We’ve finally been making progress on the the 1972 N600 we’ve been working on over the last year or two. We had to redo the fuel system (replacing the fuel pump and cleaning, sealing the fuel tank), replace the ignition system (coil, wires, plugs), completely rework the brakes (rebuilding the master cylinder, front calipers and rear wheel cylinders, front rotors), blast and powdercoat the wheels, install new tires, and fabricate a new exhaust system. While we haven’t spent any time working on the body of the car, it does run, drive, stop, turn and we’re getting to the point where we’d like to be able to drive it around.

Last week I went to a local Washington state Department of Licensing Sub-agent office to transfer the title, register the car and obtain the collector plates. Anytime you purchase a classic vehicle that is going to require extensive repairs, make sure you get a detailed bill-of-sale detailing everything that is wrong with the car. Without this documentation, the state will try to make you pay excise (sales) tax at a much, much higher rate than what you paid for the car because the car is considered a ‘classic’ and you couldn’t possibly paid such a low amount. This is actually true with any car, but the state’s minimum ‘believable’ sale price jumps considerably at the ‘classic’ car cutoff. With the documentation in hand, the process is easy. We decided to register the car as a “Collector Vehicle”, which has the benefit of not requiring annual tab renewal, but also has some driving restrictions. I was a bit surprised to get hit with a $100 penalty for not performing the title transfer within 15 days of the sale, a mistake I’ll try to not make again. I received temporary plates at the office and received the aluminum collector plate (rear only!) a couple of days later.

This weekend we spent time trying to get the car from ‘drivable condition’ to ‘want to drive condition’, which meant cleaning the interior and reinstalling all the seats and trim. We cleaned the metal interior with soap, water, scrub brush and shop vacuum. Last weekend I actually spent time cleaning and restoring a set of front and rear seats from one of the Z600 Coupe (which while disgustingly filthy were in decent shape). When I went to install the seats in the N600 Sedan, I discovered that they were not compatible and so spent the rest of the day cleaning and restoring a set of N600 seats. We actually have a couple of parts cars, and although both the Z600 Coupes have seats in good working condition, not a single N600 Sedan driver’s seat has survived the nearly 40 years intact. We were forced to purchase an aftermarket seat cover until we can get the seats reupholstered. The passenger and rear seats were in good condition and were installed as-is. We used Turtle Wax Formula 2001 Super Protectant and cleaner, which really worked wonders on the decades-old vinyl. Even the seatbelts looked like new after a good wash!

While installing the interior, we needed to improve the weather-sealing, which at this point was close to none. If the car was left in the rain, puddles soon formed on the floorboards. We installed aftermarket replacement weatherstripping, which had a near OEM fitment and looks like it will keep the rain out.

After installing all the interior pieces, Dad and I took the car out for a short drive. The car performed well, although it didn’t love the cold air (we had removed the factory winter air-preheating system). The Honda 600’s use a very odd front suspension setup where the front anti-sway bar (which is a spring in a torsion configuration) which also locates the control arms fore and aft like a strut rod or radius rod (ideally nothing like a spring). So even under the best of conditions, toe alignment dynamically changes depending on weather the car is accelerating or braking. Unfortunately ‘best of conditions’ was about 35 years ago, and the bushings locating the swaybar/radius rod combo have evolved from ’squishy’ to ‘non existent’, and informed the passengers of the situation by producing a clunk under braking. Should be easy to fix with an aftermarket poly or rubber bushing.

We’re also struggling to solve an issue with strong gasoline fumes inside the car, mostly while idling. We’ve gotten some pointers from the 2 Cylinder Hondas Yahoo! Group, which we’ll attempt to implement in the coming weeks.

Posted some photos of the muffler/exhaust fabrication we did on the Green Honda Z600.  Is pretty hard to find mufflers with tubing this small–no modern car uses tubing that small.  The Geo Metro is about the closest, and we were able to modify the muffler to fit.  I’d like to try to use ATV mufflers, but they are much harder to find information on–maybe next time!

We haven’t been competing much this year for a couple of reasons, most notably that Ed/Dad has been out of the country on business for most of the season.  The Civic is sitting in the garage, ready to be loaded on the trailer.  Its been sitting so long that last weekend I had to chase a mouse out of the car, and clean up a little rodent nest that he’d built.

