Mapones Puzzle shuttle
mapone
New Wagonist
Despite this project is still in progress(more than year), I decided to share with you my experiences and difficulties. Now Im driving a 2007 Honda Fit Sport, but the Shuttle was my first car after I passed the driving school.
I just started looking at some nice Shuttles here in the Czech Republic more than year ago, but it is a big problem to find some good ones. At that time I couldnt find even one, so I looked at some international websites and I found one in Austria not so far from the city I live in. In the advertisement there was only one picture and the description said that it had a blown engine.
So I drove to Austria to have a look at it. It was the Shuttle Beagle 1.6 AWD and it was parked in the field next to the owners house for more than 4 years because of the bad engine, so all the parts under the car werent in good condition because there were corrosion on the suspension and drivetrain, but at first glance the body looked OK.
After some negotiation, I ended up driving home with my new shuttle on the trailer.
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But nothing is so simple like it appears, the next day at home I looked closely at the body. I took out the original garnish and I found one big hole in the place where the rocker panel should be. The body was totally rotten on both sides. There were holes through into the interior. I showed it to the welder, he said there Isnt a healthy metal to weld in new parts. So it wasnt worthy the time and price to rescue it.
I just disassembled the good parts like the 4x4 drivetrain, the interior, the doors, the bumpers, all the wires, the transmission and the rest. I didnt know what to do with the body, but I kept it in case I found some little damaged shuttle to use its healthy body parts for a new one.
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For a while I was a little bit discouraged because of the situation, but I decided to begin searching for a another one. I had only one requirement, the body must be in good condition.
After some time, believe it or not, I found via a local Honda club site someone, who kept in his barn a 1990 USA version of a Civic Wagon 1.5 FWD automatic. I think it is the only one USDM wagon in the middle of Europe.
First he didnt want to sell his wagon but after 2 months of mailing and calling to him I persuaded him to sell it. The guy said to me it hasnt run in more than 3 years because the distributor wasnt working. And he was keeping it only for the parts, because he has a second Shuttle which he uses all the time. Fortunately he didnt ever use any parts from the Wagon. The body has deep scratches on a both right doors but he had two spare doors in the same color.
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I took out the plastic skirts and I was pleasantly surprised. It was 100% healthy, without any corrosion. So I decided to buy it, even if the price was a little bit higher. I paid about 1000 and from that time I was thinking about what I have to do first? Keep the 1.5 fwd automatic or use the 1.6 awd parts and rebuild it.
What would you do? :rolleyes:
I just started looking at some nice Shuttles here in the Czech Republic more than year ago, but it is a big problem to find some good ones. At that time I couldnt find even one, so I looked at some international websites and I found one in Austria not so far from the city I live in. In the advertisement there was only one picture and the description said that it had a blown engine.
So I drove to Austria to have a look at it. It was the Shuttle Beagle 1.6 AWD and it was parked in the field next to the owners house for more than 4 years because of the bad engine, so all the parts under the car werent in good condition because there were corrosion on the suspension and drivetrain, but at first glance the body looked OK.
After some negotiation, I ended up driving home with my new shuttle on the trailer.
[IMG][/img]
But nothing is so simple like it appears, the next day at home I looked closely at the body. I took out the original garnish and I found one big hole in the place where the rocker panel should be. The body was totally rotten on both sides. There were holes through into the interior. I showed it to the welder, he said there Isnt a healthy metal to weld in new parts. So it wasnt worthy the time and price to rescue it.
I just disassembled the good parts like the 4x4 drivetrain, the interior, the doors, the bumpers, all the wires, the transmission and the rest. I didnt know what to do with the body, but I kept it in case I found some little damaged shuttle to use its healthy body parts for a new one.
[IMG][/img]
For a while I was a little bit discouraged because of the situation, but I decided to begin searching for a another one. I had only one requirement, the body must be in good condition.
After some time, believe it or not, I found via a local Honda club site someone, who kept in his barn a 1990 USA version of a Civic Wagon 1.5 FWD automatic. I think it is the only one USDM wagon in the middle of Europe.
First he didnt want to sell his wagon but after 2 months of mailing and calling to him I persuaded him to sell it. The guy said to me it hasnt run in more than 3 years because the distributor wasnt working. And he was keeping it only for the parts, because he has a second Shuttle which he uses all the time. Fortunately he didnt ever use any parts from the Wagon. The body has deep scratches on a both right doors but he had two spare doors in the same color.
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
I took out the plastic skirts and I was pleasantly surprised. It was 100% healthy, without any corrosion. So I decided to buy it, even if the price was a little bit higher. I paid about 1000 and from that time I was thinking about what I have to do first? Keep the 1.5 fwd automatic or use the 1.6 awd parts and rebuild it.
What would you do? :rolleyes:
Comments
That beagle ad is gold. Do everything you can to save beagle parts
That beagle ad is gold. Do everything you can to save beagle parts
For a couple of days I was thinking about how I have to do that. I looked how to mount a Beagle AWD stuff into a 2WD Wagon body.
These differences gave me to think about...
1st, no propeller shaft support on 2WD wagon body
2nd , a different transmission mount
3rd , what to do with automatic seatbelts in Wagon If I use complete beagle non a.belt wires.
