I spent a good amount of time thinking about how to build a good rotisserie. It looks like commercial units start at $2k before shipping, and that's for pretty basic units. I also think that (from the pictures I saw) the quality of some of those cheaper units is a bit suspect.

The engine stand option would have worked, but it has a few disadvantages:

- Most stands have the engine angled slightly upward, requiring me to cut the main upright to angle the cylinder horizontally
- Most cheap stands aren't that strong, requiring reinforcement before I'd be comfortable using them to hold up a car
- They aren't tied together, so moving the car would be a bit sketchy
- Limited adjustability
- Still requires building the mounts for the frame rails, as well as a vertical drop from the center of the rotating cylinder to allow for centering of the vehicle.

I also considered building a set from scratch, but then once I added up the cost of steel it was going to be at least $800 - $1000 for a set with no adjustability. That means that if I get the measurements wrong and the car isn't centered, cutting and welding would be required to compensate. Also, a fixed-height makes it difficult to raise the car up enough to bolt it to the rotisserie.

So just for the hell of it I put "car rotisserie" into Kijiji, and what do you know:



This was for sale about 45 minutes away from me. It's a homemade unit but it's super solid. 2.5" square tubing, 3/16" thickness. The previous owner built it specifically because he looked at the commercial units and found that they lacked adjustment and they all needed to be modified anyways. His friend did the welds (which are super solid) and there's even a long square tube (right hand side of the photo) to tie the ends together once assembled.



It's height adjustable on both sides. So you can get the car centered relative to the rotating shaft (which is important, otherwise the car will try to roll in place) and then still adjust it up or down from the outside with it remaining centered. The attachment points are adjustable for different widths of car. The only thing I don't like is that the casters don't lock, but that's easily fixed by just replacing them.

I also got two bottle jacks from the previous owner which will fit on each stand. I can add a little platform just below the outer cylinder on the rotating joint, and add a piece of tube to the joint against which the jack can push. That lets me adjust the height easily even with the car on it.

Also, it was about half of what it would cost for me to buy the materials to make a non-adjustable rotisserie. I still need to buy the steel to build the attachment points for the frame rails, but overall this feels like a pretty good deal and I think it will work for my needs.

 

This weekend was a long weekend here in Canada, so I spent some time on Monday continuing to strip down the car. First though, I had to put the steering column back in so I could actually steer the thing:


Securely mounted. That's over 5 zip-ties right there!

Incidentally, you can see in this photo that I've completely cleaned the floor area of residual sound deadening. I've also chipped away all the deadening in the rear. The firewall still needs some work and then everything will get one more pass with enamel thinner to get any residue.

I hopped into the car to steer while my brother pushed the car into the garage:



Then we removed the hood and put it on the roof, since I will need to shuffle some other things around to make space. I'm slowly packing car parts into every storage space I have available.

I don't have an engine crane, but I do have one of these:



It's tethered to a big steel I-Beam that crosses the length of our garage. A bit fiddlier than an engine crane since there's no way to level it and you have to move the car out from under it before lowering, but it works.

Removing the engines on these cars is pretty easy if you've done it at least once. The engine harness was already disconnected from the inside, so I just made sure to unplug all the connectors and then pulled it with the engine:





It probably took a little over two hours. I do wish I'd been a bit more careful on the driver's side - the throttle cable snagged on something while I was raising the engine and was damaged, as well as the long starter bolt (visibly bent in this photo). The starter bolt in particular bothers me, since it could potentially have snapped the iron on the engine. Fortunately the only damage was to the bolt itself.

After that I drained the transmission. The fluid looked a bit weird:



The fluid I put in was regular brown synthetic gear oil, but the stuff that came out had this weird radioactive blue film. It was actually rather neat to look at:



Not quite sure what causes that. The Royal Purple that was in the differential came out looking exactly how it went in.

Removing the transmission on these cars is also easy - made even easier with the Cusco under-brace that gives it something to rest on when there's no engine installed. The NA transmissions are really light so I typically just grab the transmission and remove it without a jack (NOT that I advise doing that).



