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[Reginald]

I was looking at this

What I found:

Will check for voltage tomorrow

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Someone on a Honda forum pointed me to a more complete manual for my Honda Accord, which actually contained information about the interior wiring and fuse #13.

I did some editing. The area I highlighted in yellow is where I believe the problem lies. The items circled in red I have confirmed are not receiving power, while the items circled in blue are confirmed to be working. I forgot to add that the safety indicator in my car does not show when any of the doors/trunk are ajar. Now I still need to physically locate where the wires all meet and go from there.

[Reginald]

I did find some wiring diagrams for 1986-87 Honda Accord sedans like mine via repairguide.autozone.com and an online PDF of the shop manual, but both of them conveniently omit any information about the interior wiring or anything related to fuse #13 (Interior lights). From a visual perspective, I can see the door jamb switch wires snake up the pillars towards the ceiling/roof of the vehicle, but that’s it. I have to find where they all meet together and that’s likely where I’ll find the source of my problem.

I might disassemble the dome light housing to better access the wiring there, or see where it goes.

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I used a test light this morning to confirm that three of the door jamb switches are not receiving any power, while the front-passenger one is. Basically confirming what I already knew, which also means it can’t be fuse-related as none of them would be receiving power in that case.

I could really use some insight here.

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Any ideas on what step to take next?

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I checked the door jamb switch wires when swapping them out the night before (at least, as much as I could see with a flashlight), they appeared fine. I do have a test light and multimeter however, if those could be useful here.

Otherwise I checked the wiring harnesses between doors tonight. All appeared fine, only one was slightly roughed-up but otherwise non-noteworthy:

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Anyone?

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Compression test done. Zero in all four cylinders. Had a helper crank while I took off the oil filler cap and watched the cam & rocker arms do their thing as usual. I ran out of time today but I suppose I could remove the valve cover again, crank it, and watch/record all of the valve action (I can upload a video here)?

I should mention that among the many components that coolant appeared to have splashed onto, the starter was one of them. It was drenched in coolant when police and I found the car. Starter seems to be working fine though…

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[quote=”nightflyr” post=189735]If the nuts you have do not fit.
you’ll need to get a proper fitting set, DO NOT force what you have on to the studs you will damage the threads[/quote]

The hex nuts I needed were indeed metric – M10x1.50, specifically. Picked up a bag full of them and their flat washers at Home Depot. Threw those on this afternoon and they fit perfectly, got the brake booster secure. Manual says to torque them down but god help me if I can actually get a small torque wrench up in the cowl there, so I just tightened them nice & snug like I did on my old Accord a while back and that worked fine.

A few carefully-positioned blows on the pushrod with a hammer worked, it is fully seated with the brake pedal. Had some trouble getting the cotter pin back on but I figured it out (albeit unconventionally).

There was a slight scare as I had unbolted this unknown device from the steering column yesterday to access one of the bolts, and today I couldn’t get it back on at first. I’m not sure what it is, but it looks important and seems to have some function in the steering column. I did eventually get it back on correctly.

After reconnecting the vacuum lines and securing the master cylinder, I reconnected that battery and finally drove the Olds around for the first time in over a week. The new brake booster works wonderfully. No problems at all with it, my brakes are normal again. Drove around the city and stopped at a gas station to find my brake lights were stuck on (d’oh!) and that the brake pedal was a good few millimeters away from the brake light switch under the dash. Drove home and worked up a fast “ghetto” solution 😀

Yep, pennies and gorilla glue. Just enough to where the brake light switch releases normally as it did before, my brake lights work regularly again.

At the gas station (or as I joked, her “native habitat”):

Had a group of young guys come up and ask about the Olds. They seemed really into it. I don’t really like or want the attention but it’s nice to have the Olds appreciated especially by young folk (I’m 24, they seemed about my age or younger).

Thanks again! 🙂

[Reginald]

[quote=”nightflyr” post=189728]I assume these nuts ( yellow arrows ) came with the replacement unit.

