1999 Accord Type-R - Saved from the scrapheap
Discussion
Hi all, after my Aerodeck VTi-S went down a treat last year and grabbing Reader's Car Of The Week ( https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... ) I thought I'd tell the story of one of my Accord Type-Rs. I've still got the Aerodeck amongst a few other Hondas and a mega-mile Bora TDI. There's a bit to get through before we get to the actual car, so here goes:
In 2013 I turned 19, and with 2 years of driving under my belt (in a 1.4 EK Civic) I was desperate to get my hands on a fast Honda that was insurable. EP3s, while being the obvious choice didn't really interest me that much, I like them but they're a bit modern for me. That said, I would like to own one these days just to see what they're like. Insurance quotes looked very promising on an Accord Type-R and I've always thought they were pretty cool, so I viewed a few and bought the cheapest one, with the now-well-documented rotten bulkhead
Against the advice of VTECDirect, who told me, and I quote "run a mile" when I asked their opinion on buying it and mentioned the 'water leak' into the footwell. It had been driven since 2005 by a very sensible chap from Solihull, clearly hadn't been thrashed as he was reluctant to take it into VTEC when I was viewing it. My theory goes that all the consumable components had time to get old and deteriorate, but didn't fail as there was such little asked of them - then when 19 year old me got his first quick car it had a lot of niggly faults in quick succession!
It's a really early example, 1998 on an S plate, very few were made and registered in 1998 and even fewer are left now.
Being, at the time, an apprentice, I couldn't really afford to properly go through it and sort it, and I was terrified of the cost of getting the bulkhead sorted properly. I started stripping it with a mate, learning as we went. Eventually got the engine and box pulled to aid access to get the bulkhead welded, but because we were both amateurs at this point, we didn't make the nicest job of removing it, and I seem to remember a few wires getting broken etc. Due to the location of the bulkhead rot, it's pretty much a requirement that the dash comes out to aid access and avoid the obvious fire risk. Over the next few months I made a few half arsed attempts at getting the dash out but never managed it, due to a million hidden screws and lack of skill/patience. I refuse to get rid/scrap a car for no good reason and was quite attached to it, so it sat up the side of my parents house, followed by my rented storage yard for years. If I'd just left it alone and paid for the full job of dash and engine removal, welding and reassembly it would've been back on the road years ago, rather than trying to save money and do all the stripping myself when, at the time, I didn't have the skill/patience! Benefit of hindsight eh. The fact that I then got an EG6 distracted me massively, and is probably the reason it's been left for so long. Easier to get some enjoyment out of cars that are already good to go, than pour thousands into the ATR, or so I thought.
Looking very sorry for itself in my old yard:
Over the next few years, I bought and stripped 3 cheap ATRs for parts, all of which were absolutely hanging with rot.
This one, while being my preferred Vesuvio Red pre-facelift, was sadly not worth saving:
Nor was this one:
They tend to look pretty good, the arches don't really rot like they do on most Hondas, so it's easy to overlook this when buying one. Here are some more detailed photos of the silver one in the photo above!
Drivers side chassis leg/subframe mount:
Bulkhead (The main reason my S-reg red one came off the road remember)
Drivers chassis leg again - this is the mount for the airbox resonator
So no real surprise that it ended up looking like this:
Its last MOT was 2014, I got it in 2016 after it had sat on my mate's drive for a while (he bought it from a breaker in an effort to save it, then sold it to me when the headgasket went). I think it would've definitely been showing serious weakness when it was MOTd (before he bought it) as it won't have rotted that much sitting on my mate's concrete drive for a year, yet it had passed without advisories!
These rotters have at least given me a huge stash of parts, and also stripping them I learned a lot and expanded my arsenal of tools. I used the engine from V880 KCE in this:
I don't think I've done a thread on the Prelude, so I might use one of the last days of furlough to do that!
That's a serious amount of waffling so I'll get to the car this thread is about!
Having various Honda people on Facebook is a blessing and a curse - when a mate posted this my ears pricked up! Vesuvio Red, pre facelift, and in decent nick...
It was up for £1800, so I tagged people that had said they were after one, hoping they'd buy. I was saving for an R32 GTR at the time (which never happened, and probably won't now)
Kept it in the back of my mind for a bit, but the more I thought about it the more I fancied the idea of smoking around in one again, thinking it'd help motivate me to sort the S-reg. You can see the date the ad was posted in the screenshot.
Carl, the seller then started mentioning that he might have to break it as he wanted it gone to fund his turbo Civic. I kept my hand in my pocket hoping someone would buy it.
Towards the weekend he was saying he'd be starting to strip it on the weekend, so I ended up on the phone to him, asking for photos of the underside and arranging to go and see it on the weekend, with him saying he'd let it go for £1500 to me
I did try and not buy it! But nobody stepped in to save it so I felt I had to give it a chance being a non-rotten Vesuvio Red pre facelift.
Went down, having already made up my mind, if it wasn't an absolute nail I'd be swapping my insurance over and driving it back. The underside was brilliant tbh, not sure how it's survived so well as it had 170-175k on at the time, and no extra rust protection. I did find a bit of a scab on the bulkhead, but the rest of the car really was good. As I said, I'd already made up my mind so in my excitement paid the asking price and got on the road.
The thinking was that I couldn't really lose money on it, I'd run it for a few months and punt it on, having saved it from it's date with the crusher.
Whenever I'm near an air base or aircraft museum and have nowhere to be, I cannot help myself, so within an hour or so I was taking photos of my latest purchase with a Vickers VC10 at Cosford.
Dead happy. In a car I love, in my preferred colour, great weather, and it cost me less than a decent sofa.
Didn't last long!
It became difficult to select any gear without crunching, even with rev matching. It set off fine, suggesting it was the gearbox and not the clutch.
Into the yard of doom it went!
