Today when I was out working on the Talon I started hearing noises from the apartment building next to my house.  After a while longer i started hearing orgasmic screams and loads of moaning from said apartment building.  What has just happened was a mixing of the two greatest things in existence; cars and sex.  It was like listening to a porno while putting in wrenchtime, I really don't think they realized their windows were open.  Haha oh well, made the wrenching that much more enjoyable, no doubt they were having fun too.

Anyway, the good ole 4g63 is half apart now. Since my last post I have disconnected all of the electrical components for both engine and transmission, marking them all so I know where they go.  On top of that nearly all of the vacuum lines have been disconnected and marked, leaving the ones that I either don't know what they are or don't know what they're connected to just in case they don't have to come out at all.  The valve cover is off, throttle cable disconnected, today I pulled out the fuel rail, injectors, and ignition coil. I have found a few problems with the engine and the sort of job that the shop who rebuilt that engine in the first place did.  First of all there are several holes in the cylinder head that have been stripped out.  I know of at least two for the exhaust manifold and one for the valve cover, so that cylinder head is useless.  Also there is supposed to be a bracket supporting the intake manifold that connects between the manifold and the engine block.  That bracket is in the engine back, however it wasn't bolted to anything, it's held in by vacuum lines and a wiring harness that wasn't connected to anything to begin with (I think it's for my oil pressure gauge, which didn't work probably because it wasn't connected).

I also discovered some signs of mechanical troubles.  On the timing belt for example there are nicks in the belt spaced approximately an inch apart going all the way around the belt opposite from the toothed side, telling me that I probably have a spun bearing explaining the knock.  Also the ignition coil showed signs of arching, explaining my missfiring.  I don't have the right bit to get the cylinder head off so that's going to wait, I'm now just waiting for a large enough bucket so I can drain the coolant and get the radiator and turbo off and set aside.  I need to figure out how I'm going to get to the bolts for the intake manifold too.

Reusable parts so far that I can tell:

valve cover

cams

valves

fuel delivery system

exhaust manifold

turbo

radiator

intake manifold

transfer case

Dead pieces:

timing belt

transmission

ignition coil

idle speed controller

Maybe next time I'll hire some strippers while I'm working on the car, see if I can outdo this last time.