Nice to meet you Rob, great car!!

Wehey, you found it ok then!

Cheers and was a pleasure to meet you too bud.

See you again soon.

my head is not on today, need to look at things properly and not just come out with stuff st8 away, as what i sad was wrong,

the car is running rich and as craig said it should be around 12.5 to 14 on full load.

thanks for pointing out my mistake

i bet ur not getting much mpg and quite a bit off smoke from unburt fuel

Whoops, think we both mixed rich/lean round the wrong way. Just gone back and edited my posts.

^As he said. I mentioned earlier about the shocking mpg and I clearly noticed less smoke when the P13 was in.

Well hopefully get it all sorted out soon.

yea thats what i think happened, i just skimmed over and u said lean and without thinking just agreed lol

well hope u get it mapped right, as adding too much fuel dont help it can reduce the power and soot everything up

Hey guys,


Another update on the lude. And another essay I'm afraid...

A couple of minor things done the other week. And a possible big change
to the overall appearance of the car in the form of some new shoes.

1) Bloomin Brakes!
First small job was my rear drivers caliper has been rubbing slightly
everytime I take the car out once it's been left a few weeks. Not seized
I hope as I had refurbed all a while back. After a quick strip down I
put it down to the EBC Redstuff pads getting jammed in the shims. The
shims were full of crap and when the pads got fitted I couldn't do this
one as I couldn't undo one of the caliper sliding pin bolts. So left it
for the garage as it was in for an MOT the next day. I remember now that
all the other pads I had installed I needed to file down all the
retaining sides as the tolerances were so damn tight. While I was in
there I also re-greased the slide pins. Did that and cleaned it all up
and touch wood it appears ok at the moment.

Now eventually gotta get onto my front discs and pads. Looking at Hawk
HPS or HP+ with Bremtech discs for an Accord Type V with closer
thickness to the Legend discs but in the same pcd, hub and diameter as
the lude.
Hopefully add some braided lines while I'm there. All that to one side
I have been keeping an eye on various sets of Brembo 4 pots on ebay for
a possible future project.

2) Blinkin Short Shift Adaptor
Finally got the thing fitted - I bought it over a year ago now. Scary!

My part was made by Fidanza but is the generic adaptor type one you see
everywhere based on B&M's original design. Unfortunately not the
Forbidden Motorsports shifter. I tried the setting at about midway of
the adjustment with the engine off and could hardly get it into gear. I
thought I'd give it a whirl and went for a spin. Once your moving it's
actually very nice. It is stiffer but a little more controlled if you
know what I mean. So I pulled over and adjusted a little more. A few
more runs and I've got it at a reasonable drivable manner. Very happy
for the bargain £10 I paid for it. Should help shave some milliseconds
of my strip times!

I havn't put my centre console back yet as I'm waiting to fit the
transition centre arm rest which I will retrim any day now I've
been told I'll need to nip a bit out of the gear gaitor plastic holder
bit for the adaptor to fit ok. We'll see when I put it back.


3) Wheels!
Best of the three.

What can I say I've picked up another bargain and I can't believe
no-one else jumped on them.

Well here they are, from the for sale section on here from LudeChick.
She had them advertised as Rays OEM wheels because they had the 'H'
emblem centres. They were also Magnesium or possibly just a mag alloy
(i.e. small percentage of magnesium - 10-20%), which she found out after
an expensive repair. They sounded interesting to me, looked like a nice
refurb would do them wonders and they were that something a little
different that I'd been looking for. I'd been scouring ebay and scrap
yards for the past couple of months for a healthy change from my white
OZ SuperT's. I love those wheels but I needed something in keeping with
the rare kit and something a little more individual as anyone could
order a set of what I have (albeit slightly different newer shape).

So here's what I picked up:



















I was quite impressed TBH. Lacey did a pretty good job on the black
repaint of the centres. But you know me, it's got to be perfect so I'll
be doing them again completely and possibly changing the centre colour.
Not decided what colour yet as I need to knock up some photoshops to
decide.

