The RT4WD Wagon!

[Afx31]

**Here again moving my build thread on my Honda RT4WD Wagon from Honda-Tech to ClubITR like I did with my track hatch build thread! Enjoy!**

Yo! So I've been in the old school Honda game for over 4yrs now with my track/street built hatch (https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-...chbox-3251019/) and I've now picked up a new project, a RT4WD Wagon! Plans with this some what barn find which has been off the road for 9 years is to restore it, make it look shmick, and slap a SOHC VTEC motor in it and turbo! I've always wanted to do a SOHC Turbo build, and which chassis would be better than a 4WD wagon hehe. Here's some starting photos for the old girl, bit rusty around the window but apart from that the rest of the chassis is somewhat clean!

[Afx31]

DATE of original upload: 19-12-2018

Alrighty so last weekend I got around to just cleaning everything out, gassed the entire car with bug spray as there was spidery cunts (juicebox reference) left right and center! Cleaned out the boot too and vacuumed all the dog hairs out. Also removed front seats as under them contained more spidery cunts too..







Now onto the fun stuff, RUST... Both top corners of the engine bay under the crowl contained some nice looking holes, the left hole on the right side actually goes under the windscreen.. Started poking away to get rid of the big sections of rust but still way more to come out. It's definately a windscreen out job, but for now I'm considering just laying down some rust converter so it can't grow anymore. Not sure when I'll actually remove the windscreen to do all but sometime this year

[Afx31]

DATE of original upload: 22-02-2018

Sooooo... I felt like removing the plastic seat trim pieces on the side of the roof to see what lies below, and boy did I find some rust.. In the first photo below you'll see where I marked boxes with a permo, inside those sections is where rust is. The one on the left I then provided a photo of before I poked around and then after with a torch shinning through from inside. This weekend I plan to drop the sunroof assembly and cut out all the rust, and weld in my sheet metal to sort that section. Not worried about looks as it'll be covered, just as long as the rust is gone and it's sealed!






Also, the previous owner had the roof rack holes filled in, he wasn't sure how the shop did it. I was praying they did it the easy way and used bog, but nope, they welded it and did a pretty peasant job of it. No paint or anything to prevent future rust and here we go people, 3 sets of bolt holes either side of the roof all nice and rusty... sigh





DATE of original upload: 24-02-2018

So I started sussing the rust on the roof today first with dropping the sunroof. Quite easy to drop it actually. 3 12mm either side and 2 on the front and out she came. Once it was removed hopes got a litter hurt. So on the drivers edge of the roof the rust was fairly bad, not sure how it all started but yeh where the roof skin meets the chassis was completely rusted there, quite badly. Ooooh'd and ummmm'd and decided the best thing to do is to drill the roof out, cut all the rust out and weld new pieces of metal in. So in the next few coming weeks I shall do so. But here are some photos from today showing the sections of the rust. Also cleaned up the sunroof and also the head liner. Good thing is the sunroof assembly itself isn't actually rusted at all apart for the left rear corner which has a little bit of surface rust. Shame the OEM bronze tinted glass is cracked :/

[Afx31]

DATE of original upload: 25-03-2018

So finally got some free time to work on the wagon, the university semester started 2 weeks ago so hopefully I still have spare time in the coming weeks to work on my rusty wagon! Started with mving my brothers drift car out the garage to put the wagon in, as I'm going to be drilling the roof off we feel it should have some lovin in the garage, as oppose to under the carport. Taped up the front window, ran a big stanley knife (razor) around the inside of the windscreen to cut trhough the sealant and she popped out with ease. First time removing a windscreen and boy was I impressed! With the windscreen out we could see the extent of the rust damage under the window and to be honest, it's not really that bad. I think the best way to repair will be to just weld in new pieces of sheet metal. Was considering using bits off a sedan crowl section but unfortunately they are different sizes.. Anyways cleaned back some more of the rust, cut the section off on the passenger side where the bonnet mounts go as that was completely rusted..




