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MotorMouth93's 1994 Berlina Black NSX Thread

Joined
30 October 2016
Messages
1,113
Location
Austin, TX
Hi guys, I've been around Honda-tech for a few year but I'm new to this forum, I picked up this 1994 NSX in Denver, CO last weekend and drove it back home to Austin, TX and I'll be posting updates about what I do with it here. A bit about the car: it has 91,000 miles, berlina black, 5-speed manual transmission, is all original and completely unmodified, single owner before me, and he had all maintenance done at the same Acura dealership in Denver by the same certified NSX technician since the car was new.

My plans are to keep it as close to stock as I reasonably can, at the moment the only aftermarket parts I'm considering are a good quality window tint job and aftermarket stereo equipment since the original speakers/amplifiers are failing and I can't make myself spend $3000 on shitty new OEM stereo equipment, but that's still a ways off since the car isn't my DD and lives in the garage except on nice weekends.

I'm planning on doing as much of the maintenance as I can myself, so this thread will also serve as additional documentation (in addition to my own records and receipts) in support of the car's maintenance history in the event that I ever decide to sell it. I've spent the past few years restoring a 1999 Integra that was too far gone for any reasonable person to touch so I've amassed a good bit of mechanical know-how and tools, and I'm looking forward to applying it to a much nicer car now.

The car isn't perfect, however, so I have some work to do before it's show-worthy.
- Slight grind entering 5th gear quickly, 5th seems to be a bit problematic with these cars so I'm hoping some synchromesh fluid will ease the issue. I'm just going to be careful with 5th until I have to change the clutch, then I'll change the 5th gear synchronizer. I rebuilt the 5-speed transmission in the Integra in my garage after it's 3rd and 4th gear synchros failed so I'm not too worried about that process.
- B-pillars and rear bumper were resprayed and there is some orange peel that needs to be wetsanded and buffed out.
- Swirls all over the car.
- Window tint is peeling and turning purple.
- Slight oxidization on the front bumper that will need to be wetsanded and buffed. Worst case scenario I'll have to have a shop reclear the front buy.
- Sun damaged rubber trim around the rear window and on top of the front windshield.
- Trunk and rear glass lifter struts are losing their strength.
- The dealer broke off the radio antenna.
- The dealer lost my gas cap in the process of filling the car up right before I drove off.
- Timing belt/water pump/tensioner only have 25k miles on them but are 7 years old.
- Missing front tow hook cover.

As it sat on the dealer lot.

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On the road somewhere in New Mexico at sunset, you can see some of the tape I wrapped the front end with. My friend needed to use the restroom...

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Freshly washed in her new home with the unsightly front plate removed. :) I use ONR no-rinse cleaning solution in one bucket, rinse water in another bucket, and microfiber sponges and waffle weave microfiber towels for cleaning and drying.

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I ordered the following parts from Delray Acura on 11/3/2016 so hopefully some updates should start rolling out soon when those show up. Also, if anyone doesn't know, the coupon code "ClubRSX" is good for 5% off at acuraoemparts.com.


- Timing belt
- Timing belt tensioner
- Water pump
- Thermostat
- Valve cover gaskets
- Spark plug gaskets
- A/C belt
- Alternator belt
- Oil pan gasket
- Oil filter holder gaskets
- A screw to replace a missing one on the console
- Factory painted front tow hook cover
- Trunk struts
- Rear glass struts
- Antenna mast
- Fuel cap
- Windshield top rubber molding
- Rear window molding

I also picked up a set of PFR6G-11 spark plugs at the local parts store and will install those when I do the timing belt.

More to come soon.
 
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great 1st post, congrats on the purchase, sorry to hear about the dealer mishandlings, but it is in better hands now.

hopefully you purchased the metal fastener for the upper window molding as well, I believe they should be replaced together.
take plenty of pictures of the build.
 
Congrats on the purchase and welcome to the ownership club! If you haven't already found it, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the content that's available in the Wiki on this site .. which you can find off the red action bar at the top of most pages. Some of the information is getting a little long in the tooth .. but then so is your car and there weren't really that many significant changes over the years anyway. The Wiki has some good information on not only care and maintenance but also potential upgrades .. and I think there's still an electronic version of the shop manual on there. Enjoy ... Ian
 
This is going to be a huge post, I've only remembered to update my thread on Honda-Tech and not this one so here's everything from the past month or so.