Once I got them home, I took the above pics and got Googling to see
what they should look like. Lacey said they were OEM because of the
centre caps but the sticker above clearly states Rays Engineering Volk
Racing Group A Evolution 2 wheels. They are a 3 pieces split rim wheel
made up of Magnesium and
aluminium pieces. An hour on the net and found a couple of pics around
and about. The should normally look like this:















Very nice indeed, liking the look of them alot. Very BBS like. So
thought I'd see how they look on the car, just in case the black is
tempting enough to keep. Here's the result:













Ooh I do like that, does seem to go well with the black of the roof.
But I'm convinced that the return of the white will be in keeping with
the cars history and should pick up the detail of those centres a lot
better. Some quick photoshops should help decide.

A couple of things noted were:

1) Flat wheel/Busted valve - One of the wheels that was repaired is
flat, I went to pump it up and the valve was jammed. I thought I'd need
a whole new stainless steel valve - not realising that the inner valve
just unscrews!

So the old one has now been removed by the tyre guy. That particular
wheel was leaking a small bit of air from the valve and around the edge
of the wheel/tyre. The tyre guy removed tyre from two wheels for now and
I left the other two to check them with the spigot rings when they
arrive. He also cleaned up the inner rims to get rid of the old tyre
sealant - probably the cause of the air leakage.

2) Spigot Rings - The wheel hub hole clearly needs spigot rings, they
are 73mm which is far off from the Preludes 64.1mm hub. Will get these
on order as I don't want a shaking steering wheel like when I first
picked up my OZ's.

3) Offset - The offset is slightly more than the the OZ's, which is a
shame as the OZ's are spot on. I may end up adding some small hubcentric
spacers at some point if I'm not 100% happy with them.

4) Tyres - The tyre width is 215 compared to my OZ's Goodyears at only
205 wide. Havn't actually measured the wheel diameter as yet but assume
they are 7.5inchers??? But still tyres have plenty of tread to do for
now.

So with all of my checks and worries all under control, I took the two
wheels with the tyres stripped up to my friends bodyshop this Saturday
just gone and got to work on them. I'll try and take lots of pics and
include good write ups for each stage for those wanting to refurb split
rims. Thinking of you Kawa.


HOW TO TAKE APART, REFURB, POLISH 3 PIECE WHEELS - Part 1

You will need the following tools:

- WD40 (or choice of lubricants - Hello!)
- Two Socket Bars
- Suitable Extensions
- 8mm Multi-sided Socket
- 10mm Socket (for the rear nut - this may differ on other wheel
manufacturers)
- Rubber Mallet OR Normal hammer and block of wood
- Lever Bar (Your choice - but helps)
- Sharp Knife
- Suitable Working Platform - an old tyre is perfect to work on

1) Firstly soak all nuts at the rear of the wheel in a suitable
penetrating oil/lubricant - I used good ole WD40. This will help the
ease of the bolts undoing. They aren't tight - only about 20-30lb's
normally but does help. Plus reduces the risk of shearing or snapping
bolts. Wouldn't want one without the lovely R-A-Y-S raised lettering.
Boo!



2) Next step is pain stakingly long and boring - which I found oddly
satisfying. Let's remove the bolts. My 17" wheels have 36 bolts per
wheel. That's 72 for today’s 2 wheels and 144 in total when I get onto
the other two!
Oh and did I mentioned I need to polish each and every one at some
point!

Half way there - quite the milestone:



One left! Wahoo!



3) Once they were all out the fun bit started, trying to separate the
wheel pieces. All 2 and 3 piece wheels that have a join between two
parts that holds in air requires a sealant to seal it up correctly.
I’ve seen some shocking videos online of people struggling to
separate pieces because of this sealant. Should be interesting…

Annoyingly the sealant is hidden by the lip which recesses back over.



