First Edition January 2008

Check out what happening at the forum.

        From Randy and the all the Staff at 1stgenhonda.com

Welcome to the e-mail newsletter of the new 1stgenhonda.com! We appreciate your loyalty and your patience during these past few months as we have ported, polished, and refurbished this classic site for Honda car lovers everywhere. We invite you to check out our revamped portal page at Portal where you will find a host of new features, content, archives and parts look up, as well as a couple of old familiar features brought to the forefront.

In this issue we share our mission: what we hope to accomplish and how you are part of it. We also introduce you to some of the exciting new features you’ll find on 1stgenhonda.com. We hope you enjoy the new features – send us your feedback, we’d love to hear from you! 

In this issue:

Our Mission & How You Are Part of It
1stgenhonda.com Classifieds: Bigger, Badder, Better Than Ever!
The Photo Gallery
The Garage
Enthusiasts, Hobbyists and Collector Story Submissions
New Products and Services
Tech Tip: Loose mirror repair
Attention Car Club Members

*A worldly community you can come to on a daily basis to chat and interact with fellow enthusiasts.

*A portal where you can link to a wide variety of products, services and information from across the world wide web that are geared to meet your daily needs.

*An information source for the news you can use, from tech tips and value information for those restoring, the people and places for the general car enthusiast.

*A showcase to celebrate in words and video, pictures, all that is great about classic Honda cars!

Down the road we plan to add more new features and services to make 1stgenhonda.com an even more indispensable part of your life. To accomplish this we need your support. Here are three things you can do:

1) Support our advertisers. We’ve gone to great lengths to bring in reputable advertisers and sponsors that provide the very best products and services for classic Honda car enthusiasts. If you have a need for any of the goods and services featured on 1stgenhonda.com, please support us by supporting our advertisers. You’ll get great products and services, and in the end what goes around comes around, and through using our advertisers you’ll also be supporting our site, which will allow us to make the site even better for you!

2) Let us know what features, products or services you would like to see on 1stgenhonda.com in the future. To contact us just send an email to: webmaster@1stgenhonda.com We also have an easy way for you to submit stories and pictures of your Honda car project, automotive history and personal accounts. Go to our  Articles area at Articles or email in your submissions and get published online today!!!

3) Participate in our Tip and Tricks knowledge base, get your tip published and seen. Comment and help build a better resource that you can take price in helping to build.
Share your knowledge

Many have asked us for features like chats, window stickers and other content. This kind of technology, programming and content costs money. To meet these needs we’ve set up an area on the site, Site Store where you can donate to 1stgenhonda.com with through Pay Pal. Donations will go into a special fund that will be used for technological improvements, new features and general maintenance of the website. 1stgenhonda.com is now run much like many car clubs are, on a limited staff and budget. Any donation is therefore appreciated and will come back to you in the form of a better community and better enthusiast services. Free Classified Ads are back at 1stgenhonda.com! Check out the best online classifieds section on the forum. The Classifieds offer the high quality photo ads and preformatted fields for information. Every ad submitted is personally reviewed by members logging in on a daily basis on the Portal. This attention to detail weeds out the junk and incomplete info you see in many other ads. There are no gimmicks here, only high quality ads. Plus your ad stays up until it’s sold! Learn more by going to: The new Honda classic car classifieds

One of our most requested features, the Photo Gallery allows you to post photos of your favourite classic vehicle for the world to see! Get feedback on your photos, send any photo in the gallery as an e-card, view photos of classics from around the world. It’s all here and it’s all yours exclusively on 1stgenhonda.com!

Features include:

full multimedia support
search feature;
random picture;
user management (private galleries, groups);
caption, title, description and user defined fields for each picture (searchable);
Multi-lingual:
member comments;
e-card feature;
slideshow viewer;
user membership in multiple groups;
multi-pic upload;
picture-resize on upload;
forum integrated with one user id;
easily link images to forums or your blog

what is the  Garage? It is a discussion forum feature that allows members to store information about there vehicle.