But only until I'd let my bank account recover, after letting it sulk for a while in the company of the silver rotter, I dragged it out and drove it to VTECDirect to get it back up to health. While stripping it they found that the clutch had fractured part of the friction plate IIRC, so this was likely to be the issue meaning I didn't need a gearbox. New OEM Honda clutch in and away we went.
Lent it to my mate who took it to JAE 2017 while I went in my Prelude.
After this, I just used it for a year and a half or so, no mods, just routine maintenance, tyres etc. My other half got temp insured on it a few times and loved it, so the plan was for her to buy it off me and keep it for a long time.
I got offered £3500 for it at JAE 2018, but couldn't break my promise to Chloe, so very reluctantly declined.
We've been all over the place in it.
Elvington Cold War Jets day, pictured with Victor XL231:
Rare to see another in the wild! This guy was asleep in his in the services, and when we'd eaten and come back out he'd moved a few spaces away I seem to remember! Fine, be like that
Old Avro Vulcan factory and airfield at Woodford:
In the 'boneyard' of old RAF Tristars at Bruntingthorpe:
Trying not to get in the way of Bruntingthorpe's Victor, XM715:
Couldn't resist parking next to one of the Lightnings on the way out!
On a memorial meetup/drive out at Bala lake for my friend Josh, who was tragically killed in a non-fault accident in 2016:
Roping Chloe into helping me try and get the headlights sorted, I can't remember why but they stopped working at some point in 2017 or 18!
Speaking of headlights, 19 years of UV wasn't doing the plastic lenses any good at all:
Got a 3M restoration kit on my drill and went for it, took a couple of hours but eventually they came up like new! This is a must if you have an older car with plastic lenses, it takes 10 years off the front end of it and dramatically improves your vision at night. The kits were about £15 the first time I got one, but bought one recently and it was £25! Does exactly what it says on the box though.
That'll do for the first post, that takes us to some time in 2018. That's a lot of words about not very much happening, apologies
Part two coming up shortly, 2019 and this year have a bit more interesting content as the mods and renovation began, along with a Nurburgring trip, if you've made it this far check back in a couple of hours once I've got it up to date!
In 2013 I turned 19, and with 2 years of driving under my belt (in a 1.4 EK Civic) I was desperate to get my hands on a fast Honda that was insurable. EP3s, while being the obvious choice didn't really interest me that much, I like them but they're a bit modern for me. That said, I would like to own one these days just to see what they're like. Insurance quotes looked very promising on an Accord Type-R and I've always thought they were pretty cool, so I viewed a few and bought the cheapest one, with the now-well-documented rotten bulkhead
Against the advice of VTECDirect, who told me, and I quote "run a mile" when I asked their opinion on buying it and mentioned the 'water leak' into the footwell. It had been driven since 2005 by a very sensible chap from Solihull, clearly hadn't been thrashed as he was reluctant to take it into VTEC when I was viewing it. My theory goes that all the consumable components had time to get old and deteriorate, but didn't fail as there was such little asked of them - then when 19 year old me got his first quick car it had a lot of niggly faults in quick succession! It's a really early example, 1998 on an S plate, very few were made and registered in 1998 and even fewer are left now.
Being, at the time, an apprentice, I couldn't really afford to properly go through it and sort it, and I was terrified of the cost of getting the bulkhead sorted properly. I started stripping it with a mate, learning as we went. Eventually got the engine and box pulled to aid access to get the bulkhead welded, but because we were both amateurs at this point, we didn't make the nicest job of removing it, and I seem to remember a few wires getting broken etc. Due to the location of the bulkhead rot, it's pretty much a requirement that the dash comes out to aid access and avoid the obvious fire risk. Over the next few months I made a few half arsed attempts at getting the dash out but never managed it, due to a million hidden screws and lack of skill/patience. I refuse to get rid/scrap a car for no good reason and was quite attached to it, so it sat up the side of my parents house, followed by my rented storage yard for years. If I'd just left it alone and paid for the full job of dash and engine removal, welding and reassembly it would've been back on the road years ago, rather than trying to save money and do all the stripping myself when, at the time, I didn't have the skill/patience! Benefit of hindsight eh. The fact that I then got an EG6 distracted me massively, and is probably the reason it's been left for so long. Easier to get some enjoyment out of cars that are already good to go, than pour thousands into the ATR, or so I thought.
Looking very sorry for itself in my old yard:
Over the next few years, I bought and stripped 3 cheap ATRs for parts, all of which were absolutely hanging with rot.
This one, while being my preferred Vesuvio Red pre-facelift, was sadly not worth saving:
Nor was this one:
They tend to look pretty good, the arches don't really rot like they do on most Hondas, so it's easy to overlook this when buying one. Here are some more detailed photos of the silver one in the photo above!
Drivers side chassis leg/subframe mount:
Bulkhead (The main reason my S-reg red one came off the road remember)
Drivers chassis leg again - this is the mount for the airbox resonator
So no real surprise that it ended up looking like this:
Its last MOT was 2014, I got it in 2016 after it had sat on my mate's drive for a while (he bought it from a breaker in an effort to save it, then sold it to me when the headgasket went). I think it would've definitely been showing serious weakness when it was MOTd (before he bought it) as it won't have rotted that much sitting on my mate's concrete drive for a year, yet it had passed without advisories!
These rotters have at least given me a huge stash of parts, and also stripping them I learned a lot and expanded my arsenal of tools. I used the engine from V880 KCE in this:
I don't think I've done a thread on the Prelude, so I might use one of the last days of furlough to do that!
That's a serious amount of waffling so I'll get to the car this thread is about!
Having various Honda people on Facebook is a blessing and a curse - when a mate posted this my ears pricked up! Vesuvio Red, pre facelift, and in decent nick...
It was up for £1800, so I tagged people that had said they were after one, hoping they'd buy. I was saving for an R32 GTR at the time (which never happened, and probably won't now)
Kept it in the back of my mind for a bit, but the more I thought about it the more I fancied the idea of smoking around in one again, thinking it'd help motivate me to sort the S-reg. You can see the date the ad was posted in the screenshot.
