NSX Health Check Service

[Senninha]

Please suggest a couple of date and times. Looking forward to it.

Robert G 07764 365661

Hello Robert,

Welcome to NSXCB and NSX ownership. Your time with Kaz will be time well spent and give you a better understanding of your car than any garage inspection/service.

I look forward to catching up at a meet one day soon

rergards, Paul

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

Hi, Robert and all.

Thank you for showing your interest to my service and especially for the warm message.

I would like to forward you several information such as maps, photos and my background information, so I'll appreciate if you can contact me through email.

Welcome to the club and I replied back to you by PM (no email option), Robert, so I hope you can have a look at it when you have a chance.

Now back to work and need to sort out all of these parts just arrived from Japan...

Regards,
Kaz

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

Hi, all.

Based on the result of Health check, this time, I was asked to look after the driveshaft, rideheight, sideway movement of steering column, cruise control and windscreen upper seal.

The detail of the driveshaft service can be found in the other post as follows;

http://www.nsxcb.co.uk/testvb/showthread.php?t=6504

In order to service the driveshaft, obviously, you need to remove them first, re-furbish and then re-install them. Please follow the procedure described in the service manual and NEVER apply the huge torque on the 36mm spindle nut with the tyres in the air. Although the specified torque is 330Nm, most of the time, you will need significantly higher torque to loosen this nut if it was never removed or seized. You could damage the aluminium suspension parts.

One time, my friend used 1,000Nm impact wrench and still the nut didn’t move at all. At the end, he had to use the special impact wrench with supplement air tank attached to it. The spec of this tool was well over 2,500Nm.

Same for the re-installation. You will need the big torque wrench to handle the 330Nm specified torque. I use the 1”Sq one like this.


You’ll also need to drain the transmission oil if you are removing the left side driveshaft. This NSX was AT so required larger washer at the drain bolt. Some metal debris was noticed on the magnetic drain bolt which is quite normal if you drove it for many miles after the last ATF replacement.

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

This NSX was heavily modified and one thing I didn’t like was the rideheight and the wheel spacers used. The rideheight was too low and restricting the suspension movement. Also some of the bushes were deformed. The wheel spacers were applying too much offset and forcing stress to other areas. Also, it was not the centering spacer type so there was no gurantee that the wheels were aligned to the centre of the hub. After some calculation and safety reasons, I decided to remove the spacers completely.

As the coilover kit was so old and couldn’t get the spec of the spring from the manufacture, I decided to keep the pre-load and just change the rideheight. The damper requires regular overhaul but not going to carry it out this time. It will go through the alignment work at one of the race team. In the near future, I’ll be building the Bilstein kit so hope to put it on here very soon.


All of the modern production cars will have some sort of driver protection against sudden impact to the steering wheel under certain condition such as accident. On our NSX, there is a crushable structure holding the steering column. Because of the material used on this structure, quite lots of NSX will suffer from sideway movement on the steering column.

If you grab your steering wheel, you should not feel any rattle/movement on horizontal direction.

From time to time, I notice that the driver tends grab on the steering wheel on getting out of the seat especially if there was not enough room to open the door fully.
This will be one of the most common cause of sideway movement at the steering column.

If you experienced this issue, you need to get under the steering column and spend long hours to adjust the crushable mechanism to eliminate the small gap which will result in sideway movement. You will loose your body balance for a short period after this work as you will be spending long hours with your head lower than your body and putting yourself into the tiny space under the steering column.

[henry_mac]

I visited Kaz on the 3rd January for a Health check on my newly acquired car.
I would echo the comments and sentiments of the forum, Kaz is an exceptionally talented guy with great knowledge of the car. His attention to detail and care taken with the car is second to none.
It was very cold but Kaz's warm hospitality more than made up for the cold weather.
I'm glad i made the visit, I learned a lot and now have a priority checklist of items in need of attention, that I can address over the coming months.

Henry

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

Thank you for the kind message, anachonda and Henry.
Looking forward to working on your NSX in the near future.


The NSX that I started to work on before Christmas is still with me as the road condition is not safe to drive with normal tyres.

As reported in the previous post, it was leaking small amount of coolant on my garage floor from the bottom radiator drain bolt.
However, after the car was left inside the garage for a longer period without any engine fire up, I started to notice very slow leakage (a few drips per day) from the top bleeding plug as well.

It won't start dripping on the floor until after many weeks as it will be first trapped in the pocket behind the radiator.

Time to replace O-ring at both drain/bleeding bolts.
As I had spare drain/bleeding bolts in stock, it was easy to replace the O-rings once I received them from Honda.


The old (Left) and new (Right) O-ring.
The old one was almost flat and not doing any job.

After replacing these O-rings, bled the system very carefully and went out for a test driving session to check the re-furbished driveshaft as well.

Since then, there was not a single drip so I’m glad that we replaced them now.

Regards,
Kaz

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

While waiting for the snow to clear up so that I can take above NSX to the alignment place, I decided to work on my NSX.

I want to do so many things this year in order to create new packaged service menu for the NSX owners.
Having said this, I can spend only a few hours this time so decided to check my IGN Switch comp.

I already cleaned it several times in the past and the last one was done about 3 years ago.
For 15 years, I’ve never experienced any issues such as sudden engine stop but since it is not an expensive part, it may be best to replace it after long years of usage.
As my NSX is an every day car, I’ll be accessing the IGN switch many times per day so it’s a good endurance test.


