The CR-X

[Vvvtec]

Virtually identical motor setup to myself, except I have an RRC, 70mm tb and RDX injectors.

This CRX will do more than just scoot along nicely lol. Its going to be scary!

How beautiful are these ASP headers <3

[maracer]

BTW........Will you be registering?

[ChargeR]

You can put it into my car?

Nice update.

Well I think that once you get your NSX and have another car to drive you should K swap your DC2R, happy to help out .

Nice update Tom!

If only I had your pics 3 weeks ago

Thanks guy, though I'm not sure my photos would have helped, I just made it look like the pictures in the manual!

Virtually identical motor setup to myself, except I have an RRC, 70mm tb and RDX injectors.

This CRX will do more than just scoot along nicely lol. Its going to be scary!

How beautiful are these ASP headers <3

Thanks mate, seeing how well your car performs reassures me that I'll be happy with the performance of the CR-X when it runs. Definitely happy with the ASP header, for me it made sense to spend the extra on them because with a crappy header you'll be spending more in other areas just to make the same power gains. What I've got should be a good base to build on.

BTW........Will you be registering?

Yes car is currently registered and will continue to be . I never intended it to be a track only car.

[45SET]

So no A/C or P/S.

You'll have a hard time selling this on OzHonda!

[tRipitaka]

So no A/C or P/S.

You'll have a hard time selling this on OzHonda!

Tom has never sold a car of his, and I don't think he ever will. Haha

[dnapol]

+1 ^^
Tom won't sell rims or mods either.
Next level money pits hahaa

[ChargeR]

+1 ^^
Tom won't sell rims or mods either.
Next level money pits hahaa

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!

Tom has never sold a car of his, and I don't think he ever will. Haha

So no A/C or P/S.

You'll have a hard time selling this on OzHonda!

The man above is correct, the denizens of Ozhonda wouldn't be able to pry the car out of my hands. I'll crash it or keep it forever most likely.

[jong]

hey new to the forum but this is the first thread that caught my eye! can't wait to see this crx in action good luck man

[ChargeR]

hey new to the forum but this is the first thread that caught my eye! can't wait to see this crx in action good luck man

Thanks mate!

Today I attempted a task I'd been putting off for a while: patching the rust in the driver's side bonnet hinge area. I started by cutting out all the affected metal, and shaping the hole into a convenient shape:



I then cut a chunk of steel out of a nearby ED9 CR-X bonnet and formed a chunk into a suitable patch. Because I was TIG welding it in place the fit had to be fairly good, since filling large gaps isn't nearly as easy as with a MIG. Here's the patch in place after a lot of patient cutting and grinding:



Tacked in place:



I then welded it in fully. The weld is okay at the rear of the patch, but pretty average at the front where the material beneath is much thicker and was sucking all the heat out of the weld, so I'll have to go over that area again. I was reluctant to use too much current as the steel is very thin, about 0.6mm, and if I blew a hole I'd have to start the whole patching process again:



Once I've finished tidying up the repair, the next step is to strip the doors and hatch off, and then send the car off to have the bay blasted and painted. Then the slow process of final assembly can begin!

[ChargeR]

This is a quick update to show that I haven't forgotten about this car. A week or two ago the gearbox rebuild kit I'd ordered from Synchrotech turned up; I went for the complete kit including bearings for the main and countershaft, synchro rings and springs, seals, and 1-2 and 3-4 sleeves. So I've collected up my gearbox and brought it to work, and started clearing an area to work on the rebuild:



While I've got the box open I'll be replacing the differential bearings and the 3/4 shift fork. The gearbox had some issues with third gear engagement after plenty of track kms in its previous DC5R home, so with any luck it was either a synchro, sleeve or fork issue and will be fixed by the bits I have. If not I'll have to order more bits.

[ChargeR]

I haven't forgotten about this car, and I'll be putting more effort into making progress in the coming months. Since my last update I've finished pressing all the bushes out of my control arms so I will be getting them powdercoated and put back together soon, and I've started on the gearbox rebuild This week I bought another donor car from my good friends at Pickles:





It's an imported Japanese 1.5X model, so it's fitted with a mighty twin carbureted D15B, but the important part and the reason I bought it is it has a steel roof. So I'll be cutting the roof out of this car and welding it into mine. Should be fun. A whole bunch of other stuff like the glass, door, rear bumper, and tail lights will also find their way onto the SiR.

