1st April 2003
Another day to play in the garage, but a few things happening with the house today, so a bit distracted looking after arrivals. Also the stuff I ordered last week finally turned up... at the office, so I went out to collect that.
I decided to have a go at fitting the high level LED brake light. This is a flush fit light unit, which I will mount in the rear body panel, at the top of the spare wheel imprint. So firstly it's some careful measuring and marking to ensure I get the thing central and cut the right size. The cut needs to be fairly accurate, so I err on the side of caution with the first cut, and will steadily fettle it out once I can trial fit the light. Before too long I have the hole cut, and can mark up where I need to drill the holes for it to mount.

At this point, when trial fitting the light, I realise that the back of the part where the holes are is actually more proud than the foam seal around the edge. This means that it doesn't quite sit totally flush. The way around this is to totally 'french' the unit in by enlarging the hole to include these end parts, and then making up some small brackets to fit on the inside to hold it in place.
Looks neat, but I don't have any countersunk bolts to fit it with, so the finishing off of this job will have to wait until I have got some.
Fettling of the light fitting has actually taken quite a long time, but it was worth making sure I get it right. So not alot of time left out of the day after various distractions for much else.
The arrival of parts from VWP means I should be able to get further with the wiring now, the first job of which is to get the main battery leads made up to fit to the FIA switch. So I have a go at crimping a ring connector onto the slightly shortened lead from the battery, which will now go directly to the switch rather than the start relay.
Unfortunately there is more of an art to it than I realised, though I thought I'd got this one sorted, a good tug and it came undone - clearly not enough, I'll have to find out what the knack is.

2nd April 2003
I got some help after work from Steve, who put the connectors onto the ends of the chunky battery cables for me, as he had a more appropriate small blowlamp which could be used to solder the connectors onto the cables.
So I spend some time starting to tie wrap the wiring back into position, since I am now able to fit the main battery feed cable from the battery to the FIA switch position. I attach the loom as far as the big bundle of wires just about the engine output, which need to wait just a little longer.
I also loan a multimeter, so can check and connect up the wires for the brake light switch I fitted to the pedal.

4th April 2003
A little more work on the wiring for the FIA switch this evening. The main battery connections are in place now, so I'm on to looking at the other connections. I started to make up the small flylead which goes from the large switched terminal, to the rear terminal which is switched when the key is off, and allows the loom to discharge to earth through a big resistor. However I need to get some more large crimp connectors to finish these off.
I work on soldering the connections for the resistor, which turns out to be overly fiddly, but the end result is pretty neat. I heat shrink the connections on the resistor to ensure they are fully insulated, use one of the bolts retaining the start relay to provide the earth (checked good with meter), and double-sided tape the resistor to the ECU panel.

5th April 2003
First task is to pop out and buy the bits I am needing to continue with the wiring, and to finish off the high level rear brake light fitting.
So I decide to dry fit the FIA switch wiring to date, once I have made up the required flyleads using the crimp connectors purchased. Now I have the main battery feed coming onto one side of the switch, and on the other side, the feed to the start relay and feed to the loom, and a loop onto the back of the switch to the resistor to earth.
I also now have some counter sunk bolts to allow me to fix the high level brake light in position. So I also connect up its wiring by patching into the brake light feed for the nearside brake light.
I decide it's finally time the have a go at fitting the prop. There is still a small amount of wiring to do, but hopefully the prop won't hinder that too much.
In order to physically get the prop into the tunnel, I have to split it. It has a slider portion just to the rear of the centre bearing, which can be dismantled to split the prop into two parts. Before I split it, it is important to mark the relative alignment of each part of the prop to each other, since it needs to be put back together exactly the same, to ensure it does not go out of balance.
The props fit in easily enough, but I soon realise that I cannot quite get them far enough apart to re-assemble the slider. So it's off with the engine output adapter which looks like it will create enough space. However, when I remove the adapter, I discover that it was only being retained by a couple of threads of the bolt! A little worrying, so I decide to go off in search of a longer one, but it is a fine thread so will have to see.
Fortunately I manage to get hold of a longer bolt, which I have to shorten a little, but does fit. Before I re-assemble the prop, I feed the prop catcher over the front prop flange and leave it to dangle. Also I shuffle the props so to get the centre bearing mount bracket loosely into position.
Then, with the prop assembled, I can re-fit the (now painted to prevent rusting) engine output adapter with a decent dose of thread lock on it. I loosely attach the front flange to the engine using some old prop bolts, and fit the bearing to the mount using some plain nuts to hold it for now. With that done, I can push the long bolts through the bearing mount bracket to fit it in position to the chassis. Also I loosely fit the prop catcher in position, and stick a bolt in the rear prop flange to hold it in position.
So, it looks like it should all go in ok, but one of the bolts on the bearing mount is slightly less keen, so that will need some fiddling with. But it's roughly in, and looks like it all fits and the clearances are as expected - I'm quite pleased given that it was all done with bits of string and cardboard!