Carl, the seller then started mentioning that he might have to break it as he wanted it gone to fund his turbo Civic. I kept my hand in my pocket hoping someone would buy it.
Towards the weekend he was saying he'd be starting to strip it on the weekend, so I ended up on the phone to him, asking for photos of the underside and arranging to go and see it on the weekend, with him saying he'd let it go for £1500 to me
I did try and not buy it! But nobody stepped in to save it so I felt I had to give it a chance being a non-rotten Vesuvio Red pre facelift.
Went down, having already made up my mind, if it wasn't an absolute nail I'd be swapping my insurance over and driving it back. The underside was brilliant tbh, not sure how it's survived so well as it had 170-175k on at the time, and no extra rust protection. I did find a bit of a scab on the bulkhead, but the rest of the car really was good. As I said, I'd already made up my mind so in my excitement paid the asking price and got on the road.
The thinking was that I couldn't really lose money on it, I'd run it for a few months and punt it on, having saved it from it's date with the crusher.
Whenever I'm near an air base or aircraft museum and have nowhere to be, I cannot help myself, so within an hour or so I was taking photos of my latest purchase with a Vickers VC10 at Cosford.
Dead happy. In a car I love, in my preferred colour, great weather, and it cost me less than a decent sofa.
Didn't last long!
It became difficult to select any gear without crunching, even with rev matching. It set off fine, suggesting it was the gearbox and not the clutch.
Into the yard of doom it went!
But only until I'd let my bank account recover, after letting it sulk for a while in the company of the silver rotter, I dragged it out and drove it to VTECDirect to get it back up to health. While stripping it they found that the clutch had fractured part of the friction plate IIRC, so this was likely to be the issue meaning I didn't need a gearbox. New OEM Honda clutch in and away we went.
Lent it to my mate who took it to JAE 2017 while I went in my Prelude.
After this, I just used it for a year and a half or so, no mods, just routine maintenance, tyres etc. My other half got temp insured on it a few times and loved it, so the plan was for her to buy it off me and keep it for a long time.
I got offered £3500 for it at JAE 2018, but couldn't break my promise to Chloe, so very reluctantly declined.
We've been all over the place in it.
Elvington Cold War Jets day, pictured with Victor XL231:
Rare to see another in the wild! This guy was asleep in his in the services, and when we'd eaten and come back out he'd moved a few spaces away I seem to remember! Fine, be like that
Old Avro Vulcan factory and airfield at Woodford:
In the 'boneyard' of old RAF Tristars at Bruntingthorpe:
Trying not to get in the way of Bruntingthorpe's Victor, XM715:
Couldn't resist parking next to one of the Lightnings on the way out!
On a memorial meetup/drive out at Bala lake for my friend Josh, who was tragically killed in a non-fault accident in 2016:
Roping Chloe into helping me try and get the headlights sorted, I can't remember why but they stopped working at some point in 2017 or 18!
Speaking of headlights, 19 years of UV wasn't doing the plastic lenses any good at all:
Got a 3M restoration kit on my drill and went for it, took a couple of hours but eventually they came up like new! This is a must if you have an older car with plastic lenses, it takes 10 years off the front end of it and dramatically improves your vision at night. The kits were about £15 the first time I got one, but bought one recently and it was £25! Does exactly what it says on the box though.
That'll do for the first post, that takes us to some time in 2018. That's a lot of words about not very much happening, apologies
Part two coming up shortly, 2019 and this year have a bit more interesting content as the mods and renovation began, along with a Nurburgring trip, if you've made it this far check back in a couple of hours once I've got it up to date!
Edited by Jaaack on Saturday 23 May 17:50
Right then, part two! If I finish this before tea time it'll bring it up to today!
I feel like I missed out some info about these cars, and this one in particular in my introductory post. They were produced from 1998 to 2002, going from S reg to 52 plate. Numbers were never huge, with them peaking on UK roads at 1,807 examples, which according to the latest figures (Q4 2019) we are down to 323 examples on the road. A small number were made for LHD markets but they weren't offered outside of Europe. On the pre-facelift only 3 colours were available, Titan Silver, Pirates Black and Vesuvio Red. The facelift had slight tweaks to the colours (still silver, black and red, but each colour worse than pre face versions imo). The facelift lost the front and rear bumper lips and chrome tailpipes, being replaced with diesel-style hidden downswept pipes for some unknown reason. The facelift was however offered with a much nicer red interior, which was quite a rare option, and the ultra-rare and seriously nice leather option.
They come with the 2.2l H22A7 DOHC VTEC engine producing 209bhp, and U2Q7 LSD gearbox. 300mm front twinpot brakes provide stoppage. The base ATR interior is Recaros trimmed in black alcantara with green mesh centres, which is what I have.
Despite them being quite forgotten, these cars are regarded by the motoring press as one of the best handling saloons out there, and it's easy to see why after covering some decent miles in mine after it had a bit of an overhaul which you're about to read about. The steering is the best I've ever felt, I'd say better even than my EG6 with a polybush kit, quality coilovers and DC2 Type-R subframe and steering rack. Prices do seem to be slowly rising and magazines like Modern Classics have started to take an interest in them.
Mid-late 2018) I got looking at houses, and by September had an offer in and accepted on a 2 bed semi dormer house. This was in need of a lot of renovation, every job we did uncovered another 3 that needed doing. Ended up taking the whole year and between us, probably enough for a very tidy low mile R32 GTR, annoyingly....