Also I may be changing the driveline configuration slightly. I think that the K24 I've got assembled now might be too slow for what I want to achieve.

[MYDC5R]

Love the commitment you have Tom, best of luck with that roof

[ChargeR]

Love the commitment you have Tom, best of luck with that roof

Thanks mate! It's going to be a big job for sure.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I've started the rebuild on the gearbox for the CR-X. I bought this gearbox from another member, who will remain anonymous, with an undiagnosed 3rd gear issue. 3rd gear could be selected normally from the driver's seat but doing so gave a lot of revs without matching forward motion.



After removing the shifter mechanism, and a bunch of other bits here's the gearbox with the upper casing removed showing the main and counter shafts:



Everything looked normal so far, with pretty typical light wear to the synchros. A little more metal on the magnet than ideal, but this gearbox had seen a lot of track days so its not unexpected. Also it doesn't show in the photos but the whole gearbox was stained a green/blue colour on the inside, with gritty looking remnants of Red Line Shockproof oil everywhere even after using a number of different oils after the Shockproof. So I'd advise everyone not to use this oil if you ever want to use something else as it will definitely hang around inside your box.

Looking closer I found this:



This is the 3/4 gear shift fork, I don't think that crack and large bend is meant to be there. What the photo doesn't show is a second small crack on the back side of the fork, so it appears the fork failed by a crack developing at the corner due to repeated hard shifts (probably using excessive force and pushing it into the next gear faster than the synchro can handle). Once the crack reached a certain length on the next hard shift it failed completely. As a result the fork would no longer push the sleeve all the way on to 3rd gear, giving no forward motion in 3rd.

With that mystery solved I pulled the shims, seals and bearings out of the casings. Pictured is the fancy bearing puller from Honda with the DIY attachment to mate to the weird thread on the slide hammer I had.



Then spent some time cleaning up the cases as best I could:



This is where I ended up, with a mostly disassembled gearbox and lots of bags of bolts. Hopefully I can remember how to put it back together:



Next up is to replace the seals, the differential, main and countershaft bearings, and fit the new synchros and sleeves.

[plAythiNG]

Gee you have more donor cars than actual cars Tom!

Love it.

[ChargeR]

Gee you have more donor cars than actual cars Tom!

Love it.

Yep it's a problem, hopefully all these stores of EF/ED parts will come in handy one day!

I did some more work on the gearbox today, starting off by pulling the old bearings off the differential, and fitting new OEM bearings using another fancy Honda special tool. Thanks to DCW for the loan of the puller thing.





With new bearings fitted I thought it was worth checking the clearance of the diff in the casing, so I dummy fitted it in the case. The manual states a clearance range of 0-0.1mm between the outer bearing race and the shim in the case.





I used two methods to check the clearance, firstly with feeler guages between the bearing and the shim as per the service manual. Then I double checked it by removing the shim that sits in the top of the case and measured the gap between bearing and case using a small length of solder clamped between the case and the diff bearing. Both methods produced a measured clearance of just over 0.1mm with the current 1.3mm shim, so I'll order a 1.35mm shim to correct it.





Then I cleaned up the shift linkage and put it back together with new seals. With that done it was time to move on to the hard part, fitting the new synchros and sleeves to the main shaft. Here's a life size exploded view of the main shaft:





All was going well until I went to put the 5th and 6th gear synchros on the shaft and found that I had the incorrect parts. This gearbox is out of an '04 DC5R (Serial no. Y2M3 3000909) and it appears at some point in that year Honda changed the 5th and 6th synchros to single cone, the type that mate directly on to the tapered cones on the gear shown in the pic above, in place of the earlier double cone design (which Synchrotech had sent me, since I told them I had a Y2M3 JDM DC5R gearbox) So another order and another wait.

I'll be assembling the countershaft tomorrow once I manage to get the nut on the end of it undone. Once that's done all I need to do is check the mainshaft clearance and bolt it back together with the new 3rd gear shift fork and some Hondabond.