VFR800-Powered RWD 1972 Honda N600 Build Project HD

Please Subscribe to Our Channel And Follow us on Istagram - https://www.instagram.com/handbuiltcars/ ----------------------------------------------------- VFR800 Powered RWD 1972 Honda N600 Build Project There are two kinds of N600 owners – those who’ve managed to painstakingly restore Honda’s archetype hatchback down to the very last factory-approved cotter pin, and those who stuff the drive wheels out back and a bike engine up front nearly twice as big as what Honda thought the car ought to have. If there were a club for period-correct and restored N600s and their caretakers, Dean Williams would’ve been ousted from it a long time ago. Vintage revivals and things like engine swaps, non-native suspension changeovers, and a flip-flop of the little three-door’s business end all suggest that Williams’ renovation is more heresy and less purity. But the 105 hp that the motorcycle engine turns out (the N600 made as little as 36 hp) and the 127 mph that Williams will tell you that the whole thing’s capable of—whether or not it’s in flippant defiance of any classic car rulebook—says that purity’s overrated and that every cut, chop, and weld was worth it. Engine swaps don’t get any more unfamiliar than what Williams, a Central California middle-school English teacher, has drummed up, but for him this one couldn’t make any more sense. The N600, he says, was an easy choice, and is merely a sentimental stand-in for the ’72 he’d owned back in college. “Driving that car was like being in a race that no one else knew they were in,” he says about the scant three-door that, when new, sold for around a buck a pound. “You had to drive it hard to keep up, which was half the fun.” For Williams, the engine is just as logical, of which he borrowed from his own sport bike, a Honda Interceptor, the basis of which is a fuel-injected, V-4 box of aluminum with an 11.8:1 compression ratio, and that somehow fits within the N600’s recess. “I adored that bike,” Williams says, “and still feel a bit of guilt for tearing it down.” The guilt is short lived, though, and that’s mostly because its the 782cc, twin-cam engine that makes Williams’ N600 so special. It’s also what, according to Williams, was able to fit within the car’s “oddly shaped” engine bay yet still turn out the sort of power he was looking for. “The fifth-gen 800 is such a sweet little lump,” he says about the mill. “[It’s got] enough power for my needs, a flat torque curve, and an exhaust note that’ll make your soul smile.” And for the guy reading this who’s wondering why in the world he didn’t stuff something like a 240hp, six-cylinder Odyssey engine in front of the driver, Williams would like to have a word with you: “At the outset I wanted to avoid extending the nose of the car, and I wanted to leave the firewall alone, so the space available led me to the relative cube shape of the VFR platform.” He also didn’t want to end up with an overpowered, 1,500lb coffin. N600 collectors won’t be done throwing thei