11/9/2016

The whole car has moderate paint swirls so all that needs to be corrected. So to start off we washed the whole car using a soap that can remove wax and then clay bar'd the trunk since that's my test area. Then I ordered the 7 pad kit from ChemicalGuys along with the 4 compound kit from them and started experimenting with different combinations of buffer pads and compounds.


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For the polishing, we found that the following yielded good results.


Pass 1) Green pad, "36" compound.
Pass 2) White pad, "38" compound.
Pass 3) Blue pad, "38" compound.


Also seen here is a good friend of mine who is a total wizard when it comes to detaling, he's been helping me out a ton and has taught me pretty much everything I know about keeping a car clean and looking nice. Thanks Carter, I owe you Chipotle burritos for life.


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11/16/2016

Just a photo I took at the parking garage at work.

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She's going under the knife. My parts aren't supposed to arrive until Wednesday but I had some time so I started on the disassembly process for the timing belt job. Things seem more thought out than on the Integra but overall it's more of a pain in the ass. For instance, there's jack points in the middle of the chassis as well as near the front and rear wheel wells which makes it super easy to get the car up on jack stands and plastic parts have metal inserts to keep you from over-tightening bolts, but everything is so much more cramped that it still sucks to work on lol.


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11/18/2016

I received a large package from Delray Acura this morning, and they forgot a part. It was a $2 part though so I guess I'll just live with it, but that's two orders in a row that they've messed up so I doubt I'll be ordering from them again.


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I ended up having to work pretty late today so I didn't get anything done on the engine but I did turn a Maraca into a shift knob for my Integra (lost a bet...) and installed the easy parts on the NSX. First I swapped out the generic parts store gas cap for the OEM unit. The guy who filled the car up apparently forgot to put it back on right before I picked the car up so I had a parts store cap on there, he was apologetic and offered to pay for the replacement so I'm not mad.


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Then I went ahead and installed the new rear glass lifters, the existing ones sort of worked but the new ones are great, you barely have to push up on it at all now.


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Replaced the antenna mast as well. I unplugged the antenna motor immediately afterwards since I never use the radio but it makes me happy that it works and is 100% OEM.


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And finally, the front tow hook cover was missing so I picked up a brand new painted one. Granted it doesn't match perfectly since one has been driving around for 22 years and one has been in a warehouse, but it's won't be too noticeable after I clean and buff the front end.


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Hopefully I'll have time to get a lot done this weekend.

11/22/2016

I think I might have figured out why I'm having so much trouble polishing some panels. Apparently it's not unknown for an NSX to have different hardness in the clear coat across different panels, I was pointed to a video by AMMO NYC on water polishing cars with ridiculously sensitive paint so I'm going to give that a shot next.


The ****ing crank pulley bolt has been driving me crazy. My 650lbft impact wouldn't touch it. I tried PB Blaster overnight, then the impact again and no dice. So I tried torching it, still no dice. I borrowed an impact from a coworker and it didn't touch it either. Finally I bought a Mac Tools 1200lbft impact second-hand and that STILL wouldn't touch it. So I gave up and am going to take the car to the dealer to have them break it loose before I either destroy something or spend a ton of money on more crap to try to break it loose. I guess the only upside is that I got a pretty sweet impact out of it, the "650lbft" was a cheapish Husky impact from Home Depot.


I did get the valve adjustment finished though. Rather than buy the expensive Honda tool I just got the $15 one from Amazon and cut the end off with a hacksaw, worked like a charm. I did valve adjustments on B-series motors without it and it's definitely worth it even on those cars, it's much easier if you can hold the screw in place while tightening the lock nut, and with the V6 it would be virtually impossible without it if you don't want to pull the engine.


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I also replaced the rear window molding, the original one was cracking and discolored from sun damage. I didn't bother using adhesive because it really doesn't need it to stay firmly in place and that's just more mess to deal with.


