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| When the E300 was released, the employees were invited to send in ideas for the generator's application and newspaper ad. The most outstanding entries were published in the Honda company Newsletter (No. 116, issued in April 1966). |
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Koyama endured considerable hardship in the E300 project, since he was already busy with his commitments to the union. He simply was not able to devote all his time to the product's development. Therefore, even though he had managed to complete the drawings, he had no idea how a prototype could be built. The employees involved in prototype construction, though, were to prove invaluable in that regard.
The fact that he was doing all the work himself meant that Koyama often encountered difficulties in the transformation from design to prototype. The occasional error in calculated values or drawing specifications meant that much of the work had to be redone. For example, a craftsman, an expert in wooden pattern crafting, encountered a crankcase draft angle of 1/50, which Koyama had specified in his drawing. The expert immediately pointed the discrepancy out to his colleague, saying they could never make a sand model casting with that angle. However, when Koyama argued against the expert advice based on what he would later describe as "youthful folly or an amateurish idea," it only infuriated the veteran. "You don't know anything about casting," he shouted, and proceeded to spend an entire day correcting just about everything in the drawing. He even took it upon himself to teach Koyama the theories of casting and specification methods on design drawings using wooden patterns.
It was thus an emotional moment when Koyama, with prototype engine completed, took the unit to the bench and submitted it for performance testing.
"I still remember the excitement I felt when the engine was fired up," recalled Koyama.
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