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Thread: Road Star

  1. #226
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power druz's Avatar
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    A few weeks ago I had the rare opportunity to get out for a drive. I tagged along with Willywongka and a friend for a leisurely, due to traffic, jaunt up Skyline Blvd on a beautiful fall day. After a great pit stop and chat at Alice’s Restaurant, I decided to take the fast way home on the freeway.



    Unfortunately for me, before the drive I forgot to adjust my suspension from the a bit too low ride height it was at, <4" at pinch weld. Any undulations in the road at moderate speeds caused showers of sparks according to the poor E46 behind us on Skyline. I thought it was from my exhaust which shows many scars from over the years. Freeway speeds plus a good sized dip almost caused a catastrophe. Almost immediately after the horrible sound of metal bashing asphalt, smoke started to fill the cockpit. I pulled over, grabbed my fire extinguisher and looked under the car, only to find nothing. Soon the smoke cleared. I was almost certain it was oil, but my oil pressure was holding steady as well. Many years ago, shortly after finishing the engine swap, the oil pan was dented after hitting a large pot hole during some “testing” along some dark, industrial roads. I feared the pan had taken another hit, but maybe I was wrong. I hopped in and started back home, quickly accelerating to get up to freeway speed. Again smoke filled the air, but as soon as I backed out of it, it started to clear up again. As long as I maintained a steady throttle everything seemed fine, so I carried on and limped home 12 miles at 65mph. I pulled into my driveway and shut it off, going into the garage to get my Quickjacks into position to inspect the damage. I came back out to find a slick of oil starting to creep down the driveway, maybe ½ quart at that point plus who knows how much lost during the drive.



    Fortunately it’s a 7 quart pan so I quickly pulled in, but being so low, it took a little longer than usual to get the car up and another quart or so made it onto the garage floor.



    After the long clean up process, I was able to see how much it was going to cost me. It didn’t look horrible so I got onto dropping the pan with hopes of repairing it.



    But why didn’t I see any oil when I stopped on the side of the freeway, or lose oil pressure? I’m surmising that the trap door baffles in the pan were keeping the oil away from the crack while the engine was on and it was still circulating. Unless the pressure got high enough like during acceleration where it was forced out and onto the exhaust. Once I turned off the engine in the driveway the pan started to fill up and run past the baffles and out the crack. Unfortunately those baffles also made it impossible to fully clean the area around the crack on the inside of the pan which would make welding difficult. I didn’t have much to lose so I hit it with the TIG and while the bead is probably pretty porous due to the contamination, it’s seeming to hold up so far.

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  3. #227
    6,000 rpm - mere mortals would shift HarryB's Avatar
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    Yikes! Lucky in terms of timing at least! Can you implement some sort of skid plate?

  4. #228
    Supporting Member Willywongka's Avatar
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    Though it was great to catch up with you Andrew, I can't help but feel a little responsible for this happening =(. I hope you can get it all patched up so we can go driving again!

  5. #229
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power druz's Avatar
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    Indeed Harry! After reinstalling it, I figured this was a good time to finally make the skid plate I considered after the first time I dented the oil pan. The entire issue is that the V8 pan hangs about 1.5 inches below the subframe. Combined with the fact that the tubular subframe doesn’t leave much area for attachment points for a skid plate left me debating (and procrastinating) the best design. I just decided to go for the simpliest and strongest, which resulted in a large, almost 24in wide, plate so I could tie directly to the subframe and make it as strong as possible. I used ¼” aluminum plate, and left a 1/8” gap to the pan, resulting in a loss of 3/8” more ground clearance. Not ideal, nor pretty, but hopefully gets the job done. I'll probably revisit the design someday.



    Willis, I knew I needed to raise the car a bit after the last drive, I just put it off and then forgot about it Ready to go again!


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  7. #230
    Supporting Member Willywongka's Avatar
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    Glad you got it back and operational! Lets roll out again soon!

  8. #231
    4,000 rpm - entering the fun zone speedypenguin's Avatar
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    Car is looking good. Bummer about the oil pan damage, but glad it’s been sorted. Hope to go driving with you all soon.
    My Eunos Roadster, Jazz

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    druz (11-27-2020)

  10. #232
    2,000 rpm - light wheelspin, no bog here!
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    Do you need a gap at all for the skid plate? (the old Jeep oil pans had skid plates welded to the bottom of them) After all you would gain back 1/8th. The plate would still be hitting and not the pan. The other thing would be to modify the pan itself. Probably buy another pan to work with until you get it right and then install that pan? That way you could not only gain back what you have now lost, but shorten the pan up enough to not hit? Just an idea. May be a poor one I don't know. Best of Luck!!!

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    druz (11-27-2020)

  12. #233
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power druz's Avatar
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    I left the gap in case of any deflection. It is 1/4" thick but it's also 23" wide at the attachment points. I doubt I'd hit something just right but it's only 1/8". If this ends up not working out then modifying the pan will be the next thing to look at. If I lost ~3/4" that would be about a quart of capacity, still leaving 6 qts. One concern about that is I don't remember if there's enough room to move the pickup any higher.