Previous owner had a 'proper' panel beater repair some rust around the rear passenger tail light many years ago, considering the priming job he did spraying half th car in primer I could only assuming it wasn't done correctly. Decided to remove the tail lights and rear side plastics and what do you know, more rust. Because they primered it but didn't paint over it, the primer just absorbed moisture and I guess where they repaired it the water just attacked again. The first photo below is the drivers side which actually has no rust, but is somehow dirty and i don't know what.. 2nd photo is the passenger side where previous rust has been repaired, you can see where they've caked the sealant all on the inside, over board.. and now rusty water has leaked through (I'll get another photo on the other side of this, i forgot..) but to top this off, the water has run down into the tub section behind the rear wheel from this leaking and rusted out the bottom as you can see via the 3rd photo.. yeh... holes in that section left right and center, inner and outer skins too which makes it even better to repair.. But staying positive, once the rust is repaired I'll have a rust free wagon!







DATE of original upload: 31-03-2018

Long Easter weekend means time for some wagon lovin, we decided to go ahead and cut out all the rust on the crowl so we can start making templates to then cut 1mm sheet metal up to weld back in. Not much to say here, each of the 3 sections I've taken before and after shots of so I'll just list them below. First we cut out the big chuncks with the angle grinder then fine cut it again, on the drivers side we had to use tin snips to get into one or two tight corners, they worked very well. Then once the cutting was done, filed down the edges to prevent after hospital trips and then wire brushed the rest.

Also for any of you 'rare' Honda EF Access part nerds out there, is there any knowledge whether this arch trim is a access part or just a random thing someone did that happens to look OEM? Theres one on each arch. Cheers in advance!



DRIVERS SIDE:
BEFORE:


AFTER + TEMPLATE:




MID SECTION:
BEFORE:


AFTER:


PASSENGER SIDE:
BEFORE:


AFTER

[Afx31]

DATE of original upload: 30-05-2018

Been a while since the last update, that's because not much has really happenedd until last weekend. Been busy with the uni semester and work, 2 weeks left of uni and then I'm done for this semester so I can focus a lot more on the wagon build!

Two recent purchases for the wagon is a minty fresh EF5 JDM cluster I bought from Yahoo Auctions, will be a nice addition to the build. As well as this, I managed to find a super rare set of Honda Access heated mirrors for a EF5. I've never seen these before, barely any info on the internet too. I plan to try and swap the base plates over to the wagon ones.






Upon sussing the roof we found some more rust at the back. Not sure if I had mentioned above but we are planning to drill the roof off as both sides of the chassis and roof skin where they are spot welded is completely rusted. Once it's drilled off new strips of metal will be welded back in. I had a mate wrecking a ED sedan so I took the roof in case we can use pieces from it on the wagon roof. Also scored the power window setup and the door cards are a direct fit!






Last weekend we finally got around to taking the roof off, drilling out all the spot welds was interesting. The whole drivers side of the roof was rusted so we just pried it upwards and it quickly came lose. Upon getting the roof off we came to realise it actually isn't too bad. Chassis side theres 2 layers, the top one on the drives side is mostly rusted away, however the under piece is still good condition just needs a wire wheel and she's sweet. All of the passenger side apart from a very small section at the rear is fine, just some surface rust. I'll spam a ton of photos, the order of the photos is from the rear of the car ->passenger side -> front -> down drives side to the rear. I'll also then inclue photos of underneath the roof skin.

[Afx31]

DATE of original upload: 30-05-2018

So, with the roof now off I ca start cutting out the rust, as which I started doing so for the drivers side on the chassis, cutting the top piece off. However, you may have seen in photos previously but above the drivers door there was some primer, I always wondered why it was there. Then I realised there was bog at the top of the roof there.. Hammer, chisel and a wire wheel soon enough revealed this.. Our guessing is something like a tree had fallen on it before, Or someone tried breaking into the front door as the top of the door frame is bent, prying off the roof of the car. Someone has tried to repair it before but like the rest of the fucking shit repairs on this car they did a shit job. I'm quite annoyed, it will push everything back but oh well thats the joys of it. I'll fix it properly and then continue with the roof.

