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I got the itch a couple of months ago to start driving the CL again. The good news is that it's still around, although it hasn't been driven since maybe February of 2014. I was cleaning out the junk from the floor boards and found a receipt from that time frame, so I think that's roughly the last time it was taken out on the road. The bad news is that it has really deteriorated these last several years.
When I started working on it back in September, the trunk gutter was completely filled with leaves and dirt. The paint was dull and faded and I thought for sure it was ruined. The interior has a terrible smell of mildew. There's probably dozens of dents in the hood, roof and trunk. (The oak tree did that with the help of gravity.) The hood latch was stuck, so unfortunately I had to break the grill in a couple of spots to get it open. That's when I finally got a look at the engine. It's a pretty sad sight and looked as if it were recovered from the bottom the ocean. Everything steel has rusted, the aluminum parts were oxidized and dirt/dust was everywhere. The strangest thing was that there were marble sized rocks all across the valve cover. My best guess is that they were put there by squirrels, but I can't imagine what for?
I didn't take a whole lot of photos. Especially when I first started working on the car. The ones I did take were pretty random. Here's short update on the status of my CL as I try to breathe some new life into it.
This was taken right after the battery was replaced. Prior to that the exterior was washed, clay barred and hit with some rubbing compound.
Both axles were shot so they were replaced first. While the car was up, it was also given an oil change.
The shop I used to take my car to for inspection closed down, so instead of risking it, I replaced the headlights and tail lights with a used set OEM lamps from a local CL being parted out on craigslist. The front turn signals were swapped out with a cheap set of Depo brand parts.
The headlights were in really poor shape, so they needed to be sanded and polished.
Thankfully, the car passed inspection with no problems and was given a new plate.
Next step is to take the car to a shop to have the suspension sorted out. With 303k miles on it, I want to have them replace all of the bushings, ball joints and even the wheel bearings. The ABS hasn't worked in almost 10 years and should also be looked into as well.
While it's in the shop I picked up a set of set of 98-99 2.3CL wheels for $125 to refurbish and swap onto the car. When I picked them up, they were just really dirty. It was hard to tell what type of shape they were in.
The wheel was cleaned with Eagle 1 Mag Wheel Cleaner, which does a great job at removing brake dust. At this point I realized the extent of the curb rash and the condition of the clear coat.
I made the decision to strip them down, sand out the scratches and polish the faces.
I found one of the wheels was bent in 2 places. It was taken to a local wheel repair shop, where they found it was actually 3 places. $133 later it was fixed.
After stripping the wheels, it looks like two of them where original and the other two were already refurbished by one of those OEM wheel resellers. Instead of just being a clear coated aluminum wheel, it looks like they had painted the rough casted areas between the spokes in a metallic silver. I imagine it was done because the sand blasting or some other process was used to strip the wheel and it changed the finish of the aluminum. This was unexpected, so I decided that to make the wheels match, I'd have to mask the faces on all 4 and powder coat them a matching silver. Then clear coat the entire wheel. With all of the sanding supplies, paint stripper, wheel straightening and powder... It would have almost been cheaper to just buy 4 wheels that were already refinished. I see them online for about $100 a piece plus taxes and shipping.
Anyways, that's where I'm at. Looking back the car was a pretty decent daily driver and I'm not sure why it got parked and left the way it did. Hopefully over the coming year it will be restored to its prior state and driven occasionally.
Hey! Great to hear you both still have your CL's! BlackAck, I'm sure you still have one of the best kept 1st gens in the north east, if not the entire US. Cocoa, I image your car is pretty nuts at this point. The last I remember, you were increasing displacement from the 3.2 to a 3.5 or 3.7?
I did get the wheels done over Thanksgiving and they turned out halfway decent. Instead of polishing the wheels, I decided to just wet sand with 2500 grit and leave the faces with a duller finish. The silver powder went down well, but there were some problems with orange peel in the clear powder.