We had decided to go to Wild West Rally last weekend, but Dad was still in Jordan, and it seemed like PFR or Mt. Hood would be more fun to run.  With how things are shaping up, it is looking like perhaps Mt. Hood is the best bet.  If Dad still isn’t back, I may have to try to find another co-driver, which will be tough because I’d like to find someone with recce experience (creating our own pace notes).

Last weekend, I took the car for a drive and it drove well, but I’d want to try to get the following done before the event:

• Put on the new DMS shocks
• Work on the cooling vents
• Install the bigger hubs and CV joints
• Install OEM-Style ABS wheel sensors for rally computer
• Put together the rally jack

We’re upgrading from 32 to 36mm CV joints to help deal with the rash of outer CV joint breakages we’ve had over the years.  This is probably the most important upgrade we’ll be making.  I’m also looking forward to how the car will handle with the DMS shocks.  With the skidplate covering much of the normal engine bay air space, we’ve had a bit of a problem with cooling–we’ll be adding some vents for the hot air to escape the under-hood area.

Will post pictures of the progress as it happens!

Finally got around to fabricating the pin-style rally jack stands for the Civic.

Unlike most rally jack stands, these are adjustable height, which allows us to get the car up high in the shop, but lower when servicing in the field. The t-handle shoulder pins were sourced form from McMaster-Carr.

Overall the stands turned out pretty well, but I’d do them a bit differently we were to do it again.  First and foremost, I’d use round DOM tubing for the adjusters for one (square has a bit of slop and took a lot of time to get to slide properly). I’d also reconsider doing a tripod-style setup rather than a triangle, to help with the stability–and indeed we may end modifying these ones.

The gallery also contains some photos of a modified Bilstein “Monkey In A Tree” VW/Porsche jack that has been converted to use the pin and socket setup. We’ll be replacing the original bar (tree?) with a taller unit, and putting a wider base for better stability on soft surfaces.

View the complete gallery

I am selling a bunch of motorcycle stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years.  Email me if you’re interested in anything!

Dainese Ducati Sport Womens Jacket, Size 52

Very lightly worn

Retails for $500

Would fit a man, roughly size M

$200

Fieldsheer Mach 1 Mesh Jacket, Size XXL

Bought this for a trip to Thailand, but is too small.

Says XXL but fits really, really tight. I wear XL or XXL riding jackets, suit jacket 48 but this is too tight for me. I think it is supposed to fit tight, but even so would say its probably more like a Large or XL.

Has CE approved armor on back, elbows. Really nice warm weather jacket.

$70

Arai Signet GT Helmet – L

Came with a bike, too small for me.

Fits tight, not designed for folks that have round heads

Really, really nice helmet, is too nice for a guest rider helmet

$180

“Bike In Action” Leather Riding Pants Size 52

Very lightly worn

$75

Last year Evan Herling of 360 Imports and I went to a new kind of motorsports event: Professional Auto Barell Racing.  It ended up being a bit of a goofy experience–kinda a combination of drag racing and drifting.  More of a show than a competition.

Anyway, posted a small gallery of Evan’s EG Civic from the event, shortly before he started shoehorning a J32A2 V6 into it. Car handled great!

If I ever go to another one of the events to compete I’ll probably bring a tweaked version of one of our rally cars–will try to give everyone a heads up before we do it!

Okay, well we made a fair bit of progress on the green Z600. We’ve refurbished all the brakes, rebuilt the fuel tank.

The fuel system was in pretty bad shape. The fuel tank itself was dry, but full of probably 8-10 cups of ‘crud/dirt’. We’ve done this before on the N600–and I remembered that leaning/repairing fuel tanks is a messy and time consuming task. This time I outsourced the cleaning of it to a local shop. We etched the tank and poured in the sealant, reinstalled in the car. When testing it we discovered that although the fuel pickup tube was clear, it wasn’t picking up fuel. We filled the tank and discovered that only the first 1 gallon would get picked up–our pickup tube was rusted right at the very top!

So we had to take the tank out again. We weren’t looking forward to redoing the sealant and were concerned about the safety welding the tank. So we fabricated a pickup tube / patch that could be riveted on with sealed blind rivets and epoxied in place. All we had to do was drill out and remove the old tube, and rivet/glue on the new patch. Fuel system works great now!

