$2015 Challenge entry - 88 Accord LXi

volvoclearinghouse wrote: In reply to tuna55: I had the same steering feel issue on my 300TD. It turned out to be toed IN too much. Double check that toe- bounce the suspension a few times, recheck. Possibly it's going toe-in dynamically, due to bad bushings or tie rods or something?

I suspect toe changes as well. I'm thinking the radius rob bushings.

Added a ton of caster and redid toe with strings.

But I didn't drive it today because I have a load of scrap metal to bring during lunch, needed the minivan.

Don't you hate scrap prices? You probably brought about 500 pounds of scrap and got, what, $25 bucks?

volvoclearinghouse wrote: Don't you hate scrap prices? You probably brought about 500 pounds of scrap and got, what, $25 bucks?

I have some copper. That's good stuff. The last A/C unit was $15 worth of copper alone, this one should be more.

But yeah, the steel is basically free. I gave away a few larger pieces rather than spend money on cutoff wheels cutting them up. I maybe gave away $1 worth.

The first car I legally drove was my dad's 87 DX automatic sedan in 1997. Ten years old and 180,000 plus hard miles and that thing was solid as could be. I was driving it one day and due to a bad repair by a crappy pep boys mechanic, the car caught fire (ruptured fuel line to the carb). It burned to the ground and their insurance paid dearly for it. What a great car though. Thanks for the build thread. I'd love to have another myself.

So, I guess this build thread is sort of finished. I'd like to tidy up the battery terminals, and some of the bushings will need to be replaced over time, along with the dampers. I just sort of drive it now, and other than an odd EGR issue, it's just like driving an old car.

Some cosmetic stuff will follow as finances allow, but really I'm sort of done with anything that you guys actually care about.

The Leaf goes back tomorrow, after a heated and lengthy exchange with NMAC about the disposition fee (I won, but it took a week) and I will miss it. It's a big change going from a brand new electric car to a 27 year old stick shift economy car. I will be swapping in an old radio that I have failed to sell at garage sales for $5, and probably buying one of those little bluetooth adapter thingies for cell calls, but it's pretty livable otherwise. Tunakid #2 and I washed it inside and out this past weekend, and it's downright habitable.

I also need A/C to be fixed, forgot about that.

In summary, it's a car, and it's usable. I'll post on this thread as stuff comes up.

Disposition fee?

Mad_Ratel wrote: Disposition fee?

Lease stuff.

So, you have to pay them to take the car back. Neat, huh? Through Nissan VPP, the dealer quoted me $180. NMAC says it's $395. My contract says "N/A".

Four days of pissing matches, and I finally got a guy who just looked at the faxed contract and agreed that it was $0 because the contract said so.

They're really messed up about it. The contract is two sides, front and back. My signature is on the back. The dispo fee is on the front. THe idiots on the phone could not understand that, they kept saying "We have the contract you signed with $395 on it" and I kept telling that that they did not, because I had it in my hand, and the one they were looking at was a scanned copy... but it was hard to get them to understand that.

Anyway, money is money.

395 is >>> 0

:P

Tuna, I've got an old car radio you can have for the price of shipping. It's a Pioneer DEH-2600P, it can have an AUX input added by getting a cable called: PAC AAI-PIOP ($7.99 from Crutchfield, maybe cheaper elsewhere). Caveats: I don't know if it works and I don't have the harness for it. I do have the mounting sleeve, trim ring, and remote though.

In reply to slowride:

slowride wrote: Tuna, I've got an old car radio you can have for the price of shipping. It's a Pioneer DEH-2600P, it can have an AUX input added by getting a cable called: PAC AAI-PIOP ($7.99 from Crutchfield, maybe cheaper elsewhere). Caveats: I don't know if it works and I don't have the harness for it. I do have the mounting sleeve, trim ring, and remote though.

Wow, huge generosity again from you guys!

I'm going to hold off just now, and I really do appreciate your offer. I just installed the old radio I had upstairs, and will deal with the lack of bluetooth and aux input simply because shipping and a cord are not free, and that is paramount right now. I am saving my pennies (literally) for a trip to see the Tunachucekrs race at Lemons in two weeks, and have been getting stern looks from Tunawife for things like the $4 EGR gasket.

The radio is in.

The console is out (armrest is nasty and broken. I will either fix or replace with something else)

The throttle cable is fixed (there was an annoying ::stick:: when you first touched the throttle pedal which made driving more difficult, and full throttle was actually 120% (which is really 80% airflow) which made driving even more difficult) - it turns out that the throttle cable cam was all bent, so I rebent it and now it's cool.

New bushings are on the front swaybar endlinks

I found $0.22 under the passenger seat.