Despite throwing most of our earnings at the house, we booked a trip to the Nurburgring for April 2019. To be honest if we'd realised how much money we'd have needed to spend on the house I don't think we'd have booked it, which would've been a shame with how 2020 is turning out, so I'm glad we were naive! Obviously it'd be stupid to do this without some preventative maintenance, so I booked it in at VTECDirect for a cambelt and tensioner, DS2500 pads and new discs etc. I asked Ben to give the car a thorough inspection and let me know anything that needed doing. If I recall correctly, it had the following done:
Honda cambelt and tensioner
Balance shaft belt removed (mainly for reliability - if these have issues and snap they will throw the cambelt off its pulleys, but supposedly frees up a tiny amount of power to by reducing mechanical drag)
Solid filled front engine mount
New coolant
Fuel lines replaces
Brake lines replaced
Drop links
Front lower and upper ball joints
Crank pulley (more on that later)
amongst a few other things, and the total came to around £1250, but it was all stuff that needed doing, especially with a Nurburgring trip coming up.
Also bagged myself a set of Tein Basic coilovers for £250, to finally correct that lofty ride height. I wasn't expecting brilliance with them tbh, but they're really nice to drive on, and have plenty of adjustment spare (you don't want to ruin such a great handling car by slamming it, just a nice subtle drop.)
Coilovers were off and on a LOT trying to get the right balance of it looking great whilst driving great. Got it down to a few minutes a corner with no power tools after it had all been apart a few times and was all greased up nicely.
I think this was just after fitting them, obviously wound them pretty low to see how it looked.
After lots of fettling, I took it for an alignment and then obviously it had to stay like that! It's higher now than in the above photo, but still looks decent. Because of the basic design of the coilovers, the height affects the preload, and with the front low, it was a bit more tail happy (but still very stable and progressive when it did let go). It's more neutral with it slightly higher, which was probably the right thing to do as I didn't want any tail out action on the Ring!
6am, about to set off from Cheshire to Dover:
At the cream cliffs of Dover, waiting to get through passport control and queue for the boat! Noticed here that the brand new crank pulley had a very slight wobble, suggesting the end of the crank is worn. Gulp... Checked it was tight and it was, so decided I'd come this far, might as well carry on.
Later that day:
Absolutely knackering drive, we got seperated from our mates in the MX5 at Dover and ended up on different boats So had to meet up in Dunkirk IIRC. It was really late when we got to the holiday park as we had to stop quite a few times and walk around a bit due to fatigue.
The next day, after meeting up with the rest of our mates who'd gone Hull-Rotterdam:
For anyone planning a trip, I can't recommend Lindner Ferienpark Nurburgring enough! Really nice place with modern, clean villas and a decent price too. Less than 5 minutes from the Nordschliefe. The only potential issue is some of the driveways are steep so you have to park on the street.
Sticker earned! Annoyingly I now can't find the f
king thing - didn't want to stick it on as the car badly needed a paint correction so I was saving it.
Unfortunately only got one lap in, about 3/4 of the way round it started to overheat! Damn 20 year old rad! Stuck it in 5th and put the heaters on and it cooled back down to normal temps. Upon inspection it seems that the rad cap couldn't quite cope (Ring is very hilly and it was a very hot day, so the engine was producing some serious heat) and was letting pressure out, reducing the boiling point of the coolant. It might've done another gentler lap, but I've broken a car on the Nurburgring before and it's absolutely not an experience I want to go through again, but that's another very long story for another day. It didn't ruin the trip though, and we still had a brilliant few days just enjoying the atmosphere of this amazing place. It drove back absolutely fine, even a brief thrash up to around 140mph on the autobahn. Somehow got 400 miles out of a tank, from Nurburg to somewhere on the M25 IIRC! In fact I still haven't changed that rad cap as it's just not been an issue on the road.
Know how I mentioned I can't drive near cool things and not go for a closer look?
Took a detour on our way back despite us being absolutely knackered and wanting to get home.
And, not content with Vulcan XM655, it'd be rude to be in the area and not pay XL360 a visit in Coventry too:
Back home, 1,304 miles in total, one speed camera set off in Belgium, plenty of oil burned, a few tanks of fuel used, a lap of the Ring, and a very happy couple in an amazing £1500 car....
4 weeks later:
Driving us both to work at 5:45am, was just getting on the throttle and about to pull out for an overtake when it cut out very suddenly and very effectively. Got it around a kink and had to get out while it was still moving to try and preserve momentum (gravity not being on my side in that location) and pushed it into the farm entrance where my old yard was. Weirdly the exact same thing happened a few months prior, in the exact same place, in my Bora. Was the clutch in my Bora ripping the centre out of the friction plate (230k, the last 20k of them were remapped). First suspect was ignition coil in the Accord, as I've had them fail before on Hondas, but usually it's a fail to start rather than a cut out while running. By pure luck my mate finished his night shift and was on his way home, so he stopped and took Chloe to work and got her there with a couple of minutes to spare, while I wasted an entire shift of holiday waiting for the AA
6 hours later they recovered me to VTECDirect, who diagnosed a crank position sensor failure and had it back to me the following week.
Due to the aforementioned house renovation, I didn't have any spare money to spend on cars, so all the Accord got after the crank sensor, was petrol. It was at least good to drive and needed nothing mechanical doing, so I just used it.
Harassing Kris Meeke on WRGB:
You may notice the new plates, I ordered them in plenty of time for Germany as the old ones looked awful, but they didn't turn up on time so annoyingly it still has the awful old ones in the Ring photos
Looking 'well used' after 2 days of chasing the WRC around North and mid Wales.
Parked it up for winter not long after this. Remember the start of the thread for the reason why! Also, the fact I literally live on top of Britain's biggest salt mine doesn't help.
You may be wondering what happened to the S reg?
I've still got it, and it's not in a brilliant state, however, from what I've seen, it's solid as a rock underneath and the only real welding needed is on the bulkhead. It's a shame it's ended up in this state, but I do genuinely plan on restoring it. I'm currently saving to get our crappy tiny garage demolished and a decent sized one to replace it, then I'll have a decent environment to do it in. I like the idea of having S704 NLX as a virtually stock, mint example (pretty much how V212 EGJ is now) and have V212 as more of a track-focused example.
