Well, my busted up 4g63t is all but out at this point.  The alternator, power steering pump, AC compressor, cylinder head, starter, and rad are all out, all that remains in the car is the block, transmission and a few wires and hoses.  I pulled the cam shafts, rockers and lifters out of the head and set those aside as they will be making their way to ebay.  The cylinder head will probably go to a recycler since it has some stripped out holes, one of which being a spark plug tunnel so it's pretty much junk.  I'm going to try to get around to pulling the valves as those are still good.  The alternator is probably going in to Auto Zone or O'Reilly's so they can sell it to a refurbisher, it's so gummed up with engine grease that there's no way that'll sell on ebay.  I cleaned off the starter, I'm going to be cleaning off the AC compressor and power steering pump, those will all go on ebay probably.  The only one I might hold on to would the starter, it could be handy to have.  Of course I'm waiting on all of these until after my new engine arrives so I can replace anything that might be broken or showing age. 

The good news is that the pistons are not cracked, though it is obvious that the block was reconditioned once as there are marks on the cylinder walls from when it was honed, also cylinder 2 is way over bore with a stock piston in it, there's one hell of a gap between the piston and the cylinder, luckily the piston rings held up.  No signs of cylinder damage so the block is still good so far as I can tell.  I'll know for sure once we pull it out and check the crank.  I'm pretty sure I was starting to see some failing bearings but it wasn't driven much once it started so the block should still be fine.  The rods weren't hitting the block so they might still be good.  I got off easy.

Keep an eye out on ebay for my:

valve cover

cam shafts with lifters and caps

block with or without pisons, not sure.

power steering pump

ac compressor.

Trash:

Alternator basically

cylinder head

all wheel drive tranny

There will be pictures, I'm borrowing Sai12's camera so I can put stuff on ebay, I'll put some up here possibly tomorrow if I have time.

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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.

Tags: DSM Engine Transmission Swap First Gen Turbo All Wheel Drive Sex

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Where the Talon AWD drivetrain swap stands now;

Engine and transmission still not ordered, waiting on funds.  I'm focusing instead of pulling out the old to make way for the new.  So far the Oil is drained.  The transmission drained itself so I don't have to worry about that.  The air intake system is removed, leaving only the turbo outlet and intercooler in place.  Within the week I hope to have all the fluids removed so I can start pulling the engine and transmission out in pieces rather than renting an engine crane with nowhere to put the engine once it's out.  I'll just pull it out in chunks that can be carried into  my house where I can work on prepping them for a rebuild.  By the end of the month it'd be nice to have everything out so I can give the engine bay a good once over.

Tags: DSM Engine Transmission Swap First Gen Turbo All Wheel Drive

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So since I'm doing some major repair on my DSM I am trying to decide where I should go next with it.  It is the All Wheel Drive variant, normally with 185 hp since it is an automatic variant, however the new motor is coming out of the Galant VR4 with the 16G turbo and hopefully yellow-top injectors, meaning 210 hp if I swap in a high flow fuel pump and the Galant VR4 ECU.  Now I can go two ways with it, show or performance.  I'm leaning towards performance but I still want it to look unique.  The only mods I have planned out are all middle-of-the-road and generally weight-saving measures; Carbon fiber hood and lift gate, rear seat and rear carpet delete, roll cage, 1.5" lowering springs with rear camber kit, racing seats and 4-point harnesses.  No performance mods as far as the engine and transmission are concerned really.  Where do you readers think I should take it?  Do you want to see some performance mods or should I build a car to take to shows and act as a leaning post for scandily clad females? 

Tags: DSM Repair Rebuild

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Right now I'm pretty glad that I decided to try to find an engine with transmission to throw into my Talon instead of just a long block. The other day I drove my Topaz home from work and parked in front of the Talon sitting dead in my driveway, I look underneath and I see a puddle under the car. I assumed my ghetto JBWeld oil seal around the oil return line from the turbo gave way, decided I would drain the oil as soon as the weather wasn't all shitty to avoid making too big of a mess.

A couple of days later I'm crawling underneath the car and discover that indeed my JBWeld seal was starting to give out, but the gigantic puddle under the car was not a result of it.  Instead the seal between the transmission and the transfer case/center diff housing gave out and the car was dumping transmission fluid everywhere.  I only had one catch can and no empty oil jugs to empty the catch can out so I opted to just drain the oil, pull the battery while I was at it, and just throw down a large cardboard box to catch and hopefully soak up the Autotrans oil.  Once I have a few more buckets for the various fluids that need to be removed I'm going to start pulling that engine and transmission out to make light work of the whole swap once the new drivetrain arrives.  There will be photos.