I was digging through my garage and found a camber kit and steel braided brake lines that were purchased several years ago. These will be put on in the next few weeks. I also picked up a trunk with OEM wing that I'll have painted, but first I need to replace the alternator and sort out some things with the cooling system.
Ok well, I dropped the car off at a shop in December of '18 and it's still sitting there. They haven't been able to figure out the problem with the ABS and just tinker on it every now and then. The accumulator was replaced, but that didn't fully correct the problem. Instead of the ABS light just staying on all the time, it now only comes on after it's driven a few miles.
I haven't really been in a rush to get the back (obviously), plus I have too many cars in garage and driveway as it is. Once I get one of them out of the driveway, I'll just pay the shop for the work they've done so far and bring it home.
The CL is finally home. It had quite a few things replaced including the ABS modulator, master cylinder, right rear caliper, rear brake pads, rear speed sensor, both front upper control arms, alternator brushes, sway bar end links, drivers side door lock actuator and window motor among other things. The next major items on my list is to have it painted and the rust repaired. There's a big 8" crease in the drivers side door where someone carelessly smacked it with their door. Apparently that happened a couple of weeks ago.
It looks like someone broke this trim piece when they removed the door panel to replace the window motor and door lock. They also severely scuffed up the plastic trim piece that covers the steering column. This is a shame since the interior is the only part of the car that's still in good shape.
In the meantime I plan to redo the lighting with a new headlight retrofit and new LED tail lights. I have a small collection to pull parts from to build one good set of each.
A couple of years ago I picked up a set of 7.0 mini H1's to replace the old 2.0's that I ran for several years. This new model is supposed to be a lot better and it appears that way just judging by the build quality. The reflector bowels in my old projectors were pretty roached. This time I plan to use a better bulb which will hopefully avoid this issue.
This whole project will continue to move pretty slowly while I focus on my bike, but it should look a whole lot better by summer.
I found a body shop I'll use for painting the car. Next week I'll drop off the RL to have the rear bumper painted. If it looks good, then the CL will likely be dropped off in March. We're going to stay with the OEM Primrose color, but the plan is to tweak it a bit to remove some of the purple tint.
The trunk floor is in pretty bad shape. I had a leak around one of the tail lights which allowed water to get into the trunk area and cause the cardboard/wood panel floor to warp. So to fix this, I'm going to cover the floor with vinyl wood from Home Depot. I grabbed a few color chips last week which had a cool grey appearance and settled on the Black Oak (far left). The thickness is 4.7 mm, so it should make for a nice ridged surface that won't buckle and bow as easily as the original floor.
Today I ordered one case of the vinyl wood, which will cover just under 25 sq. feet. This should be plenty since the CL trunk is roughly 14.2 sq. feet from my measurements. I used some thick paper sheets to put together a template.
This past week I also took my worst set of headlights (the ones that were on the car when it sat outside for several years) and sanded them to see if they'd clean up. I was little surprised that that the yellowing was able to be removed. They baked in the sun for 5 years with no protective coating so I though they may have been too far gone.
Here's a before and after sanding.
Here's how they turned out after applying rubbing compound. I'll wait until the headlights are reassembled before spaying a clear coat and buffing them to a smooth finish.
I have 3 sets of headlights, so I plan to rebuild all 3 of them.
Set 1 - Best Lenses, Reflectors and Housings Retrofit Mini H1 7.0's, black housing, amber corner lights and HIR high beams.
I may try to build some sort of LED DRL, but the CL's headlights don't give you much to work with. The plan is to use the X5-R projector shrouds. They have a built-in LED halo, but I suspect that they're a pretty junky design and likely won't be bright enough to be visible in daylight. As a back-up plan, I'll pick up some new mini gatling gun shrouds.
Set 2 - Next Best Lenses, Reflectors and Housings Black housing with halogen low and high beams.
Set 3 - Worst Lenses, Reflectors and Housings Retrofit Mini H1 2.0's with black housing, spray painted reflector bowls (not yet sure which color they'll be) and painted gatling gun shrouds.
The reflectors on this set are yellowed, scratched and pitted.