So some persuasion with a block of wood and hammer at first didn't seem
to do anything, but I think it may have loosened the sealant. In the end
a lever bar opened it up as I hit the lip with the wood and it was off.






The middle section was easier as the sealant
was exposed - so I cut it out.













The main wheel part appears to be full magnesium and the lip is 100%
aluminium. Unsure of the centre??? This is great as I was worried
reading around that the magnesium will not polish up to a mirror shine.
Magnesium is very impressive though, the main mag wheel bit is lighter
than just the rim and there's tons more metal. I think they will either
be a similar weight to my OZ's or possibly lighter! And a size bigger.
Gonna weigh them when I'm done and find out. Less unsprung weight would
be sound!

Another 36 bolts and some separating action and I had the two in
pieces:




I’ve begun to sand down one of the lips. I’ve started with 180 grit
to breakdown the diamond cut grooves and take off the lacquer coating.
Most of the areas around bolt holes have been neglected and have slight
pitting. Will take a while to knock this down by hand so will have to
wait till I pop back to my friends bodyshop again.

But here is the progress on the first lip so far. Not done a lot as I
spent most of the day doing the above ^.





I did however test a small spot with more 240, then 320, 500 and some
Autosol metal polish. This brought it out to this:



Not bad considering I havn’t gone higher than 500.

I also test out one of the centre caps – nice chunky bits of
aluminium and the VDub scene are testament that polished BBS centre caps
look the dogs danglies. So here’s the result of one edge with the same
stages as above:





Ooh…I like that! So I know what I’m doing with these then. Still need
to get a better centre cap though. Emailing a few badge manufacturers
who do stuff on ebay to see if they can reproduce the original ‘VR’
badge. Maybe even get the lettering in red. I can do the graphics it’s
just finding somewhere that can print them with the chrome effect and
resin layer above.

So that’s it for now. Will get busy with some photoshop colours and
stick a poll up me thinks.

PART 2 Soon!


Cheers,


Rob

Ooowwww sexy. Doing a good job on the wheels and what a hidden find. They actually look really good on the car as black and polished but i suspect they will look way better fully polished.

I was wondering why no one snapped up those wheels, nice choice

the black does go well with the roof, I would be tempted to go all silver maybe

how about a red lip? anodised or whatever its called

Wow, that's a lot of work you've been doing, wondered why you'd gone quiet

Whilst the black technically matches the roof, i'm afraid i'd have to restore those wheels to original as the black just gives the impression of giant black hub caps


I think once cleaned up and polished, they'll look fantastic, i'd look to measure the rim width as well to see if 205's would fit, though looking at them with 215's, i'll guess not. Back of the hub should state the details.

Impressive work matey, those wheels will look the nuts when finished. Wish I had have snapped them up now

i also wondered why no one had snapped these wheels up,
good job on the refurb so far rob
but i have to agree with dave, dont think the black matches up well with your car, but should look awesome refurbed

Good luck nice project

Cheers guys.

Ratty: Yeah I was surprised how good the black was with the black roof and windows, etc. Fully polished would be awesome but sooooo much work and more maintenance. The spokes are so intricate I'll be there forever. Plus I'm still unsure if the spoke section is ali or mag - mag won't polish up like ali will.

Lude-Dude: Mmm, been pondering some anodised bits now. I think I still want the lip polished but thinking the bolts and perhaps the centre cap??? Red anodising against white would be similar (but awesomely better) than my old OZ's. May have to look into prices. Bolts would be good as they'll take forever to polish 144 of them!

MaDMaXX: Yeah I have been in the background, checking a few posts here and there. Aint got access at work now and had some busy few weeks!
I'm not persuaded on the black yet either. Will I ever decide???
Still havn't measured/checked the wheels yet as they're out in the garage. But must be wider than my OZ's. I shall post when I find out.

Cheers for rest of the comments. I've set up a separate thread for colour choice of the wheel here:

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