My Love hate relationship with a 3rd gen prelude – part 2

This is a continuation of a series of posts. You can read part one here “My Love hate relationship with a 3rd gen prelude“

Back in 2015, I purchased my first ever 3rd gen prelude. But it had problems like most cars over 25 years old. Needed a water pump, needed some rust repair, needed a bit more work, then I originally thought.

So I figured I would try and rebuild some of what I could, and then see where the car was at. I knew I had to pull the engine and all that stuff. After about a week of removing what I needed to remove, I was finally able to yank out the engine. With the help of an old oak tree I was able to do this.

Yanking an engine

I posted about the time I yanked an engine from the first car I ever owned here “Pulling a 93 Civic Engine“, so I figured how hard could this one be. Well a civic is nothing compared to a 3rd gen prelude. The amount of cables connected to this thing is insane, you have 4 engine mounts, a much different intake manifold.

Pulling the Bastard B

The bastard B out of the bay.

The bastard B was finally out of the car. After I got it out, I still had a lot of work to do. I knew I wanted to paint the engine bay, while also doing a shave and tuck of the wiring. But I gotta say, its quiet a bit of work to remove this much from the engine bay.

Cleaning up the engine bay

Once I got that engine out, I decided to remove the rest of the gear in the engine bay, so I can start work on shaving an figuring out how to start on a wire tuck.

Still a lot to remove

All removed started sanding grading and patching

After I did all the patch work, I sanded, primed and paint a gloss black. But then I saw someone with a matte black colour and decided that would look much nicer.

Freshly Painted

Starting to piece it back together.

Too much rust

If you have ever done any work on an older Canadian car, you will quickly realize how much rust they cars can have. The first big rust fix that would need to be done, but later found out that I would be unable to fix was the shock bar in the front. This bar is designed to absorb the force of a front end crash. Yet, you are not able to weld repair this.

A rusted shock absorber

Rusted through area

The second major issue was the under carriage. the floor pan were rotting. I didn’t realize at first when I jacked the car up, but after sitting on the jack stands for a few months, I started to notice the under coat was pealing and decided to see how bad it was with a chisel. And this was the result.

Scraped and chiseled under carriage.

After I scraped and chiseled the under carriage

It honestly seemed like every time I would pull something off the car, I would expose more work. Not a fun time.

The fun was over

In late October the snow started to fall and I quickly realized I was sort of screwed. I had a car in pieces and a rotting shell. And decided that I needed to look into another prelude body. With snow on the ground, I began to start searching for another shell, I knew I had great parts to use on any 3rd gen shell. After searching for a few months online, I got a kijji notification that my search results found something new. So I opened it and saw a 88 prelude 4ws about 9 hours away and a  province over. I messaged the guy and waited.

Four days went by with no response. After a week, I finally got a response at 2 in the morning right before I was going to bed. And I spoke to the guy and asked every possible question I could. He stated he couldn’t work on it anymore, was safetied in his province, and needed some rust repair. It also had great internals, but had been sitting for two years in his driveway.

So I figured I would tell the guy I will wait on it till spring and if it was still there, I would purchase in the spring. And thats what I did!

That spring 2016, the new car arrived. Stay tuned for the next post, it spans two years and brings me to present day! Where I have been working a lot on a beloved prelude!

Do you have a project car?

Id love to hear your experience with a project car, or a car you love to hate. Comment below!