So begins a big project for my Automotive 11/12 students! I bought this broken 1999 Acura Integra for my senior automotive students to get experience working on a moderately old and high milage car that they have a good chance of owning in the future.
I am told by the previous owner that the “timing belt has skipped a tooth on one or both cam gears, causing the car to crank over but not start. The car was a daily driver before the incident”. Since this is an interference motor I can likely deduce that the engine has bent a couple valves causing a lack of compression in the cylinders, therefore prohibiting the car for running.
Besides the engine, the interior is is decent condition, and the exterior has a small amount of rust. I plan on removing all current rust and repainting the entire car to match stock colour, black.
At the time the picture below was taken, all engine accessories, driveshafts, wiring and plumbing is removed. All that is left is engine mounts the the transmission/engine combo will be removed for an entire long block rebuild!
Updates to come!
Mr. McCormack
Progress has been made! The engine is out and the rust is on it’s way. Seems like someone has done some body work on this car before, looking at the layered colours as the paint is removed down to the metal
And the body work done so far. Time to buy some Bondo I think…
Time to send the block and crankshaft to the machine shop to get a cylinder wall hone and micro-polish on the high milage crankshaft.
After the block and crank was sent out for machine work the cylinder head underwent disassembly. It was discovered that no valves had been bent in the incident that caused this engine to no longer start, which is great news! No need for new valves now woohoo!
You can see the condition inside the head below… not so pretty.
I don’t have any pictures of the engine being reassembled on a work bench but the engine was completely put back together with a lots of new seals and gaskets. Cylinder head, transmission, intake manifold, exhaust manifold and engine mounts were bolted to the engine before the it was dangled by a crane into the old but clean engine bay of the Integra.
After a long day reconnecting all accessories, plumbing, electrical and drivetrain the engine starts and runs!!! No scary noises, no blue or white smoke, no leaks! Very impressed with it so far.
Next up is paint! Stick around for my experimentation with different spray booths and HVLP gun setups.
First off the car had to be painted with primer for new paint to properly adhere. To contain the dust in the shop a sudo spray booth was contrived from clear garbage bags and our four post hoist raised to the max. An hour of taping later we had a functional spray booth. For ventilation we used the in floor exhaust ventilation pipe to draw the paint vapour out of the back of the booth.
You can see the rear of the Intregra painted with grey primer below, still wet!
Now… the primer results were… mixed at best. I had never painted with an HVLP gun before and the amount of physical space around the Integra made it extra challenging to keep the gun a consistant distance away from the car’s surface. Long story short, the primer left many runs which were eventually all sanded away with varying levels of success in prep for a one stage black paint to match the original/factory color.
Painting a car at nearly a professional level is one of my professional goals for this year because I would love to teach an auto-body course. This process of struggling, failing and some success is reminds me what it can feel like to be a young learner in a field of technology that one has very little talent or practice with. Either way I am loving the journey to success.
There was a couple weeks that elapsed between painting primer and painted the one stage black because of sanding the runs and other life constraints. But with that extra time I decided a proper spray booth should be built if we were really going for near professional results. I set out a group of five students to design the booth given the dimensional, structural and air flow details. Once the design was complete and finalized I purchased 19-2″x4″, a huge sheet of white plastic and a furnace filter to construct the spray booth. The booth turned out great! The booth was more roomy and sealed the outside air very well. Have a look at the booth in use below.
The painting of the single stage black came out pretty decent this time, only a run or two and good level of coverage on 90% of the car. With all that said the car will likely be back in the spray booth to perfect the paint as well as to give me another chance to expand my professional skill set.
Another great day at work 🙂
Very shortly after the car was painted for the second time I insured the Integra and began to daily it to start getting miles into the rebuilt engine. After 800Km of trouble free driving the engine died on me on my way to work… Cruising along the highway the engine just stopped providing power. I pulled over and checked under the hood but nothing was visably wrong. I hoped back in the car and cranked and cranked and eventually it started! I zoomed off again hoping the engine wouldn’t die on me again but sure enough it did. I made it within 5Km of my school before the engine died for good. I left the car stranded on the side of HWY 1 to be picked up one of my great Vice-Principals. Once at work I called a tow truck to pick up my car, all that was good. About an hour after calling for a tow truck I got a call from the RCMP telling me my car was broken into, the robbers stole nothing (because there was nothing to steal), but they had broken my drivers side window and rear truck key slot. As if this day couldn’t get any more stressful.