There was definitely an oil leak at the rear cooler line - not sure if from the line itself, the fitting, or the crush washer.

To be continued

 

The car was just high enough in the air for me to remove the transmission from the side. It's actually a lot scarier with the engine out. Small bumps to the chassis are a lot more likely to knock the car off the stands than with the engine installed.



Drained the fuel while I was in the area:



It's advantageous to drain it well in advance of actually removing it, since that gives the residue time to evaporate. Working on the car was a little nerve-wracking with the engine suspended in the air:



I know it's on there securely, but even so.

The only cart I have available is this little guy:



I've actually had more than one 13B on this stand. It may be small, but 13Bs are light and fit on it pretty well. It's bigger brother currently has a 13BT on it.

Rolled the car straight back out so there was space to lower the engine:





With the oil pan and pickup removed, 13Bs are pretty much flat. I think the oil pressure regulator protrudes slightly but it fits into the void in the center of the stand.





That's it for now. There's still a lot to do, but frankly these cars are like LEGO bricks once you've spent some time on them. Very easy to take apart and put back together. The same probably can't be said for the actual bodywork ahead of me, but I'm just going to take my time and I think it'll be fine.

Until next time

 

It certainly isn't an ideal setup to remove an engine and transmission. It is more than sufficient though. I think the first and only time I did the same is when I parted out my wrecked one, in a gravel drive way, on bricks, with no engine hoist. It is amazing how light the drivetrain is. I was able to lift an auto trans and put it in the hatch with one other helping me, rather easily, at least for an early 20 something year old. The engine and sub-frame is light enough to move on a luggage dolly, too. It was a single use dolly, afterwards though.

I had a few issues with my current car after the all of the heavy steel was out of the rear of the car, it was very easy to lift the car some while loosening some bolts. Maybe I just had the car a bit crooked with the engine still in?

This is great work so far, keep up the work and don't feel rushed, that's when accidents happen.

 

so is it going turbo when it goes back together?

 

That's the plan. I have all the parts I need - at least I think I do (other than a fuel pump and a shifter return spring for the TII transmission). I was going to do that sometime this summer, but since the NA driveline is out anyways now is an opportune time.

This does mean I'll need to finalize the bracket for the hall sensor before I can drive the car again, but I have a lot of body and paint work ahead of me before that anyways.

 

I've been slowly picking away at emptying out the engine bay. I still have some minor cleanup of the interior floor, but it's largely bare. Other than the headliner and sunroof panel every interior part is stowed away in my basement.

I ran all of the fasteners through the ultrasonic cleaners for a few baths and then chased all the threads with a thread cleaner:



Many of them are common fasteners that are easily replaced, so they won't be reused. I'll keep them aside for something else and just replace with new. But that's no reason to put them away dirty.

After that I started removing piece after piece. The following pictures aren't that interesting - just photos of things that are to be unbolted and packed away. But they will serve as convenient documentation when I put it all back together later.





This is a custom fuse panel I made a few years back for high-current items (e-fan on one circuit, alternator on the other). It worked fine but it looks very messy. I'll keep it for now but I doubt it's going back on the car.









The fuse panel has some convenient plugs on the bottom, then two 10mm nuts hold the original main alternator wire on and it just pops right off.



The body harness runs along the front bar and then to the area under the stock airbox. There's also the power steering cooler loop and the oil cooler (already removed in this photo).



Under the custom brake hoses for my Subaru brake booster / MC are the disconnects for the transmission / starter / charging system sub-harness:





It was a bit greasy from the oil that had been leaking from the rear oil-cooler, but overall not in bad shape. If the oil has wicked into the wiring I might just replace the affected wires. In for a penny, in for a pound at this point.



You have to take out the headlights to unplug them as they aren't part of a sub-harness. Fortunately the connector for the retractor motors is easily reached in the engine bay, so they don't need to be removed (yet).