I did take it to the jetwash when I quit my yard and moved it home
A few weeks ago, around a month into being furloughed I got bored of sitting around and decided to tart the old girls up a bit (Aerodeck and Accord)
I've always wanted to de-chrome the front grille, the JDM Euro R has a body coloured grille surround and it looks way better than the chrome. People always do these in black and spray the H red and IMO it never looks right, so I went body colour for the surround and Rover Gunmetal metallic for the H (I had it lying around from my Aerodeck headlights and thought it'd look tidier than the chrome)
Also did the wiper arms in satin black for both cars as they were all grey and horrible.
The finished product, I could do with a new Type-R badge as that's not taken too kindly to all the years of UV.
Reassembled and looking loads cleaner in my opinion!
I thought I'd better take care of this:
Armed with Chloe's hairdryer, my Halfords card and some glue remover I got the faded old badge off and removed all the residue (that was a nightmare in itself). Did snap my Halfords card though
Due to me being lazy and just taking the car to the local car wash when it was dirty, the paint was looking pretty shabby, badly swirled and with quite a few scratches here and there. The bonnet is quite badly stone chipped, and randomly the passenger door is the same, no idea why?! Maybe a previous owner used to drive down gravel roads with the doors open.
The whole car was like this or worse, and running your hand over it was like running your hand over concrete:
Chloe got me a DA mop last year for my birthday and this was my first opportunity to use it, so I ordered about £150 worth of cleaning and detailing supplies and waited for it all to arrive!
Thanks to very quick service from Slim's detailing it all arrived a couple of days later and I made a start at tackling the paintwork. It took around 16 hours spread over 3 days to get this improvement, but was well worth it (maybe not worth the aches and pains though)
The neighbours [strikethrough]probably[/strikethrough] think I'm mental but I'm really happy with how it turned out.
Piece de resistance:
New OEM rear Honda badge. Much better than the Ebay jobbies as they're a horrible bright red, the OEM ones are actually a metallic red and just so much nicer all round quality.
Much better!
Next I decided to mirror the de-chroming effort from the front, on the rear. In addition, the number plate surround was knackered with lacquer peeling off, and being several shades of pink.
Rubbed down, separated and ready to paint:
I actually made a bit of a hash of this, meaning I had to wait a few days for it to harden and rub it down again. It's still not perfect, but it's much better than it was despite the 3 flies that landed in it! Guess that's the beauty* of spraying stuff in your overgrown back garden/jungle. Picked 2 of the flies out and lacquered over the wings/legs they left behind Proper bodge tbh but I'm considering getting the car painted in the future and it's loads better than it was, so it'll do for now.
Another little purchase while furloughed:
Ben at VTECDirect called me (shouldn't have answered, it always seems to cost me a few hundred quid...) as he'd just picked up a van load of ATR bits and was letting me have first pick at them. Came away with a K&N Typhoon intake, VTECDirect alloy radiator, brake master cylinder stopper (vastly improves pedal feel if the one on my EG6 is anything to go by) and a set of wind deflectors.
Typhoon fitted. Affectionately known as a dort cone due to the racket they make
Yes, the rocker cover is on the to do list.
After fitting the Typhoon I started it up to let it warm up before giving it a thrashing, then looked under the car for a socket I'd dropped. It was at this point I noticed this
First suspect was crank seal, so called Ben and told him to expect to see it turning up for investigation and repair the net day. Ben informed me there were many seals on that side of the engine, cam seals, oil pump etc. Worst case would be a new oil pump, still available brand new at around £220.
Didn't want to drive it in case the damaged seal picked up on whatever rotating assembly it was sealing and got ripped out, so got a little bit of my money's worth from the AA.
Got it back, oil pump was okay but he's replaced nearly every seal on the passenger side of the engine, and the cambelt hasn't had a bath in oil so that's good.
Refitted the plate surround and finally got to experience the sound from the Typhoon! Sounds fantastic from inside, and like a 90s Supertouring car from the outside when approaching. I got Chloe video a few flybys from outside so hopefully I'll get it uploaded.
Haven't been able to refit the plate as it's bloody melted! Left it in the rear window while I was painting the surround and now it's all bent and wobbly. Gives me an excuse to order a slightly smaller one, I saw a red ATR on Ebay with one and it looked brilliant but shouldn't attract too much attention from Plod.
These are the most recent photos I'm really happy with how it's looking at the minute, the colour coded bits look way better than the chrome, and the paint is half decent now too.
Future plans; it'll need a baffled sump to combat oil starvation as I intend on a few trackdays soon. I need to see what I can do about the crank pulley wobble before it causes more serious problems. I'd like a posher set of coilovers. Refurbed rocker cover, probably in the factory wrinkle red. The exhaust needs attention, they're HKS backboxes bodged onto what looks like a standard system. (there's a reciept for £600 from the previous owner! Poor bloke got had!). You'll notice in pre-Germany photos it's miles out, it was adjusted a bit with a section welded in to realign before Germany but it really needs a new system making. I'd like to make it lok a little more aggressive, I've got a carbon fibre Gurney flap somewhere but not sure where, that'd be a nice addition. Missed out on some fibreglass vented wings a few weeks ago, would've been cool! Maybe some 'aesthetic' aero (canards, front splitter etc. Not those ste Wish.com ones though.) I'd also like a new set of wheels, along with some AD08RSs before it sees a track. It's currently on Pirelli P Zeros all round and they're okay on the road, but I did take a set on track once and they were disappointing.
Insanely long ramblings about a man maintaining a Honda Accord and then painting the grille. Oh and washing it. Sorry.
If you got this far, congratulations and thank you, please be nice as it took all bloody afternoon
I feel like I missed out some info about these cars, and this one in particular in my introductory post. They were produced from 1998 to 2002, going from S reg to 52 plate. Numbers were never huge, with them peaking on UK roads at 1,807 examples, which according to the latest figures (Q4 2019) we are down to 323 examples on the road. A small number were made for LHD markets but they weren't offered outside of Europe. On the pre-facelift only 3 colours were available, Titan Silver, Pirates Black and Vesuvio Red. The facelift had slight tweaks to the colours (still silver, black and red, but each colour worse than pre face versions imo). The facelift lost the front and rear bumper lips and chrome tailpipes, being replaced with diesel-style hidden downswept pipes for some unknown reason. The facelift was however offered with a much nicer red interior, which was quite a rare option, and the ultra-rare and seriously nice leather option.