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(Rear trim is missing here because I had it off for the valve adjustment.)


11/26/2016

Finally got the trunk struts replaced. For some reason Honda doesn't give you new ball bolts with the trunk like they do with the rear glass struts, so I had to reclaim them from the old struts or pay another $30 and wait another 3 weeks for stuff that's backordered. The process isn't too bad, just mask around the bolts to keep them from getting scratched if the saw slips then carefully cut the socket in half. There's enough space between the ball and the socket wall that there's very little risk of hitting the ball with the saw if you're careful. (Marks on the bolts are not from the saw.)


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After carefully removing the "Made In China" stickers that were on the new OEM parts...


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Hopefully paint correction will be done by the end of next week, time permitting.

11/27/2016

I made a good bit of progress this weekend.


I reinstalled the wiper sprayer nozzles after cleaning them out, they were pretty gunked up.


Before
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After
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My main project this weekend was the front end, after finally coming to terms with the fact that my paint is soft, I just decided to polish it as best I can (which is pretty darn good but not good enough for my OCD) and wax it to take care of the fine micro-marring that remains. I was planning on regularly waxing the car anyways so I can live with it. So far I've polished and waxed the driver side quarterpanel, trunk, wing, roof, hood, both fenders, and the upper front bumper.


At the beginning the bumper was pretty messed up. There's some pitting which I unfortunately can't do much about, some bad touch up paint job that looks like it was done with a 3" paint brush, and there was some bad surface oxidization on the top. These photos were taken after clay-barring the surface.


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After first trying a fairly stiff foam pad and a course compound I realized that the paint isn't particularly flat so the reflections look like trash, so I decided to wetsand the bumper to even it out. The process I used was 2000 grit 3M WetOrDry (do NOT use lesser brands such as the Gator shit that Autozone sells, you will ruin your paint with that crap) using Meguiar's Quick Detailer as a lubricant, then after that I made another pass using 3000 grit 3M paper as well with the quick detailer as lubricant again. The badge, sadly, did not come off without incident. In the process of removing the adhesive, it took some of the clear coat with it. This won't be visible once I replace the badge, but it still bothers me.


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To buff the sanding scratches out, I started off with a course pad and a course compound, then progressively moved to finer pads and finer compounds until. You can see the pitting in this photo as well.


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And this is after wax has been applied. I'm using Meguiars synthetic paste wax, but if I take the car to a show or something I'll apply a coat of carnauba wax on top of it for a bit more shine. This is the first car I've ever actually waxed and it went on very easily. Just wipe it on, wait for it to haze, and wipe it off with a microfiber cloth.


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After letting the wax haze I wiped the excess off but it's too dark to get a good picture, so I'll post tomorrow.


I'm also thinking I might have the wheels media blasted and powder coated the factory color. They were refinished recently and they look pretty nice, but the color is a bit lighter than the factory color and they were redone using paint. And nothing beats a freshly powdercoated set of wheels lol.

11/28/2016

I drove the car to work this morning and took some pictures in the sun. Turned out pretty nice I think.


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12/2/2016

Relatively minor update: I took the car to Sterling Acura here in Austin on Tuesday and they were able to break the crank pulley bolt loose and torque it back properly so I could get it off. They told me not to worry about it when I went to pay and I was in and out in less than 30 minutes! They have excellent reviews online as well so I'll definitely be going back there if I ever need to have the dealer work on the car.


Anyways, with the car back up on jackstands I was able to back the properly torqued crank pulley off with my impact with almost zero effort, so I've started on the engine maintenance. When changing the timing belt you need to lock the cams in place and it's recommended to use 4 5mm punches to do this. I don't happen to have 4 5mm punches laying around, and no store near me sells 5mm punches by themselves, so I bought a 3/16" (4.76mm) steel rod and cut it into small pieces with a cutoff wheel on the Dremel and it worked out perfectly for $5 and 15 minutes of work.


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Shortly after taking this picture I started trying to remove the timing covers and gave up after an hour or so. I was able to get all the bolts out but there is just no room on that side of the engine bay, I have no idea how the rear timing and middle covers are going to come out but I'll worry about it this weekend. Working on this car sucks compared to the Integra, which I'm pretty sure had a much bigger engine bay and a much smaller engine.

