Since I know no one likes reading, I'm going to try to keep my comments short. I'm an undergrad ChemE student, and decided to take a year off from school to complete an internship. As a 21-year old keen on making financially responsible decisions, I spent my first paycheck on a half-finished project car (being from NY, I couldn't say no to a 30-year-old japanese car with no rust.)
I have ZERO experience building / working on engines, though I've done a fair bit of bodywork and audio/electronics installations. So I'm learning as I go
'89 hatch with over 200k on the body. Despite that, the only rust is a small patch on the trunk floor which will be an easy fix. Can't say the wiring is in good condition though, there are bare wires poking out on the headlight harness. Going to be fixing the entire chassis harness at some point, not entirely sure how I'm going to go about that yet though.
Started off ripping out the interior to look for any rust spots hiding under the carpet. The tar sound-deadener stuff from the factory is gross as s**t, and will be coming out eventually. Got the car ripped apart when someone decided to complain to my apt complex about my "mechanical work on an automobile," so I moved the car and paused working on it. Didn't know that taking out door panels counted as mechanical work
(Yes, the car came with a fire extinguisher. Guess I wasn't the only one skeptical of the wiring
)
Finally got a space in a garage where I could pull the engine, thanks to my awesome friend. Borrowed a hoist from a coworker, and out she came. 10,000lb break-strength tow straps ftw!
Been tearing apart the engine over the past couple weekends. Started up top and worked my way down, leaving the head mostly intact.
Ran into the first problem when pulling the cams. The intake cam came out smoothly, while I had to PRY the exhaust cam out of the head. Upon further inspection, the male key that goes into the gear was cracked & bent. Looks like it's time to upgrade cams, unless I find a good deal on craigslist.
Fun fact: the purple is Clemson purple, and was done by the same guy who powdercoated Death Valley.
Next up was struggling with the ARP head studs & nuts, lots of me & the engine stand spinning around in circles while I tried to find a good point to brace from. Finally got them out, and got the head off.
Lots of caked on carbon, but the cylinder walls are quite smooth. I was feeling pretty optimistic at this point.
In my attempts to get the crank pulley bolt out I ended up turning the engine over. I was expecting to hear a knock, but it turned smoothly without any sounds. Got the girdle off, at which point it spat out one of the main bearings when turning over
Said to heck with it, and pulled the pistons out with the crank still in. Thinking that I'm going to need to borrow an impact to get that dang nut off the crank snout.
Then out came rod bearing #4:
After looking at the bearings, these were ACL bearings that originally come with a black-ish coating. So this one was quite ground up
On the plus side, all of the bearings looked much better than what I've seen when other RB's end up with rod knock. Next up is finding a good machinist in the area and taking the crank to be ground, conrods to be polished/ground, and getting oversized bearings. Planning on getting the block checked and tanked as well, since the coolant passages are fairly corroded. Depending on how all that goes, I'll eventually have the shop balance the entire rotating assembly.
Also, since I've generally seen a lot of dislike for the RB20:
No, I'm not going to scrap the 20 and get a 25. I'm a college kid. I have no intentions of buying a long block + custom drivetrain + motor mounts + wiring harness + ecu + etc etc. I've always wanted to take apart an engine, so I'm quite content rebuilding this one. Besides, I'll know exactly what was done to the engine.
and hey - so far it's just been removing lots of bolts. We'll see how much I struggle trying to put it back together 
Decided to pick that one up now, rather than waiting to see if it's possible to hone mine and source oversized bearings. Got it thru JDM Buyer, highly recommend them. They took the time to help me with the purchase, and will be combining shipping with any other parts I order before the container leaves Japan. 
