Honda N600 Engine Rebuild, Part 5

Despite the intervening 42 years, the engine guts looked pretty good.

The top of the pistons are a bit grungy.

But the cylinders don't look too bad - no serious rust or pitting, although there is some small pits that really shouldn't be there.

Another thing I think I've learned about engines - it's amazing what they can deal with and still run.  I polished up the cylinders and didn't worry about it.  My goal is not to race the car or even show it.

I'm just hoping to drive it around town as a "second car."

Yes, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN to leave well enough alone.

I tore the engine apart in January of 2113.  I cleaned and scraped all the parts.  I had all the new gaskets and seals and was ready to go.

But . . . . I had to take a look at the rings.  But when getting one off, it went PING and broke.  That made me happy.

I covered everything with old sheets and ordered $70 of new rings.  At least I could get them.  But I wouldn't be back until April - it will have to wait.

Honda N600 Engine Rebuild, Part 4

For those of you who know me, I'm condensing extraodinary amounts of time in this Honda N600 car and engine post sequence - in fact, years.  I don't work too fast.  In this case, parts are hard to come by and since the car is in Alaska, I also have to get the parts here. 

Anyway, the engine is out of the car and powerwashed.  It's time to tear it apart.

 In my very limited experience, the greatest amount of time is cleaning parts.  This photo is looking at the top of the engine head.  You can see the valves clearly.  The cam chain is in the middle of the photo held up with a black and white wire.

The gasket surfaces have to be clean and "unmarred" by wire brushes or sharp tools - especially since the engine is almost all aluminum. 

It was very difficult and time consuming to scrape the old gaskets off and make sure the mating surfaces were clean and flat.

I tried all sorts of foaming and cleaning products to loosen the gaskets, but in the end - a sharpened scraper used very judiciously was the only thing that worked.

But you have to be very careful not to scratch or ding the mating surfaces.

Bounty of Summer in Southeast Alaska

The weather in Southeast Alaska has been downright glorious this summer.  My brother and his wife visited last week.  Here's proof. 

Good eating.

Honda N600 Part 3: Engines and Boredom

Without boring you too much, I dropped the engine out of the car so that I could clean it up and have full access.  The way you drop the engine is a little different.  You lift up the front of the car, loosen four bolts, and drop the engine onto a floor jack - along with the axles and hubs.  On these things, the transmission is a part of the engine.

It's a powerful thing: 2 cylinders, 600 cc, 36 horsepower, air cooled.  Neat.

In the photo on the right, the car is hanging from the garage beam and the engine is partially supported by the floor jack.

First thing - powerwash the engine.  It was absolutely full of oily gunk.  Don't worry, I towed it on a sled I made down to the end of the driveway to powerwash it - then the gunk just goes out in the street.

Yep, pretty ugly.

This is where I think the problem is: at the bottom of the cylinders is where I've read about the O-rings failing over 43 years or so.  Not surprising, huh?

Honda N600 rebuild Part 2: The Problem, You See . . .

The woman that had the car lives on the ocean here in Sitka.  Surprisingly, her garage door faces the ocean - and there's no driveway.  Hmmmm.  The car hadn't moved in 20 years, so with the help of a friend (I only have one, whew!), we pushed the car out the garage door, turned right onto the lawn, and up the hill to the driveway.  We pushed her on a trailer and drove her home to our three car garage.

After a year (literally) of goofing with tires and brakes, I fired her up.  And it started!  Wow.  Amazing.  The only problem was there was no exhaust or muffler left.  It was LOUD!

And . . . . when I parked it, I looked in the garage after a couple days and oil was pouring out of the engine somewhere.  After considerable "research" on users groups like ANZHonda600OW and 2Cylinder Hondas, I discovered that my model engine had two 0-rings that liked to fail over 30 years or more. 

I knew that you wanted to see them, so here they are:

But here I am getting ahead of myself again.

