August 6th, 2015 - Time flies when you're having fun... working on the odds and ends for Project PRO.2

August 6th, 2015 - Time flies when you're having fun... working on the odds and ends for Project PRO.2

Well, I have been taking care of some odds and ends on the CR-X while waiting for a good day to take my car to the rent-a-bay shop to get the Tanabe exhaust installed. I will be doing it myself, but I decided I wanted to do this in comfort and style. I'm waiting for a day not too hot, not too cold or rainy that my wife will be able to accompany me with my tools and the parts. The place is also first come, first served, but it's fairly cheap -- a full day is only $145.

I did some tweaking on the Tein Street Advance set up this past weekend. I checked the car again after she 'settled' and decided she needed to come up a bit more, so I added another 8mm of ride height to her. So that's now a total of 23mm on 3 corners and 35mm on the right rear. She's a bit high now, but I'll keep an eye on how much she 'settles' in the coming week and make a final determination on the height then.

How it sits currently:

Front Max: -67mm
Recommended: -45mm to -25mm = -35mm Median
Actual: -44mm

Rear Max: -71mm
Recommended: -55mm to -35mm = -45mm Median
Actual: -49mm (Left Rear) / -36mm (Right Rear)

Also took the opportunity to adjust the dampening force on the Street Advance. I took her for another drive to test the new ride height over some local speed bumps and to get my baseline 'feel' on the hardest setting on the Tein set-up. I came back to the garage and determined there was about 30 'clicks' between Soft and Hard. So starting at the hardest, I adjusted 15 clicks counter-clockwise (softer), and made another test-run over some bumpy asphalt and freshly paved roads. Too bouncy. Back to the garage, adjusted 7 clicks clockwise (hard) and test drove again and it was much better. Going to continue testing and see if I need to firm it up a bit more before I finalize where I want it to be, but so far I'm really enjoying the ability to customize the settings to my liking.

I added the Honda Access mirror covers this past weekend. Using the OEM Honda Access instructions I received from rickcab1 years ago, the installation was a breeze. Using a 7/64 drill bit I made my hole in the mirrors themselves and attached the covers using 3M 06384 tape I picked up from the autobody supply store. I may have to remove and re-do them though, as I don't believe the tape is thick enough or strong enough to properly hold the covers to the mirror, despite a thorough cleaning with isopropyl alcohol. But they are on and solid for now.

Repairing the horn was next on the agenda. I was pretty sure that there was nothing seriously wrong with it, as I remember taking off the front bumper a couple years ago to test-fit the brackets for my fog lights and I figured it was probably nothing more than a loose/disconnected wire at one of the diaphragms. Turns out that's exactly what was wrong. I reconnected the top wire on the left horn and beep beep! we're back in business.

With the bumper off, this also gave me an opportunity to check on some things... one of the bolt holes for my bumper mounts (that holds the bumper bracket to the front bulkhead) was stripped. Has been since I got the car. Now that I've had a closer look I'm thinking it's not too serious and may be repairable with a metric tap (I only have an Imperial tap and die set at present), so I will continue with only 3 bolts holding my bumper in place. If it's not easily repairable, I could try and replace it but it is different than the one I salvaged from Project 88, so I've added a pair to my list of needed parts. I was also missing a clip holder for the hood release cable, which I found in my assortment of clips/goodies and replaced.


Then I had a wild idea... with the bumper off, I'm literally 8 bolts away from replacing my headlights. Why not convert now? So, I went to the auto parts store and grabbed a couple of new H4 bulbs for my EDM LHD housings and popped them in. Replaced the left side without issue and had removed the air intake tube and the right side headlight when I ran into a little (big?) problem. The adjustable height motor was preventing the headlight from mounting properly in the front bulkhead.

I'd heard a rumor of this but hadn't seen anyone who had this issue first-hand with an EF8... until now. Searching the Internet I couldn't find much info on this either... I attempted to remove the adjuster motor but without success. It seems to be attached to the reflector inside the housing somehow so I will have to remove the housing to remove the motor... something I'm not too keen on doing at the moment. My biggest issue with buying new headlights is that it's difficult to tell the difference between LHD and RHD headlights for the EE8 VT models. (If someone knows how and can demonstrate with pictures, I'd love to hear all about it)

In addition it seems equally difficult to find LHD headlights without the adjuster motors. I was thinking of trying to mate the back plastic from a JDM housing with the reflector and glass from the LHD EDM headlight but I found a post online where that was attempted and it apparently doesn't work; something about the glass having a dissimilar shape than the plastic.

Either way, "LHD Headlights" went back on my wish list... and the JDM lights went back on my car.

Next up was a new head unit... We traded in my Honda Fit to get my wife a new SUV. She needs to travel to remote areas from time to time; and some places don't have cellphone coverage en route. With me having a company car, it seemed a no-brainer to get rid of the Fit and get her something more reliable. The trade-off was I received her 2000 CR-V to bomb around in on weekends. We recently upgraded the head unit in her CR-V to an Alpine with Bluetooth audio and hands-free. I only drive this car on the weekends and depending on what the schedule is like, sometimes it only gets driven once a month so it made a lot more sense to pull that deck out to transplant into the CR-X and use the little Motorola T305 hands-free unit I used in my Fit in the CR-V.

Mounting the deck was standard fare, although this time I had a stereo shop solder the hardness. The mic for the hands-free was zip-tied to the clock wiring and the cable fed down behind the center vents and past the climate control. Test calls have indicated people can hear me loud and clear. I also added the new Spoon shift knob which will hopefully be less hot when I park in a sunny area.

Remember, this blog was written in chronological order so, you will need to click OLDER POSTS to move forward in time, and click NEWER POSTS to go backwards.