Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

In Japan, we cerebrate almost any occasions on the calendar but
New Year’s day is one of the most important one for us.
We celebrate Christmas as well but it’s normal working day for
most of the companies.

As I’m bit behind the schedule, just a quick break and back to work.






Managed to get the delivery of boot lid strut, stud ball end fitting and
A/C idle pulley from Japan.







Installed the A/C idle pulley.






My hand was covered in oil so just the ‘after’ photo.
Cleaned and degreased the oil pan to this level.

The mating surface against the gasket will be degreased again
prior to the installation.







Cleaned the bottom side of the engine.

It was covered in light brown film but engine oil was doing good job in
keeping the area clean so not too difficult to wipe them off.

Another reason why it is important to replace the engine oil regularly.

Not much debris were found at the strainer filter so very good.
Quite often, you will find the residue of liquid gasket, etc that
were dropped inside the engine during the previous engine related service.






Hello, flywheel.








After degreasing the mating surface on the engine block side,
applied liquid gasket to the specified places at
the oil pump and side cover and
installed the oil pan with new gasket.

Very important not to over torque the soft rubber gasket
considering the design of the oil pan mating surface.

The workshop manual specifies it to
torque all bolts and nuts to 14Nm.

Personally, I think this is way too tight and cause more oil seepage.









Front header re-installed.
New bolts used at the heatshield.

Although it is changed to stainless,
OEM one is still fairly heavy considering its size.



Can’t pour engine oil until the liquid gasket cures but
it won’t slow me down as I’m just in the process of
putting everything back together.

Lots and lots of wrenching especially on LEV models.


Hope to fire the engine up soon and take compression.

More to follow later.
Kaz