Last edited by Blazin Si; 01-10-2021 at 07:50 PM.
Reason: speling
So the past few weeks I've been driving the CL to work pretty regularly. It seems to be running fine. All 4 shocks are blown on the coilovers. This wasn't the case when I parked the car several years ago, so I suspect that the seals deteriorated from sitting for so long. New shocks from Function and Form are almost as much as a brand new set of coilovers, so I think I might switch to a Ground Control/Koni Yellow combo.
I've noticed small puddles of oil in the driveway while the car was warming up. After jacking the car up one weekend, I found that the oil cooler o-ring had failed. While reaching around the oil filter, I had bumped the oil line to the cheap mechanical oil pressure sensor that I installed long ago. The oil line was so brittle that it had snapped off. I also found that the passenger side axle seal failed and was leaking transmission fluid.
I like having an oil pressure sensor since I had one engine spin a rod bearing after losing oil pressure. This time around I bought the Pro Sport "JDM" electrical oil pressure gauge and mounted it to the a-pillar.
The local Pull-A-Part has a '97 3.0CL. It was nice to find out that all 97's must have the same color a-pillar trim piece. I didn't like the idea of drilling holes into my interior, so I pulled one off of this car.
The gauge pod came from Autometer. Autometer doesn't make one specifically for the 1st gen CL, but they have one available for the 94-97 Accord coupe, which fits really well.
I went to all of the local hardware and auto parts stores looking for a grey that matched the trim piece, but none of them were close. I ended up settling for this "Lunar Grey" for the time being.
The wooden shift knob that my neighbor made me had gotten dull, so I sanded it down, stained it and applied a flesh layer of urethane. It's not a great match, but it looks much better than it did.
I'm looking forward to some warmer weather so that the bigger projects can start. These past several weekends have been cold and rainy and it's hard to get motivated to work on the car.
We had some warm weather this past weekend, so I finally tackled the oil cooler o-ring repair. The old o-ring was stiff and a hard to remove in the limited working space. It all went pretty smoothly until my hand slipped and broke the brass fitting to the oil pressure sensor.
I think I overtightened the brass fitting when I installed the oil pressure sensor a few weeks ago. It's probably a good thing that it broke when it did, and not randomly while I was driving the car. Luckily, I had a spare fitting with the correct threads sitting in an old parts box, so I was able to swap it out in a few minutes and carefully put it all back together.
I picked up some Yokohama Advan Fleva tires from Discount Tire for pretty cheap and finally installed the 98/99 wheels.
Over the weekend I purchased caliper rebuild kits for all 4 wheels. I plan to remove and disassemble all 4 calipers and then powered coat. This time around I'll apply 2 coats of black powder and a clear coat to better protect them.
Finally, my HID projector shrouds showed up so I tried test fitting them in the headlight housing. It looks like the 7.0 Mini H1's are a little larger than the old 2.0's, which means that the back of the reflector will need to be cut out to allow enough clearance.
The brake caliper rebuild kits arrived a couple of weeks ago, along with a new valve cover gasket. I plan to rebuild the calipers soon and powder coat the valve cover in a fresh coat of wrinkle blue.
The A/C was repaired recently. I suspected that the system leaked out the refrigerant from sitting so long and that turned out to be the case. The A/C shop said that just about all of the seals failed. The compressor is still working, but it's showing its age and will need to be replaced sometime soon. It's nice having A/C again. It blows about as cold as I remember it. I picked up a can of condenser cleaner and tried cleaning it just for the hell of it. There didn't appear to be much of a change after I rinsed it off.
This past weekend I replaced the crusty old sway bar bushings. I'm pretty sure they were the original ones that came on the car.
I also purchased all four replacement struts from Function and Form. Unfortunately, the rears are out of stock with no date for when they expect to receive more. I went ahead and replaced the fronts to help eliminate some of the bounciness. I was worried that the spring perch and lower shock mounts were going to be seized in place. I was surprised to find out that they weren't. It wasn't easy getting them apart, but I didn't have t resort to anything extreme like a torch.