After removing the [Edit: deleted 'two'] lower panel, you will be able to access the two small bolts holding the IGN Switch comp. It is at the very back of the key cylinder and it has lots of thick wires soldered to it.


There is a brown connector at the other end. After removing the switch comp, the key cyl side will look like this. This will provide you with the original position of the contacts inside the white cover described in the next post.

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

On the IGN switch comp, you can remove the white cover to expose the internal contact points. The cover will only fit in one orientation so no need to worry about its original position.

As expected, even after just 3 years, the contacts were already showing fretting corrosion residue.

Needs to clean them again.

You can carefully take out the contacts assy inside the white cover but before doing so, please make a note on its original orientation as you want to put it back into the 'Lock' position.

I normally use super fine wet sanding paper with very little force to re-condition the contacts surface.



Before (Left) and After (Right) of each contacts assembly.

Re-assemble everything and test the key operation several times before going out for a test driving, if I can...

I still need to find some time to replace my fuel filter and install the Type-R Clutch pedal with damper-less setup.


I hope I can visit the alignment place this week...


Regards,
Kaz

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

Back to the Red NSX that was waiting for the alignment service during the snow in January....

7. Door window glass and weatherstrip
First time when this NSX showed up to my place, I noticed that the rear edge of the door window glass was hitting the Front Pillar Retainer. It was very scary closing the door so I kept the window glass lowered slightly.

Also, when the engine was not running, the window will move only about 10mm (half inch) from fully lowered position so the entire window related mechanical and electrical parts required some attention.

The weatherstrip was not installed properly and because of this, it was already deformed and damaged.


Although I had spare weaterstrip, we agreed not to replace it or carry out the full window alignment work on this occasion.

On earlier model, you need to be very careful with the rest of the parts used on the door when replacing the weatherstrip or adjusting the window glass. The shape of the weatherstrip was modified on our NSX in early 90’s and if you just follow the workshop manual to replace the weatherstrip or adjust the window alignment, you may end up with water leakage issue even if you may be able to overcome the wind noise issue. There are several parts to be replaced/reviewed in relation to the spec of weatherstrip.

So, as I didn’t have these specific parts in stock to match the latest weatherstrip and there is no point in aligning the window glass against the deformed weathertrip, decision was made to carry out the minimum alignment work. The aim was to prevent the glass from hitting the retainer and also at least let the driver to close the window without using hand to pull it up.

It is best to remove the front/rear guide rails and the regulator to clean/replace the parts to improve the up/down speed of the window but for this occasion, minimum service was carried out.
It was also making the ‘popping noise’ so greased the glass holder collar as well.

After these tweaks and the alignment work, the window now goes up and down much faster than previously. Still, not like the NSX just arrived from the factory but good enough until we get the new parts for this.

From time to time, some of the screws holding the retainer were corroded and very difficult to remove.

I’m so glad to have this special plier with me when dealing with these corroded/rusty/damaged screws and bolts.

Although it was for the minimum alignment work, had to spend several hours before I was happy to return the NSX to the owner. As expected, there was some wind noise created due to the deformed weatherstrip but better than hitting the pillar every time closing the door.

[Problem Child]

Hi, all.

Addition to my NSX Climate Control Unit (CCU) service, I have been offering the NSX Health Check Service for some of the members here.
As I received similar questions on this, I would like to share some of the information of the service and the maintenance works carried out based on the result of this.

[Edit: It will take minimum of 4Hrs plus another 1Hr for the report.
Due to the time required and to be fair with the owners who are taking the further service based on the health check report, the new price is GBP250 as of May/2012 and it includes GBP100 deposit towards the future major services.
The depoist is valid for a limited time decided by myself and as it is recommended to take Health Check service once a year, the time limit will be much shorter than that.
The criteria of 'major service' to be decided by myself.
The depoist of GBP100 won't be refunded to the owner if one couldn't take the major service within the time limit unless separate agreement has been made with me.]

As I can only carry out this during my spare time at this stage, it will be private/friend basis.

I will inspect your NSX for about 150 check points from top to bottom and front to rear. During the health check, I’ll ask several questions such as when the last time this part was serviced so it would be nice if you can bring your service record or study them prior to the health check.

After this, I’ll summarise the recommended future service works with three different priorities so that you can discuss with your mechanic or myself to schedule the service timing and also spread the cost. It is recommended to carry out this kind of Health check every 6 months regardless of the mileage since the last health check.

As a personal opinion, anyone with NSX workshop manual can carry out the service work. Also, anyone with the parts list can place the order for you.

However, the service result would be different depending on the knowledge, skill, experience and so on. On top of these, there are several things that can only be detected by the sense/feeling which is not on the workshop manual.

You could be ordering a part without knowing the fact that it could be repaired rather than replacing or it could be upgraded with small extra cost.

Addition to these, knowing the car from the development stage, understanding the specific design reason of each parts and experience in the motor racing will make different level of service.

Some of the members decided to go ahead with the Health check service and even went further to leave the car at my place or placed orders for the parts.

Followings are some of the works that I carried out recently.

New Front Brake Disks and Refurbished Front Brake Calliper with new pistons



ABS service including flushing the four solenoids

Hi Kaz, hope you are well. Are you still offering the Health Check Service. If you are I would be interested