12/5/2016

I finally got off my ass and made some progress this weekend. On Saturday morning I went shopping and picked up 4 gallons of Honda coolant, an OEM filter, 6 quarts of Mobile 1 10W30, and 3 quarts of Honda MTF.


I started off by giving the valve cover gaskets a good wash in hot soapy water. I threw the originals out the first time I started taking things apart but then had to put it back together to take it to the dealer so I had to use my new gaskets. This way they'll be ready to seal with the Hondabond around the corners.
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Apparently when the dealer changed the oil they didn't bother with replacing the drain washer. It's way flatter than a single use, properly torqued washer should be. This combined with a broken antenna...It wouldn't surprise me if they used recycled dino oil of the wrong weight.
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With the timing covers successfully removed, the first thing I did was mark the timing belt and gears with a permanent marker. When I copy the marks to the new belt I'll just line them up on the gears to set the timing. (then verify it four times using the built in marks of course)
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When copying the marks from the old belt to the new make sure to verify that the marks are correct at least 4 times as well. Contrary to popular belief, P2V contact is a VERY bad thing. ;)
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Before I put the new belt on though I dropped the oil pan to replace the gasket. This turned out to be a massive pain in the ass as one of the exhaust nuts decided to destroy the stud rather than back off peacefully, so I'll have to figure something out for that. I'm going to try to find a die of the correct size to repair the stud and just buy a new nut I think. I cleaned up the oil pan and lined up the gasket.
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Oil pan studs installed and gasket surface cleaned. Normally the pan only has 4 studs and a whole bunch of bolts , but since I had a ton of B-series oil pan studs laying around and they're the same thing, I installed them instead. This makes it way easier (and looks better IMO) as the gasket will stay on the studs while you maneuver the pan in underneath it.
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Oil pan reinstalled. The torque spec for the oil pan nuts/bolts is 8.7lbft but I couldn't go past 4lbft before the gasket started to bulge out the sides too much and there's plenty of reports that 8.7lbft is too much so I left it at 4lbft.
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The previous guy to change the water pump used Hondabond, so I spent 45 minutes scrubbing that junk off.
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Old vs. new waterpump. The old one only had 20k miles on it but since I was here already I might as well replace it for peace of mind, it does really look brand new though...
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Rather than pay for some more obscenely overpriced new bolts like the manual suggests, I cleaned off and applied new Hondabond sealant to the existing water pump bolts.
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Pump installed and all the bolts torqued to 9lbft and 16lbft for 10mm and 12mm respectively.
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And finally I put the new belt on and made sure the marks all lined up.
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At this point I forgot to take pictures and it was just more boring stuff. I tensioned the timing belt, reinstalled the timing covers with much cursing, installed the AC tensioner and new AC belt, installed he alternator and new alternator belt, and then called it a day. It's looking like a few more days of work at this point before it's back on the road as I still need to drain the rest of the coolant and refill it, replace the transmission fluid, and reinstall all the crap on top of the engine that had to come off for the timing belt.

12/9/2016





I've been trying to work on the car an hour or so a day so I've made some progress this week.


I ordered LED bulbs to replace pretty much every single lightbulb on the car because the fade in/out of incandescent bulbs annoys me, but I was two red 1157 LEDs short so I had to place another order that should be here Friday. SuperBrightLeds is a great company to deal with, the one time I had an issue (that was mostly my fault) they sent a replacement bulb and a prepaid box to send the old one back.


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I also removed the factory CD changer to free up a bit of trunk space and make it look cleaner. I'm planning on holding onto it for when/if I sell the car but I'll never use it.


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Transmission fluid replaced. Getting the new fluid in the transmission required a waterfall of funnels.


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Finally reinstalling the valve covers along with all the other plastic covers and clips on top of the engine that i had forgotten existed.


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Funny thing about the gold badges, I didn't realize the gold wasn't normal until my new badge showed up in the mail and prompted my post about it in the gen 1 discussion forum here. Turns out the front badge, both exhaust tips, and the antenna nut were gold plated at some point.