They come with the 2.2l H22A7 DOHC VTEC engine producing 209bhp, and U2Q7 LSD gearbox. 300mm front twinpot brakes provide stoppage. The base ATR interior is Recaros trimmed in black alcantara with green mesh centres, which is what I have.
Despite them being quite forgotten, these cars are regarded by the motoring press as one of the best handling saloons out there, and it's easy to see why after covering some decent miles in mine after it had a bit of an overhaul which you're about to read about. The steering is the best I've ever felt, I'd say better even than my EG6 with a polybush kit, quality coilovers and DC2 Type-R subframe and steering rack. Prices do seem to be slowly rising and magazines like Modern Classics have started to take an interest in them.
Mid-late 2018) I got looking at houses, and by September had an offer in and accepted on a 2 bed semi dormer house. This was in need of a lot of renovation, every job we did uncovered another 3 that needed doing. Ended up taking the whole year and between us, probably enough for a very tidy low mile R32 GTR, annoyingly....
Despite throwing most of our earnings at the house, we booked a trip to the Nurburgring for April 2019. To be honest if we'd realised how much money we'd have needed to spend on the house I don't think we'd have booked it, which would've been a shame with how 2020 is turning out, so I'm glad we were naive! Obviously it'd be stupid to do this without some preventative maintenance, so I booked it in at VTECDirect for a cambelt and tensioner, DS2500 pads and new discs etc. I asked Ben to give the car a thorough inspection and let me know anything that needed doing. If I recall correctly, it had the following done:
Honda cambelt and tensioner
Balance shaft belt removed (mainly for reliability - if these have issues and snap they will throw the cambelt off its pulleys, but supposedly frees up a tiny amount of power to by reducing mechanical drag)
Solid filled front engine mount
New coolant
Fuel lines replaces
Brake lines replaced
Drop links
Front lower and upper ball joints
Crank pulley (more on that later)
amongst a few other things, and the total came to around £1250, but it was all stuff that needed doing, especially with a Nurburgring trip coming up.
Also bagged myself a set of Tein Basic coilovers for £250, to finally correct that lofty ride height. I wasn't expecting brilliance with them tbh, but they're really nice to drive on, and have plenty of adjustment spare (you don't want to ruin such a great handling car by slamming it, just a nice subtle drop.)
Coilovers were off and on a LOT trying to get the right balance of it looking great whilst driving great. Got it down to a few minutes a corner with no power tools after it had all been apart a few times and was all greased up nicely.
I think this was just after fitting them, obviously wound them pretty low to see how it looked.
After lots of fettling, I took it for an alignment and then obviously it had to stay like that! It's higher now than in the above photo, but still looks decent. Because of the basic design of the coilovers, the height affects the preload, and with the front low, it was a bit more tail happy (but still very stable and progressive when it did let go). It's more neutral with it slightly higher, which was probably the right thing to do as I didn't want any tail out action on the Ring!
6am, about to set off from Cheshire to Dover:
At the cream cliffs of Dover, waiting to get through passport control and queue for the boat! Noticed here that the brand new crank pulley had a very slight wobble, suggesting the end of the crank is worn. Gulp... Checked it was tight and it was, so decided I'd come this far, might as well carry on.
Later that day:
Absolutely knackering drive, we got seperated from our mates in the MX5 at Dover and ended up on different boats
So had to meet up in Dunkirk IIRC. It was really late when we got to the holiday park as we had to stop quite a few times and walk around a bit due to fatigue.The next day, after meeting up with the rest of our mates who'd gone Hull-Rotterdam:
For anyone planning a trip, I can't recommend Lindner Ferienpark Nurburgring enough! Really nice place with modern, clean villas and a decent price too. Less than 5 minutes from the Nordschliefe. The only potential issue is some of the driveways are steep so you have to park on the street.
Sticker earned! Annoyingly I now can't find the f
king thing - didn't want to stick it on as the car badly needed a paint correction so I was saving it.Unfortunately only got one lap in, about 3/4 of the way round it started to overheat! Damn 20 year old rad! Stuck it in 5th and put the heaters on and it cooled back down to normal temps. Upon inspection it seems that the rad cap couldn't quite cope (Ring is very hilly and it was a very hot day, so the engine was producing some serious heat) and was letting pressure out, reducing the boiling point of the coolant. It might've done another gentler lap, but I've broken a car on the Nurburgring before and it's absolutely not an experience I want to go through again, but that's another very long story for another day. It didn't ruin the trip though, and we still had a brilliant few days just enjoying the atmosphere of this amazing place. It drove back absolutely fine, even a brief thrash up to around 140mph on the autobahn. Somehow got 400 miles out of a tank, from Nurburg to somewhere on the M25 IIRC! In fact I still haven't changed that rad cap as it's just not been an issue on the road.
Know how I mentioned I can't drive near cool things and not go for a closer look?
Took a detour on our way back despite us being absolutely knackered and wanting to get home.
And, not content with Vulcan XM655, it'd be rude to be in the area and not pay XL360 a visit in Coventry too:
Back home, 1,304 miles in total, one speed camera set off in Belgium, plenty of oil burned, a few tanks of fuel used, a lap of the Ring, and a very happy couple in an amazing £1500 car....