First I just started to disassemble all the parts from a Wagon, to see any clear differences.
There wasn’t anything more to think about, so I took the plunge… Let’s start with the work.
First I cut out whole part with the propeller support from the Beale floor.
After that I drilled out only these metal pieces which really holds the center part of the propeller shaft on the body.
Now I just did some measurements to weld it into the correct place in the Wagon body.
And the welding…
Of course after welding I did a complete under body paint protection against corrosion.
Now I was ready to mount the shaft in
With The same way like #1 I just changed the body transmission mount, drilled the AT mount out and welded MT one in.
I was thinking a lot about what I have to do with automatic belts. In the end I decided to do a manual belt conversion. It wouldn’t be possible to connect automatic belts wires into the Beagle wires, because a.belts used the special door locks with an open/close door sensor. Beagle locks doesn’t have these sensors, instead sensors use power door lock actuators. And I prefer the power locks more.:encouragement:
I started to do that with a cut out the inside parts with a belt slider of a Beagle B pillar and did the same thing with the wagon pillar.
A few measurements and I welded it in.
Now I was able to mount the belt into a higher point with the slider, but what about the winder? It really doesnt fit into the place where the power winder was, so additional modifications were needed.
The opposite end of the belt I just bolted into a hole which was already there.
Almost done...
So I drilled a hole...
...and welded in the part with a nut, which I drilled out from beagle body before.
Belts are done.
The last problem I had to solve was how the rear differential bolt up. It looked like the rear cross-member was ready for the differential mounting component. Holes were there, but nuts inside were missing, so I later found some nuts with a big washer, made the holes from above and just inserted these nuts inside the cross member and mounted differential up. I shouldnt have done it that way. Later I realized it was a very flawed process. Why I will tell you soon. For now the rear differential is located in its place.
I'll be checking back now & again for progress updates. Keep the pics flowing...
:thumbup:
Before:
And after:
A little problem arose when i started putting down the beagle gray carpet.
Since i first started to think about this project, the whole time i wanted to use the beagle gray interior. Dashboard, all panels , carpet... all gray.
But unfortunatelly I was forced to improvise a little.
Beagle grey cerpet doesn't fit into a Wagon floor because Wagon and Beagle front seats' mounting points for seat rails are in different places.
I the wagon they are farther apart than in Beagle. And the carpet is customized for that extra spacing.
So i dind't have the choice, so i used Wagon blue carpet. I was wondering how this blue/gray combination will look when I finish it all.
Manual shifter
I wanted to use the Wagon seats too, reason is a nicer shape. Beagle seats were tattered and isn't chance to find this unique textile pattern. Seats rails also doesn't fit into the Wagon.
I'm really enjoying this kind of work. I like to see how the things will turn out.
I got a package with all new bushings.
I ordered a polyuretane bushings set from Strongflex.eu. Excluding the rear trailing arm bushing, that's the one i wanted to buy as an original Honda part.
Like I said at the begining of my article, AWD beagle suspension was pretty rusty. So I dismantled it into pieces. Some bolts were seized, and heads had snapped off. It means the bolts were stuck in with no head to get it out. There was only one way how to resolve this problem...cutting. Then I put it in the press and pressed all the old bushings out.
I know one guy which has a m
I decided go with a D16Z6 swap. I bought an 250+ miles engine and did a complete rebuild.
I don't want to write about what all I did with it, I was exactly following this instruction:
http://honda-tech.com/honda-civic-del-sol-1992-2000-1/d16z6-engine-rebuild-pictures-3051143/
This article helped me a lot...
I really want to do the same thing during the winter time.
When I finished all the work on the engine, I was ready to connect it with the transmission and then put the whole car together.
First I installed the polyurethane engine mount inserts. It was pretty easy, to install them without the engine in. But I didn’t realize what a mess it can make. After the installation, I was getting a vibration on my dash and steering wheel from the engine. The stiffer mounts just transferred the movement to the chassis via the vibrations. It is not comfortable at all. If I knew it beforehand, I wouldn’t have installed them, because it is not simple to take them out with the engine in. Especially the rear firewall one. It is better to spend the money for the new stock engine and transmission mounts.
Engine in
After I installed the engine, trans, front and rear suspensions I had to think about what to do with the exhaust. It really is a problem over here. There is no car part stores that are able to get a complete exhaust. They say it’s because the Shuttle is so old, and they are not able to do the order for old cars. So one possible way on how to resolve the problem is do it myself. I have had a universal muffler which I thought could look good on the shuttle. I have had some exhaust pipes too so I just tried to make something and now I have this:
It is only a temporary solution, I needed something “now” so it was the easiest way to do it like this.
While I was doing the exhaust work, I remembered that I have the OEM trailer hitch. You never know when it could be useful.
This is the real hitch mounted to the rear side members. It is designed for 1400kg heavy trailer.
And this is how the Shuttle looked like after all that work
It was going quite good but I still had lot of work left to do on it. New paint, roof rails, the front suspension was too low and there was a weird sound from both front axles , tattered roof liner and very poor brakes. I still had lot of work before me.