Tags: DSM Repair Rebuild

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This is sort of the second installment of my DSM repair bit, I thought I'd fill you guys in a bit more.  As I mentioned before, when my girlfriend(Sai12 on here)'s brother owned the Eagle Talon the used turbocharger we put it blew pretty spectacularily.  When I pulled it out it was so bad, shaftplay doesn't even cut it, it was far beyond what shaftplay would define.  The impeller wiggled around so much that the fins had been smacking into the compressor housing and had shattered into little tiny bits that I can only assume got sucked into the engine.  When I had the turbocharger out I took it apart and noticed that instead of two bearing in the bearing housing there was only one.  Most of the bearing was in the form of copper powder floating around in the oil. We showed up on a Saturday and pulled the turbo out, on Sunday I had it running again after a full turbo swap, radiator flush, oil change, and ghetto repair job of a stripped out oil return fitting using a whole tube of QuckSteel to seal around a leaky oil line.  Very obviously only meant to be a temporary fix but I didn't have time to pull out the oil pan and rethread the holes, so I opted to spend the extra $150 to later replace the oil pan and oil line that were now cemented together, packed up, and headed out for I had to work the next day.

With that said, I have a sneaky suspicion that a solid chunk of the bearing was either lodged in the oil line and got pushed out, or it was hanging out in the sump and is now free because I hear what sounds like rattling coming from down below in the oil pan/crank area.  It rattles at idle and roars under power, triggering the knock sensor, flashing the oil light, and shaking the whole car.  That sounds like far more than a little piece of bearing could be doing so I'm going out on a limb by assuming that some other factors are coming into play, eating up my engine.  That is why I opted for an engine swap.  I'm hunting for a full turn-key drivetrain with engine, five-speed all wheel drive transmission (the car is AWD and I'm keeping it that way) with all of the accessories and sensors.  All of the problems this car has are under the hood: Idle Speed Controller, Worn out Power Steering Pump, Old Alternator, Bottom End Knock, Ghetto Oil leak repair, so getting a full system would insure that I get a lower mileage engine, a lower milage transmission (the current one has 157000 miles), a newer oil pan that hopefully isn't stripped out, hopefully newer accessories and a functioning Idle Speed Controller, and if I went JDM a more powerful engine than anything offered in the US.   Once that's swapped in I'll just rebuild the six-bolt that's in there and sell it.

I'm looking to keep it around $1500, not the nicest or lowest of miles at that price, but hopefully a nice platform to work from.  The candidates are picked out, just waiting for the money to come around, I'll keep you posted.

Tags: DSM Drivetrain Replacement All Of My Problems Lie Under The Hood

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My beloved 1Gb DSM is sitting dead in my driveway, much to my displeasure.  That car has a long history of unloving owners and now I'm the one dealing with the effects.

Brief history on the beast:

The car itself is a 1993.  Those familiar with DSMs will recognize this as the first full production year with the 7-bolt motor, a motor infamous for crankwalk.  My girlfriend bought the car in 2006 from a guy named Robby, who bought it from his sister.  Sometime during their posession of it the engine apparently spun a rod bearing, at least that was according to the invoice from when the motor was replaced.  They took it to a DSM 'specialist' who knew enough to swap in a 6-bolt shortblock, however they went really cheap and didn't do all of their homework as the car still had the 7-bolt valvetrain with the more restrictive ports.  Plus they put in a used shortblock without rebuilding it first, who knows what condition those bearings or rings were in.

Anyway, she sold the car to her brother, who blew the turbo, after which the car sat until I bought it from him.  I did a turbo swap in the street and drove it home the next day.   Driving it around last month ended tragically with the knock sensor triggering every time you step on the gas, as well as terrible rattling sound.  I haven't compression tested it yet so I don't known if it is a cracked piston, bad rod, bearing, or perhaps a chunk of the turbo bearing coming back to haunt the car, but this time around that car is getting some proper treatment.  Rebuilt long block with a few fresh sensors and accessories are in the near future.  While the engine's out I'm very tempted to swap out the automatic AWD transmission for a 5-speed, we'll see how money goes.

At the moment I'm driving a Mercury Topaz (same as Ford Tempo for those unfamiliar) that I need to give back to my parents by the end of May as their second car just recently blew up on the highway.  Now just have to order the engine and hope the seller isn't a douche by taking to long to ship.  She's a work in progress, but'll be one hell of a street light racer when it's done.

Once the engine is done, tasteful mods shall follow.

Tags: DSM Drivetrain Rebuild Replacement

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