I picked up some metal polish at AutoZone and went to work on one of the exhaust tips to see how difficult it would be. Turns out not very, in 15 minutes or so I was able to completely remove all the gold plating by hand on one of the exhaust tips.


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I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but when I was removing the nuts holding the A-pipe to the front exhaust header one of them had fused and ruined the thread as I backed it off. Rather than deal with trying to remove the also very stuck stud, I opted to repair the threads with an M10x1.25 die and just replace the factory nuts with aftermarket stainless nuts. Threading the new nut on and feeling it go on perfectly smooth was a great feeling after laying on my back for an hour messing with it.


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I got lucky and was able to thread the die on perfectly to what was left of the existing studs and it all worked out quite nicely. So then I loaded up the studs with anti-seize compound and put it all back together.


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Anyways I'll try to do a better job of updating here in the future.
 
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Rather minor update. The car is all back together now and is driving great. No leaks so far, but I didn't tighten one of the accessory belts enough so it squeaks a bit on startup, I'll address that this weekend.

Since installing LED bulbs in all the external fixtures the turn signals have been hyperflashing due to the much lower current draw of the LEDs. And of course, the flasher relay that AutoZone's website listed as compatible was most definitely not compatible, so I went ahead and modified the OEM flasher according to WB9RKNs post here. It was very straightforward, removing the transistor took far less time that getting the relay out of the car to begin with and it seems to work perfectly!

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Then the brake light indicator was also on due to the low current draw of the LEDs, so I used the method outlined by mcrider here. On this one I made some slight changes, in the PDF file it only says to ground the white/green wire, but since we don't know exactly what's inside the brake light sensor, that is absolutely awful practice. You should never tie a signal wire straight to ground or power if you don't know what's driving it, so I depinned the sensor side of the plug and shorted just the wire that goes to the cluster to ground, then heat-shrinked the loose end and taped it to the side of the connector for if I ever need to revert back to stock.

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And I also put some stickers I had laying around on my toolbox. If it was a Snap-On box I'd be waxing it instead but mine is just a Craftsman. :biggrin:

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Minor stuff, I've mainly just been driving the car lately since the high-priority maintenance is out of the way.

I made a steel bracket to mount a fire extinguisher where the CD changer used to be. I'm going to remake it since I don't like having the holes that close to the edge but for now it works fine. The small holes are drilled and tapped for M6x1.0 so the extinguisher just screws straight to it.

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Then I wetsanded and polished the front corner lights. They were in pretty rough shape but they came out pretty well I think.

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I ordered one of Hugabuga's window regulator fix kits a few days ago so hopefully the windows will be nice and smooth after installing it.
 
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I know this is a stupid question but I'm also trying to fix the hyperflash with the resistor but I'm having difficulty getting the flasher relay out of the fuse box. Was there a trick to it or what worked for you?
 
It took me a while to get it off too. The tab that holds it on is actually on the top of the relay, so you pull the relay straight towards the passenger side of the car. Jamming a flat-blade screwdriver between the bracket and the relay near the top and twisting it a bit would probably be the easiest way to pop it off.

Also, if you're planning on changing out the resistors, I'd consider looking at that tutorial I linked instead. It's way easier, you just desolder or cut off the 3-pin transistor and hyperflash is gone with no drawbacks. You can still use regular bulbs if you like without any risk of burning the relay up like you would if you just changed out the resistors.
 
Hugabuga shipped out the window kit faster than I expected, it took 8-10 days from the time I sent the payment to receiving it. But then I let it sit on my kitchen counter for another three weeks while I drove the car and enjoyed it.