The lower strut mounts were looking a little rusty, so I went ahead and stripped them.
Then powder coated them a gloss black with an extra coat of clear.
I was afraid that the powder would be too thick to allow the lower strut mounts to slip into the strut fork, so I masked off the mating surface and sprayed that area afterwards with an epoxy paint.
The reassembly of the coilovers was pretty easy, as was the reinstall. I forgot how much trouble it was to get the ride height even. I probably spent a good hour and a half getting the front level.
Yeah, no kidding! There's not much action here. I figured that since I'm partially restoring the old CL, I'd keep posting up the progress and hopefully motivate some others to do the same.
You're making me seriously regret having sold my TL-S.
I love the passion for keeping these things running well and looking good.
I LOVE your updates and pics and the way you write. Keep it coming, man.
J.
Thanks! I'll keep posting updates as things progress. I've been browsing the 2nd gen CL and TL forums hunting for restoration and build projects. It would be nice to own a CL-S 6 speed, or 6 speed swap a TL, but there can't be that many CL-S's left and it's got to be hard to track down a manual transmission and ECU for a TL. I'm having a hard time finding a T2T4 (F20B) transmission for my car. There's an F20B w/ tranny on ebay right now for $2,700. I just don't think I can talk myself into spending that kind of money for a transmission, and then try to resell the motor.
I really need to be more methodical about how I go about making these repairs. I should have inspected the suspension all at once and repaired everything in one or two weekends. My original plan was to have the car painted by now.
This past week I replaced both outer tie rod ends and removed the oil cooler again since it started to leak for the second time. While I was under the car I noticed the drivers side inner tie rod boot was ripped open. It doesn't feel loose, so maybe I can just get away with replacing the boot.
The oil cooler o-ring looks like it's perfectly in place, so I don't know why it was leaking again all of a sudden. I smeared some Hondabond around the o-ring, which I might regret later. I'll guess we'll see...
While replacing the passenger side tie rod, I noticed that the axle seal was leaking. It looks like I'll have to take the suspension apart again to replace that.
It's getting really hard to find OEM parts for these 1st gen CL's. Especially for the Quartz Grey interior. Basically everything is discontinued and sold out. I guess I've been out of the scene for too long. Even aftermarket performance parts seem to have become much more limited than I remember. I've been searching for a local shop to tune the motor since I've been running an H22 base map all this time. There appears to be only one or two within a two hour radius that specialize in imports. It looks like I'll have to upgrade from Chrome to a Hondata S300, which is overkill for a stock motor and bolt ons. Down the road I might swap the cams and valvetrain, but the options are limited.
You know something funny that was another reason I kinda backed off...
after watching my buddy Brian put together that silver TL on AHC Garage and how
much oem parts cost now even for a mass produced American model.
For that, it made the cost for German parts more palatable to me. There are a
few Honda old school models I wouldn't mind dailying...we shall see.
You know something funny that was another reason I kinda backed off...
after watching my buddy Brian put together that silver TL on AHC Garage and how
much oem parts cost now even for a mass produced American model.
For that, it made the cost for German parts more palatable to me. There are a
few Honda old school models I wouldn't mind dailying...we shall see.
AHC Garage?!? I watch all of their videos. Those are some high quality builds. I'd love replace all of my worn out suspension parts with OEM stuff, but for now I just stick with Rock Auto.
Rock Auto parts allow me to spend a little extra money on other things like my recently acquired T2T4 transmission with helical LSD. It's not as good as the T2W4 tranny from the Euro R Accord, but the taller 5th gear should make highway cruising a little more tolerable.
This will replace the M2S4 transmission that is currently in the car, which has served me well for several years.
I'm going to try to clean up this transmission a bit and then take it to a shop to crack it open and check the synchro's and give a look over.
I tried to clean up the transmission over the weekend using some acidic aluminum brightener and brass brushes. I also removed all of the fasteners to see if any were seized. Luckily, they just about all came out with no issue except for one bolt that had some damaged threads. I cleaned it up with a die and ran the tap through the hole. When I pick up the new clutch, I'll also purchase all new fasteners.