To be continued

 

I found two new areas where rust was starting. One on the front inner fender under the airbox:



One here on the seam of the driver's side shock tower:



Fixing that properly is going to mean drilling out the spot welds and removing the tower, repairing it, and then priming and reassembling. Not too big a deal, but as with every other "little job" they add up.

I put the oil cooler aside, but no matter how much I drained it there is always more oil. I left it like this for 20 minutes with a cloth underneath and nothing happened, and then with zero warning it all leaked out:



Then I spent awhile pushing the body harness through this opening in the firewall. I alternated moving to the interior of the car every few minutes to clear space and make sure nothing was hung up. Eventually it all went through.



Not car related exactly, but our jack has been leaking for some time. This meant that it would lose a few mm a minute in height, and wasn't safe to have any part of your body under the car when it was solely supported by the jack.

Now, one should not be working under a car without properly supporting it on stands in the first place. But one does need to actually put the stands under the car to achieve this so at a certain point the slow-leak becomes a safety issue. My dad found a great deal on a low-profile, high-lift Dewalt unit. Which sounded great until I actually saw the size of the thing:



This thing is huge. Granted, I no longer need to drive my car up onto ramps in order to lift it. But it doesn't help with the space issue now that parts of my car are packed into every available space.

I have spent a long time soaking the fasteners for the front bumper in PB blaster:



Forgive the terrible photo - there is no good way to light the area.

I'm confident that the studs are going to snap off. But these will cost me $125 CAD per side so I'm going to try and save them if possible. Speaking of stuck fasteners:



The little M6 screws that hold the headlight covers on absolutely won't budge. It looks like the last time this car was painted they painted over the threads on the back. This means that not only are they stuck but the PB blaster won't penetrate. I have yet to decide how to deal with these - I'm going to think on it a bit and come back to it later.

The FTP lenses came out with no trouble:



But I am sad to say that my once mint-condition JDM lenses have acquired some small cracks:



Disappointing, but I can live with that.



Took out the radiator and some custom ducts I had made. I'm not sure if I posted about these. They're just designed to seal the rad to the undertray and prevent air escaping underneath the rad end tank.

To be continued

 

When taking out the driver's side marker light, I found that someone had spliced a wire in. It went nowhere so I can't really speculate as to what it was for. I swear, there is no part of this car that the previous owner or his mechanics didn't mess with...


There is a plastic bracket thing that mounts to the front bumper cover and then also to the front bar. I'm not sure what it actually does, but the fasteners are really crusty so I'm going to spend awhile soaking them in PB blaster.


At this point the engine bay is mostly clear:





When I posted about the corner at the top of the firewall where the water was entering the cabin, I mentioned that I wasn't entirely sure how to gain access to repair that area. I spent a good long time reading the body manual and inspecting the area, and I concluded that the only good way to repair it is to disassemble the wiper cowl area. That plus some (really minor) rust on the passenger side A-pillar seam necessitates windshield removal.

I'm not too afraid to remove the windshield, but there is always an element of risk to that. My current windshield also has a few stone chips (repaired, but still ugly) as well as a distinct "sand-blasted" appearance. What can I say, ~400,000 km takes it's toll. I decided I'd rather have a new one in-hand just in case.

The Mazda dealership just laughed at me when I asked for the price on a new windshield. He was kind enough to try and source one but confirmed it was NLA. Amayama lists some at about $1000 - $1300 CAD, but there's no guarantee they really exist. Add to that the cost of shipping one from Japan, import fees, residential delivery, and the absurd FedEx import brokerage fees, and I'd probably be looking at $2500 - $3000 all said and done.

I called a local auto glass place and they told me that while they could remove the original windshield there was no guarantee that it wouldn't break. The kind receptionist also spent 20 minutes scouring the country for an available windshield before confirming that no Canadian suppliers had one. She suggested I try U.S suppliers. I asked if she knew any and she simply said "no", so I thanked her anyways for her time.

