Do I get to call myself a car guy now?

I spent a few days this week tinkering in the garage just finding more small things I can work on.

I had two goals this week:

1. The oil catch can was installed in a way that the horn cut a small hole in the hose. I believe this is the side that sends the oil/air mix into the can, not the side that returns air to the engine. Next,
2. Someone along the way decided these annoying blue LEDs were the future (and boy was he ever right) and put them all over the car.

Additionally, the headlight on the right side of the car was non-operational, as was the bumper marker on the left. Thirty bucks at NAPA later, and I came home with a bunch of incandescent lights for the interior, parking lights, and side markers. Finally, no more blue LEDs on the interior of my car!

Before: Harsh and blinding

After: Warm and soothing

But what about the headlights? As it turned out, buddy installed LEDs only for the low beams. The high beams were still using halogen lights. I stay in town for the most part so I don’t even really get the chance to use my high beams. I can live without them for a while. So I pulled out the LEDs and their drivers.

Good riddance

The original headlight sockets were still in place so it was a matter of unplugging the LED drivers, jamming the headlight into the correct hole, and plugging everything in. Now, I have two functioning low beams that emit the soft white light that halogens do. Because I’m not some psychopath who takes joy in blinding others.

Halogens! For seeing. For being seen. For making sure other drivers can still see.

Then there was the oil catch can. Another thing I wanted to address was the fact that I had no idea when it was last drained. Was it last week? Was it four months ago? I don’t know! So I got out my pliers and gave it a twist. And a twist. And a twist. And then it got really hard to turn. I was certain I was turning left…until the gasket started cracking and coming out. That’s when it hit me: the plug is reverse threaded. Sure enough, I start spinning it right, and the thing comes right out!

I’d have a picture of how much I got out, but at this point, my gloves were covered in oil so I just dumped it into my oil pan, changed my gloves, and moved on. I’d wager it probably had at least 3/4 cup in there. That’s about 180 mL for you metric peeps.

Next order of business was addressing the hole.

That horn has so much oil on it that it will probably never rust.

At first, I was ridiculing this person in my mind for installing the catch can in such a way as to guarantee the horn cuts a hole in the tube…until I tried moving the horn to literally any other position and finding out the grille doesn’t fit unless the horn is in exactly that spot. So all I’ve done on this is cut out the section of tube with the hole in it, and clamp the hose back down. This is the best I can do for now. I’ve bent the horn bracket so that it pulls it back a little and angled the tubes so that they try to run at an angle less conducive to making a new nick.

I’m probably going to try to bend that bracket for the catch can back a little and then zip tie the hoses together to create more distance. I do feel much better about this, though.

After driving it a bit more, I refilled the gas tank. In the 67.2 miles I drove, I burned 3.98 gallons for a burn rate of 16.9 miles per gallon. That’s a bit below where I expected to land with this car, but then again, I’m not always feather-footed. My 9th gen Civic is always well below the EPA rating for city driving. I’m lucky to average 25 mpg on a tank. So I can’t say I’m too shocked that I’m below EPA ratings. And if I can do 17 mpg regularly, then as little as I drive any car anymore (for example, it took over 2 1/2 years to put 10,000 miles on my Civic - thanks, covid), I’m happy with that. It is funny to me that this car burns gas as fast as modern SUVs do while making 60-100 horsepower less.

Or does it…

I’ve noticed something on my car. And the keen-eyed among you will have noticed it in the intro photo too. This engine has a red top.

I didn’t think much of it at first. I don’t reckon it’s uncommon that people repaint it. In fact, my last Prelude had a black top, and I’ve kind of wanted to get a black top until I started looking into this. The 5th gen USDM Preludes got two engines, the H22 that made 195 hp, and the H22A4 that made 200. As far as I can tell, the H22A was reserved specifically for JDM Preludes. So okay, I got a JDM engine. I’ve just uncovered that the engine isn’t the one the car came with. And the H22A was also used in the JDM Accord. But I dug a little deeper on this.

I found a thread from 2009 where a user was trying to identify his own H block and the user ben_deez linked a Word document with a list of engines and codes. What you have to pay attention to here is the seven digit number stamped below the engine code. That shows what model and trim level the engine was designed for. It also has some information about the Preludes with the B and F engines. If I’m reading the table right, then any H22A where the seven digit number begins with 4 came from the JDM-only Prelude Type S, which had a red top and made 217 hp and 163 lb-ft. Now, do all of the other components match to actually let it breathe like the Type S? I have my doubts. There were many other modifications made to the Type S’ airflow system that lent it that extra 17 or so hp. Without putting it on a dyno, I have no idea what this car actually makes. But I do feel fairly certain that I’ve got something special here and the last guy had no idea what he had.

So here I am. I’m pretty certain my specific car is something else. Someone with resources once owned this car. If this engine was swapped in 10 years ago, someone spent some money to import and swap this engine. There are significantly cheaper ways to get 17 or 20 extra hp out of the H22 or A4.

Where am I on the car now? Well, the only thing I need to do to really get it driving regularly is to put new seals in that power steering pump. I had my father-in-law give the pulley a little twist. He was a mechanic for a couple decades. He worked on and drove trucks in Vietnam. He still does work on his own cars. So if anyone knows what a bad bearing feels like, it’s him. And he says the bearing feels perfectly fine. He even pointed out the exact spot in the power steering pump that’s leaking and said it just needs an o-ring. So one of these weekends when I have a few extra hours and the weather is nice, I’ll get back in the garage and put new seals on that pump. Until then, I’m perfectly fine driving the car without power steering assist. Maybe when we get a little closer to October and it’s only 75 degrees outside instead of 95. It’ll help if I don’t line all the surfaces of the pump with my sweat!

And for anyone wondering how that bumper reinstall went…I know what I’m doing!

Until next time, peace.