    Thanks Brian, would be great to see you out again!

  13. #234
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power druz's Avatar
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    Also while I had to disconnect the oiling system from the pan to remove it, this was as good a time as any to finally install the Mocal oil cooler I’ve had sitting in a box for years. Finding a good spot for it wasn’t easy due to the large 19 row size but discovered it fit almost perfectly under the radiator support and above a brace I welded in the bumper support to accommodate the intake. A couple of flat brackets could be screwed into some rivnuts in the brace and another for the top of the cooler tied to a factory tapped hole in the rad support.



    1/8” flat bar was all I had laying around, so some beefy brackets were made.



    The only downside was that it had to be mounted upside down to accommodate the fittings. Again, not ideal, but not a big deal. I could have flipped the whole thing over and mounted it below the brace, but I couldn’t find a good way to do the bottom mounts that way. I also like it tucked up out of the mouth and out of harms way while still in direct path of airflow.


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  15. #235
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power druz's Avatar
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    It's not as if I've run out of Miata things to do as I still have a list much longer than I'd like, but coming up on 25 years of Miatas being my tinker toy and over 10 years with the current one, for the past year I've had an ever increasing itch to try something new. The thought has crossed my mind many a time to pick up another Miata and do something different than the current build and stick to what I'm familiar with, and have tons of parts for, but I really felt like diversifying to something actually new.

    I decided I wanted a classic. I'm not much of a rotary fan, so that rules out most classic Mazdas. I've never been into Toyotas. 15 years ago I had a neighbor with a Honda S800 coupe and I would see it in the parking garage once in a while. Great looking and so interesting, but most appeared out of my price range, especially the coupes. So that leaves Datsun. But the 240z have skyrocketed in value and Skylines have always been up there. There's always been something about the 510 that I'm not very fond but I'm not sure what it is. That leaves the Roadster, which would make perfect sense. They've started to creep up in value as well and while I love the front end, the rear is only meh. But that was probably going to be what I could fit in the budget.

    The tall windshield 68+ was out of the question, it had to be an earlier low one. That eliminated quite a bit of the market. However I noticed earlier ones were usually cheaper than their later counterparts. Good for me since that's what I was looking for. After much searching, I would come across the occasional Honda and I noticed that same trend in them also. The later cars with the bigger engines and more development had more demand. Also, the roadsters were quite a bit less than their much more rare coupe brothers, although compared to the Datsuns any form is pretty rare. I expanded my search a little on the hopes I could get lucky but after some research I learned that their market was quite quirky due to their relative complexity and lack of parts. That tempered my dreams a bit. But Hondas are powered by dreams.











    A couple of months ago I finally took the plunge. I never bought a car without seeing it in person, nor had one delivered, but it worked out very well. After waiting a week to get here from Indianapolis, it was a reality.



    It's not perfect, but that's not what I was looking for. It seems like a solid driver quality with just a few things needed, in the perfect color Ivory over red. It's an early 1964, one of the first few thousand cars Honda ever built, and one of only a couple hundred currently in the states. Built the same year Honda entered its first Formula 1 car.

    After a couple of months of ownership I'm only just about to begin, because just like the Miata things always take me 10 times longer than it should, but the first drive was a blast. 606cc of fury, lucky to have 50hp today from its 57hp when new. It's the complete antithesis of my 5967cc 425hp Miata, exactly what I was hoping for.


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  17. #236
    4,000 rpm - entering the fun zone Roadster7's Avatar
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    Odd looking R-2 Limited.

    Jokes aside, amazing car. Perfect opposite match to the V8 NA!

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  19. #237
    5,000 rpm - there be torque here! Greasemonkey2000's Avatar
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    Such a gorgeous Honda! I've always wanted a older Honda as most of mine were 90s-00s, the oldest being a '89(iirc) CRX with a B16A swap. Whats the plan, Andrew?
    '01 NB2 aka MisF1re: http://mazdaroadster.net/showthread....218#post207218
    '97 M aka Warbird, gone but not forgotten: http://mazdaroadster.net/showthread....B&goto=newpost
    Instagram: @greasemonkey2000

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  21. #238
    6,000 rpm - mere mortals would shift oldgrayleather's Avatar
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    Congrats again D - really looking forward to hearing your first hand account of this new direction!

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  23. #239
    6,000 rpm - mere mortals would shift HarryB's Avatar
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    Stunning! I would never imagine these would be more attainable than 240Zs.

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  25. #240
    3,000 rpm - starting to feel the power druz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Greasemonkey2000 View Post
    Such a gorgeous Honda! I've always wanted a older Honda as most of mine were 90s-00s, the oldest being a '89(iirc) CRX with a B16A swap. Whats the plan, Andrew?
    I've used Hondas most of my life for daily drivers. I helped a buddy build a B16 CRX way back in college, but never really modified any of mine. Just something not too boring to commute. But I have an affinity for them. This one will probably stay on the same path, mostly a stock restoration, but nothing too elaborate either. The main goal is to get back some of the backroads driving enjoyment that I don't get out of the Miata anymore. The S600 feels happiest in the 35-55mph zone, whereas the Miata is 75+.

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