I google searched and one result came up - Kool Katz Auto Glass. I'd never heard of them and the website is a bit clunky. For example, it doesn't seem to be able to search for a particular car. Instead there's a long dropdown list of tags that you can filter for, or alternatively scroll through 10+ pages of windshields until you find your car.

But they DID have a windshield listed for FCs, and as an added bonus this windshield came without the stupid windshield antenna. As an aside - I know those windshield antennas had their purpose, but in the modern day I find them distracting and ugly. Not just because I rarely use the AM / FM tuner, but also because modern stereos get much better reception than the OEM ones.

Shipping to Canada would have been an additional $400 (USD, not including Fedex Freight's aforementioned fees). My dad has an account with CBI USA in Niagara Falls. This is a business that lets Canadians deliver their packages there for a small fee, and then we can pick it up and bring it home. This way we only need to pay the typical customs fees at the border.

So I shipped the windshield there and we made a 5 hour trip to pick it up:



No picture of the windshield itself, but I did verify that the windshield looked like the correct one and wasn't broken before loading it into the car for the drive home:



It fit into my dad's Acura (but only barely). For any car larger than the Rx7 I think one would need a trailer or to strap it to a roof-rack.

Overall it was a pretty smooth experience. I think we spent less than an hour total in the U.S, and when bringing it back the customs office merely charged me $45 in sales tax and that was that. We left at 7AM and were home by noon.

For now the windshield will live in my shed. I am still going to try and remove the current windshield non-destructively. I might just outsource it to a professional. There are also some spacers underneath it (now NLA) to get the height correct, so I need to save those and make careful note of their position and orientation. The installation will definitely be handled by a professional.

That's it for now. More to come once I free up those bumper fasteners (or lose patience and snap them off) at which point I can remove the subframes and lift the car up onto the rotisserie.

Until next time

 

the last windshield i had done, the guy used like a razor blade on a stick. so he was able to cut the seal all the way around the glass.

 

From what I can tell, it doesn't look too difficult. Once the seals are out (and with no dash or interior to worry about) it looks simple enough to get a razor under the seal, then slip something like a guitar-string through and work all the way around.

Reinstallation is definitely something I don't want to tackle myself.

 

the guitar string for sure will break the corners, it does work great for the sides though.

 

I actually hadn't thought about the corners. I can see how trying to negotiate the guitar string around a sharp corner like that might put too much stress on the glass.

A feeler-gauge might work decently for the corners, if I'm very careful with it. Also less likely to scratch the glass than a razor blade.

 

The bolts on the back of my headlight covers also didn't come off. I couldn't even get them off with an extractor set. Guess it's going to be drilling them out. Nice project, I feel like the same work will be in my future very soon.

 

I continued to soak the bumper bracket fasteners in PB Blaster for several days, but at a certain point I just had to accept they weren't going to get any better. I broke most of the bumper studs as well as lots of other M6 fasteners in the front-end:



Bumper is cracked on this mount:



With all of the side fasteners removed the bumper started to come free. You can see a pretty significant color difference in this photo:



That's because the bumper was cracked in a parking lot years ago. The dad of the teenager who hit me knew a guy who worked at a Ferrari approved body shop and they did it for him for free. The work on the bumper itself is decent, but it was clearly a rush-job since there was no blending and they masked it rather than removing anything.

To be fair, you can't blend metallic single-stage paint. So they would have essentially had to paint the entire car. Overall I can't say I'm upset with it.

I then removed the top bumper fasteners:



And with that I could remove the bumper cover and put it in the cabin for now (until I find more places to stow parts).

The bumper foam underneath was in good shape:



Although this repair on the bumper is downright shameful:



I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure this is also the work of that same body shop since the bumper was deformed in this region after being hit. It's just a piece of mesh with something (JB Weld?) used to glue it to the back of the deformed area. The best way to fix this (short of replacement) would probably be to use heat to try and form the bumper back as much as possible and maybe glass the back of it for structure. I'm no bodywork expert so take that as my opinion, not a statement of fact.

