Popular Post tomble Posted December 7, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 7, 2020 Background I'm a beginner to this whole thang, with nothing more than YT and a strong desire to use power tools to make something shiny and cool again. Half a year ago if someone told me in the future I'd be working on restoring a car... I'd either not believe them, or ask them for lotto numbers. Yet here I am. I saw this float on and off trademe for a few months before snaffling it up with an eye towards full or mostly-full restoration, then going where the wind takes us from there. I adore the look of these machines and the idea of breathing life into a sad old car really appeals to me for some reason - this thing already has a soul, and a much stronger connection than some rando import, and I've never driven it. So what is it? A 1983 Mitsubishi Starion GSR-X, automatic, top trim, all-original (what's left of it anyway), with a 2.0 G63B turbo engine. It was** driven into a garage 15~ years ago and the distributor and battery removed before the previous owner bought it to restore with his son. He didn't do anything more than turn the drive shaft and wipe the gunk from the ID plate before his son lost interest and it sat in his garage for another year. Then we bought it. My partner and I (which in practice so far means mostly me) plan to restore it slowly over the coming years as time and money permit. I'll just use 'I' going forward to make it easier. The state of it Here's a pre-anything walk-around. It has a lot of missing or broken stuff. The interior is in a right state with absolutely munted carpets (found some old KFC bones under a seat), super-dehydrated leather, tiny bits of missing trim, sun-bleached buttons etc. Fortunately some really important stuff is OK like the dashboard but the pluses are few and far between inside. Maybe most importantly, it doesn't smell. I suspect time is to blame for that (see chicken bones, full ash tray, evidence of mold, etc) The exterior is much the same, with surface rust spots, dents, minor collision damage in one corner, some broken or missing trim pieces, non-functioning boot latches, saggy bumper plastic, distressed window trim, missing driver's wing mirror (only had the one) and incredible amounts of bog. The engine has a couple hundred thousand km's on it and seems OK I guess. A couple of hoses could use replacing but nothing serious. The vacuum lines have had someone monkey with them at some point which is going to be a PITA to figure out - but I guess I didn't know what a vacuum line was a couple months ago so once again, patience and time. It seems like everything else is basically intact - most emissions stuff, A/C seems ok (can't test it yet obvs). It arrived with oil well-below the 'low' mark but the oil itself looks fine. The cooling system is 95% brown 5% water. There's evidence that some oil gaskets probably need replacing. Fine, fine. What isn't fine? Plenty, but I'll start with the biggest issue. They took the distributor out and put it on the passenger floor. Okay, whatever, google can help me fix. The problem: it's not the original distributor. There's no vacuum advance on it, I don't think it is for a turbo engine, and most importantly I have no idea where the connector hooks up to the wiring harness. I learned from a young age that square pegs don't go in round holes and I haven't found a square peg quite like the one on the dizzy. Okay, fine, google can help right? Maybe I can just get an old original one? Lol no. Google has not been my friend. I can find a million different replacement distributor caps, water pumps, blah blah but for some reason finding a solution for my problem has left me truly stumped. 1. Buy a new OEM one. Sure, but that's >$500 USD and I'd want to be very sure I know what I'm buying before I sink that - like do I want part #MD001631 or #MD066837? 2. Buy a salvaged, rebuilt or aftermarket one which specifically suits this engine. I'm cool with this, but... I can't find any. The closest I can get is stuff for a 2.6 G54BT (as a reminder I have a 2.0 G63BT) which supposedly is too short. 3. Buy a different but compatible engine's dizzy. How do I know what's compatible, and suitable for a turbo engine? For all that the internet holds I've found this to be surprisingly tricky to find any info on this sort of thing. 4. Decipher the secrets of the distributor I've been given and see if I can't just Make It Work™ for now - though I'll probably want to get something more suitable in the future. On this I am stumped. There's simply no place I can find that this thing can plug into. The best spot I've found has a round connector with 3 pins vs. the distributor's square connector with 4 pins. I'm really hoping I've just missed something obvious but my hope there is dim. I've spent the last couple of months entering endless google search terms and asking in fairly obscure places around the internet to no avail and this (aside from money) truly is my greatest blocker right now. I want to try and get the engine running, however poorly, before I get it out - partly because this the last chance to hear it for a while but mostly so that I know if I've broken something when reassembly time comes. So if anyone knows anything about wtf is going on please let me know because I'm going a bit crazy! 26 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted December 9, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2020 @Firebrand to the rescue! He happened to have the right one (we think) floating around and used the opportunity to offload a bunch of other stuff he was hoarding, for which I am extremely grateful. And most importantly, it fits! Finally!!! This is just a test fit - I'll need to get it properly in. Next up is to sort out the spark plugs, re-dinosaur the oil system and de-dinosaur the fuel system, then we're pretty close to test firing this beastie. 23 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted December 13, 2020 Author Share Posted December 13, 2020 Getting the engine started is a milestone I want my partner to be there for so putting it off until the holidays when we have the time. So in the mean time let's take a look at our fuel system. I read that fuel drains slowly so I didn't bother to raise the back of the car to fit jerry cans/buckets under, instead opting to just use a pan and ice cream container and swap them over. This went poorly... But at least I didn't roll a 1 so the garage and everything is intact and I just have to deal with the fact that I need to keep all the doors open for a while. Also poor: my preparation. I bought a 10L jerry can and for some brain fart reason decided that is all I'd need. I had a couple more litres than would fit in it so I threw it in an old container and let it evap outside until I could get another one. 15 year old fuel smells and looks pretty bad. My old container was dirty so I was hoping that the crud at the bottom was already there. Foreshadowing Fast forward to weekend: Partner is over! I want to see what is borked and what can be cleaned and re-used. She removed the wheel and dropped the fuel tank after a bunch of dirt/fuel to the face. What a trooper. I disassembled it and found probably the first truly effed functional pieces of the car. I'm actually shocked at how bad this has rusted. It's like the rust has generated its own cities and infrastructure on these tubes. This float mechanism is truly beyond hope. I was hoping to be able to clean the in-tank filter and re-use it, but it's $15 from amayama and it looks like I'll need to find some other bits too so shrug emoji. I gave the tank a quick zhuzh with a smol brush and left it outside to tackle another day. I can hear debris shift around when I tilt it. A brief shitty look inside is inconclusive - definitely some rusty bois floating around in there but not sure what the tank itself looks like. The exterior has some minor surface rust in places, hidden under the geological layers of dirt. It sucks that the holes are so small, definitely won't be able to get my arm in there to clean it properly, so we may have to wait for some solvents to arrive courtesy of partner's chemistry connections. As a side, the paint around the drain hole peeled off from the fuel. Seems like a design flaw... also the fact that the heat guard can't be removed so treating up in there is going to be "fun". 8 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted December 13, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 13, 2020 Maybe some more background as I've kind of started part way through. I saw this car pop up a couple times on Trade me and couldn't really get it out of my brain despite never being interested in this sort of thing before. We bought it went the price made sense a couple months after first seeing it. In my original post I put some asterisks after some words. This because we realised that the previous-previous owner probably told some porkies to the previous owner to sell it to him. They say they took the dizzy out as an anti-theft measure but it's the wrong dizzy, which calls into question all of their other claims (driven into a garage for storage 15 years ago for eg). And why cut the battery out? :\ Things we knew were wrong with it both of the boot latches are broken the distributor is (was) missing the battery has been removed via wire cutters fair amount of surface rust paint is horrific 14+ owners, and it's clear that the last few have not cared too much for it unrepaired front passenger corner collision (plus evidence of other historic repaired collision damage) interior trim is horrific or missing with only a few 'ok' bits only truly concerning rust was a piece at one of the rear latches and on the back of the bonnet The previous owner left a lot of fun stuff for us to find. Not pictured: all sorts of screws and bolts and trim bits that had fallen off deteriorated trim and found their way under the seats. Also 12 pence somehow. I considered the rust situation to be "ok" but after seeing a few restoration threads I have upgraded that to "pretty decent actually". No rust underneath, and the "usual" spots for starions seem to have escaped unscathed. There's surface rust in a lot of places but it's only eaten through or "bad" in a few minor spots. The rear driver's side floor doesn't look happy, but is surface only. Even the battery tray hasn't been eaten through Lots of dodgy looking bits actually cleaned up relatively ok with just a wire brush. It turns out that both latches have some rust that has managed to eat through - it's quite minor but will need some welding. I've dressed some bits with rust converter already. The only really bad spot we've found so far is the front crossmember which has a hole eaten straight through it. So we'll have to either find a new crossmember or get it repaired. I feel like we've dodged most of the rust bullets, but I do need to impress just how much surface rust is on this thing. There's also a ton of rando bog from historic repairs in places. So I'll likely get the whole thing media blasted down professionally just to make sure we're not leaving anything to get eaten away. 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted December 20, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 20, 2020 So there's some time before the other half is in town again and we try and start things up so I kept myself busy on other stuff. I figured I should check out my benefactor's dizzy while I wait for the penetrating lube to take effect on my fuel pump, make sure it doesn't fall over when kicked. The rotor had really spotty continuity so I gave it a quick buff with some fine sandpaper. The cap had little or no continuity from inside to out. The ignition coil lead was very loose in it and the contacts are quite worn. Some fine grit sandpaper sorted out the continuity but when I assembled it all I wasn't able to get any continuity from the ignition coil contact to the spark lead contacts. This means either the rotor isn't contacting the output contacts, or the carbon input contact. To check I set up a professional continuity testing rig. There's no continuity from the input carbon contact to the rotor. Some thin foil bridges the gap and restores continuity. I got concerned that even with the foil bridge, I'm unable to get continuity from the spark lead plugs to the ignition plug when turning the dizzy. Fortunately some quick research later tells me that the output contacts should not actually touch the rotor so I think that's ok. Phew! Some quick googling tells me that the carbon is spring loaded. So like any good DIYer I poked it to see what would happen. It went all the way in and won't come back out ... :D. I must have pressed it in just enough to prevent contact with the rotor when I scuffed it with the sandpaper. Of course now I have to get it back down somehow, or just buy a new cap (which makes sense if the spring is toast). Pliers just scuffed the metal surrounding the carbon. Taking ideas on how to get it out... (mate says compressed air should work - getting one soon, but bought a new cap anyway) --- While I was noodling around the area I checked out the ignition coil lead and it is absolutely spanked. Zero continuity no matter how it's bent on any part of the contacts. The dizzy side also had basically zero grip until I flared the contact out a bit - not that it matters if it can't carry a current. So I'll get a new one. I might as well get new spark leads while I'm shopping. (Future Tom note: this is normal, spark cables have super high resistance!) --- I also make sure to take on easy goals to keep morale up, such as tidying up my rusted battery tray using vinegar, wire wheels and spray paint. Can't eff that up It's no custom machined wheel horn button but still satisfying to get something from fucked to passable. I think that's the motivation for this whole project in a nutshell for me. 20 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted January 2, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 2, 2021 So we did a few things in between family obligations. We replaced the oil and oil filter - well partner did, I remain an oil change virgin. Not too much mess, at least nothing a rag and some dirt won't clean up! We found top dead sexy and got the distributor installed - 50% chance it's right, gotta figure out if it's on the compression stroke but #1 cylinder is too hard to reach rn - we'll find a cork or something. We also dropped the dizzy nut and it entered a portal to another dimension. So now a windscreen wiper needs a new nut. We followed this guide and so have the timing 10 units before TDC. Pulled all the spark plugs to check them out, visual inspection seems good even if they're two different brands for some reason. Metal isn't bent, can't measure gap but it seems okay, no crazy build up of stuff, threads are dry (ignoring penetrating lube), except... ... #3 is cross threaded >.< It took most of my strength w/ a breaker bar to get out and required the use of the bar for almost the entire journey out. It's definitely the socket that is the main problem as other spark plugs struggled to go back in too. The socket itself looks like it has some crap in it - I got a pokey magnet in there and drew out a fairly substantial amount of shavings and dust from the threads, but... eek. Down the line we'll try a back tap and see if we can avoid removing the head. We're still lacking the dizzy cap (on its way) but we hooked all the bits back up and the battery and tried to turn it over just to see if that was all good - but nothing, just a click. Full charge on the battery with plenty of CC's tasting like these. The click doesn't seem to come from the starter but rather inside the car on the passenger side which is confusing, but the day was long so we called it there. To do: figure out exactly what's making the noise, also remove starter and see what it looks like / poke it with some electricity. ---- Bonus older gif: pop pop up and down headlights! The left hand horn likes to sound when the lights pop up. I'm guessing there's a short somewhere. The left light also is sliiightly slower to come up giving it a lazy eye effect. Features? 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted January 3, 2021 Author Share Posted January 3, 2021 After some googling and video watching I figured a few things out the click is the relay near the ECU in the passenger side activating, and this click means that relay (and the electrical system) is probably all good there's a control terminal on the starter solenoid which is meant to have a cable going into it Here's the ECU, being good looking But our starter only has the one cable actually: Also it's really hard to see back there, that's a camera shot because there's no actual line of sight to the back of the solinoid. ... Wait what's this? Sure enough there's a dangly boi in the engine bay that slots right on (hard to do when you can't see it!). The prev-prev owner must have removed it with dizzy etc. So we plugged it in and gave it another ignition test... ... and no dice. But the solenoid activates! Hallelujah - that means it's not an electrical problem! After much fandangling with next to no space and funny angles under the car, partner manages to get the two bolts undone to haul the starter out. Here she is standing in triumph. We gave it a quick test on the bench by grounding the case and 12v'ing the positive terminal, then bridging the control terminal with a screwdriver. The starter clicked and whirred into life. Probably still bad but an interesting turn of events given that the motor wasn't spinning at all inside the car, even after some hammer hitting. So we chucked it back on the car, first just with the wires attached (it spins when ignition is turned, hooray?), then with it properly seated, and gave it another whirl. It struggles, hard. The battery's CC rating is fine, and doesn't drop below 10.4v while cranking. I doubt that's the problem. The starter also still randomly fails to engage sometimes. So I think the reason it's struggling is just that it's old and shitty. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted January 7, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 7, 2021 A huge package of stuff arrived from rockauto.com - wow what a site. $15 for spark leads that cost $115 from SCA . Anyway. I got a generic battery tie down kit, because we don't have the original. The tray has no hook on the front side so I test fit and drilled one. Aaaand it doesn't fit the car. The screw in the panel on the right of the image is where the stock battery holder went. I may be able to jig something up with this kit but low priority for now. Annoyingly it might fit if I could move the battery back a bit, but the tray bolts are in the way. So moving on! I uninstalled the old battery leads, the frame mounting point was hidden behind the ignition coil and/or knock box so I had to make space first. 5/6 screws come out ok, including an already-stripped one, but.... It's OK, this screw extractor will.. ... break off and deposit hardened steel to prevent any further drilling attempts... ... eff it I'll just bend it out of the way for now. I don't have a welder or dremel yet and access is too poor for a saw so a problem for another time. So the old are off Get the old hardware shiny and onto the new cables Tidy up the lead castings We'll need to get new heat shielding later but for now just masked a bracket on to remind me We'll also need to get some electronics stuff to crimp some new connectors onto new fusible links - for now I've just stuffed this one in the hole... Tada! Both cables are a little too long, kind of awkward to position (gotta watch that ignition coil) and I don't think the negative cable actually hooks up like this stock but they work! And it's much nicer being able to throw the negative clamp on when I want power instead of dicking around with battery leads. Additionally, it looks like the new terminal connections allow for much better power delivery over our shitty jumper cable clamps and the starter now turns the motor at a respectable speed. It looks like the ignition coil is fine too I've got some extra precautionary steps I want to do (got a compression tester and an endoscope) but once the new dizzy cap arrives I think we're golden to try firing it up :O 16 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted January 9, 2021 Author Share Posted January 9, 2021 The spec for the spark plugs is meant to be 0.8mm according to the interwebs. Ours are all over the show so I bent them back into shape which won't help now but may later, especially because I don't want to put fresh plugs into the engine with the #3 threads being what they are. Before compression testing I decided to get in there with a cheap endoscope (I got it because there are so many times I wish I had a better angle on stuff that's obscured, see: starter solenoid). Angling it is hard because it's just on a normal electrical cable. I'm smart so I only took 3 pics and didn't label them, so here's 1/4 of the sides of 3 random cylinders. I guess the harsh line is the end of the head's travel, the coffee grounds are metal filings or carbon deposits, and the diagonal scratches are factory boring marks. When I google "worn cylinder wall" I get a lot of pictures of prettier looking walls though... :X. How bad is it doc? Compression testing is all over the show. 1- 158 2- 103* 3- 130 (carefully threaded on) 4- 120 I did #2 first and since it was such an outlier I went back to it after lubricating to get 120 psi, supposedly different readings before and after lubrication means worn piston rings. This is my surprised face: 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted January 17, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 17, 2021 New dizzy arrived and the 15A socket for our new compressor is installed. It's go time! @ProZac convinced us (not hard) to actually get it proper running and go for a Totally Legal drive on totally private property, instead of just start-ya-bastarding it. So that means getting a jury-rigged fuel system going. First thing though is to clean out what we're keeping. Step 1: Clean the old stuff. We blew out the old lines using compressed air then ran isopropyl alcohol through them before cleaning it out once again with air. Then we kiwi ingenuity'd the pump to run a bunch of isoprope through until it ran clean. We also isoproped the bits of hose and line and stuff we'll be keeping. Step 2: Replace fuel filter with $5 rockauto one. Massive PITA wrenching the fuel lines off :\. And back on. Step 3: More kiwi ingenuity to fashion a temporary fuel pump bracket using an L&P bottle and duct tape. More fuel line wrenching. Yes it works . Don't worry, I plan on vapour blasting and zinc coating the L&P bracket later for the final resto. Step 4: Create a temporary fuel tank that isn't going to tip over or slosh fuel. Step 5: Reassemble the dizzy cap and ignition leads. I tried to confirm TDC with the compression tester but I wasn't able to get any movement on the needle on a hand stroke so w/e, we'll just live with the 50/50 chance. Step 6: Pump up the tires and set the car back down. It rides really high without all the stuff I took off the back. Then we pushed it outside because ventilation & to reduce fire risk. I only have a small extinguisher. Step 7, not pictured: get water in the rad (just plain water for now), put seats back in, tighten a few things. Step 8: Crank it! It took a couple cranks for the fuel to make it to the carb, and when it did.... uhh... It was super late in the day and we were over it but we took a quick look anyway because getting the fuel disconnected and safe would take time and girlface won't be back again for another 3 weeks. The o-ring looks OK (no cracking, no obvious damage) so we took the VERY DUMB step of just tightening it further. The itty bolts didn't like that one bit and we pulled one off >.< That's what we get for rushing I guess. So now I'll have to get the remains of that old bolt out (deja vu), source a replacement and more importantly figure out what went wrong. I'm guessing the injectors must be blocked or something so next step I think is to remove the ECI and see what's up there... 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted February 7, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 7, 2021 Slow 3 weeks but at this exciting time I was waiting until girlface is around to experience milestones with. In the mean time... I got the old busted fella out, found an almost-there replacement bolt and cut+filed it down to size, which technically puts me on one of the starting rungs of the "could fabricate engine from scratch" ladder. It was a relief to finally have a screw extractor work for me instead of deposit hardened steel in a critical area. It then worked for me again removing a nearby busted screw in the ECI. Am I jinxing myself? Thanks to @ProZac's old ECI rebuild guide I was able to figure out the size of o-ring I needed. Damn glad I did too because the shrunken old o-ring looks damn unrecognisable next to the new and I absolutely would have stuffed it up by eye. Otherwise I mainly just dicked around cleaning up + converting rust on panels and researching fuel tank acid dipping and stuff while I waited for the girlbeast. --- Today my partner's down so we inflated the tires, pushed it outside, prepped a fire extinguisher and once again re-attached our jerry rigged jerry can. Nothing but starter motor. I was hoping the dizzy was installed correctly first time but I guess now we had to confirm it. The first spark plug hole is way too deep for either of our thumbs to make it to, so we started trying to think of alternatives to test for the compression stroke. Our compression tester isn't good enough for the job as one stroke doesn't register on it. Create a thin bluetack window? Fashion a plug out of something rubber-like? Then we had pretty much the same idea at the same time: detach the hose from the compression tester, thread it on and put our thumbs over the other end My partner was dubious that she'd feel anything (hey now no giggling) and got a fright when she actually felt pressure against her thumb. We were now able to verify the compression stroke.. and that our dizzy was 180 degrees off. So then after re-installing it and lining it up... We got ahead of ourselves wanting to go for a spin without checking things more lol. We immediately had to turn it off because there was a fairly bad fuel leak around the top of the fuel filter. I seated it a bit better but after trying again it turns out the leak was coming from the crimped connector on the hose . So that's another skill to figure out how to do / how to delegate. However the old failure point is fine now, so it was definitely the o-ring that was busted. The initial firing was had a slight delay while things came back to life after 15 years, but after that the engine purred. Also every subsequent ignition is damn near instant. I'm by no means an expert but it was quiet, smooth and like it had just come off the road. We wanted to just listen to it purr all day and take it on a brief Totally Legal spin but unfortunately the fuel leak delays that. So that's my next mish for the next 3 weeks. But we are heckin' PUMPED. Apart from an awesome milestone for 2 people who didn't know what a vacuum line was a few months ago, we validated a lot of work that was up in the air until today: the distributor and ignition system, fuel system, timings, blah blah. Riding on pop-up beams of light rn! 28 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted February 13, 2021 Author Share Posted February 13, 2021 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted February 14, 2021 Author Share Posted February 14, 2021 So of the three high pressure fuel hoses it looks like two have been munted over the years. This time it's the one at the rear that connects the fuel pump to the metal fuel line running to the front, and it has two holes in it. As the video above shows these holes do a fantastic job of high-pressure sprinkling fuel all over the show. It even got into the wiring sheath on the fuel pump. Won't have to pull those weeds for a while at least. The good news is the L&P bracket is holding up great, Tom 1 Mitsubishi 0. Rather than head over to hydratech again I decided to give repairing this one a go myself first. This meant going out and nabbing a vice (been meaning to get one) and a cutoff tool (which will be handy for some other things too and also meaning to get). I've already got the fuel hose and clamps. I saw a guide a guy made removing extremely similar ferrules from a hose, he used a much smaller dremel but I'm hoping I can skip that and get away with the cut off tool. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted February 14, 2021 Author Share Posted February 14, 2021 I got away with the cut off tool. Not too much drama and air tools are fun (I later moved the clamps a little closer to the ends) But when it came time to re-assemble the banjo onto the pump, I noticed that there weren't any crush washers previously. @ProZac confirmed that there should be some and that the (checks notes) "pulsation dampener" side's washer has some cutout bits to allow fuel to flow out of the dampener and into the banjo fitting, I had some extra copper washers that were large enough but didn't have these cutouts: It should look kind of like this: Or this: The gouges are not ideal but that's what I get for being a dumb and holding it steady with raw pliers. Better than nothing. I marked the notches of the dampener on the outside with vivid so I could line it up with the copper washer and installed. Aaaand... My neighbour was over and implored me not to tighten it "too much", shouldn't have listened. While the washer is definitely not an amazing washer it still should have been tightened/crushed a lot harder. But my hose fix works perfectly! So after mulling whether I really wanted to take it all off and mess around with it again I decided instead to just get some goggles on and tighten it further in-place. I still didn't really go as far as I could have but I took it to "acceptable dribble". Then I went and did some checking of things The good Revs and speedo work, not sure if boostometer works No dashboard warning lights (suspicious) Heater works Brakes seem totally functional - at low speed Able to go into drive/reverse and move forward and back without drama, she wants to move - at low speed... After 5 minutes the fuel dribble stopped entirely...?? I'll take it The bad A/C didn't kick in at all The ugly When done messing around I let the turbo timer do its thing for a minute while I inspected the exhaust and stuff. After the engine shut down I noticed some very whispy smoke coming from the turbo area. Not enough to capture on camera and I couldn't trace it to an exact area. Giant shruggy shoulders but I assume stuff shouldn't be smoking. I think that mostly concludes what we wanted to do with the engine. Next couple weeks will be less exciting as I'm waiting for my partner before we do anything else (ie. take it for a spin). After that it's stripping time... 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted February 27, 2021 Author Share Posted February 27, 2021 Partner is down so we took it out for a short legal drive on private roads. I'm not sure what to point at, but it took a bit of pedal for it to get into second gear (as a reminder it is an auto) - so for a while it just sounded like a very taxed engine moving at 15km/h. I didn't push it very hard because while the brakes seem fine I wasn't willing to find out how good they'd be if I really needed to stop in a hurry. We were brave enough to take it down a short steep hill section of private road and it reaaaally struggled to get back up it at about 5km/h (but fortunately did ':D). So there's either a power issue or a transmission issue, or both... but we've decided to investigate/solve these problems as we reassemble rather than hold up the stripping process. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted April 16, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 16, 2021 I did say things would slow down First target in my sights has been to fix up the tank and its bits and bobs, and get the rear side of the fuel system 100% sorted. The tank has surface rust inside, and a fair bit of deposited rust from the pickup tubing and gauge level rusting away. Most people I talked to told me not to worry about it, just clean it out and be done with it, but... that just doesn't sit well with me. Rust must perish! My tool for the job is a POR-15 tank sealing kit. There's a bunch of guides online but they all seem to differ somewhat or have missing bits of info so I figured I'd detail my journey. The first thing to decide was what order to do things in because I needed to strip the paint on the surface as well as there are some bad and rusty spots. I decided I'd rather not get chemicals or rusty dust or anything inside a freshly sealed tank so I opted to strip + quickly prime the surface before I started on the inside. There's a lot of paint stripper to choose from and it seems like they all really do have a large range of reviews from "perfect" to "did literally nothing". So I spent way too much time looking around and settled on TERGO paint stripper. I chose correctly, this stuff is fierce. I was worried it wouldn't touch the rust converter I had on it but the stripper just totally nailed anything it touched, including the brush itself. Lots of PPE for this! Next I used a strip wheel to clean up what the stripper didn't quite get. I learned I should have started with the wheel and then gotten the fiddly bits with the stripper afterwards. I also used some wire brushes to get as much of the rust off as I could from the fiddly places. This pic is halfway through the top before the rustening. Then it's paint time, I'm no expert here but I figured the more layers the better. I've got some self etching primer and the plan is to tidy up and go over it again later with some (also self etching) black paint. It's going to get banged around a fair bit and so I'll need to repaint it but I feel like this is the better order to do things in, I can easily clean up and repaint the surface but the POR-15 kit is expensive and time consuming. This is a logical break for a new post, but.. how big can these things get? POR-15 TIME So there's three steps here, clean/degrease, metal prep/rust removal, then seal. The $150 kit comes with stuff for all of this. I didn't need to spend all that honestly, but as a beginner I really am trying to minimise the amount of faffage I need to undertake. Past Tom was smart enough to write all this shit down as I did it because I knew I'd forget intricacies: Degrease! I plugged up the tubes using a technique I read about online, with pipe+bolt - this should help prevent the sealant from creating a plug later on. I used duct tape for the larger openings which worked well, however I noticed a small leak at one point in my initial taping and when I re-did it it was WAY worse. I noticed that the tape wouldn't stick very well despite drying it down with paper towels or using degreaser or even a little sandpaper (needed to sand it anyway). I ended up solving it by using a heat gun to dry the rim thoroughly, the tape stuck very nicely after that, so pro (lol) tip. I then poured the degreaser and warm water in, along with some bolts, and began my daily workout: shaking the absolute shit out of a large unwieldy fuel tank with few opportunities for grip. I would rotate to each side and different angles and slosh enough to hear the bolts fly around in there, taking breaks as needed (lots of breaks). I kept this up for probably 30-40min. Then I used the pet cock to drain the tank and added about the same amount of cold water back into the drain hole, sloshed each side to rinse and drained. I did this about 8 times with each time coming out a bit less brown, but I noticed that the water still had a sort of cloudy colour to it so as the instructions suggested I repeated all of the above with the second bottle of degreaser they sent me. Here's the stuff from the first drain. After that I did my absolute best to drain the shit out of it. At one point I took all the tape off and stuck a hose in each opening spraying on various angles with the tank in various angles until there weren't any bubbles forming inside the tank and the water was mostly clear. I used a magnet on a stick to get the bolts out because my hand is way too big to fit inside. This whole process took a fairly long time and is a serious workout, something the motorcycle tank guides won't tell you! The instructions said it didn't have to be bone dry for the next stage but I used my heat gun to get it some of the way. Sticking it into the tank did really well, heated the whole tank and even the exterior dried within 10 min. However lots of fumes so moved it outside really quick. Looking at the structure of the tank with all the pipes and baffles in the centre of the tank, it's clear that this mostly only cleaned the walls of the tank, but hopefully that's good enough because I don't think I could get it any cleaner with what they gave me. Oh hey look a logical breakpoint. Metal prep! Next I put the petcock back in, poured the bottle of metal prep in and re-taped it up, swished it around all the sides and paid special attention to rapidly rotating and shaking it to try and get enough of the interior structure coated as I could. Then I left it and rotated it every 30-60 min making sure to get all sides. The duct tape held up OK but dribbles started when left upside down for too long. Then I poked a heat gun in it and left it in various positions for an hour~ which was really effective at getting it bone dry. It was getting a bit late in the day and the sealant says it can bond with flash rust so I left it. Checked it out the next day and... was unimpressed. I could still see and feel rust coming off like sand. It did a little work, but here's a couple pics to show just how little work it did. Before: After: I did some googling and found a guy who'd done it a few times. He said the metal prep is fine for small amounts of rust but if you have more than just surface stuff you should use proper rust treatment first. I'd already been faffing for so long with this thing and was ready to be done with it, I very nearly just rolled the dice and proceeded with sealing it as-is but after a deep sigh my risk-averse brain caught up and actuated my legs over to mitre10 to pick up 5L of rust remover. So I sealed everything up, poured all 5L in and intended to leave it overnight on each side... and the duct tape started failing after 30 or so minutes. Blah. I tried many things including making a custom lid out of a takeaway container but everything eventually leaks. If only I had an L&P bottle. Mate to the rescue! He had made some C H O N K covers for another of his mates and cut them down to size further for me. Talk about overkill but it works so well! Along with some old gasket maker these sealed it up extremely well, in fact when opening them back up they'd let off a fair bit of pressure from gas build up inside. A++ Look ma no leaks! I also figured out a better way to seal the filler hole. So I left it on various sides rotating and sloshing once per day to a different side, for a week. Then I opened her up and.... not bad. Parts that were sandy rust are now absolutely smooth to the touch. A pipe with a bunch of growth on it is now clean. Vaguely surface rusty parts are now looking much more uniform. There's still some somewhat-sandy rust on a part of the top but... I'm happy enough to proceed. Short of cutting it open or getting some chains to try and go around the heavy baffling inside this thing, I can't get it any better. Obviously I can't re-use the metal prep but the rust remover and the copious amounts of water used to flush shouldn't have changed the quality of the surface any, I hope, so here's a different dice roll! Now I should make another post for the next part of the story. ... THE SEALENING Final stage! I opened the can and stirred for 10 mins, it REALLY doesn't want to become a uniform colour but my online research says that's normal. Then I sealed the tank back up, poured the sealant in, turned up my TV and sat on my deck for an hour just slowly rotating this thing. Occasionally I gave it a shock-turn to try and splash or dribble onto the baffle structures as much as I could. The low point in my tank is unfortunately around the petcock hole :\. With water I can just vacuum it out. Can't do that with sealant, and I don't want to stick a rag on a stick in there or anything. Someone online had gone overboard and rotated his tank for 2+ hours and that had the side effect of having the sealant essentially distribute and harden up during that final hour meaning he had no leftovers, so I was trying to go for a happy middle ground where there shouldn't be too much pooling. After an hour I opened it up and was beholden to all that was good. I was expecting the sides to be coated and then incomplete splotches on the baffles and the pickup cup etc but EVERYTHING IS 100% COATED and I am SO HAPPY. I removed the petcock and drained the best I could. It turns out quite a bit of sealant is still in there after an hour :\ so backup plan after removing everything else off the tank is to rotate onto its sides over the next couple hours, to try and get it to distribute a little more in there as it solidifies. I feel like a massive blob of it around the petcock is probably not ideal. Final thing was to use some turps to clean up the petcock hole threads and area, the petcock itself, prop it up and leave it to cure. And then abandon the garage with all the doors open because even with PPE I don't trust those fumes, The next day I am greeted with this lovely sight. I am extremely happy with how it turned out. The pictures show some semi-rusty bits, they're totally grey IRL so I don't know what that's about. It hardened to a plastic-like substance that I can't scratch with my fingernails. Finishing up Finally I tidied up and re-primed problematic parts of the exterior (I flower-pressed some grass into the bottom with the heat gun), re-masked things up and added a few layers of CRC black. I was going to clear coat it as well but the feedback on that was "why?" and I'd already spent enough time on it so .. ok. One giant post, and one giant tick box. I shouldn't have to do anything on this tank again. Yay! Now it's stored safely wrapped in plastic under a bench for the rest of the car to catch up! 19 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted April 29, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 29, 2021 In the meantime, I yolo'd other parts of the tank. As a reminder here's what I was dealing with. The pickup was so rusted that I almost threw it out. Even after finding out that they're basically unobtainable I still wanted to, but was convinced it was salvagable. Fine. The other stuff is OK but dirty and with splotchy surface rust - some bracketry holding the fuel pump on the tank, and the filler neck. So I decided to treat with a vinegar bath. I don't have many pics of the process, but it went like this: 1. put into vinegar 2. rotate every so often 3. hmm and humm about what to do, occasionally scrubbing rust and dirt 4. leave it in there because it can't rust in vinegar!* (* don't do this...) I decided I'd get it electroplated down the line and so topped it up with water and left it, figuring that it was better than open air. This was a mistake. The ascetic acid doesn't just like rust! It slowly ate at the surface of the metals and left pitting etc. I probably should have just left it all until immediately prior to electroplatey time. But whatever. After a quick wipe down it came out fine and the pitting is minor. The pickup tubes received extra wire brushing and a little sanding. So moving on. I had my first play with soda blasting! Super messy but it did a reasonable job. If it weren't for the pitting it'd probably be super smooth on all the non-pickup parts but MOVING ON. The soda killed all the weeds growing between the paving slabs so win-win. I wire wheeled the remaining black paint from one of the brackets then off to the electroplaters, a lovely pair of chaps in Petone, they praised my cleaning skills saying they usually get filthy trash in. I've never had this done before so the results are astonishing to me. SO FUCKING SHINY! Inside and out! The plating even seems to have filled in some of the pitting, or at least they psychologically look better - and the pitted parts still look nice and shiny. And the price was very reasonable. I'm probably going to be hunting for more stuff to make shiny now. 23 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted June 13, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 13, 2021 We want to take the engine out for a few reasons. it needs some love it's dirty a.f, as is everything around it we're leaning quite heavily towards a nice professional media blasting And of course as a side of point 3, everything else needs to come off too. But let's start with the big boi. My workmate lent me his crane so we also wanted to make the most of having it. We disconnected, lightly researched and removed every piece that was connected to the engine in the engine bay. We also took out stuff that looked like it'd obstruct the process. Turns out we removed quite a lot of stuff. We kept things labelled and I made a diagram of all the vacuum lines. I'm certain this isn't the original configuration, and I have to figure out what a few of the lines are for, hopefully when it comes to reassembly time I can simplify them a bit. I don't really have a "before" shot and the "during" is a million close up pics of where things were, but here's about where we got to. Leonie took the exhaust off. Don't worry, I did my fair share under the car too.. it's hard to take action pictures of myself.. and it's scary down there.. The drive shaft... the drive shaft was a massive pain in the arse. No matter what we did we couldn't break the four bolts holding it in. Only spanners could fit on and there's very little wiggle room. There's also a strong subconscious disincentive to exert "too much" force while underneath a car. In the end we bought a propane torch, daisy chained two spanners and set it up such that I could kneel next to the car and apply full body torque - and even then it felt like the spanners were about to break they were bending so bad! It was a huge triumph to get this out, this took a few sessions to surmount. The second Epic Bitch was the automatic shifter. I didn't think to take a photo so here it is from underneath after removing it. The shifter 100% does not fit out of the plate it's mounted in, and the plate sure as hell won't fit through the body either. We had to lift and angle the shifter up to get access to that bolt underneath. We first tried to hammer the bolt through the rubber bushing which was working well until we noticed that the left hand side is attached to two arms, not just one, and we hit the maximum punching range about halfway from the goal. The left-hand side had this circlip that we didn't have a tool for, but that I thought was kind of useless if we could just punch the bolt out to the left, right? Why bother trying to move it right if it can go left? After lots of banging around and head scratching I noticed the second arm and realised we had to detach that arm anyway. So we drove out, got some circlip pliers, took that out, obliterated the cotter pin holding that second arm in and pulled it off super easy. Fuck. This had taken a couple hours by now lol. Anyway we now had nothing left holding us back so we were bolstered and rest of the fucking owl'd the engine out. I bought my first car three years ago lol 19 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted August 24, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 24, 2021 We've got lots of stuff in motion, albeit slow motion, and my instinct is to wait for some kind of complete item of progress before I post. But given the size of stuff I guess I should just live journal some of it or whatever. So here's a few snapshots of what we're up to. First up: panel stuff. My intention was always to get a little bit OCD so just keep that in mind when you see what we're doing First up: there's not much visible rust but there's lots of bog and >16 owners so I want to figure out what things actually look like under it all. As I've already mentioned, the plan is to get the whole thing media blasted. I'd love to DIY all of it but the shell is such a huge task, too big to do all at once and tackling one section at a time just seems onerous. I've also done some minor amounts of wire wheeling etc and the idea of tackling all of those little nooks and crannies keeps me up at night. So, professional media blasting for the body. But that takes a lot of the "DIY" out of it so we want to do stripping all of the removable panels (including possibly the doors) ourselves. So I decided to start with the front lip. Remember, the goal here in my mind is just to take all the paint and bog off and see what's underneath, get it ready for the next steps. A stripping disc did a decent job against the bog... wow that's a lot of dust... wow uh that's a lot of bog... ... let's just cut an angle straight down and see when I hit metal... I guess panel beating it into shape was too hard? This hit me so hard with "wtf" that I literally just put it back on the floor and left it for a while. And, as clean metal does, over time it started to get some surface rust. Which forced me to think about the other half of what I was doing... cleaning it all up just so it can rust again? Nope, I need to protect it. But with what, rattle can primer? I want this thing to be professionally painted at some point, and in my brain rattle can primer didn't really factor into the timeline well - would I just have to clean the parts again prior to having them properly painted - and if so, why strip everything now? But I still wanted to strip everything, so that forced me to come up with a plan. 1. Strip it down 2. Paint it with a high quality "final product" primer 3. Part will last until it's ready to be painted and then the pro's won't have to muck around with primer (assuming I don't noob up too hard)? This'd be a lot easier if I was more comfortable asking questions, or if any of my friends were car people at all, but I got some advice (good I hope?) from this forum. I landed on durepox which supposedly is good to apply to bare metal, is an effective barrier against rust, and can be left for quite a while without issues (some people use it as a top coat? :X). In May I got a moisture filter for the air compressor, a devilbiss starting pair of HVLP guns, gun cleaning fluid etc and then once I ran out of things to buy / wait to be delivered and thus ran out of excuses, I bravely accepted that I was intimidated and put it all off for a couple months. ... Fiiiiine, late July I picked it up again. First thing to do: the left fender, which has some minor collision damage, so I tried my hand at panel beating it into some slightly more reasonable shape. Fun to do but wow hard to master. I got it into much better shape but definitely will need a pro to bring it to 100%. No before pic unfortunately, just imagine the front of it caved in. Then I stripped it all down with angle grinder w/ strip disc and drill w/ wire wheel. I hate fiddly corners. I did the entire outer face and parts of the inner side that had surface rust, the rest I just scuffed a bit with sandpaper. Please feel free to skip the total ignorance that follows. ... Please. ... Ok. So I'd read that using metal prep was a good idea... the acid conditions the metal to accept the paint better, and also nukes any residual trace rust that might be lingering. Sounds good, but I have none! What do I have? Should be the same right? Just wipe it on, go have lunch, come back from lunch AND OH MY GOD FUCK FUUUUUCK ... I shouldn't be allowed around vinegar Cue hours (well, it felt like it) of using my partner's well-situated parts washer and sand paper to remove the fuckery I inflicted upon this poor fender. But I got there. Cleaned, wiped down with isopropyl alcohol and tack cloths, haphazardly dexter'd (at least dust doesn't matter so much with primer !) and strung up. After reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading the spec sheet that came with the durepox (aka second guessing myself) I've got the gun set up, the compressor set up to the correct psi, everything ready to go. I really wasn't sure how thick it should go on, so I decided one coat = "I can't see the part anymore" then came around for a second coat after 10 mins as directed. No runs, no issues, it surprisingly it came out quite good! When I started the second coat I didn't clear the gun first so the first millisecond deposited some spittle but whatever, it's primer. Really should have dexter'd the tool bench some more but that's a future Tom problem (thanks asshole). Of course the shitty panelbeating efforts are more pronounced now but \/\/ whatevaaaa I left it hanging for a few days longer after it cured just so I could observe the results. It's hard as feck, doesn't appear to have any adhesion issues and after all that noobery does not appear to have come out any worse for wear. Then I carefully wrapped it in some heavy duty plastic + cardboard and stashed it for the assembly phase. I'm really keen to hear feedback before I do any more of the car. I'm also keen to hear your guyses take on the logistics of having parts that need painting on all sides (thus requiring they be off the car) but also need to be on the car for panel beating, bogging, aligning with other panels etc. Would the pro's prefer to receive it intact and disassemble as need be, or with the panels off the car and they'll stick them on themselves, etc? Then there's the misc trim - I assume they'll want indicators, bumpers, so on so on... which implies a completely intact car? Ugh. 17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted September 13, 2021 Author Share Posted September 13, 2021 Note to Starion owners: there's only two more of these left in NZ... 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.