Mods, Type, Purchased From, Installed By, Description, Ratings, Insurance, Premiums, Quarter mile Times, Dyno Runs, You can also keep track of your expenses.

Add your vehicle to the garage

1972 Civic Submarine Test

FROM: Earle Horton
SUBJECT: Re: Expedition engines can ingest Water Spray
DATE: 22 Nov 1998 02:10:13 GMT
ORGANIZATION: AT&T WorldNet Services
NEWSGROUPS: rec.autos.4x4

A lot depends on engine design. Some engines will bend a connecting rod, while others will crack or break the cylinder walls. Others will simply stop running once driven into water, but work fine if drained and refilled with lubricant.

I drove a 1972 Honda Civic into a pond once. I think the year was 1976. The car was totally immersed. Then Bernie and I got the dump truck, pulled the car out, drained the water out of the oil, popped out the windshield, and tried it again. We had so much fun we went back into town and got Ralph.

Ralph is about 6'4", Bernie is about the same, and I am a mere six footer. We induced Ralph to get in the middle of the front seat by offering him beer. We drove around the Montague flats a while to give Ralph a false sense of security, then took off up the power line right of way. About a half mile up, a right turn leads to an embankment that straightens out and leads down into the pond. The last two hundred yards or so is a straight shot into the pond.

About half way down, Ralph realized what Bernie and I had planned. Ralph is strong, but the beer had slowed him down and Bernie and I had the doors locked and were securely belted in. About the only way out for Ralph was the windshield opening, and he went for it. The created a very large disturbance in the front seat area of the Civic, to say the least.

Luckily, there wasn't enough time for Ralph to escape. As the Civic entered the pond, a wave of water which looked to our beer soaked minds like a tidal wave crashed in over the hood and we took Ralph for a short but memorable submarine ride.

A group of local hippies was on the other side of the pond smoking dope. One of them laughed so hard he fell down, but wasn't hurt. As we were standing on the roof of the Honda, we realized that the portable winch and (more serious) the beer, were in the back seat of the car. Bernie, ever the gentleman, headed under water to fetch the necessaries for pulling the car out. Not a single bottle of beer was lost. The Honda was good for two more immersions before the motor gave out.

My wife keeps in touch with Bernie's wife. He drives a bus for musical groups on tour and has put four children through college. I left the commune, went to college, and wound up programming computers for Big Bad Microsoft. I had to retire from that because it gave me enough money to afford lots of toys but not enough time to enjoy them properly. I don't know what became of Ralph, but I am sure he hasn't forgotten our little ride into the pond.

I don't do much off road driving now. It tends to tear up the environment and annoys wild life and hikers. If you see mud on my tires, it comes from the parking lot at the trail head. I leave it on because I like to tell myself I am impressing people who have to work for a living.

 Features added late summer to fall 2007

Blog
Easily enabling members to publish on the web.
We add themes regularly based on user requests
Spell-check, Previews, Auto save, Words, Photos, Videos
Create web pages. For example, you could add an “about me” page, and a link to that page would be automatically added to your sidebar. You can even create an entire web site using pages

Advanced Links
Submit links with banners
Links bar on forum and Portal

Events Calendar
My Favourite, keep track of up coming events on a yearly calendar.
Next 5 current events listed on Portal

Downloads
Spell checker, fonts and image resizes tool, Free Parts Cross Reference

Articles
Members can submit articles on how to’s or Honda related articles

Improvements on Forum
Country Flags in members profile, viewed in forum posts.
Signature Editor/Preview (cool tool make it easier to make a signature)
Sub forums/Forum as link (trickery) Finally a way to de-clutter the main page of the forum

BBCodes
Url code changed to make it easier to enter links
Utube
Movie & QuickTime
Left and Right IMG tags
Google Search BBCode
And many more.