The crash bar looks okay as well:



This material is weird. I think it's some sort of FRP but it feels like bakelite.

With that the front-end is pretty much naked, and I'm happy to say there is no major damage:



There's definitely been a bumper replacement in the past, but nothing looks too out of place. Well, except this:



This vertical where the fender mounts looks like it was bent in the past and banged back into place. Everything lined up so I'm not worried about it.

Unfortunately I now realize why the brake cooling duct on the driver's side came out so easily:



When I was trying to loosen, the nuts kept turning and turning. Then instead of the nuts loosening the duct just fell out. It seems that rather than loosening, the entire speed nut started rotating in place and snapped the mounting points off of the brake duct. Kind of a bummer, but certainly fixable. Then again I might not be able to use these brake ducts anyways. More on that later.

I noticed these brace things:



They're in fine shape and there's nothing remarkable about them - but they strike me as a bit odd. It's a tube that's been bent and then flattened at both ends. They seem almost like an after-thought. Nothing functionally wrong with that I suppose, but they are visually jarring. Fortunately they live under a bumper so I'll never see them again when the body is reassembled.

These are the frame rail ends to which I will attach the rotisserie:



I've ordered some steel to make the mounts, but I found that even on maximum power my welder can't weld steel that thick. I would probably be able to do it with a 220V hookup (I use my welder on 110V most of the time), which I don't have. I'll look into adding one for the garage but I think our panel would need to be expanded, so it might be costly.

Alternatively I might buy a 220V extension cord (if such a thing exists and is safe to use with a welder) and unplug the dryer for awhile to do the welding.

To be continued

 

I continued on to the rear bumper cover. This time I didn't snap any bolts:



But uh, only because I already snapped them several years ago and the side brackets have been replaced with zip-ties since then...

The crash bar came off easily as well:



You might ask where the bumper foam is. Well, your guess is as good as mine.

While it's true that I have removed this part before, I had never taken a bumper off before. So I didn't actually know that there was meant to be any foam there. I put it back together the way I had taken it apart and didn't think about it again. I've been driving around with no impact foam for the better part of a decade. One more part to track down...



I might be crazy, but I actually think FCs look good with no rear bumper. Add some long stainless-steel muffler tips and it looks pretty cool.

The body in this area is surprisingly pretty good, although I'm sure I'll find otherwise when I dig into it a little more. The only rust I see is actually just transfer from the gas-shocks on the crash bar.

Since we're on the topic of bumpers, we should talk about S4 vs. S5 bumpers. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the differences, and I didn't really care for the S5 bumper in the past. But as I've gotten older, it's kind of grown on me. Or it might be more accurate to say that I've fallen out of love with the S4 bumpers.

Before I say why, I'll tell you it's something to do with the turn signals. Take a look and see if you can tell what it is. S4:



S5:



Do you see it?

The S4 ones are just rectangles. Also, they're huge, and very very orange. They're actually not rectangles - if you look closely, they have a curvature and one side is not parallel to the other. But they are so large as to be kind of distracting. Also the "trim" on the S4 bumper is slightly smaller, but the ridges make it more conspicuous. Overall the S4 turn signals and grill region feel like a bit of an after-thought to me. Speaking of which, the S5 also has factory fog lights that look like they fit (since they are designed for that opening in the bumper) rather than the S4 ones which quite literally look tacked-on.

Now I didn't feel THAT compelled to replace the bumper. I still liked my car just fine even with S4 trim. But if I'm painting the entire car then I may as well swap now if I decide I want to. Plus my S4 bumper requires some repair before I can reinstall it.

So those were among my justifications to pick up a set of much worse condition S5 bumpers:



I know - pretty clapped out. But the price reflected the condition, and it was a set with the rear bumper as well. It also included good condition side brackets to replace the ones I just destroyed when removing the S4 bumper. It's currently bolted on only along the top with no side brackets, but one thing I noticed is that the driver's side doesn't quite line up with the fender. Meanwhile, without moving it, this is what the passenger side looks like:



Hmm, there's some shrinkage going on. Perhaps this bumper was in the pool...