I just joined this community and am learning about these cars now. I enjoyed reading through your thread and seeing the progress of your car! Lookin' good!!
I just joined this community and am learning about these cars now. I enjoyed reading through your thread and seeing the progress of your car! Lookin' good!!
Thanks, and welcome to the forums. I'm looking forward to seeing your build.
I don't have much progress to report for the past month or so. The inner tie rod boot was repaired, and I took the transmission to a shop to have them split the case and inspect the gears and synchro's. It was good to hear that there was no damage. I did find a crack in the bell housing, so the transmission was taken to a welder to have it repaired.
I purchased a new Exedy OEM replacement clutch, pressure plate and flywheel. Once the bell housing is welded and my neighbor returns my transmission jack, I'll start on the transmission swap.
This past Friday I drove the CL to work. I got stuck in traffic on the highway and noticed that the temperature gauge was starting to get up to the 3/4 mark. When I got home, I unplugged the radiator fan an hooked it up to a 12V power supply and found that it was completely dead.
I removed the fan and disassembled it to find that the motor brushes were worn out. This is the original fan assembly, so I think it did alright for 310k miles. Last night I ordered a new fan motor, which should arrive later this week.
The brush on the right hand side had worn down to the point that the spring could no longer put pressure on it.
If everything goes well, I'll be closing on a new home the week after July 4th. This house is in the same neighborhood where I currently live, but it has a 2 car attached garage and a 3 car detached garage. It also has a 2nd driveway, so there shouldn't be any more problems making room to work on cars and motorcycles.
So not much progress this past month. We didn't close on the house as planned. Due to delays caused by material shortages, the seller wasn't able to complete the renovations that we agreed to. We had to push the closing date out a few weeks, so we should be signing the papers this week or next.
As for the car, the fan motor was replaced and this time I used stainless steel fasteners with anti-seize so I won't have to fight it the next time it needs to be removed.
I was waiting to move into the house before the transmission is swapped, but since it was delayed I went ahead and had the crack in the bell housing repaired.
I also tried to replace as many bolts as I could get my hands on just to freshen up the transmission. Many of them are discontinued by Honda. The slave cylinder was also replaced and the hangers were powder coated.
Last week I noticed that the boot on the axle that I replaced a couple of years ago had failed and slung grease all over the wheel. This axle only has ~8k miles on it, which is a shame. I also can't find the receipt for it, so I'll have to buy another one and install it when I swap the transmission.
Lastly, I figured the motor was due for new spark plugs. I felt that it was running well, but I decided to check them anyways and I'm glad that I did. The old plugs were looking a little worn. After replacing them with new NKG Laser Platinum's, the car does feel like it accelerates smoother at partial throttle. I was shocked at how much of a difference it made. Now I contemplate replacing the cap and wires. The cap is still available through Honda, but the wires are not. I guess the next best alternative would be NKG aftermarket replacement wires, however I hate the blue insulation that they come with.
I recently embarked on a similar mission with my first love...the 04 TL 6MT...
I feel you on axles...I lost the battle trying to get the passenger side free of the intermediate shaft so I could slap
a chinese piece of shit on and decided to do it right and order OEM axles instead...they are backordered but I'm not
in a rush.
Also, in doing the leaking slave swap yesterday (with checkvalve removal) I leaned on the radiator upper snout and
snapped it off. New rad, thermo and hoses on the way. YOLO.
It looks like the OEM axles for the CL are no longer available. I might have considered it, but now after looking at the price for a 3rd gen TL axle, maybe not... I see two part numbers with the same description. One is $260 and the other is $540. I suppose it's worth it if they last a lot longer. I guess I'll have to do some research to see which chinese replacement axle for the CL is the least shitty...
I forgot to mention that I also picked up some new OEM engine mounts. I plan to replace all 4, but only the rear engine mount and the transmission mount are still available through Honda. Looks like I'll have to shop Rock Auto for the front and the drivers side mounts.