4 weeks later:
Driving us both to work at 5:45am, was just getting on the throttle and about to pull out for an overtake when it cut out very suddenly and very effectively. Got it around a kink and had to get out while it was still moving to try and preserve momentum (gravity not being on my side in that location) and pushed it into the farm entrance where my old yard was. Weirdly the exact same thing happened a few months prior, in the exact same place, in my Bora. Was the clutch in my Bora ripping the centre out of the friction plate (230k, the last 20k of them were remapped). First suspect was ignition coil in the Accord, as I've had them fail before on Hondas, but usually it's a fail to start rather than a cut out while running. By pure luck my mate finished his night shift and was on his way home, so he stopped and took Chloe to work and got her there with a couple of minutes to spare, while I wasted an entire shift of holiday waiting for the AA
6 hours later they recovered me to VTECDirect, who diagnosed a crank position sensor failure and had it back to me the following week.Due to the aforementioned house renovation, I didn't have any spare money to spend on cars, so all the Accord got after the crank sensor, was petrol. It was at least good to drive and needed nothing mechanical doing, so I just used it.
Harassing Kris Meeke on WRGB:
You may notice the new plates, I ordered them in plenty of time for Germany as the old ones looked awful, but they didn't turn up on time so annoyingly it still has the awful old ones in the Ring photos
Looking 'well used' after 2 days of chasing the WRC around North and mid Wales.
Parked it up for winter not long after this. Remember the start of the thread for the reason why! Also, the fact I literally live on top of Britain's biggest salt mine doesn't help.
You may be wondering what happened to the S reg?
I've still got it, and it's not in a brilliant state, however, from what I've seen, it's solid as a rock underneath and the only real welding needed is on the bulkhead. It's a shame it's ended up in this state, but I do genuinely plan on restoring it. I'm currently saving to get our crappy tiny garage demolished and a decent sized one to replace it, then I'll have a decent environment to do it in. I like the idea of having S704 NLX as a virtually stock, mint example (pretty much how V212 EGJ is now) and have V212 as more of a track-focused example.
I did take it to the jetwash when I quit my yard and moved it home
A few weeks ago, around a month into being furloughed I got bored of sitting around and decided to tart the old girls up a bit (Aerodeck and Accord)
I've always wanted to de-chrome the front grille, the JDM Euro R has a body coloured grille surround and it looks way better than the chrome. People always do these in black and spray the H red and IMO it never looks right, so I went body colour for the surround and Rover Gunmetal metallic for the H (I had it lying around from my Aerodeck headlights and thought it'd look tidier than the chrome)
Also did the wiper arms in satin black for both cars as they were all grey and horrible.
The finished product, I could do with a new Type-R badge as that's not taken too kindly to all the years of UV.
Reassembled and looking loads cleaner in my opinion!
I thought I'd better take care of this:
Armed with Chloe's hairdryer, my Halfords card and some glue remover I got the faded old badge off and removed all the residue (that was a nightmare in itself). Did snap my Halfords card though
Due to me being lazy and just taking the car to the local car wash when it was dirty, the paint was looking pretty shabby, badly swirled and with quite a few scratches here and there. The bonnet is quite badly stone chipped, and randomly the passenger door is the same, no idea why?! Maybe a previous owner used to drive down gravel roads with the doors open.
The whole car was like this or worse, and running your hand over it was like running your hand over concrete:
Chloe got me a DA mop last year for my birthday and this was my first opportunity to use it, so I ordered about £150 worth of cleaning and detailing supplies and waited for it all to arrive!
Thanks to very quick service from Slim's detailing it all arrived a couple of days later and I made a start at tackling the paintwork. It took around 16 hours spread over 3 days to get this improvement, but was well worth it (maybe not worth the aches and pains though)
The neighbours [strikethrough]probably[/strikethrough] think I'm mental but I'm really happy with how it turned out.
Piece de resistance:
New OEM rear Honda badge. Much better than the Ebay jobbies as they're a horrible bright red, the OEM ones are actually a metallic red and just so much nicer all round quality.
Much better!
Next I decided to mirror the de-chroming effort from the front, on the rear. In addition, the number plate surround was knackered with lacquer peeling off, and being several shades of pink.
Rubbed down, separated and ready to paint:
I actually made a bit of a hash of this, meaning I had to wait a few days for it to harden and rub it down again. It's still not perfect, but it's much better than it was despite the 3 flies that landed in it! Guess that's the beauty* of spraying stuff in your overgrown back garden/jungle. Picked 2 of the flies out and lacquered over the wings/legs they left behind
Proper bodge tbh but I'm considering getting the car painted in the future and it's loads better than it was, so it'll do for now.Another little purchase while furloughed:
Ben at VTECDirect called me (shouldn't have answered, it always seems to cost me a few hundred quid...) as he'd just picked up a van load of ATR bits and was letting me have first pick at them. Came away with a K&N Typhoon intake, VTECDirect alloy radiator, brake master cylinder stopper (vastly improves pedal feel if the one on my EG6 is anything to go by) and a set of wind deflectors.
Typhoon fitted. Affectionately known as a dort cone due to the racket they make
Yes, the rocker cover is on the to do list.
After fitting the Typhoon I started it up to let it warm up before giving it a thrashing, then looked under the car for a socket I'd dropped. It was at this point I noticed this
First suspect was crank seal, so called Ben and told him to expect to see it turning up for investigation and repair the net day. Ben informed me there were many seals on that side of the engine, cam seals, oil pump etc. Worst case would be a new oil pump, still available brand new at around £220.
Didn't want to drive it in case the damaged seal picked up on whatever rotating assembly it was sealing and got ripped out, so got a little bit of my money's worth from the AA.
Got it back, oil pump was okay but he's replaced nearly every seal on the passenger side of the engine, and the cambelt hasn't had a bath in oil so that's good.
Refitted the plate surround and finally got to experience the sound from the Typhoon! Sounds fantastic from inside, and like a 90s Supertouring car from the outside when approaching. I got Chloe video a few flybys from outside so hopefully I'll get it uploaded.
Haven't been able to refit the plate as it's bloody melted! Left it in the rear window while I was painting the surround and now it's all bent and wobbly. Gives me an excuse to order a slightly smaller one, I saw a red ATR on Ebay with one and it looked brilliant but shouldn't attract too much attention from Plod.