Anyways, at the beginning of this week I decided that it was finally time to pull the door panels and knock out everything there at once. I dropped the car off at a very highly reviewed PDR shop here in Austin to have the three door dings and one fender dent fixed since I thought not having door panels might make it easier for them to do the work. Only the fender dent and the passenger door ding were able to be fixed though, the driver side dings were too sharp to do anything about, and they even pointed out the subtle marks left by the previous owners attempts to PDR it as well, so I guess I'll just have to live with them. :(

Anyways, onto the window regulators. After installing the pulley from the kit and sanding the teflon feet a bit to slide smoothly with my warped slider part, I decided that I wanted more. More pulleys, to be exact. So I went on Amazon and found some nice little sealed bearing pulleys (I paid about $10 for a set of 5 and $7 for hardware at Home Depot) and went to work with the dremel. Here is the result: the first 6 pulley NSX window regulator retrofit that I've seen.

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I had to grind away quite a bit of the plastic part at the top so I ran the bolts holding the pulleys on through the backside of the plastic for extra support. I haven't reassembled the motor portion yet but with the cables pulled tight it seems to work perfectly!
 
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After installing the passenger side regulator which I posted above, I had to reinforce it since drilling out the plastic bracket to install the leftmost pulley caused it to flex and creak. It's fixed now but for the driver side I added the topmost pulley since the other one really doesn't have that much stress on it.

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And the other parts I need to put the doors back together showed up after a couple of weeks on back order.

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I bought a new antenna nut and grommet since my original had been gold plated and I couldn't get the gold out of the dimples.

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To remove the factory godzilla jizz sealant that was left over from the original shredded moisture barriers, I scraped as much as I could off with a plastic scraper, then put WD40 on a cloth and rubbed the rest off, then finished off by wiping it down with rubbing alcohol to remove the WD40 residue. It took a while but worked well and didn't damage the paint.

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I did some searching to find a way to install the new moisture barriers that would be waterproof, reliable, and removable without too much effort, and the BMW guys use butyl rope to do this. So, I bought 90 feet of 1/8" butyl rope at Lowes for about $6 and went to work. I did the driver side door first and it went on well but I think I put too much tension on the plastic when I installed the speaker box and the door handle so I think I'll order another one and redo it.

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Using what I learned on the driver side, the passenger side went on near perfectly.

1) Make sure the door is clean and free of leftover glue/oil/etc.
2) Hold up the moisture barrier and poke the wires through the holes in it, wherever possible make sure the flaps on the back go over the wire harness to keep water from running in.
3) The MB has a hole for the top left and top right door panel screws, put these screws in to loosely hold the MB in place while you install the butyl rope. I find it easiest to apply the rope in 6-8" sections, there is no increased risk of leaking doing this since it mashes together easily if you overlap it a bit.
4) The door shell has small grooves where sealant was applied, lay butyl rope along the top edge of the door in this groove and lightly press the door liner onto it so that it sticks, but can still be easily removed.
5) Install the door handle, central locking box, and speaker box in that order. You do this so the door liner is pulled along the contour of the door panel and won't be stretched out.
6) At this point, around the edges in some places the MB will want to bunch up since you're trying to cover a 3-dimensional surface with a 2-dimensional sheet of plastic. To make these areas seal against the butyl rope, you press the MB into the butyl using your fingernail/dull plastic scraper/etc to create small ridges, this will let you take up the slack in the plastic.
7) After the MB is stuck on all the way around, get a heat gun and set it on low (~250F) and heat up a portion of the plastic on the rope and then press it on with your fingers until it sticks well. You can also make sure there is no tension on the plastic as it is very easy to stretch when heated a bit.

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Anyways, with the doors all put together the windows go up and down much faster and smoother than before. Hugabuga's kit is completely worth the cost.
 
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can't believe I missed this thread! Amazing work.

What source did you use to do the timing belt? Did you change the tb tensioner?
 
Thanks for the kind words guys.

What source did you use to do the timing belt? Did you change the tb tensioner?

https://www.nsxprime.com/FAQ/DIY/timing-belt.pdf

I just used the PDF from the FAQ and referenced the shop manual when I needed a bit more info, and yes I installed a new tensioner along with the belt and water pump.

Anyways...The Audi dealership I bought the car from had the B-pillars and back bumper resprayed due to sun damage, and from the looks of things, whoever did it had absolutely no clue what they were doing, I got better results than this when I painted my Integra in my parents back yard and that isn't an exaggeration. Pro tip: Stay away from Audi Denver if you want quality body work.