I found that the S4 brake ducts are too long and won't fit with the S5 bumper:



I'll either have to trim mine or find some S5 ducts. I probably also need S5 ducts if I decide I want fog lights, but since they seem to block most of the brake cooling ducts I am not sure that I want them.

The center grill is completely missing:



But that's okay, since I kind of hate the center grille. Most likely I'll glass it and then smooth it so that it looks like there was never a grill in the first place. I might also try to find some inconspicuous mesh so that rocks don't hit the heat-exchangers.

For the rear bumper it's more of the same. One crack here that's been fixed with hot glue (or possibly snot):



And a hole rubbed / burned through from the previous previous owner's exhaust tips:



But it also included all the brackets, so overall this purchase nearly paid for itself:



I'm still not 100% certain on the S5 trim, but I am about 95% certain. In addition to the visual improvements on the front bumper, the S5 has OEM side skirts as an option, and reproduction trim is available for most S5 parts but very few S4 parts. Almost all aftermarket parts also match S5 rather than S4 (skirts, fiberglass fenders, half-bumpers, etc). While I have no particular desire for aftermarket body panels, having the option is nice.

Will I find more clapped out parts for the body to further add to the work ahead of me because I'm a masochist who dislikes bodywork but somehow always finds a reason to do it?
Will I snap more expensive fasteners forcing me to spend hundreds of dollars buying OEM from Japan?
Will the title of this build thread become a lie?

Find out next time, when I have the steel to weld up those mounts for the rotisserie.

 

i think it was a different thread, but the track FC's use the S5 fog light ducts for oil coolers.
Knight Sports sells a kit to mount the FD coolers to the FC, but i think most people use aftermarket stuff.

the old FEED FC

pretty sure you don't need it in a street car.

also the Canadian market has different rear bumpers than the US (or Japan), which is kind of neat. https://partsouq.com/en/catalog/genu...=1941543472&q=
and Japan has a different front reinforcement, which is metal

 

Oh, I definitely know I don't NEED the brake cooling ducts. It just bothers me that they're blocked. It's more psychological than anything else.

Any idea what makes the Canadian bumpers different? I didn't notice any obvious differences. And since it's just the cover I doubt it's for crash safety.

 

this is 100% true!

the rear says 5mph in the parts catalog, obviously i've never seen one. CA not CA, lol

 

The Canadian cars rear bumper only had a couple of foam stripes on the bumper bar.At least that was the case on my S5.

 

Good to know, This could be not true but I read the FC's are just a bit rear brake heavy. I figured the cooling from the ducts would off-set the imbalance a little with better cooling. So much for that Idea... The more you know.....

If I were building a race car... cooling oil better would be more useful..

 

The steel came in, so I set about getting the mounts ready for the end of the Rx7's frame rails. I had started to design these in Fusion with the idea I would get them laser cut, but apparently the free version of Fusion no longer exports DXF. So I'd have to find some sort of workaround and then just hope the dimensions were preserved. Instead it just made more sense for me to buy rectangular plates and drill holes in the appropriate locations. I did both front and rear at the same time, but I'm only going to photograph the rear for now:



I'd been using a $300 Canadian Tire welder for years. It was decent enough, but the wire speed was audibly inconsistent. Also the 4 voltage settings did make it frustrating to weld when the correct voltage is somewhere between two of the correct settings. Lastly it didn't really have the power to weld thicker steel.

My brother and I went half and half on a Lincoln multi-process machine awhile back. It's a 240V unit, but included a 120V adapter. I thought I would need 240V supply to the welder in order to get a good weld on the 1/4" steel I was using for the mounts, but it actually worked really well on 120V:







Not beautiful, but strong. This did unfortunately warp the base, so I put it between some bricks and hit it with a hammer until it straightened out:



Next I set about modifying the rotisserie. It already did everything I needed, but I had some ideas to make it more convenient. It started with a tube welded right below the rotating joint:



Then a simple platform and gusset:





This makes a little stand for this bottle jack:



I'm sure you already get the idea.