Here's a happy photo os each of my ED chassis (I need a CRX now don't I )







DATE of original upload: 26-06-2018

Alrighty time to start tackling the rust on this roof. Uni exams are nearly done so I was able to fit in some time, one more exam this Friday and then freedom! ... until next semester.. My dad runs a warehouse whom supply 3M products and other products to other warehouses like DHL/TOLL, Quantas and other buinesses, he brought home these rust remove wheels, they are bloody awesome! Got rid of heaps of surface rust from around the chassis roof where the roof skin sits on. I also cut out the remaining rust on the drivers side. Once it was all off from these grinding wheels and also some wire brushing, I wiped on some WD-40 as a panel beater mate informed me to do, so the clear metal won't corrode again. Then I started working on the roof skin side, passenger side came clean very quickly however the rust got under the webbing supports, so they will need to come off as well.

[Afx31]

DATE of original upload: 08-07-2018

Progress time! Got a nice big 1200 x 1200 piece of mild steel sheet which we will use to patch up all the rusty goodness. Started with the chassis side on the roof section, a few posts above we cut ut the bad rusty bits as the rest was only surface rust. We needed to replace a smaller section on the lower piece (chassis side theres 2 layers, with the roof skin then sitting on top of that) so we cut the smaller piece accordingly. Next we then had the upper piece which ran from the back of the rear door to the front windscreen. Towards the front the chassis actually curves outwards (can see in the pic below) so we decided to do it in 2 pieces, can see faint scribe markings where we cut it on a curve to follow the shape required. Nothing actually got welded in today, remembered last night at midnight I needed weld through primer and the shops that would stock it were shut today (Sunday) so welding will occur next weekend.





Next up was one of the 3 holes under the crowl. This section was the one which actually rusted under the windscreen. Theres a step in the factory metal with a radius where the windscreen would sit. I don't have access to a sheet bender so we improvised, to be honest it worked perfect. Used a block of wood and hammered it on the corner so it bent on the crease (does that make sense?) and yeah. Little bit of fiddling around but we got it to this shape. We decided it will be easier to tack it in from the top the slightly bend some sections in the lower bit for a perfect fit.






Last piece we got around to today was a second out of three holes under the crowl, the one passenger side where the hinge goes (probably the trickier one). After a 3 hour proscation chat with a old childhood mate/father who came over to see how rusty rust could be, we got around to this. Not fully complete, ummm'd and arrrr'd over a few options and decided to go with 2 seperate pieces as oppose to one, as theres too much bending and yeah, ceebs. Used some engineering tools (paper) and started folding around to get a rough shape of the lower section, it sits rather flat. We will then have the upper angle piece weld on top of this. Also had the right hand side piece 30mm longer so we could bend it up the side of the chassis and fold it over (looks like it was the same from factory)

[Afx31]

Up to date now

[Afx31]

Have made some good progress lately, other weekends have been taken up with prepping my track hatch ED for Honda Nationals which was a few weekends ago, now it's full steam ahead with the wagon!

First off I'll start with what I bought, another wagon! As I've said before the RT4WD Wagons are very rare here in Australia, currenty we only have like 30ish accounted for? Apparently 100-200 were sold in Australia, and somehow I found one which was a paddock basher, been painted by the kids and yeah, nothing like some 'honda' moss growing on every panel. The owner kept the RT4WD system apart from the gearbox (no idea why) but I still bought it. Sun roof isn't cracked, good interior pieces and panels we can use to repair my rusted sections. Once we got it home the stripping commenced over 2 days, pretty much gut EVERYTHING from it and store for spares. Once the roof liner was dropped I could check to see if the roof was rusty like my maroon one and guess what, it's not on the sides (rear was a little rusty, same spot as maroon one, not as bad)! So we went about drilling this roof skin off as well, however as we don't need to reweld the spot welds, we just drilled straight through them with a normal drill bit!

Photo dump incoming












A few of my latest Honda Access purchases for the Wagon, I also got a pair of Gathers rear speaker pods from Japan, the holy grail of my slowly building collection!

Honda Access EF5 floor mats! MINT Condition!



