Im sure it will look great once its all finished, im drooling atm

Arggh, non of the pictures are working now in your last post Rich

They do for me, however this doesnt work:

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"The collection you have requested from this gallery does not exist or is not available"

Pics don't work for me either

Sorry guys it seems that Fotopic are having some problems at the mo.... either that or I've outstayed my welcome with them

Have e-mailed them to see whats going on, hopefully it'll all be back up and running soon enough.

Argh, noooo, Rich fix the pics!!

Ok well it appears that my daily gallery bandwidth limit got exceeded in record time today

I have upgraded my account so hopefully they will be up and running again in the morning...if they're not I'm gonna have to get serious with them.

I'm away now for most of the weekend with the race team at Snetterton and then back up at CF workshop on Sunday so won't be able to do anything about it until Sunday night now.


Just to answer a couple of posts while I'm here

njord -
Thanks and yes I am totally over the moon with it.
One thing though and I hope this doesn't sound like a dig at you cos it's not meant to but...
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is far from a "money no object" build, it is self financed the hard way by working my balls off till all hours, selling stuff I never wanted to sell and generally speaking not having much of a life like going out and hitting the pubs and clubs. There is no way I could have afforded to simply stump up a load of cash for the whole project to be done if I wasn't able to do as much of it as possible.
Also it wouldn't have been possible without the backing and support of Andy and Simon @ Custom Fabrication and now of course SGM Racepaint. The work being done is still costing me a few quid of course but certainly nowhere near what it should do as they wanted to use the car as a showpiece for what they can do in exchange for logos on the car (they have the roof all to themselves) and promotion through the forums I'm on and our company.

Like I said, wasn't meant as a dig but I do get alot of people making inaccurate assumptions about my wealth or lack of it. I am in the same boat as anyone else on here... how far you want to go all depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice... oh and bear in mind that the car hasn't seen any meaningful action for 20 months now !! It saw some road work about 9 months ago or so but literally that's it. This has been very much a slow process overall


Frank --
Cheers mate, well believe it or not the "original" plan should have seen me out racing it this year but what with one setback after another, not enough time and not enough money I decided to start from scratch and take the long path. I'd love to have it all up and running and back together in time for some testing ready for racing next year but we'll see. This build HAS to be done right...the standards have just gone too high for it to become a throw together job.


Mart, Merlin -
Cheers guys, I'm glad I'm not the only one that ended up speechless and drooling


Dave and Dave -
Fingers crossed the pics will be back up for you soon


As I said in my post - The car will be making a personal appearance at Rally Day @ Castle Combe on Sept 19th. Obviously it won't be there on it's own - myself, Si and Sam (Performance Autowrks) along with Andy and Simon (Custom Fabrications) will be there with a couple of other cars. Come along, enjoy the day and come and have a chat

i know its not a dig at me as i know how costly things get as i am also like u. wish money was no object but its nice to do stuff yourself.

selling stuff, having to work loads, lots of time in having boring nites in.

ur just lucky that u do have a few conections and there helping u out, i hope that my car turns out well and might even see u on the track.

Very very impressive This is getting better and better. Glad the pics are sorted now Rich.

This should be XXX rated thread Keep up the hard work. Im going to try and save up enough dough to send my lude over to you. May be quite a while yet though

That looks fantastic Rich, and yes, the pics are back up

I'm really looking forward to seeing this in person, even in it's non built up state i'll be able to appreciate just how good it all is.
You're right about us all being in the same money boat, it'd be great if we could all spend what we want to :}
I don't even know what a night out is anymore

Oh, and i was right about the detail level, you must see that now, mine looks good and should be solid, but you *know* yours is absolutely bang on!

Let me know your weekends for Sept if you can please Rich, i see the 3rd week is at Combe.

Amazing!

Now thats what you call a super clean shell

Thanks for your feedback as ever guys and thanks for not taking some of the things I say the wrong way. Sometimes I can be a bit abrupt

Sorry I've not updated recently, not had much time to spend on t'internet for one reason or another so I'm playing catch up a little bit here.

So anyway...here we go... Update Phase 1




So from the last update there were a few more bits left for Custom Fabrications to do before releasing the car back to me.

Cast your mind back to when I suggested that this item was going to get the weight saving treatment



Well that's the front subframe which has suspension compression struts (sometimes known as traction bars) running to it and also carries the front engine torque mount.
After much thought and discussion we came to the conclusion that rather than mess around trying to save some weight out of the bloody great ugly thing it would be far better just to make a new front end which would be stronger, lighter and incorporate adjustable compression struts. Here's the results in all it's nicely triangulated rose jointed goodliness









As a farewell present to the car the guys went all show and shine to produce this nifty little battery cover. They are also building me a custom oil catch tank which will sit really rather neatly out of the way at the back of the engine bay.




And so with that, it was over to me for it's welcome return home
Time to get a couple of shots that I've not been able to get so far




Here's a reminder of the old rear end view complete with spare wheel well



And here's how it looks now, complete with "nerf" bar to protect the rear floor....something that apparently was common practice in the Super Touring era.





This is the underside of the boot floor/rear chassis now with suspension and subframe in place. This will all need to come apart again for further modification and freshening up of the suspension.





I then couldn't resist the temptation to rest the carbon bonnet in place and quickly fit the bootlid and spoiler back into place...just to get an idea you understand








Ok so that's where we were at as of Saturday the 5th September.

