Project Steph's 1978 Honda Civic 1200

[EvoCivic]

It's a bit hard to photograph. It appears to be a chrome strip embedded in clear(ish) plastic. It's the 217.005 from Spectrum. It's a little wider than the 217.007 that a few people seem to have used and has a wider chrome strip. It's almost exactly the same width as the OEM stuff (although a different design) so IMO fits better than the 217.007. I test fitted a small length on a car and once in place it looks just like the original stuff (but not all cracked, crazed and faded ;))

[Steph]

It's a bit hard to photograph. It appears to be a chrome strip embedded in clear(ish) plastic. It's the 217.005 from Spectrum. It's a little wider than the 217.007 that a few people seem to have used and has a wider chrome strip. It's almost exactly the same width as the OEM stuff (although a different design) so IMO fits better than the 217.007. I test fitted a small length on a car and once in place it looks just like the original stuff (but not all cracked, crazed and faded ;))

Man, that sounds perfect! :D

Please pop a 'set' in the mail to me and send me a PayPal invoice ASAP!

TIP 1. I'll be financial again on Wed, so don't expect payment until then. LOL!
TIP 2. You can likely expect reciprocity to take place on that day also, in regards to the crank pulley, glovebox, etc.
TIP 3. We Australians like giving each other 'tips'.
TIP 4. Is the place I exclusively deposit large items of rubbish and used containers of engine oil, etc.
TIP 5. I often run out of steam after the 4th tip...

[79cord]

Another wow @ that engine, Its turned into a work of art!
Must keep an eye out for your C90 posts too since I've '66 CD90, 68 CT90, '70? CD90z & '75 ST90 lined up @ the back door for attention.

[Evoboy]

and...

Looks amazing great job not usually one for polished out anything but WOW I'm impressed!

[Steph]

Thanks guys. I've tried the whole way to find a balance between polished and painted, but the braided everything is all show. I really wanted to do an old school engine bay like you find with a lot of older V8s, and try not to tech it up too much. I may make a concession to a power conditioner I purchased, which I've upgraded with Nichicon capacitors, and top quality Roederstein resistors... you know, usual stuff. I managed to get one in black.

Oh yeah, there's about 450,000 micro-farads inside there, in small packages, so they're faster to respond than larger caps. These are great to help filter out ripple from the alternator, and smooth out transients caused by switches, etc. They claim to assist electronic ignitions, and I can't see a reason why a power supply improvement wouldn't improve performance, because it nearly always does in my experience... up to a point that is... anyway, I may 'hide' it on the side of the battery, or mount it on top, or put it in the draw!

[loza]

Hey Steph, are those extractors custom or do you have a source ??

[Steph]

Another wow @ that engine, Its turned into a work of art!
Must keep an eye out for your C90 posts too since I've '66 CD90, 68 CT90, '70? CD90z & '75 ST90 lined up @ the back door for attention.

Soo many projects

I just wish I could stop myself looking for future projects while I have so many 'future projects' already on the go! :P

I really want to do a cafe racer at some stage, and a late 70s, early 80s 40-series Land Cruiser. I plan on travelling all over Australia, and what better way to do it than in a vehicle you restored yourself. I'd just recondition the motor, replace the suspension, and stuff like that. Nothing like what I'm doing with the Civic. Projects, projects, projects!

Oh yeah, in case anybody is wondering. yes, my back is still shagged, but I've just learned to live with it, plus I think I was lucky I did so much sport and athletics when I was younger, because I learned at an early age to carry pain and soreness with me continually. Of course I had a choice to opt-out back then, but I never did, always feeling I'd slip back and it would be counter productive. So now the only difference is I don't have an opt-out option available to me, other than that, it's business as usual. I've even started hiking again, but only on smooth trails. The one thing I miss most are sprints, especially while training with a dog. That is soo much fun. I would explode forward as fast as I could, and Marshall would be taken by surprise, then he'd come tearing past me to prove he was the fastest. The sound of his feet hitting the ground would be similar to the sound of horse's hoofs at the races (that's what we call horse racing). That sense of him coming up behind me would always push me way harder than I could ever train alone, and it was fun!

now, where were we... :P

[Steph]

Hey Steph, are those extractors custom or do you have a source ??

I made my entire system from scratch, although I used part of the shell from a stainless muffler to make mine. My muffler is now straight through in design, so not very quiet. I also made my mid-section resonator smaller, using 3" stainless exhaust tube to make it, with 1-3/4" perforated tube inside. The header must be made out of 1-3/8" tube. If you use 1-1/2" you'll regret it unfortunately, unless you have a firebreathing drag engine to use it with, and even then I'd argue otherwise. The other thing is you don't want to go over 1-3/4" for the tail (tertiary) section, as 2" is too big for these engine. I base those last comments on what I've read here, as well as being supported by the maths when I crunched the numbers, so to speak. With a 2" system, you'll push the power curve up at the expense of idle and bottom-end, and the torque curve will take a hit the entire length. The formulas to make these calculation have been in common use for a very long time, yet people seem to ignore this and jump to the bigger is better philosophy. Just this week I had a 1-3/4" system fitted to my 1300 Ford Ka, and it absolutely sings. You'd swear the exhaust was tuned to the engine, and that's because it is!

All that said, getting mandrel bends in 1-3/8" stainless is going to be difficult, as you'll have to buy the stainless from Columbia River Mandrel Bending, then have BHL Holdings here in Adelaide bend them for you. They just happen to have all the formers there are because they bend for all industries (furniture, etc). Otherwise they can easily supply 1-3/8" mandrel bends in mild steel, which you can have ceramic coated in a chrome-like finish for a great result, and potentially better at heat retention?

This summer I plan to convert all the header files into 2D sheets that can be printed and used as templates to make the header. That's how I made it, along with my laptop sitting there so I could glance at the 3D model from time to time, and rotate it. I'll make a multi-platform/program 3D model as well. Like I did with other parts in the CAD files section here. hmmm... I might put a link to that in my signature...

viewtopic.php?t=19851

[amifsud]

Where did you get the flange plates cut?

[Steph]

I'll post the file you need in the CAD section. Any laser cutting outfit will knock a set out for you. Needs to be 10mm minimum IMO. You could also get the single header plates and go that way, but I prefer the solid single-piece plate myself. I'm pretty sure I have a single header drawing (99.99%), which I'll post also, as well as the secondary plate files. As usual, I'll put some PDF files, along with the DXF file for the laser cutter to load on their machine, and create the G-code for their machine. That saves them tons of time over you giving them a drawing alone. Put simply, it could shave as much as 50% off the price, in comparison to supplying a drawing alone, plus it eliminates a potential avenue for errors in drawing 'interpretation'. OK, that's 2 jobs for my old laptop today. Interestingly, the both were given 'birth' by people named Adrian. :P