6th April 2003
After dry fitting the prop yesterday, it's time to fit it properly today. So the first thing to do is to work out why the centre bearing mount bracket isn't quite fitting right - you can see from yesterdays pictures that the bottom bolt isn't quite all the way through the bracket.
After some umming and aahing, I decide that it is because the reverse box mounts are not quite totally sqaure - in fact, the lower one is fairly well bent from where the reverse box had to be 'encouraged' into position to get prop clearance. Unfortunately the route to fixing this involves removing the whole prop again, which involves removing the engine output adapter again, etc. Hassle, but unavoidable.
After a short while, it's all back together. So now I can bolt the front flange back to the engine output adapter using four pre-loved bolts, which I will replace one by one with the pukka ones once it is all in. Then it's on to the centre bearing mount. With the front fitted, the bearing position is now fixed, so the packing for the bolts through the bracket can be determined.
I re-fit the bearing to the mount (again using plain nuts, to be replaced once it is all in definite final position), and then work out how many packing washers are required for each side of each of the long bracket to chassis bolts. It's a bit fiddly fitting these but soon enough they are in place, and everything is lined up nicely.
The rear prop section has the slider on it, so it is flexible and can be fitted last of all without any worry of mis-alignment. So as I am happy with the positioning, I fit the final nuts to the bearing mount bolts. I am using some 'stiff nuts' for this which seem to be more than adequate given that the only force they get is supporting the weight of the prop. For sanity I also give them a small dose of thread lock.
With everything tightened up I look at final fixing on the flanges. However since I am going for the sanity of spring washers, stiff nuts, and thread lock, the bolts I have are not quite long enough to accomodate the washers, so I will have to order some longer ones.
For now the temporary fixings allow me to admire my handy work. I'm quite pleased with the way this has turned out - the prop angles are not bad, and although installation has been a bit fiddly first time, it all seems to have gone together pretty well. Hopefully it will work as well as it looks it should.

7th April 2003
Didn't do a great deal on the car this evening, but spent some time taking a load of reference pictures and measurements of the aeroscreen fixing points as a favour to someone from the BEC list. Hopefully this will help to save the same problem I had of really having to use guesswork to get the aeroscreen into position. It should give a reasonably sensible starting point anyway.

I also went for a climb up into the roofspace of the garage to take a wider view of the prop fitted to the car, in a bid to try and show the prop angles a bit better.
As I've got the airbox off the engine, I am going to see how tricky a task it will be to replace it with a foam sausage filter. This should release a little more power from the engine, at the potential cost of breathing in warm air in traffic, though I don't think this will be too much of a problem with the great hole in the bonnet in front of the area.
So a bunch more reference pictures to use in discussion with people to work out what I will need to do. As with everything it seems, it is not looking like a totally trivial task of just cutting a backplate to suit and whacking the filter on. In the tops of the throttle bodies are some bleed valves which are used for the cold start bypass system - and so will need to be provided with a method of drawing filtered air. On the airbox the backplate is machined to accomodate this.
The other problem area is that the fuel rail and regulator sit higher than the face of the throttle bodies. So it seems I will need to create something a little bit clever to work around these two issues. Not wholly sure what that will be yet!