Honda N600 Rebuild Part 1: Crappy Mechanic

OK, I admit it.  I'm a crappy mechanic.  But there's this problem - I enjoy it!  Now how could that be?  It seems idiosyncratic - most of the time people enjoy what they're good at.  Not sure what that says about me.

You see, my friend Tom told me about this car during "old man's basketball" (3-5 p.m. on Saturday, be there) maybe 4 years ago.  When he told me about it, I had to google it: "Honda N600 car." What a beauty!  Do it!  Google it!  You'll see such great cars.  But I resisted for 6 months.  When he told me the owners were going to tow it to the dump, I had to ACT!  Be DECISIVE! 

 And here it is.  Well, maybe it's surrounded with junk, but at least I can fit it into a two car garage with two other cars.  I always wanted a 3 car garage and doggone it, I reached my goal.

But, really, it's a long story.   Too much for one post.  I hope you'll be able to wait!

CHILD(REN)

I try to keep things reasonably "private" in our increasingly technological and public world, even though I realize clearly that I'm operating on a worldwide technological non-private platform.  So I don't talk too much about family members so as not to ruin their chances for a new job or anything.  But, what the heck, Hannah is on the same platform so I may as well "be out."  I'll try not to brag too much, since all parents are pretty proud of their kids.

Hannah just arrived home from India, after a competitive internship with the School of Social Work and Columbia University in New York, NY.  She and another girl spent two months looking at various social work enterprises in rural India. 

It always amazes me when one's kid(s) can be so good at something - yes, I know, it's her Mom.  Along with many other things, I think she's an impressive writer, observer, and thinker.  You can decide for yourself.  She writes for herself and a small audience at her blog here.  She's also quite the brave traveler.  If you like what you read there, go read the older posts from when she was in rural Malawi, Africa.  She wasn't blogging when she went to Mongolia, but on the other hand there wasn't email or internet in the ger (yurt) that she stayed in.

She has an "official" presence at the Columbia U. blog.  Scroll down to see her blog posts.  Her name link is her bio.  An executive from the sponsoring TVS Motoring company, SST division actually called her to talk about her "Inclusion" blog entry.  Wow.

It's great to have her home before she flies off to NYC for the second and final year of her Master's in Social Work degree.   

Siding and more siding

After considerable deliberation, Matt decided on cement board siding.  This particular type is Certainteed cement board siding with a 6" reveal.  Plus, a contractor in town had either ordered or been delivered two pallets rather than one - we never heard the real story.  Matt got a great price on it.

With my questionable skills, I always like to start on the least visible side!  That's not exactly accurate, we actually went around the building once with what we could reach without a ladder or scaffolding.  We started with a 8 inch cedar "band" which matched the old house.  We also put 3/8" furring strips on the housewrap so that there was breathing space between the wrap and the siding.  That's been the new custom and it makes sense, but I've ripped siding off a 15 year old house without it and not seen a bit of problem. 


In the photo above, we've finished and are "painting down."  We gave everything at least one coat of paint before we put it up and a then caulked and painted our way down so that all edges were sealed and had two coats of paint.  We've taken one set of scaffolding down.  Whew, it was plenty high for me and Matt wore his rock climbing helmet the whole time.

Now we're at the back side.  Luckily, we only need two layers of scaffolding on this side.  You can see the furring strips up on top above the siding.  You can also see the brown 5/4" by 4" rough cut cedar wrap around the windows.  We thought that gave the building a nice look.  We put a ledger board for a future deck on this side too.

The "third" side was a little sketchy on the right side.  We were able to put one section of scaffolding on the roof by building a wall.  Then we had to use a ladder jack with a ladder and a plank on the right side.  I can do it, but it's not my favorite.  I confess that I use my boat maxim: "One hand for yourself, one for the boat."  In this case, it was one hand holding on to the house for balance and one hand to work.    Matt declined the opportunity to use the plank!



The 4th side will have to wait a couple weeks.  We ran out of planks and Matt had visitors and City Assembly stuff.  I want to get it finished so he doesn't have to worry about it over the winter and I don't have to do it later!