Honda Access Air Refiner, works well and lights work too!


Gathers rear speaker pods for my hatch!

[Afx31]

Onto some actual progress on my wagon. With the metal strips we had previous cut for the roof support chassis side, and 2 pieces for 2/3 of the rust holes under windscreen, I sprayed them in weld through primer to protect the metal from rusting. With this sheet metal, as with any bare metal, once your fingers touch it, the oil on them attracts rust straight away, so best to clean the pieces off once they are finalised with some degreaser and then paint to protect from surface rust.



Next I slapped some weld through primer onto the first rust hole we were going to weld our new piece into, the middle peice of the crowl which previously we bent the metal different ways to try and following the OEM design. The piece was then held in place via a magnet by hand by my father whilst I went around it tacking to the chassis. Our plan was to continue bending it in different angles whilst tacking it for the perfect fitment. With it tacked into position I then went around it to weld it fully. Here I tried different methods I had researched, welding normally and trying 'stitch' welding when you weld 1 spot quickly, almost zapping it, then move down 1mm and do again etc. Whilst doing all this we were fiddling around with the welder settings to try see what worked, going on some of the angles one or two sections blew through as well, but was easy to patch up the hole.





With this done we cracked out the grinder and started grinding down the welds to be flush with the chassis by using a flappy disk. A good majority of it was done, I'd say 90% with a few mini holes I need to go over again to completely fill (I still need to do this to this date, will do next weekend). Considering neither my father or I have done panel beating before we were quite impressed with our work, so have bent the metal into shape and to see it welded in there faily smooth, it's a good feeling. Only skill sets for this was my dad did his apprenticeship when he was a teenager in the UK as a fitter & turner, learnt to weld somewhere along the line, and me learning to weld in highschool and continue with exhaust jobs at home. We look forward to doing the rest of the panels!

[Afx31]

And now this weekends progress!

Time to address the dent I found underneath all the bog between the front and rear door on the drivers side. With the spare shitty wagon I bought we decided to cut the damaged piece area from that one as it was mint and weld it onto my maroon one! So we marked out roughly what we needed, then added some extra length to be safe, drilled out the spot welds and cut each of the 3 sides and off she came, with ease!










Now it's time to cut the piece off my car, this time obviously needing to take a bit more care.. Same process as before.. Once it was off it revealed the damage behind, luckily it was all surface rust which was easy to remove. It looks like previously they possibly tried to pull the dents out by welding something to it, but that ofcourse rusted from behind..











With the chassis piece off we placed it over the replacement piece to mark out what we actually needed, and obviously leaving a little extra to play with. Then back and forth with the grinder slowly shaving down each side to get a good fitment with about 1mm gap where the welding is required and wallah we have a replacement piece ready to be welded! Slapped some weld through primer over the chassis side and back of the replacement piece.





Welding time, started with the sections that would be above the doors,* either side of the section cut out those areas move freely as we have preivously cut out the inner sections which holds it down, so if we match these panel lines up we can push it down for correct fitment with the spot welds, hard to explain if anyone is confused lemme know I'll draw on the photos to show what I mean. I then moved down and did the sections in the door jams tacking it into place to ensure the panels were level to each other, with this done we moved onto the spot welds in the door jams too. Bolted the drivers door back on to check the fitment, spot on!
*






With everything tacked up and looking gucci I went ahead and welded it all together, the sections inside the door jams were a little tricky, somewhat welding up above my face on an angle, the weld pool was at times running down too fast, but got it done. Then back to grinding it down flat with a flappy disk, then using a special pad my dad got from his work, its like a cloth disk for the final fine details. We were able to get it very smooth, probably going to need a small amount of body filler for a perfect shapre but we are very impressed with our work. I was able to stand on the door sill, hold onto the section we just welded in and yank back on it, didn't move at all! Finished it off with some primer to protect the metal until I body fill it before paint!








