HenRoc: 1992 Accord EX Wagon

[HenRoc]

Thanks Mike!

Unfortunately I may have spun a bearing on one of the connecting rods heading home from work one night. Been trying to set sometime aside to drop the pan and inspect each of them for visible wear. I was heading home one night and decided to open it up on the highway, reached the limit on 5th gear and boom spun bearing. I contemplated buying another H23A but the costs associated with it was way too much.

A motor that at one point was worth $900 not even ten years ago is now worth $2,400 shipped to my door. Going to see if I can just do a simple replace. I'm really contemplating going the K24 route since those are now cheaper than an H22 or an H23A swap. Only visible downside is I'd loose all the factory stuff like air conditioning and cruise control but the aftermarket support for the K platform is so endless now.

[AccordWarrior]

Love the exhaust choice Henry. I always loved how the WS2 sounded on these cars.

[Daheavyking]

Love the wagon Boss. Looks great

[HenRoc]

As of now i have a few parts that need to be installed:

Exhaust system an Apexi WS2 with a JG Fab 4-2-1 manifold

[HenRoc]

So in September '21 the swap was done and running. It was still on a base tune so it was running a little rough but I was content. It was enough that it would give me some down time until the following spring.



Fast forward to April '22 , I had been gifted a set of TL-S waffles from a good friend who was moving and didnt have room for these wheels. So they were given to me as a gift. Sent them to a local powdercoater and a week later I had them on the car with Continental Extreme DWS06s in a 225/45/17 size



What a world of difference. In terms of looks and handling.

[HenRoc]

Finally in August, the swap was finally in the car...not done completely though as I still had some loose ends to tie up



Also the day it was finally in also marked exactly 10 years prior where I had done an H22A swap in my first and only coupe:

[HenRoc]

Fast forward to July and progress was being made, weeknights were limited but weekends I was trying go at my own pace. I kept the stock transmission with the H23 for now. All stock Exedy clutch kit was mated beforehand.

[HenRoc]

Also I had grabbed a P28 one day while I was at local yard. It was an 1995 Civic EX sedan with a p28..considering no one grabbed it right away I snagged it. In June '21 I sent it off to phearable for the HondataS300 install.



Also picked up a set of Spoon Rigid collars and yes, you can definitely tell a difference.

[HenRoc]

As soon as I got the motor home, I got to work. Put it up on an engine stand.



Since I had ordered a lot of maintenance parts I was able to tear into it rather quickly



In the meantime, since Rywire was no longer making OBD1 VTEC subharnesses, I ended up ordering an OBD0 one and re-purposing it for my setup..not picture is a custom distributor harness they made for me since my stock harness
was too short to reach the distributor.

[HenRoc]

Well...it was short lived...very short lived. The engine ended up loosing oil pressure and was leaking oil from the side of the block. So once again I parked it. Now other people would have just thrown in the towel and sold the car but I was determined. I had done some research on H23A Bluetops and really wanted one. I kept checking back on HMotors online for availability until boom, they had recieved a shipment of them to their warehouse. I ordered it in March of 2021 and almost a month later, it showed up to my work. Sequence of photos is obviously me documenting the day it was dropped off.



The 4 days prior to it's arrival, me and GraniteCB7 pulled the old tired F22A6 out.



After taking out the motor and removing crank pulley and timing covers..we discovered the source of the oil pressure loss.



Unknown to me at the time, the balance shaft seal had failed. What I didn't know is that Honda had TSB on these where you needed to install a balance shaft seal retainer (06923-P0A-306) either that or the engine never came with one.

[HenRoc]

Further diag, led me to believe the headgasket was failing..so I took the cylinder head off and sent to a machine shop to get it re-sealed and milled. They ended up only have to shave about 0.07 off, which wasn't bad for a car with only 238k orignal miles on the motor.

Put it back together


Even ran fine through out December of that year.

[HenRoc]

So I went ahead and purchased a FelPro intake gasket.

For about 3 months everything was working fine, until mid late November it overheated again. So I pulled the spark plug where I suspected it was loosing compression and found this:



So I parked it:

[HenRoc]

So about a month after the last post I made about finally sorting out the air-conditioning issue..this happened


August of 2020 I had been commuting at least 30 mins to attend a trucking school to obtain my CDL-A license. By that weekend my good friend GraniteCB7 dropped by to help me diag an issue.



After doing a pressure test on the cooling system..you could hear air rushing out from around the intake manifold as well as an obvious coolant leak. So the disassembly began..



You could see that the old gasket had definitely seen much better days.

[i-07]

You going to post the updated suspension pics?

[HenRoc]

Eh I wouldn't say toys. The wagon will always stay with me. But the Tribeca I wanted to keep around since kids are on the way and being that I've been laid off for 5 months, I don't want to sink myself further in debt with a car payment so I opted to just fix it.

Aside from that, I am also about to embark on a 6 week course to get my CDL here in Massachusetts, they offer state funded programs for train to work jobs, so if I can land a decent job afterwards I'll save up and buy a minivan next fall and get rid of this car when I can.

It was only worth $150 at the local yard.