1988 Honda City CG - New addition to the fleet

[barrett]

That's absolutely glorious. Best car I've seen on autoshite for ages. I'm sure some judicious LED additions will set that front panel off a treat.

[BadLuckClub]

26 minutes ago, The Vicar said:

Was the Irish car black in colour? I’ve heard from a few sources that it was stolen and subsequently burnt out by joyriders in the last year or so. 

Ah yeah, It might of been that one. bloody sucks about it being stolen

[The Vicar]

I have been driving this for about four weeks now and am really getting on with it. Its a fantastic little car to throw around the backroads, I'm just afraid I'll get caught one day  Hasn't put a foot wrong since I've got it.

[Spottedlaurel]

Great to see one for real.

Despite looking quite small, I believe they're too big to be a Kei car?

I built the Tamiya kit a few years ago:

Tamiya 1:24 Honda City GG by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Tamiya 1:24 Honda City GG by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

[The Vicar]

That’s right - they’re too big to fall into kei car classification. It’s 1300cc. I think the Honda Today was the kei alternative to my car. 

[The Vicar]

By way of a small update, I've put some LEDs in the front reflector panel:

I had these lying around, so decided to give it a shot. They both look to be a different colour, but they came from the same packet so I'm not sure why that is so. There is room for two more on either side of the Honda badge, so with two more the whole thing should light up nicely. I'm desperately trying to find suitable lights that are not LED; I don't think they look right with the headlights. I was thinking of using four reg plate lights - I need something about that size and shape anyway. Any other ideas? eBay seems to only show up crappy Chinese LEDs.

Overall though I'm quite happy with the result! 

[Fumbler]

Looks like the future now!

[The Vicar]

Carried out a small bit of work this weekend. There has been a small weeping of oil from the rocker cover since I bought the car and I finally got around to cleaning and sealing it. Seems to be ok for now anyway. On Friday I noticed a small patch of fresh oil under the car so needed to get the finger out and it was good to get it sorted.

Also gave it a new set of plugs, adjusted the tick over and ran a bottle of dipetane through the tank. The car has been quite heavy on fuel, but it seems to be marginally better now. Hoping this has helped but I'll only know for sure when I next fill the tank. I think it is over due a service and maybe a carb tune. 

Anyway, all back together and running well:

[LightBulbFun]

On 7/13/2020 at 5:34 PM, The Vicar said:

. I'm desperately trying to find suitable lights that are not LED; I don't think they look right with the headlights. I was thinking of using four reg plate lights - I need something about that size and shape anyway. Any other ideas? eBay seems to only show up crappy Chinese LEDs.

what sort of brightness/wattage are you aiming for here?, I can think of a few tungsten lamp solutions to match with the head lamps  

I was thinking something like this a festoon lamp as you mention, but a ridged loop one which is a little bit more compact I think 

they also come in frosted for more diffusion if required  

[The Vicar]

Many thanks for this @LightBulbFun and apologies for not replying sooner. To answer your question, I'm not too concerned with wattage or brightness at all really, I just want it to look cool and not blind oncoming drivers. I'm keen to replace the two LEDs I have in there at the minute, I made a bit of a mess installing them and would like two slightly bigger units to hide the holes I had to cut to get the original pair into the grille. I'd guess something around the size and shape of a reg plate light on any standard car, maybe slightly bigger. Will need to measure.

Do you have any links for what you've shared above? Is eBay the best bet?

[The Vicar]

As another update to this, in the last week or so the car has received an uprated head gasket kit, timing belt, water pump, AT fluid flush and refresh, new discs and pads on the front, plugs, leads, distributor, and the carb stripped and cleaned.

I bought the car at the start of June with 85,300 km, this evening it just ticked over 89k. It has been mostly reliable, but out of the blue recently it started running very poorly, as if it was only going on two cylinders. My initial thoughts after a bit of investigation was head gasket, which I duly had done, but no joy. The timing belt needed doing anyway so it wasn't a totally fruitless endeavour. Later changed the plugs, leads and distributor with no joy either. The carb strip down and clean has done it the world of good though, and it is running better than ever before now. Plenty of life left in the old girl yet.

[LightBulbFun]

11 minutes ago, The Vicar said:

Many thanks for this @LightBulbFun and apologies for not replying sooner. To answer your question, I'm not too concerned with wattage or brightness at all really, I just want it to look cool and not blind oncoming drivers. I'm keen to replace the two LEDs I have in there at the minute, I made a bit of a mess installing them and would like two slightly bigger units to hide the holes I had to cut to get the original pair into the grille. I'd guess something around the size and shape of a reg plate light on any standard car, maybe slightly bigger. Will need to measure.

Do you have any links for what you've shared above? Is eBay the best bet?

No Problem  happy to have been able to help

here is a couple links to the above

https://www.bltdirect.com/rigid-loop-festoon-light-bulbs

https://www.bltdirect.com/festoon-lamps

as you can see they come in a good variety of sizes wattages voltages and finishes 

and the above and probably much more of this type of lamp can easily be found elsewhere as well if needed, just search for Festoon lamp or festoon bulb or the such like on ebay or in any motor factors or such like and im sure plenty of options will pop up  

[RoadworkUK]

I award you 600 out of ten for the front panel illumination, and fairly strong marks for sundry other bits such as head gasket work. Generally quite a high score all told. Well done.