-Tape any areas around the mirror base that you don't want to scratch up. Tape off the mirror glass to aid your work and protect the glass. Some glass tools are available from auto glass or auto paint stores, such as a plastic trim tool that make the job a little easier. A decent tool can be made from the strips that run the length of the original wiper inserts, by wrapping some tape around one end as a handle and trimming to length. Working on a bench that has a folded towel on it makes a "safe" surface.

-Remove mirror from base, this can be done with the mirror attached but its very frustrating.

-Warm the mirror; by now all of the plastic is brittle we just have to work with it. a hair dryer, oven, on the dash on a warm day...

-Start at the top of the mirror, away from the Day/Night toggle if equipped.

-Using a plastic tool if available, or a small flat screwdriver, or the steel strip from the old set of wiper blades... work the tool in the small space between the mirror body and the bezel that goes around the glass.

-Slowly work your way around prying the bezel up away from the mirror housing, if the angle of the bezel starts to get too tight, "bends too much" try going around a corner and working back to it. Remember to just pry so that you are lifting the bezel, creating a gap between the bezel and the mirror body.

-Once the bezel is lifted you can start the same procedure, at the same starting place, prying the bezel outward from the center of the glass. The bezel is "snapped" onto the housing in 2 directions and as you begin to work the bezel outward you will see that it starts to come off more easily, so work over a soft surface.

-If the glass does not just fall out when the housing is turned over, you can use the mount arm to lightly help push it out from inside.

-Okay you should now have 5 pieces in front of you, Mirror arm, mirror housing, bezel, glass and a little piece of broken plastic. Take a couple minutes to see how it all fits together, and where that extra piece broke off.

-Inside the housing on the mounting block you should see the tension arm and screw, remove the screw and the tension arm.

-The end of the tension arm away from the screw that used to fit under the broken portion of the block has a little bend at the end, notice the shape, maybe even trace it to a piece of paper.

-You will need either a vice and a pair of pliers or just a couple pairs of pliers. Holding the tension arm close to the end that is bent you need to bend the tension arm so that the bend will now fit down into the space where the piece broke away from the mounting block.

-Bend a little at a time, it is spring steel. You want to bend it so that when you place it back into place and just start the screw, the tension arm is about midway up the threads. this will give you "good" tension. I have made a few that I added a bit more tension and was fine, but I have seen it overdone and the results were a hard to adjust mirror, and more stress on the mirror arm mount, and they are too easy to break as it is.

-Good time to clean, paint or burnish any of the parts that need it.

-Okay, time to assemble. Put a dab of lubricant on the mirror arm at the ball end where the tension arm will ride, petroleum jelly is fine in this climate, yours may require Silicone lube, you should know by the condition of the interior plastics.

-Put the ball joint in place, and secure the tension arm over it with the screw. A dab (small) of lock-tite is not a bad idea.

-Place the glass back into the mirror housing.

-A very light film of lube on the inside of the bezel usually works well at this point. Place the bezel back over the mirror housing and start to snap into place in the longer sides first.

-Remember that the bezel snaps in place from 2 directions, try to work your way around in one direction before seating it in the other direction. It is not always so easy, sometimes it just wants to fall back into place, others you will have to work around it 3-4 times.

-You should now have a complete mirror assembly!

-Reattach to the mount and wipe up the fingerprints... remove any tape that was in place and adjust, that's it!

-I have only run across 1-2 that were not repairable and one was due to someone being there before I got it and there was a time issue.

If it all fails just remember the words of the immortal Raul Julia in Gumball Rally...
"What is behind me, is not important!"

-Good luck; Bill

 If you belong to a local car club, then be sure to tell your fellow club members about 1stgenhonda.com! 1stgenhonda.com is a great place for club members to come online and chat on a regular basis. We offer free hosting to car clubs and other services like providing a way for clubs to sell their goods and services online. We can also put up a special message board for your club! or Region, Having your club and be an active participant at 1stgenhonda.com provides not only a way to bring your club members together, it can also help grow your club. Have your Club President or Membership Chairperson, contact us at webmaster@1stgenhonda.com to find out how we can help your club to grow and prosper

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