Now although I've said all along that there will be no rushing and no desperately trying to make it to deadlines there was one that has been looming up and that's Rally Day @ Castle Combe on 19th September.
Ourselves (Performance Autoworks) and Custom Fabrications have a trade stand at this event and we both want my car to be there and built up to a level but the standards have to be high...what a drag

What with work commitments amongst other things I really wasn't sure how much was going to get done...and more to the point I had to find all the stuff I took off the car and start getting it into some kind of presentable condition to bolt back on .
I still had/have plenty of plans and ideas of things I want to do during the build up so some things will need to be gone back over after the show.

Anyway...onwards and upwards....... chuffed to bits to have it back home and my god it doesn't half pump up the old enthusiasm

Ok, so we're onto Phase 2 of the update now

This will bring you all bang up to date with where I am with the car at the moment.




To be honest I didn't know where to start so I figured the back end was as good a place as any.
Had a good sort out of all my sets of rear lights (found out I've got a total of 6 pairs ), jumbled all the bits up to create the absolute best condition pair I could. Gave them a bloody good clean and then refitted them along with the newly cleaned boot seal.
Decided now was as good a time as any to fit the spangly recessed aero fuel filler and neck - Perfect








Next was to tackle the bootlid. I'd already bolted on the boot spoiler so all I had to do was mount the plastic number plate holder/surround. You may remember that I cut out all of the inner skins of bootlid that once held this piece in place so the best and lightest option was to bond it back in.
You can just make out in the second pic that I left a small section of the original metalwork in place to allow for mounting of number plate lights...I know you don't need them for a race car but all along the plan has always been to get this thing road legal (or near enough anyway ), it just makes testing things so much easier.







What next? Well how about some doors?
I was all set to bolt the hinges on and mount the doors when something dawned on me... these hinges are bloody heavy !!
I don't know if anybody here has felt the weight of a fully loaded Prelude door but let me assure you that they are very heavy so obviously Mr Honda needed to ensure it's hinges were suitably heavy duty...fair enough. Thing is my doors are gutted bare so weigh nowhere near as much as they used to...in fact I'd say a third of the weight easy !
I think the following pics tell their own story







Yes that really is 620grams for a bloody door hinge !!







Yes that's 260grams saved per hinge....a bloody kilo in door hinge material...who'd have thought it!

Now compare and contrast



All 4 done, primered and painted




Now we can bolt them on and get them pesky doors hung...what a hateful, fussy, ballache of a job but worth it in the end to get them sat nicely







Figured now was as good a time as any to mount the rear bumper, unwrapped it from it's protective paper which it had sat in since Kris had painted them months ago only to find that the inside of them looked a bit on the messy side - different shades of red, some orange and some black untreated original plastic. Now I know you'll not ever really see that but i know it's there and that wasn't good enough so a nice dusting of satin black later made things so much nicer




While that was drying I thought I'd take a look at the front one....unwrapped it and yep the back inside could do with the same treatment but more importantly the visible black recessed areas were looking pretty tired. Kris did a great job of masking them off previously so all it took was to mask off the surrounding area, a quick going over with a scotch pad and a dusting of satin black to restore to it's former glory






While I had the black paint out I decided I might as well tidy up the rest of the bumper and front end parts such as the nostrils, bumper mounts (previously lightened many years ago), grill mesh, indicators, and fog lamp surrounds (brake ducts).
The indicators are a bit of a tempory thing really as I intend to relocate the indicators upto where the current sidelights are (part of the headlamp). The old indicators will then be replaced with either black painted ally plate or carbon.
Now I know all this stuff is purely cosmetic but I'm only ever gonna do this build once and I want it to look the absolute nuts when it's finished, the whole thing has to be done to a high standard ...that's very important to me.... it also has to look nice
Once done, the wings and headlamps could be bolted into place using some rather nice lightweight aluminum bolts , then the bumper fitted complete with all it's freshened up black fittings















Freshly painted roof rails/trims refitted. That in itself is a real testament to the skill and quality of workmanship from Custom Fabrications - remember, the roof has been removed and refitted on this car yet still the trims fit absolutely perfectly




Ok so I had got to a stage where the bumpers and panels were back in place and looking good, I'd saved some more weight and found a few further areas to save a bit more...what I really wanted to do now was see how the package was going to look on it's race wheels at race height. So it was up in the air, free off and adjust the poor neglected Dampertech/Gaz coilovers, pop the wheels on and drop it off the ramp.





This was about to make or break my enthusiasm and motivation.......

(apologies for the grainy pics..this all happened around 8.30pm on Sunday evening)



















Motivated? Enthused?


Well I smiled alot, said several "Hell Yeah's", motivated myself to the fridge, cracked open a tin of Stella and proceeded to drink it with real enthusiasm while wandering around the car eyeing up all the angles.........

I am indeed a happy chap



Oh and first thing this morning I decided to try and get a couple of better pics.
There's something kinda Super Tourer esque about it don't you think?






There are a few more pics on

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And don't forget - This coming Saturday at Castle Combe is the big annual Rally Day event. We'll be there along with Custom Fabrications, The Lude, Kris' race Civic and a rather tasty Old Skool Lancer Turbo...come along and say hello and take a closer look



As always, thanks for taking an interest.
Questions, feedback, comments are all welcome

Absolute quality work, I love the attention to everything you do. I love the hinges(I just hope some of the forum members don't decide to do it to a standard door)

When I get to work, log onto PUK and see an update on this thread it really brightens my day!