8th April 2003
I got hold of the longer bolts I needed for attaching the front and rear prop flanges to the diff and engine, so I spend the evening fitting these. It's a pretty fiddly job as there isn't alot of clearance in which to swing spanners around, but after while it's all done and looking neat enough. The stiff nuts I got for the job seem to be pretty good, I don't think they are going to move anywhere, especially with the spring washers, thread lock, and torque tightening.

9th April 2003
Another evening spent mostly doing stuff to help someone from the WSCC forum. So tonight I'm re-assembling the clutch on the broken engine, taking plenty of pictures along the way, to help someone who is experiencing a possible clutch problem on his MegaBird. It's a pretty simple job, and having now done it, won't have any worries should I need to do it in the future. And I even have a good looking spare clutch and gearbox too!

Once this was done I had a fiddle around with one of the switches from the dashboard, as I got a bit inquisitive about how they work, and whether I could modify one to work in an on-off-mom fashion for my main beam switch.

11th April 2003
Not much inclination for playing with the car this evening (the need for sleep is starting to win the battle), but just time to extract the cam position sensor from the engine to see what it looks like. I got clearance from Westfield to take it off, as I had to check first given that the engine is warranted and I didn't want to risk invalidating that.
So three small bolts and the sensor can be prised off the engine. There is small gasket to seal it, and a couple of small lugs locating it. However, there is nothing that looks particularly out of place, so no explanation for the oil to migrate down its wires. I'll have to source a replacement from Honda for sanity - this one must just be slightly not quite sealed properly.

12th April 2003
Since the postman disturbed my slumber with a package of needed bits from VWP, I thought I'd get on with a bit of car work this morning. I've got guests coming over this afternoon, as we are having a house party this evening, so I'm not expecting to get much done to the car this weekend.
So I can now finally finish off the wiring for the FIA master switch. The last two connections will break the power to the ignition circuit when the switch is off - basically it will cut (ignition) switched power to the loom, thereby killing power to the ECU and hence the coils. I can also re-visit the dash loom, and convert what was the old ignition switch wiring into the wires and connectors required for the new separate switch and start button.

I now have all the wiring almost complete, and it seems a sensible plan at this point to make a little effort and get the car re-started. This will be a welcome test of all my wiring changes, and I can check the functioning of all the new switches and things.
A couple of the connections need to be helped via some judicial use of electrical tape (i.e. I realise I forgot to order the small connectors for the start and horn buttons!), but after a while everything is connected up and ready to go.
Before starting, I can check some of the connections and switches are working with and without the ignition on. It all looks good so far. Before a full start, since it has stood for a couple of months now (!), I let it crank over a little to get the oil circulating. Then, with the fuel pump now running (via the immobiliser key), it fires into life on the button.
I let it idle for a while to get some temperature into things - it's nice to hear it running again, and it sounds really good without the airbox, lovely induction noise just blipping the throttle in the garage, let alone what it must sound like under load on the road!

14th April 2003
As expected no further progress over the weekend, but it was nice to have a bit of time out doing something different. The downside is that I seem to have caught a cold, and am feeling a bit under the weather.
Having started the engine on Saturday it made sense to have a go at turning the wheels before dismantling the dash again. I ran out of time at the weekend to get this far, but just need to re-attach the clutch slave cylinder, which proves to be a bit fiddly with with the prop in place, but just about do-able.
Before long the clutch and gear linkage are connected, and I warm the engine up. Engage a gear and operate the clutch pedal by hand, the prop turns, and it all looks good. There's a clattery noise though, which wasn't there before, but it seems to be coming from the rear brakes so it could be because they are loose without the wheels on. A successful test for the new prop and bearing though.

I then pop around to see how Craig is getting on with re-fitting his engine - but my five minutes visit turns into a two hour mucking in helping job! Ah well I know how to fit a K-series now... (well fiddly compared to a bike engine!) : )

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