I haven't inspected the mounts in the car very closely, but I have to imagine they're shot. I know that I've never replaced them in the 17 years that I've owned the car.
So there's nothing new to report except that my fiancée and I moved into our new house 4 or 5 weeks ago. Needless to say, all of my free time has been spent moving, unpacking, and cleaning. This house is going to take a lot of work before it starts looking nice, but now I finally have my garage where can I work on my projects.
It's large enough to park to 2 cars comfortably, plus a couple of bikes and still be able to maneuver around them if I need to work on something.
The rear of the garage also has a small "shop" area attached to it where I can put a work bench, air compressor and other miscellaneous items. A couple of nice bonuses is that the garage has a few 220V outlets and an attic tall enough to stand up in. Pretty much every item that you see laying around the garage was left there by the previous owner. It's a bunch of junk and we've thrown most of it away.
Last weekend we took a couple days off from working on the house to drive up to NC 80, also known as the Devil's Whip. It's a lot like the Tail of the Dragon, but a bit shorter with more elevation and no police. It's only about an hour and ten minutes from where I live.
This road connects to the Blue Ridge Parkway so we cruised that for a bit. It was the perfect weekend for a drive. There was hardly anyone on the road.
Speaking of Tail of Dragon, there is a classic Honda meet taking place there the weekend of October 16th through the 18th. I have some family coming into town that weekend, but I'm going to try to make it out there on Saturday. I will undoubtedly be the only CL there, as with most car meets!
The CL received some attention again recently after I noticed that the clutch pedal was starting to lose pressure. The reservoir was nearly empty, so I added some fluid and the clutch came back. I checked under the dash and found that the leaky master cylinder is starting to get worse.
While inspecting the car, I also noticed that the power steering fluid was getting low. A quick look at the pump revealed that it was leaking quite badly. Leaking seals and gaskets seems to be biggest issue that I have with the car right now. I suppose that many of these seals are ~25 years old, plus it didn't help that the car sat around for a while allowing them to dry out.
I went ahead and ordered a new Honda clutch mater cylinder and gasket, and new o-rings for the power steering pump. The parts were delivered this past week, so I decided to tackle the power steering pump first since it was making a mess all over the engine bay.
I degreased the pump housing really well and hit it with some aluminum brighter. The pulley, engine hanger, pulley tensioner and pump bracket were all powder coated to help freshen them up a bit.
This coming weekend I plan to replace the clutch master cylinder and possibly the valve cover gasket, which will take care of the next two biggest leaks. The valve cover will be stripped and powder coated wrinkle blue while I have it off. This will probably take longer than weekend to complete due to all the cleaning, stripping and masking that will need to take place.
In other car related news, I purchased a new Icon 56" roll cart from Harbor Freight when they had one of their big sales. It was delivered in December and since then I've been filling it with new tools, mostly from Icon and Tekton.
Over the weekend I was able to replace the clutch master cylinder. It took a lot longer than expected. I had a hell of a time under the dash removing the cotter pin from the clevis which attaches the clutch pedal to the master cylinder. The cotter pin was so mangled that I had to squeeze my Dremel's cutoff disk in there to cut it apart. Putting the new master cylinder into the car was much less trouble.
I drove it around a bit yesterday to dial in the free play. Overall it feels pretty good. The pedal is a little stiffer than before and the engagement point feels normal, but something just kind of feels off. I'm starting to think there might just be less slop in the pedal now since the old worn out parts were replaced.
It's been a busy couple of weeks, but I was able to make some time this past weekend to work on the valve cover.
When removing the alternator harness cover, I found that one of the nuts holding down the valve cover was loose. I had what I thought was a gasket leak on the backside of the valve cover, but it turns out that the oil was seeping out around the nut and then running to the back of the cylinder head.
From what I can see on the top end of the motor, it all looks pretty clean. Nothing appears to be tarnished and there's no evidence of sludge.