To be continued

 

Next I needed another platform and gusset at the bottom of the main upright (I don't really know the best word for what it is - the upright at the back of the base with the wheels):





And a similar square tube is welded to the back of the vertical sliding part that bolts to the car via the mounts.

So here's the idea.

First I'll need to lower the stand (on both inner and outer adjustments) to it's lowest point and bolt the adapters to the frame rails:


You might notice the square tube on the adapters is very shiny - that's because it was just a little too big to fit into the receiver and needed to be shaved down slightly. I intend to grease it so they don't rust together.

It looks like I'll need to have the car either on ramps or stands even to meet the lowest point. But from there I will need to jack it up using a floor jack, at least enough to fit the bottle jack onto the platform:



Then I can adjust the car up on the inner adjustment using this bottle jack with a socket adapter - essentially, this will allow me to center the car more easily. The inner adjustment locates the car relative to the rotating joint.



But I already hear you saying "What if you run out of height on the bottle-jack"?

Well, then I temporarily lock these bolts down:



Then I can lower the jack:



And insert one of these extensions I made:



And loosen the bolts before continuing to raise the car:



I don't think I'll ever need the longer extensions, but I made them just in case.

Then once the car is centered (using the innermost adjustment), I can use the same technique to raise / lower the car (while remaining centered relative to the rotating joint on the stand):



And that's that for now. I have a second identical bottle-jack, and I still need to modify the other stand in the same way. I'm hoping to get that done tomorrow.

My stretch goal for tomorrow is to actually have the car on stands. But since that means removal of both subframe assemblies as well as doors and hatch, I think it's unlikely.

Until next time

 

This is an update I typed out earlier and then cross-posted to Grassroots Motorsports, but for some reason it vanished here. Pasting it here again to see if it works this time:

I made a bold statement about my goals for today. But instead of getting work done, so far all I've done is add more work...



I spent some time with my dad at the town-wide garage sale today, and I found this guy looking a little dejected on someone's lawn. I can tell it's a Honda (logo on the seat) and it's likely from the 80s, but not the model or displacement.

At first glance it has all the parts, but the stator cover was sitting in one of the cardboard boxes and has clearly been off for some time. The owner was upfront about there being some water in the engine - he kicked it over and some droplets flew out. The engine turns freely and has at least some compression, but beyond that it was a bit of an unknown. Apparently he purchased it complete (though disassembled) from the previous owner and has done literally zero work on it since.

We talked for a bit about how much he'd want, and he asked for $100. I ended up getting it for a pretty reasonable $50, considering that literally every part of it will need to come apart and be fixed. Once I got it home, I spread everything out to make sure I had all of it:



I probably should've done that BEFORE buying it, but hey, it was only $50. I knew it had a seat and fuel tank since I could see them in the boxes, but I was pleased to find the wiring harness and a speedometer. The wiring harness is a little mangled, but nothing I can't fix. Why do people always seem to cut wires like 2" away from a convenient connector?



And then here's the stator cover. Not entirely clear why someone would remove it and then just leave it off for years, but here we are.

Not pictured are some other parts. Three ignition coils with wires, two new spark plugs, a new carb, the handle controls / levers / cables, and an assortment of hardware that (hopefully) belongs to this bike. I don't have time to start working on it today, so I just washed everything off and I'll tuck it away in the shed for now.



I kicked the engine over a few times to try and expel any water. I got a few drops out, but nothing crazy. I can definitely feel some compression, but I'm thinking it's probably wise to just tear it down anyways. For now I'm going to let it dry out awhile, then add some MMO before parking it. The engine code HD05E seems to correspond to a 100CC engine:



Which makes sense, because just before driving away the previous owner gave me this:



Look at how nice this bike is supposed to look! Maybe it will once I'm done.

