At this point the XJ was mechanically solid but in desperate need of some cosmetic work.

It was hard deciding where to draw the line in terms of what I’d work on vs what I’d leave as-is but I settled on repairing both quarter panels, and the roof as they were the worst.

With a rough idea of what it’d take to fix up the damage I decided to switch focus and tackle all the mechanical / electrical issues before diving into the bodywork.

Back in June of 2024, the night before I was due to fly out to Colorado for a work trip I couldn’t resist sifting through the Denver Craigslist to see what I could find. I wasn’t actually in the market to buy anything, but whenever I’m traveling outside of the Northeast I always like to see whats for sale in the states that don’t have to deal with road salt.

I don’t use the locks on my HF 5 drawer carts and wanted to free up some extra space so I decided to delete them. This was a fairly easy mod to do since the parts are held in by small rivets that can be drilled out.

In order to hit my power goals of 200 - 225whp, the B20V I’m building will need some mods to get there. Originally my block was a high compression B20B that had the better PHK pistons but the cylinders were out of round and had to be bored 0.5mm over (not to mention 1 piston was cracked) so I can’t use the stock internals.

Building a B20 VTEC (aka B20V) isn’t much more difficult than building a normal B20 but it can be daunting to figure out what you’ll need for parts with so many different options out there. You can do anything from slapping a VTEC head on a stock B20 block and sending it, to going all out with high comp pistons, big cams, and a bunch of headwork.

Reading CEL codes for an OBD0 Honda is easy since you don’t need to jump a service connector like the OBD1 Hondas, but you do need to find the ECU so you can count how many times the red LED in the ECU blinks.

I’ve got a growing collection of nuts and bolts and started using the 20 bin storage cases (SKU: 93928) that Harbor Freight sells to keep them all organized.

The bins work great for all my larger hardware such as some of my Honda bolts:

Working on your XJ’s suspension and need a torque spec? This list should have you covered. I grabbed all of these torque specs from the 2001 factory service manual and should apply to any year. (You may want to double check if you’ve got an older Renix XJ)

There’s only 6 capacitors in the 1988 - 1989 Integra ECU but getting to them can be a pain since the ECU is hidden underneath the passenger seat. The parts list required is as follows: