fuel

Americans get confused/love the RHD's - every time I drive the wagon through the states I get lots of stares, waves and thumbs ups etc. Most just can't comprehend that you could possibly be operating the vehicle from the other side of the car haha.

damn that's disappointing - it was a pretty tidy & solid car when I last saw it 15 years ago

so what happened to it?

With just two days to go before I had to leave NZ to head back to Canada, I was able to shoot over to Rotorua from Taumarunui where a BNT had a reputable Dayco branded auto tensioner on the shelf on clearance. I was headed to Taupo on that day to see family for lunch so the extra 2 hour round trip from Taupo wasn't too bad at all. I slapped it back together cleaning up the damaged lower timing cover because the brand new replacement from Amayama that should have arrived mid-Jan was nowhere to be seen. And as luck would have it, just three days after I left this turned up on the front doorstep

So kinda forgot to update this before I left NZ end of Jan. Shortly after the last post I slapped the cleaned out sump back on, filled with oil and fired it up with the covers and ancillary belts still off so I could inspect everything: The tapping noise is just a hydraulic lash adjuster because I was too lazy to individually bleed all 24 of them before reassembling the cylinder heads. The noise went away after a few minutes of idling once warmed up. I did have an issue with the timing belt auto tensioner however - and I'm not sure if it was part due to being a crappy $20 china part from Rockauto or installation error on my part. I do want to preface this and say while I myself have never experienced an auto tensioner failure up until this point with any of my Mitsu engines (be it 4G63's or 6G72's), plenty of folk mainly in the US where the 3000GT is a bit more popular have had issues with the auto tensioners failing taking out the timing. I wanted to somewhat mitigate the possibility of a timing belt auto tensioner failing by inserting a small plastic puck you can buy from Volvo on the tensioner rod which in theory would prevent the arm from slackening off fully if the tensioner rod were to retract fully. However what ended up happening was the tensioner arm fully rested up against the puck at all times causing the tension on the belt to be a bit on the tight side. I slackened off the tensioner just a little bit however this had the effect of the rod extending a little further and the auto tensioner no longer seemed to be doing any tensioning at all, as seen here:

Evo X turbo wont bolt in place where a IV-IX turbo was and vice versa. The X turbo orientation is actually the same as the earlier VR-4 and Evo1-3 turbo because the turbo sits at the back of the engine on the firewall side while retaining inlet pointing at passenger side. The IX turbo is really good though - the 10.5T exhaust flows plenty (Evo X is larger at 12T in comparison). There are a some different compressor wheel and shaft configs for the IX turbo though which you should probably be aware of. No doubt most of the IX turbos available in NZ will be JDM variants which have a Magnesium compressor wheel that tends to shatter when running higher boost than stock. The options are: TD05HR-16G6C-10.5T - USDM (regardless if MR, GSR or RS) TD05HRA-16G6C-10.5T - JDM (maybe GT model?) TD05HRA-16G6mC-10.5T - JDM RS model TD05HRA-155G6mC-10.5T - JDM MR RS model TD05HRA-155G6C-10.5T - JDM MR GSR model HR just means Reverse orientation (ie Evo IV to IX) HRA is Titanium Alloy shaft/turbine m in compressor part number means Magnesium alloy I have the USDM TD05HR-16G6C-10.5T without the fancy TiAl and MgAl parts but it means I can push through 25+psi without it flying to bits. Full boost comes on fairly strong at ~3000rpm and keeps pulling almost to the red line. The X compressor wheel is a 152G6 which helps with quicker spool and doesn't seem to be impact the top end too much. The JDM IX MR and even VI TME RS use the smaller 15G based compressor wheel and they are still putting out the same power as their 16G counterparts just with better response. I have a 20G compressor wheel and slightly back cut turbine wheel in my VR-4's stock TD05H-16G-7T frame and it was only ever so slightly laggier than the stock big16G with full boost coming in strong around 3500rpm and pulling until the red line. If I were to do a turbo change I would use a twin scroll X turbo with a custom manifold - much better response and would still be able to flow just as much.

Amayama have become so bad lately. I placed an order for a new lower timing cover for the GTO before Xmas and they said it would arrive mid Jan which was fine because I was still in NZ until end of Jan. Come end of Jan it was nowhere to be seen and Amayama were just flat out ignoring my requests for them to look into it and just kept copy/pasting "expected delivery is Jan 16" despite them sending that message on Jan 24 and again on Jan 27. I also had another order I placed same time for some engine mounts to be delivered to my friends in LA as I was stopping over in LA end of Jan on my way back to Toronto. To their credit the parts went from Japan to California basically overnight.. only to be lost by UPS as soon as they hit the US. It took them two weeks of me pestering them to look into it before they advised me to visit my local post office and see if they were there. UPS has nothing to do with USPS. I ended up getting a refund and had to place the order again for the parts to arrive direct to Canada (with extra customs duties added). I had such a great run with them the last few years but they just turned to shit recently. Someone put me onto www.tosshin.com and their prices are even better than Amayama but they don't tell you the shipping cost until everything has arrived to them, but have been assured they are more than reasonable. I placed an order with them a couple weeks ago but they haven't even bothered to update anything and let me know how it's progressing. I don't want to use Megazip or Partsouq cause their prices aren't great and Partsouq sends everything from their UAE warehouse at a larger cost and time to get here.

you sneaky guy haha. well done

those GTO sumitomo's wont bolt up to that knuckle, you'll need an adapter bracket. the 'small' GTO brakes are 295x30mm while the 'large' GTO brakes are 315x30mm. You could use the prefacelift 96-97 8G Galant/Legnum VR-4 calipers with 294x26mm Grandis/Outlander rotors and that will be bolt on. The 380 uses 294x28mm rotors and chunkier calipers but they wont bolt to your knuckle assembly either.

Now featuring both heads. I accidentally dropped the 10mm hex part of the tool to tighten up the head bolts into the rear cylinder head, which conveniently found its way through the perfectly sized oil drain hole down to the sump. D'oh. Magnetic tool wouldn't pick it up, so off came the sump. The sump has been off before at some point, so will be a bit happier about cleaning up the excess sealant and resealing it properly, not that it seemed to be leaking before. I did find four of the rocker arm needle bearings which is good, but brings the total of needle bearings found up to 40 now. Three rocker arms were destroyed letting their needle bearings escape, and the small issue is that 40 doesn't divide by three cleanly so there must be another two needle bearings floating around somewhere. The good news is they are larger than the sump pickup mesh strainer, so I'm not too concerned about them being ingested into the oil filter. The oil did seem free from metallic sparkle which is reassuring, I'm not sure if I'm going to bother dropping a big end or the mains girdle to check bearing condition or not. Belt on and all timed up - somehow got it bang on first try which was nice - usually with these quad cam V6's I have to attempt at least two or three times to get it good. Not too much left to do before it's running now.

max ugga duggas on the rattle gun and she'll be right

Cylinder heads cleaned up, bent valves removed and new valves fitted. My first time lapping valves so I was worried it wasn't going to work out. But eventually sped up the process by fitting the valve lapping tool into a drill at low speed. I did one pass with coarse paste followed up by a fine paste and the end result was valve to seat contact patches all within spec. Phew. And they seemed to hold fluid just fine I guess the real test is when they're back on the engine and running. Am getting half way there though

Slowly plugging away at this - cleaned up the block deck surfaces and fitted new water pump, crank oil seal, tensioner & idler Some of the new parts ready to go - am still waiting on the lower timing cover to arrive from Japan. Amayama are doing their best to ghost me with no updates despite an another order placed after the timing cover order arrived already.

Hopefully that valve guide is OK and not tweaked also. Might be worthwhile grabbing a spare pair of heads while they're still cheap and plentiful in case this is a recurring theme. Am kinda regretting not hanging onto a pair of heads from the $100 donor GTO engine I torn down years ago for my current GTO that bent all the valves. I got lucky that it was just bent valves and a few damaged rocker arms, but if I had to start replacing springs, valve guides and seats etc it starts to become uneconomical to repair and just better off with replacement heads. Hopefully head gaskets are cheap and easy to come by for these engines?

yeah the Airtrek, Evo IV, later Galant/Legnum VR-4 and anything that uses that rotor has the ABS sensor reading off a done wheel on the CV axle shaft, while my Diamantes and earlier Galant VR-4 have the tone ring attached to the back of the hub flange and the ABS sensor sitting outside of that. The weird thing is the turbo JDM CU2W Airtrek has the smaller 276mm rotors whereas the poverty spec USDM 2.4L SOHC N/A 2005-2006 of that same generation has the larger 294mm rotors. I think the caliper carrier brackets from the pre-facelift 8G Galant/Legnum VR-4 are the same too, but for me it was easier to grab a pair of the USDM Outlander ones from a junkyard I was visiting in Toronto.