The brakes were in pretty bad shape, we ended up having to rebuild or refurbish essentially the entire system. Both the rear slave cylinders, both front cylinders and the master cylinder and the front brake lines (lines were seized when we rebuilt the MC), rotors, front pads, rear shoes all needed work or replacement.. Did not cost a who lot, but took a fair bit of time and some specialized tools.

After we got everything finished up and bled the brakes, we fired it up to take the car on it’s first drive in over 20 year. Went to pull the car out of the shop and it wouldn’t budge. I knew that the car was capable of self-propulsion, as we have moved it in and out of the shop on several occasions (with no brakes–interesting times). Initially, I figured we must have incorrectly adjusted the rear brakes.

Turned off car, started checking the brakes–all four wheels seemed to be freely movable. After a minute of head scratching, got back in the car and it wouldn’t move again. At this point we realized that it it only locks up the front brakes when the motor was running–had to be the vacuum operated booster. So we disconnected booster, plugged line from motor. Problem solved, car now freely moves (and stops!) under it’s own power.

Hopefully we can get the booster fixed, although a lot of folks drive the cars with the boosters bypassed or disabled. I’d prefer to get it working–or perhaps we’ll just have to retrofit a larger master cylinder.

On the way back from the test drive around the block, the car started to sputter and backfire. Naturally it wouldn’t start. We re-adjusted the points and it seemed to fire right back up and run properly.
Didn’t have time to do another full test drive, but pretty sure that was it. Think I’m going to that electrical/optical system and get rid of the points.

When we first got the car it seemed to have an exhaust system. That is if you look at the exhaust manifold it had a pipe going towards the back of the car. Further inspection revealed that the exhaust pipe only extended about 6 inches from the header and then simply ceased to exist.

So we’ve started fabricating a new custom exhaust system. Hopefully once we get it finished we’ll be able have a full system bent up for us (which we may be able to provide to other owners). Finding mufflers with 1.75″ inlets and outlets is actually kind of difficult. Frankly there isn’t a lot of space to put a muffler so it has to be rather small to begin with.

We’ve got collector plates already for the car, so hopefully after the exhaust system is complete, we’ll be able to drive it around town.

Next step is to fix the rust, prepare the car for a fresh coat of paint. We’ll simultaneously be working on restoring the interior–recovering the seats, replacing the headliner and fabricating a new carpet. The project continues.

Brake / Fuel System Rebuild Gallery

Z600 Gallery

K&K (52)

Originally uploaded by Auto Otaku

There is a great photo gallery on Flickr from the K&K Clubman Meeting in Japan. Great vintage Japanese racers.

Full photo set @ Flickr

Article/Blog Post at Auto Otuku

I’ve posted the stage times and analysis of the 2008 Mt Hood Rally.  This is actually a first for us in that Mt Hood had a RallyMoto event for motorcyclists.  We’ve posted the results of both events separately as well as combined:

Mt Hood Rally Regional Rally
Mt Hood RallyMoto Regional Rally
Mt Hood Rally Combined Regional Rally

For additional rally stage times and analsys see our Rally Database at http://fatboyraceworks.com/rally/

We’ve been concentrating on the Rally program lately, evidence of this is that the last time we raced the CRX was in late 2006 (I think) at ICSCC event at Mission Raceway in BC. We had a problem with the oiling/cooling system on the B16A and ended up melting a piston and DNFing.

In anticipation of being able to run the car again eventually, one weekend while we had some downtime, we were able to install a new B16A into the CRX. We took the opportunity to plumb in a 2 quart Accusump, to help with oil starvation issues under the high cornering loads that the car sees.

Other subsystems of the car will be undergoing upgrades shortly: we’ll be installing a spherical bearing rear lower control arm setup and a NSX big brake upgrade that we purchased from the C-Speed Racing team. We’re also considering dropping the spring rates of the car, which while not unheard-of, are on the aggressive side, especially considering the short-wheelbase the car has. We’d like to install a new front cross-member and radius rod setup similar to the one we recently fabricated for the Civic–have to check on the rules–we may be forced to just run a spherical bearing instead of stock radius rod bushings.

Hopefully we’ll have time to fabricate a nice adjustable rear touring-car style swaybar system–nothing else I’ll put a beefier rear swaybar I have sitting around (which will require reinforcing the subframe) .

Am also hoping to fabricate a new front splitter for the car, and coming up with a matching rear wing.