Hypothetically I could even add signals and a headlight then drive it on the road. Not sure what the legality of that is in Ontario though, and I'm also not sure that I'd be comfortable driving a tiny bike like this even out here in the country. Every car is huge these days, and people routinely do 100+ km/h down my road.

 

No work ended up occurring on the rotisserie stand or my Rx7 today. Acquiring a bike has exacerbated my existing space issues - there's just nowhere to put anything. So I spent some time cleaning the shed and taking photos of some parts to sell.

However, I couldn't resist working on the Honda a little bit. I was hoping to get it to fire once today (on starter fluid), but that didn't pan out. I started by using a heat gun to dry all the moisture out of the cylinder, and once that was done I added some MMO and worked it around by rotating the engine a bit.

While waiting for that to soak in, I popped the valve cover off to find a very cute little camshaft:





Hard to tell in a photo, but both lobes look decent. More than good enough to run at least. Everything here also looks pretty clean.

I drained the oil:



It's black, like bike oil usually is. However, there were some chunks:



They were all pretty soft. They felt sort of like axle grease, or maybe Jello. It reminds me of the tar monster from Star Trek.

After that I spent some time kicking the engine over to spit as much MMO as I could out of the spark plug hole, and then did a comp test:



More than I expected for a cylinder that had water in it, but less than spec. It should be around 160. I have no doubt that it would come back around if it ran for a few minutes, but I think a ring and hone is in this bike's future. I do however need to finish fixing my Rx7 first...

I was able to determine based on the chassis code (and some clues from a helpful commenter over on GRM) that this is actually an XL100S - the street going variant of this bike. I thought it was a dirtbike only since it doesn't have any signals, horn, etc. But actually it looks like a previous owner removed all of those parts. Unfortunately they weren't included in the purchase, so for now it will remain a dirtbike. Once I ride it a bit I'll decide if I want to go all the way and make it a street bike, although obviously only for very local use since it's 100CC.



Being an XL100S it gets some nice upgrades. The 100CC variants all got 19" front and 16" rear wheels, and the street-going XL models got metal rear fenders rather than plastic.

Speaking of fenders, I removed the embarrassing Monster Energy stickers:



The front fender was painted very poorly, which is to my benefit since I wanted to remove this ugly red paint. However, the fuel tank and rear fender are both metal and look like they were actually sanded and primed before painting. This makes it unlikely I'll be able to remove the paint non-destructively.

I don't have the tail light, but I still have it's bracket. I think it doubles as a license plate bracket too.



I spent about 5 minutes using the wiring diagram in the manual to track down what all of the connectors did (or in some cases, the snipped wires where there used to be a connector). It looks like someone has completely removed the light control connector from the front of the harness, so that's one more thing on the list if I want to ride this bike on the street. That being said, there are only about 10 wires - I could always just make a new harness entirely if I like the bike enough.

With the harness reassembled and the appropriate wires twisted and tied I tried to see if I had any spark, but there was nothing. Only one of the three ignition coils that came with the bike actually matches the harness - there's a single bullet connector only. The other two coils have two bullet connectors. I'm sure one of the two wires can simply be grounded to the frame, but I haven't really looked into it properly yet.

I also figured I might have no spark due to dirty points, so I went to remove the rotor and see what was up. Unfortunately, living outside for some time had taken it's toll and the rotor was very stuck:





After a significant amount of time soaking in PB blaster, the fluid started to leak through and the rotor came free:



The points don't seem bad, but the ceramic insulator pieces on the stator coils seem none too happy. Several of them are cracked and a few pieces fell out. I can also see they've been removed before, for some reason.

I cleaned the points anyways before reassembly. I also cleaned the inside of the rotor:



I'm not exactly sure what this is, but it looks like a mechanical advance. I think the centripetal force causes the black arms to spin out and rotate the collar. The collar is eccentric to the crank (which is what causes it to close the points), so rotating the collar advances ignition timing.

I spent a few minutes trying to test the alternator / rectifier wiring, but none of the readings made sense so I decided to leave it at that for the day. I'll do some more testing before I try to start it again.