My suggestion would be use the hardware that was supplied with the unit.
[/quote]
Those two nuts are for the master cylinder. It didn’t come with four nuts for cowl-side, so I’ve had to use the old ones off the old brake booster. The studs on that side are slightly smaller on the ends (which the hex nuts fit perfectly onto), but then they enlarge slightly after that (which is exactly where the hex nuts won’t go past). This makes me think I’ll need larger hex nuts than the original ones.

From the looks of it there appears to be excessive build up on the brake pedal stud.

Might try some emery paper and clean it up the apply some grease.
If that fails, and the connecting rod eye bolt is under sized, might try to file it open until it fits properly.
Considering the age of the vehicle, replacement parts may not fit as well as the originals.

I thought that build up was old grease or something, it was also on the cotter pin I removed from pedal earlier. That thing the yellow arrow is pointing to though, is actually an old washer. I’ll try your suggestion though.

Thanks for your input 🙂

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Not sure if you already knew about this but Eric himself posted a video about this very subject on his other channel:

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Finally off work today so I drained the oil out of the pan. Looking closely, I see at least two very tiny pieces of shiny metal in the oil, but it was clean otherwise. I began work on getting the drive belts off as well, but one of the bolts holding the power steering pump to its mounting bracket was apparently tightened by Godzilla (trying to loosen it with my 14mm wrench lifts the entire engine up) so give me more time on that one.

They really never wanted me to drop the oil pan, it seems. There is just so much in the way (exhaust pipe, crossmember) and some of the bolts appear impossible to get to. I’m contemplating just paying the shop $500 to do it…

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Interesting development today.

As I was looking for more of the bolts holding on the lower timing cover, this odd sight jumped out at me:

Yes, that is a huge rip in the lower timing cover, exactly over where the oil pump is (which I don’t remember seeing before). Not only that, but looking down in there with a flashlight – you see those teeth? That’s the oil pump pulley with the timing belt wrapped around it. Something looked really weird about it though – the oil pump pulley is not flat against the block, it’s crooked and partially sticking out of the hole in the timing cover!

Thinking about this for a good while tonight. One possible scenario as to what happened was the oil pump somehow either broke down internally or became dislodged from the block while travelling at high speeds, immediately cutting that crescent-shaped hole in the timing cover when it fell out. But how did the timing belt itself not get totally shredded when that happened? It would explain the extra slack in the timing belt, however. The oil pump pulley is no longer keeping the belt as tight from that end.

What do you guys think? The lower timing cover is very complicated to remove on this engine so it might still be a while before I’m finished…

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^ Ah thank you. I believe that channel has a video that helped me replace a column switch on my Accord a few months ago as well.

At it again today – checked those bearing caps and none of them had play. I was removing the timing cover(s) today and noticed that the timing belt was rather loose. I was able to just slide the belt off the cam gear with my finger (I didn’t slide it all the way off). Has a lot of slack in it – it wasn’t like that last time I checked a couple of weeks ago.

I didn’t finish removing the lower timing cover as the final bolt that holds it on is hidden behind a large drive belt pulley, I have to figure out how to go about removing it.

I bought an Irwin bolt extractor today and it works, I was able to turn the rounded-off oil pan drain plug (but I left it on because I the new plug hasn’t arrived in the mail yet).

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Just out of curiosity (and it can’t hurt), I pulled the valve cover off today and poked around for damage around the rocker arm assembly. I originally wanted to drain the oil out of the oil pan today (and eventually drop the pan), but the oil pan drain plug is completely rounded off and I can’t get it off until I get a special tool. I’ve already ordered another drain plug from RockAuto. But in the meantime…

I tugged around at each of the rocker arms for play. Some of them had a little play (not side-to-side but up-and-down). I took a picture and matched it up with the rocker arm assembly diagram in my service manual.

I outlined the rocker arms that had play. The exhaust valve on cylinder no. 1 had the most play, it would tap loudly when I moved it back and fourth. It hadn’t occurred to me to check the bearing caps for play, I’ll do that tomorrow.

Just want to know what you guys think if any of you are familiar with inspecting the top ends of engines.

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