After the engine repair and reinstall there was still a check engine light.

The old one was quite rusted. There is a cover for it that collects all kinds of grime and moisture. The result is a rusty mess.

For the reinstall I suggested rubberized paint. We used the 3M Professional Grade Rubberized Undercoating. It turned out quite well in my opinion. We missed a few small spots. We'll have to see how it holds up. We also ended up coating some of the fuel hose connectors, the old ones were mighty rusty.

Anyways, here are some pictures:

Necessary Garage Materials, Aerosols

Having spent a fair amount of time working in my garage and on cars over the past few years these are the spray cans I find necessary:

PB Blaster

It is absolutely excellent at removing rust and loosening stuff. It acts as a great penetrating lubricant. Sometimes you need to add heat to get the best effect. This means having a blow torch on hand can be very helpful.

Brake Cleaner

This cuts through grease like nothing else. You can go pretty cheap here, although I have found that the more expensive stuff does a bit better job on the first spray. Generally, a few good sprays and a wipe with a rag and the metal looks new. Terrible to breathe in through. You want to be in a well-ventilated area when you do this.

Rubberized Paint

3M Professional Grade Rubberized Undercoating is my brand of choice. This stuff can coat on thick. I’ll have picture of it up later. It allows you to coat those hard to reach and difficult metal pieces. When you’re doing a lot of car work you often come across a lot of rust that you could wire brush out of the way. I wish we had this when we had the engine out of the Forester. There was some rust that was fantastic mess at the time.

I’ll update this to reflect how it stands up long term. Right now though I can say it coats well and looks like it will work quite well.

But yeah, for someone who plans on doing work on old cars, maybe even new ones, I would suggest having these on hand. The rubberized paint will help with all sorts of future rust issues.

A taste of the next car I look to purchase...

I was in a Subaru dealership with my dad the other day picking up some parts for the family Forester (a bit more on that later).

They had a Subaru BRZ there, a car I am very interested in. Unfortunately I did not get to take it for a test drive, but I did get to examine it pretty thoroughly.

The seating position is very comfortable. The rear seat behind the driver’s seat is utterly useless. The rear seat behind the passenger seat actually has enough leg room that you can sit there fairly comfortably. I do not know how great it would be on a long distant trip (to be in that rear seat), but for shorter drives it looks like it should be fine. As a Honda Prelude owner I like this improvement. It takes the car from a two adult passenger vehicle to a three adult passenger vehicle.

The trunk space is shallower than I expected, but with the rear bench folding down this probably would not be an issue for long road trips (something I’ve enjoyed in the Prelude).

The dealer was also kind enough to pop the good. The engine really is nestled in there very low. It fits right between the wheel wells. There is a metal skid plate underneath the whole thing. There may or may not be a third engine / transmission mount. If there is one, it is not located in the in the center of the firewall like on other Subaru's. The weight distribution looks wonderfully low.

The oil filter is located on top of the engine, which will make that bit of maintenance that much easier.

The AC compressor is beneath engine.

The radiator is mounted at an angle, it looks like it may be difficult to get out.

Spark plugs look quite interesting. It looks like you will need to remove the wheels and plastic cowling in the wheel wells to get at them. This may actually be easier than the current song and dance removing fluid reservoirs, batteries, and air boxes in the Outback and Forester.

All in all, I’m a fan. I will most likely be looking to buy one within the year.

Nausicaa (Honda Prelude), Tear Down (Part 3)

As it is before Thanksgiving break and I had some free time this weekend, that and my girlfriend was in town again, we did a bit more work.


First, the last of the wires connecting the dash to the car were disconnected.
Then the dash was removed.
Some of the metal left behind is rusty. The plan for that is to wire brush it and coat it in silicon paint.

Nausicaa (Honda Prelude), Tear Down (Part 2)

I am in the process of tearing down Nausicaa before building her back up.

With law school and all, I haven't made that much progress. We'll see what I do with my free time and weekends this year.

This weekend I spent some time with my girlfriend working on removing the dash. Had we started earlier, or had an hour more of light we would have been successful... but as it sits, the dash is ready to come out except for a few wires still connected.

Center console has been removed. Front seats were previously removed, as was the radio section.

Jaguar Alive Driving Experience, October 2012

Somehow I was on an invitation list for this event: Jaguar Alive Driving Experience

The first part of the event included a show room and food and some cars to look at.
This is the new Jaguar F-Type.
I think this was the S model. On the inside it felt more like a concept model and mock up than a fully built car. I wish I had been able to drive it.

Places to do Car Work

This is just a funny post, but I thought it's funny the places I've done significant car work.

Parking lot of condo I was renting in Miami (underground).
Driveway of the house I was renting in Miami.
Parent's garage in IL.
Parent's driveway in IL.
Great aunt's garage in VA.
Bubbe's (grandmother's) driveway / in front of house on street in NJ.

I suppose the list will grow.

Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Car Alarm Removal

Ceras Victoria had an aftermarket Clifford fancy alarm installed in her just after I bought her. I wanted a good car alarm.

The problem is as time has gone on I have not driven her much, especially being in law school and using public transportation every day.
I drive the car maybe once a week, more likely once a month. This means I use fuel stabilizer in the tank a lot and that the internal battery on the car alarm goes dead.
I disconnect the battery when I park it because there is an electrical drain (possibly was the alarm) so that I can start it when I need to.
The disconnecting of the battery meant that every time I reconnected the battery the car alarm treated it as a break in. This means that it goes in super shut down ignition kill mode which is just a pain in the ass. So, when it did this while I was visiting family in New Jersey with my girl friend (was supposed to be a short visit, turned out much longer) I decided the alarm had to go.

Luckily I had my camera with me.

Seat removed to make it easier to access the dash.

Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Fender Remodeling

As mentioned before... the fenders on Ceras Victoria's ugly side sometime scrape the good rubber making for fun noises and interesting smells. This usually happens when the car is particularly loaded with stuff during left turns or big bumps.

Being really annoyed I took a hammer to it. Originally I was planning on reshaping the wheel well back to its original shape but that proved too difficult due to the folds in the metal.

I therefore hammered it up and out of the way, which helped a lot when the car is empty.
Also, to compensate for this, I'm known to left foot brake over bumps to shift weight forward and prevent wheel scrape. I think it sometimes drives cars behind me on the freeways crazy.

Pictures now...

Start...

Ceras Victoria (Honda Prelude), Road Trip to Washington DC, Summer 2012

I figured I'd post some images of the current state of the car...
I also drove it to and from Washington, DC this summer and up the East Coast some.

Nausicaa (Honda Prelude), Tear Down (Part 1)

I am in the process of tearing down Nausicaa before building her back up.

With law school and all, I haven't made that much progress. We'll see what I do with my free time and weekends this year.

Here are some photos of what has been done...

This is a picture of how I started...

Cloud (Subaru Forester), Back Together

While I was away in DC this summer my dad, brother, and sister finished putting Cloud back together.

I have no pictures of the process, but, on the bright side, it all works!

That means, fuel hoses and so on reconnected. I got a call from my dad asking why it would turn over but not catch and I had to remind him about the fuel relay under the dash. It is a royal pain to get to.

But yay! One project done, for now...

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.

Introduction

For those who know me, I'm involved in a few car projects.

Someone I met while working at the US PTO (Patent and Trade Office) this summer told me I ought to blog the work I do.

This blog will be updated slowly until I have time to make some real progress.

For starters though I plan on going through some of my old pictures, uploading, and giving a blurb or two about what is going on.

This will be picture intensive.