Then I got to work on chemically stripping the old paint. These new environmentally friendly paint strippers don't seem to work as well as the old stuff. In some areas the paint just wouldn't dissolve, so I had to resort to the Dremel with wire wheel.
I sanded down most of the rough imperfections. Then the valve cover was thoroughly cleaned with IPA and placed into the oven at 450° C for 45 mins to burn off some of the oil and allow it to off gas.
After plugging some holes and masking off some of the surfaces, it was ready for powder.
The color I chose is called Blue Print from Prismatic Powders. Sometime back in 2011-ish I purchased the color swatches for all of their wrinkle blue powers. I wanted the OEM look, but the color were limited at that time. The winkle effect for this powder isn't as pronounced as the OEM Honda paint and the color is slightly purple with a light metallic effect. I was a bit worried that this bag of powder wouldn't set up correctly since it was over 10 years old. I tested it on a few pieces of scrap aluminum and found that with the right combination of pre-heating and cure time, it would turn out halfway decent.
It all went pretty well until I was just about finished applying the powder and then the gun coughed out some clumps which landed right across the letter "V". This old Eastwood coating gun has a problem where the powder collects on the inside of the nozzle. If you don't periodically tilt the nozzle down and away to allow the powder to fall out, it can build up and spit out all at once.
Overall, I think it turned out pretty good. It looks a lot better than it did with the old chipping paint.
I masked the areas around the letters and sanded them with 220, 400, 800 and 1200 grit.
Here is the final result.
I can't put this valve cover back on with the crusty old hardware, so I placed an order for new nuts and washer caps. Hopefully they'll arrive before the weekend.
I got the valve cover installed this past weekend with the new hardware and I'm fairly pleased with the way it turned out. It doesn't look OEM like I had hoped for, but it's a lot better than it was.
I also spent a little time investigating the surging idle problem that has plagued this motor ever since I swapped it into the car. Roughly 50% of the time when this car is idling, the RPM's bounce between 800 and 2,000. It always seemed to be a little worse in the winter.
All of the vacuum hoses are in rough shape. A lot of them are showing signs of surface cracks, but there was no evidence that they were causing vacuum leaks. I know that the F and H series motors are susceptible to clogged IACV's, so I pulled mine off to take a look.
It looks bad, but maybe not as bad as some of the others that I've seen on posted on the internet. I sprayed it out really well with carb cleaner and tried to carefully remove the sandy debris around the o-ring.
There was a whole fiasco after I reinstalled it which consisted of an extremely rough idle and a CEL for code 9, which is #1 cylinder position sensor. It eventually worked itself out and I cleared the code. I think I probably didn't allow the carb cleaner to fully evaporate after cleaning.
So far the engine seems to idle a lot better. I drove it to work yesterday when the air temp was 28° in the morning and then 65° in the afternoon. Normally I would expect to see surging idle at some point during my commute, but so far it hasn't shown up. Fingers crossed this solved the problem.
I sanded down most of the rough imperfections. Then the valve cover was thoroughly cleaned with IPA and placed into the oven at 450° C for 45 mins to burn off some of the oil and allow it to off gas.
Haha, yeah I definitely meant Fahrenheit. I pretty much never have to type out temperatures outside of work, where we exclusively use Celsius, so it's a habit to type the letter C.
11-21-2018, 02:08 PM
Welcome back, nice to see your CL is still going strong. I'm planning to bring mine back out in the spring, it's been sitting for too long
Made her street legal (took a few weeks and a couple of junkyards lol)
There's not much action here. I figured that since I'm partially restoring the old CL, I'd keep posting up the progress and hopefully motivate some others to do the same.
Those are some high quality builds. I'd love replace all of my worn out suspension parts with OEM stuff, but for now I just stick with Rock Auto. 
It's not as good as the T2W4 tranny from the Euro R Accord, but the taller 5th gear should make highway cruising a little more tolerable.
I see two part numbers with the same description. One is $260 and the other is $540. I suppose it's worth it if they last a lot longer. I guess I'll have to do some research to see which chinese replacement axle for the CL is the least shitty...