It wasn't enough to dissuade me from buying the car though so here I am. I got tired of looking at the shit respray so I decided to fix it.

Here you can see why I hate it. The prep work was done with sandpaper that was too course, so there's little sanding marks all over it. Photos taken after I had masked it off to protect the edges where the paint/clear is thinner.

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The reflections look like shit compared to the glasslike finish in the factory wetsanded paint.

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The process I use is 2000 grit ->3000 grit ->DA polish with increasingly fine pads/compound. Sanding is done with Meguiar's quick detailer as lubricant, the 2000 grit is done with a block to get everything nice and flat, and 3000 grit is just done by hand. If you're going to do this, use very little pressure and wipe everything off every 30-60 seconds to check your work. Some parts flatten out easily, others take a bit more time so you don't want to keep sanding where you don't need to and thin out the clear more than absolutely necessary -- essentially the same as what I did on the front bumper.

Almost done wetsanding with 2000 grit, you can see the sanding marks are almost gone.

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After wetsanding again with 3000.

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Nice and polished, much better than before. There is a slight difference in the paint color, but it's not really noticeable and I can live with it for now.

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Here is an edited photo of the other side showing both the before and after side by side, also a huge improvement, but it wasn't quite as bad as the driver side.

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Hopefully I'll have time to do the back bumper this weekend, and possibly install the new front passenger wheel bearing too.
 
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I dropped the car off at a window tint shop on Saturday and had the old purple stuff removed and new 35% ceramic tint installed all around. I picked it up yesterday and it came out extremely well, it was worth the several day wait at Austin Window Tint. The gap at the edge of the windows is <1mm all the way around. The car is disgustingly dirty but hopefully I'll have time to wash it either tonight or tomorrow.

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After watching a video put out by a professional detailing shop where they paint corrected a Porsche GT4 and then applied clear paint protection film over the whole car, I decided that's what I need. However, the $3000+ price tag for a professional job just won't do, and while a smarter man than myself would grumble and start pinching pennies, I realized that just the film itself would run me under $1000, so I bought a 60"x60" roll of Suntek PPF to test it out before buying a whole roll.

I did the roof first, but I should have started on the B-pillars or door handles. It came out pretty well but the edges are jagged from my not learning how to cut it properly until I was about halfway through trimming. It's fine for now since the edges aren't visible unless you're 2" away, but if I have leftover film at the end I'll probably redo it.

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Then I moved onto the headlight covers, these were easy, just cut a square of film, lay it down, squeegee the slip solution out, trim, and fold the edges over.

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B-pillars were next, but I don't have pictures. They came out fairly well, some edges are still a bit jagged but not really noticeable.

Now door handles, if I could do it again, I would do these first as they had the most intricate cuts and material waste is very limited from messing up since they're so small. They came out fairly well but not quite perfect, I might redo them later too. I haven't cut out the NSX logo yet in this picture. Cutting is tricky, you have to use enough pressure to score the film enough to easily rip, but not enough to go all the way through. By erring on the side of caution I've avoided any disasters but it's very time consuming. The paint on my driver side door handle was starting to wear through on the very edge from being grabbed so much so I decided not to risk polishing it and just cleaned the surface with alcohol and applied the film, making sure to leave extra on the back edge to wrap around the back. The film completely hides the rather heavy swirling on the handle! (You can see a slight finger on the B-pillar here, I need to go back with the heat gun and flatten it.)

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Finally I did a fender, by this time I had mostly gotten the hang of it so it came out near perfectly, all edges are wrapped nicely with no "finger" bubbles except for one that's covered up by the fender liner. The issue with the front end is all the tiny rock chips. the film hides the smallest of the chips fairly well, but it makes some of the larger chips more visible. You can see here the reflection of the sun off of the unwrapped bumper (rather dirty right now) and off of the wrapped fender (wrapped but covered in fingerprints).

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Anyways, I think I'm going to go ahead and order a bulk roll of the film and knock out the rest of the car. This stuff makes detailing the car a complete joke, even if it does show some of the chips more at least I won't have to kill myself over swirls. If anyone has any questions about the process feel free to ask.
 
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