New budget (bushings, radio, harness):

$1047.71

New "real" (including tools and drinks and such) budget

$1160.84

Cool that you sorted out the throttle, if you'd want, I have a TB off a 97-01 Prelude H22A1 that you're welcome to "have" with the FITV delete.

Not sure if it's applicable to your chassis, but I just put 90-93 Integra front upper control arms on my car. Got almost -3 degrees camber(-2 degrees more than previously), and added a degree of caster. May be able to poke around the Honda parts bin at a junkyard and see if anything could work.

beans wrote: Cool that you sorted out the throttle, if you'd want, I have a TB off a 97-01 Prelude H22A1 that you're welcome to "have" with the FITV delete. Not sure if it's applicable to your chassis, but I just put 90-93 Integra front upper control arms on my car. Got almost -3 degrees camber(-2 degrees more than previously), and added a degree of caster. May be able to poke around the Honda parts bin at a junkyard and see if anything could work.

Thanks Beans!!

I'm going to steer clear of mods to the engine for a while until I get everything sorted out. I really appreciate your offer!

As far as suspension swapping, apparently Prelude arms swap, though I cannot remember the exact years. What it buys you, however, is adjustable camber to -decrease- camber after lowering. What I plan to do instead is to cut the springs ever so slightly to get to a -2ish static camber and leave it there.

I'm not doing that until I have enough cash to swap out the dampers, though. I am seriously considering going the phoni route, though, and refilling mine with fork oil and crossing my fingers.

Another cheapo option are the generic $50 ebay coilovers. I got 550lb rates with mine, 7.25" tall coils, and work pretty damn good with my Bilstein HD's. It's ALMOST as comfy as my skunk2 springs were.

I can poke around the old garage and see what else I have lying around that I'd just send to you for the price of shipping, if you'd like.

In reply to beans:

I still don't understand what a cheap coilover gives you on a car already set up like these (because the stock setup is a coilover). Can you help me explain?

I also have to look into replacing basically every bushing. I cannot find a smoking gun, but it's a bit wobbly bobbly over bumps, and even after maxing out the caster adjustment on the stock radius rods, it's dead on center. It still holds a nice line when cornering but it's weird and sloppy on center.

I borrowed a set of r134a gauges and found 100psi on both cold and high sides, so I will be saving for a compressor too.

If you have anything lying around, I may be interested but please don't be offended if I pass based on shipping costs. Go faster isn't the goal, be better and driving back and forth to work is the goal. At least for now.

In reply to tuna55:

Inner tie rods will make a car feel like it is on a bubble until the steering loads up in a turn.

tester wrote: In reply to tuna55: Inner tie rods will make a car feel like it is on a bubble until the steering loads up in a turn.

I had a thought similar to that, but with the car up, shouldn't I be able to feel that pretty easily by turning the wheel by hand?

Maybe not, the slop might be tough to identify.

I was calling the speakers "acceptable" but then tried listening to "Life's Been Good" this morning and wow, it sounded like someone was farting during that bass.

Well the set of R134a gauges that I borrowed were bad. Happily I was told this before I bought anything. Apparently the high side leaks to the cold side within the manifold, so you have to check the two sides separately.

When I did, I found 0 and 125, so I'm going to buy some refrigerant.

My local junkyards sell speakers for $5 a pop. $20 for a full set of Kenwoods that were a couple years old transformed the way the stock stereo sounds. Keeping my eyes peeled for a Kenwood headunit not. If not, I'll splurge.

For a "true" adjustable coilover on a suspension like these, all you're really gaining is ride height adjustability and spring rate selection.

beans wrote: My local junkyards sell speakers for $5 a pop. $20 for a full set of Kenwoods that were a couple years old transformed the way the stock stereo sounds. Keeping my eyes peeled for a Kenwood headunit not. If not, I'll splurge. For a "true" adjustable coilover on a suspension like these, all you're really gaining is ride height adjustability and spring rate selection.

Thanks for the advice.

My local junkyard charges $2 to walk in. It's also full of utter junk. I'll keep looking on Craiglist though, because pretty much all music is terrible on this system.

I'm probably just going to save for some decent KYB dampers and do that.

Here's the new list. I handled the cruise and the mirror so far.

There might be some good info on 3geez.com (or whatever the 3rd gen accord site is). I've found that LKQ's are absolutely the best yards I've been to so far. Clean, organized, and usually has a bunch of good stuff. Standardized pricing makes it nice going from yard to yard, too.

Cleaned the EGR last night and that fixed the CEL I was getting at high throttle angle, high RPM conditions. That nice.

If I understand Challenge budgets properly, the gasket doesn't count because it was intact on the car. I'm counting it in the real budget though.

New budget:

$1047.71

New "real" (including tools and drinks and such) budget

$1165.17

First tank of gas today: 28.66 mpg, including lots of idling. Mostly suburban driving.

eh...