Ironically when the car got to school on the tow truck it started right up once it was off the tow truck. I drove it into the shop scratching my head and wondering what could be wrong. After much research and discussing how the engine died with my fellow technology teachers I concluded it was one of three things: main relay, ignition control unit, or the ignition coil. I ordered all three online and hoped for the time being that those parts would solve my problem.
I began replacing the ignition coil and ignition control unit. You can see a picture of the inside of the distributor where the ignition coil and ignition coil are located.
I replaced the parts and the problem seems to be fixed. I have only put 8Km on the engine since but it’s been a problem free 8Km haha. It’s very tough to trust this car again after all that I’ve been through with it.
… And the saga continues… Well at least I was close with thinking it was the ignitor/coil/relay… After 10Km the engine died again in the same fashion…
After much research and thought I deduced that that either the cam angle sensor and TDC sensor in the distributor was shot. These parts cannot be replaced within the distributor and require replacing the entire distributor. So called a few local auto wrecker for ’99 Integra B18b1 non vtec distributor until I found a used one located on mitchell island for $100. Sure enough, I bought and installed the wrecking yard distributor and the Integra fired right up!!! I set the timing and parked it.
Since then I have only put about 16Km on the car but it has yet to fail me so I am gaining confidence that I found the problem, haha… I despise this car now.
In reflecting on how I diagnosed and examined this problem I feel although the car died on me twice I still followed the logical path of diagnosis. The reason this problem took so long to root out was because it was intermittent. When the engine was cold it would often start because the Cam Angle Sensor or TDC sensor in the distributor would function but once up to sustained operating temperature the sensor would fail due to thermal expansion likely.
This seems most probable because the cam sensor is a induction circuit using a magnet and a fixed coil of wire. As the magnet passes closely by the coil of wire a current is induced in the coil, this current signals the ECU to tell the ECU what the cam position is. Without this signal from the distributor the ECU will not send out an ignition signal to the ignition coil even with power going to the secondary side of the ignition coil. Gaaah… I essentially learned that there a three crucial signals to nearly all Honda/Acura coil in distributor type ignition systems. The signals are crank position sensor, cam angle sensor, and TDC sensor. I’m fairly certain all three are induction type sensors, meaning they are very simple electrical sensors that are very reliable and rarely fail because of how simple they are. Unfortunately, after 297 000Km these things happen and someone like me buys into this kinda problem… only to trouble-shoot the entire ignition system from spark plug to ECU one wire after another to find the missing connection… talk about a needle in a hay stack.
With that all said, I believe the mechanical saga is behind us and not the only remaining aspect of the car to work on is the body work.
If I believed in things being cursed, I would believe this car was.
After leaving the body shop to get an estimate on the damage from the smashed window break in incident I was hit by a elderly couple on my passenger door! I accelerating from a stop from a green light in my direction north bound on 200th when an elderly lady went to make a right turn on a red light coming from 90 degrees to my right. The lady pulled on as I was 9/10ths the way across the intersection leaving my little time to avoid the incident. I gradually swerved and honked away but she didn’t see me and we collided. Luckily the dent was small and limited to just the passenger door but I still couldn’t believe my luck. In only driving this car 800Km it gets broken into and dies on me, wow. In a decent stroke of luck though the elderly couple were very apologetic and said they would be certain to pay for the damages to my car as their car hardly had a scratch. Oh well eh, at least it makes for a good story. Such is life.
… And the Integra is sold… Haha, after getting the car back from the body shop it was posted for sale and sold within two weeks. Overall this car taught myself and my students many fundamental lessons about the cars and life.
Lesson #1: No risk; No reward. Simply, if you aren’t taking on risk it’s likely you aren’t pushing your own capabilities and understandings to the limit.
Lesson #2: People will be deceitful for personal gain. When I bought the car I was told it was a skipped timing belt. I think the owner knew it wasn’t timing related yet framed the situation to me as a timing issue.
Lesson#3: Necessity is the motivator of action. If this car had not been my insured daily vehicle during the time of it’s failure I would not have been pushed as hard to troubleshoot and resolve the issue. Although this caused much stress in my life, it ended up being for the better.
Story over,
Mr.McCormack out.