These are the most recent photos I'm really happy with how it's looking at the minute, the colour coded bits look way better than the chrome, and the paint is half decent now too.
Future plans; it'll need a baffled sump to combat oil starvation as I intend on a few trackdays soon. I need to see what I can do about the crank pulley wobble before it causes more serious problems. I'd like a posher set of coilovers. Refurbed rocker cover, probably in the factory wrinkle red. The exhaust needs attention, they're HKS backboxes bodged onto what looks like a standard system. (there's a reciept for £600 from the previous owner! Poor bloke got had!). You'll notice in pre-Germany photos it's miles out, it was adjusted a bit with a section welded in to realign before Germany but it really needs a new system making. I'd like to make it lok a little more aggressive, I've got a carbon fibre Gurney flap somewhere but not sure where, that'd be a nice addition. Missed out on some fibreglass vented wings a few weeks ago, would've been cool! Maybe some 'aesthetic' aero (canards, front splitter etc. Not those s
te Wish.com ones though.) I'd also like a new set of wheels, along with some AD08RSs before it sees a track. It's currently on Pirelli P Zeros all round and they're okay on the road, but I did take a set on track once and they were disappointing.Insanely long ramblings about a man maintaining a Honda Accord and then painting the grille. Oh and washing it. Sorry.
If you got this far, congratulations and thank you, please be nice as it took all bloody afternoon
spaceship said:
Excellent thread. Cracking read. Always liked the ATR, didn’t realise they rotted so badly!
Thanks! They rot awfully, but hide it well!ChickenvanGuy said:
Really enjoyed that, as another Honda fan (S2000s in my case), thanks for posting.
Looking forward to the rest of the tale!
Thanks! S2000s are great, big fan of them. Would like to try one.Looking forward to the rest of the tale!
AnhBanhBao said:
This is great. Anytime I read about these I start thinking about late 90s BTCC.
Cheers. Weirdly, the BTCC Accords never had any Type-R marketing which seems quite a big missed opportunity! All that money and development, to not try and push sales off the back of it?!mw88 said:
Really like these old Accord Type-R's - Fair play for saving one!
Not sure I could resist if a tidy Pirates Black one popped up at a good price! But I've dropped nearly £3k on my CL9 Accord Type-S in the last 3 months
I'd really love a Pirates example (my Aerodeck is the same colour and its stunning in the sun) and I'd struggle to resist if the right one came up at the right money! CL9s are great, really nice interior, and still look sharp and modern today.Not sure I could resist if a tidy Pirates Black one popped up at a good price! But I've dropped nearly £3k on my CL9 Accord Type-S in the last 3 months
Second part is now up, and vaguely more interesting!
Thanks for the kind comments
Many years ago when I was working for said manufacturer - I had a silver ATR as one of my lease vehicles - loved it and the snarl,as the vetch kicked in, remember coming out of London on the M40 with Mrs OT and her brother and his mate in the car and as I noted it down it felt like it took off like a rocket
Returned to the fleet department at 4000 miles and apparently needed two new front tyre Gulp
Returned to the fleet department at 4000 miles and apparently needed two new front tyre Gulp
Good to see an ATR being used properly. I didn’t ever really fall for the 2 I’ve owned.
My biggest complaint vs my 2 DC2 Integras is the narrower VTEC rpm band.
Hits VTEC @ ~5800 but rev limited to 7900. The Integra has VTEC @ 5800 until 8500. Those ~600rpm make a huge difference- I found the ATR more tricky to keep on the boil- the need to rev to just shy of the limiter to keep it in VTEC got tiring!!
The extra kerbweight of the ATR made it feel noticeably more docile (sluggish) pre-VTEC as well. Just not as chuckable or light on its toes.
To liven it up further definitely investigate a 4.64fd & a better header.
The header looks big bore- but is actually twin-walled!
Oh & you’ll definitely want your crank pulley & overheating issues sorted before tracking it!
My biggest complaint vs my 2 DC2 Integras is the narrower VTEC rpm band.
Hits VTEC @ ~5800 but rev limited to 7900. The Integra has VTEC @ 5800 until 8500. Those ~600rpm make a huge difference- I found the ATR more tricky to keep on the boil- the need to rev to just shy of the limiter to keep it in VTEC got tiring!!
The extra kerbweight of the ATR made it feel noticeably more docile (sluggish) pre-VTEC as well. Just not as chuckable or light on its toes.
To liven it up further definitely investigate a 4.64fd & a better header.
The header looks big bore- but is actually twin-walled!
Oh & you’ll definitely want your crank pulley & overheating issues sorted before tracking it!
I remember being a passenger in a very early (possibly pre-production) one of these being driven by a mental Japanese bloke. He was doing over a ton down a dual carriageway somewhere in Wales in the pouring rain with no wipers on because he wanted to see if the Rain X he’d put on worked or not.
Great read this, kudos for keeping it alive, looks really good now. I used to have a facelift black and read interior one. They certainly make a great all rounder, I remember that VTEC howl really well and the way it just carved up curves-a really satisfyingly car to drive.
Funnily enough like you I also used to have a VTI Aerodeck and fitted with a rear anti roll bar from a MG ZS made a huge difference to the way it handled, I also remember the comedy bus sized steering wheel too.
I've since moved onto a CL7 Euro R which is very similar to your Accord Type R but a little bit more refined.
Really hope you keep it as you are in tip top shape and gain many years of pleasure out of it as cars aren't going to be built like this anymore!
Funnily enough like you I also used to have a VTI Aerodeck and fitted with a rear anti roll bar from a MG ZS made a huge difference to the way it handled, I also remember the comedy bus sized steering wheel too.
I've since moved onto a CL7 Euro R which is very similar to your Accord Type R but a little bit more refined.
Really hope you keep it as you are in tip top shape and gain many years of pleasure out of it as cars aren't going to be built like this anymore!
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