With the final few hours of daylight for the weekend, the insider section of where we just replaced the dented bit I sprayed with weld through primer. Previous posts I showed were we had to cut out the upper and lower folds of the metal which the roof skin actually sits on top of, obviously because it was completely rusted out. I tacked and welded in the lower piece, I must say it was an absolute @$^!@#% trying to weld it in. Upside down, nothing wanted to cooperate, eventually got it done after playing around with the welder settings, found it best to crank up the powa and just hold the weld pool a bit, defs not as much as I would do on any other panel, but seemed the only option.* * * The other few photos show me holding a piece we need to cut to fit into the 2 upper sections which need replacing.

[Afx31]

With only 2 small strips needing to be welded onto the chassis side of the roof section, the chassis would then be ready to have the roof skin welded back on! It's been off for like 3 months, and with it off your not meant to move or jack the car else things can go sideways.. I've been wanting to go ahead with swapping my D16Y1 in (which I need to update on too).

So we pulled out the 2 roof skins and looked at what needed to be replaced on the new roof skin from the donor car. Reason for choosing this skin mostly because the whole drivers side is rusted, but mainly because previous owner had the roof rack holes filled in, front and rear has nuts welded on underneath the roof skin itself. They were welded up but not protected from behind so they rusted, and in the middle studs are welded into the roof which were cut flush with the roof.




First section to tackle was the huge hole on the rear where the boot hinge bolts to, it's very common for rust to appear here on the wagons, even some of the hatches.

Sealant cracks, water gets under, gg. We cut out the rust affected area and followed similar methods from bending a piece to go under the windscreen which we previously welded in. Took a little bit of fiddling around, including cutting a new piece of sheet metal and starting again but we eventually got the shape working.

The crease in the middle of it we could not replicate 100% but this should be fine. Traced the holes for the hinge which will be cut out later, then made some final cuts, neatened her up and done! Once again, we are starting to scare ourselves with how these panels are turning out! I ran out of gas as I had to weld some stuff for my brothers S13 drift car, so I'll have to refill my bottle this Friday, with more welding to occur this weekend. Stay tuned!

[felixR]

So much patience.

[Afx31]

So much patience.

A lot more to come!

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

[Afx31]

Update time! Got a decent amount of work on the Wago over the weekend, with the possbility of the roof shell be welded on next weekend! Big update with many photos, so incoming spam..

We decided to continue and get the roof skin all repaired. Theres 5 rust spots in the front of the roof itself, all which would have been under the windscreen. The windscreen had been replaced so I'm assuming not done properly, water leaked under the seal and the rust occured.

Started off with cutting out the 5 sections, only cutting off the outer skin. Next marking those pieces onto my original roof (which we are using for replacement pieces) and begun cutting them. Once cut, final grinding was carried out to ensure a good fit for each piece.





From left to right (drivers to passenger)
























So you now might be wondering, why didn't I just repair the other roof as the front of that one is mint! Well, 3/4 of the drivers side where the roof dips down into the side channel was completely rusted out, more rust on the rear than this one, and the roof rack holes were welded in, rusted out and roof rack studs cut off the mid section of the roof. Both skins had pros and cons, I simply went with this one as all roof rack bolt holes/studs were still there and seemed harder to replace.

After moving roof skins back and forth & the car sat there without a roof for a few months, everything still lines up shmick! Didn't get any photos, but we bolted in the sunroof to position it with the hole in the roof. Also, the rear 2 tabs for the sunroof on the driver side were also rusted out, the bolt snapped when trying to undo, completely rusted. So I drilled the 2 brackets off the spare shell, wire brushed and welded them on!






With this done, we cut the 2 pieces required to replace to upper skin chassis side where the roof lays (previous update we did the bottom ones). I didn't take many photos of each bit inplace/welded/grinded, but they were welded up and grinded down, ensuring the distance from the top of the pillar to the piece we were welding in was the same as the untouched passenger side. I will admit, my welding skills were a bit off today. Not to mention on the right side it kept blowing holes here and there so had to fill them up. Was trying the stitch weld method where you weld for a second then let off, as oppose to a constant pool dragging it across, as that will generate too much heat.










and to finish the update off, 'mocking up' a turbo from my brothers drift car :P