I know its a lot to read but this was the shortest way I could sum everything up so you guys know everything that's going on and how everything happened. Plus the read is worth it :P
Well, I sold my old 2g to my girlfriend's brother because I ended up running over the oil cooler (It wasn't properly tied down) and I'm pretty positive I spun all 4 bearings from oil starvation at the very least. So I was in search of a new DSM to replace my old 2g, but I knew I wanted an AWD this time because of what happened last time. So my search began, I looked for about 3 months before I found a red 1g that looked pretty beat up (and the owner said he was trying to sell the car with a body kit that was never put on -_-) but he said it had a freshly rebuilt motor and no rust was trying to explain to me everything else the car had but I told him I would just come take a look at it and see what was up. So I went to see the car and the guy ended up being pretty nice. The first things I noticed was that the car had no front bumper, radiator, battery, intercooler, intercooler piping and a small amount of rust on the rear drivers side quarter panel, but everything looked fixable and he told me he had a FMIC that he could give me and he had the radiator. I did not have the $2,000 that he wanted at the time, I only had $600 so I asked him if I could put a down payment on the car and have him tow it to my house (he owns a tow truck) so I can work on it and see if I can get it running before I give him the rest of the money. At first he was pretty reluctant but he finally came around and let me take the car while he kept the title. When I got the car parked in the driveway I started seeing what the deal was with it. I opened the door and found a turbo sitting on the drivers side floorboard with no exhaust housing so I ended up putting that aside to do research on it to find out what it was (Garrett turbo with 1.10 A/R housing) along with a Garrett GT3271 that was actually on the car. The guy planned on getting the car running and tuning the car with a MAF-T Pro Gen II, I just wanted to make sure the car ran at all so I just ended up taking that out and soldering all the wiring he hacked into back together so it would be stock again until I could get DSMLink V3. When I looked behind me after I could finially sit in the front seat I noticed all the stuff piled everywhere from the car (bolts, MAS, gaskets, misc car parts) the back seat got destroyed by grease from the car parts. So I cleaned out all the car parts and put them into a bin to see if they were parts that I would need to use later because I figured they had to come from somewhere (I found out later that most of the parts were just extra parts and that the guy was just really disorganized and didn't really care about the car). After I cleaned out the back seat I opened the hatch and noticed MORE car parts and bolts and about 5 years worth of piled up grease. I cleaned all that up and sorted all the parts out also. Then I noticed the car kind of smelled weird and I looked over at the passenger side floorboard and noticed something that looked like dead weeds, and a bunch of rat turds.. So I took the seats out and vacuumed everywhere. I washed the car and started working on getting the parts from my 2g's 6-bolt build to my new car to make the new car stock (14b, 2g exhaust manifold and a couple other things). After I got the parts I had put on I put my old rims from my old car on my new car because the stock saw blade rims had garbage tires on them (every one was dry rotted). Then moved on to washing the car for the first time since I got it (About 5 years worth of pollen build up and dirt), it cleaned up pretty decent except for the faded paint and clear coat peeling that I didn't notice until after I washed it. Then I moved on to cleaning the interior more thorough and started to find some nesting material under the center console by the shifter, I followed the nesting material to behind where the radio goes (The car came with no radio and a chopped radio harness... All the speakers were also cut out so the connectors are all gone). I vacuumed what was on the ground up... Then I looked up and found out what was nesting in the car... Rats.. And they had been living in the air vent tunnels of the car I guess with nesting material they had found. I vacuumed out what I could without taking the dash out. My girlfriend's brother came outside and I wanted to show him how far the car had came already since the last time he saw it (The guy dropped it off the night before and I started working on the car right before the sun came up). I let him sit in the drivers seat while I sat in the passenger seat and he looked down by the radio by my feet and said "what is that?" so I looked down and there was a baby rat crawling up the passenger side floorboard by my feet (Alive). I jumped out of the car and ran to get stuff to get the rat out (I didn't want to touch it with my hands). I got the rat out and right after that we found out the name for the car "La Rata". Here is some pictures of the car now and a little after I had cleaned it (I didn't get pictures of how bad it really was before I started on it because I was just too excited to even think about that).
This is the earliest picture I have of the engine bay, I had already pretty much got it together. I can't believe I forgot to get pictures of the car when I first got it, it was bad, especially the engine bay... The block is yellow!
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This is the turbo that came ON the car, it's a Garrett 3271. It was on an ebay hacked and destroyed manifold with an old turbonetics delta mark II waste gate. I'm glad the turbo never got ran on the car because with that manifold and waste gate I don't think it would have lasted very long.
If you know what your looking at you already know what I had to do here.
The guy had a flexible rubber hose here that was completely destroyed, I tried putting gas into it the first time and none of it even made it to the tank, which was bad because I had to take the tank off and get about 5 gallons worth of 5 year old gas out of it.
The P/O sprayed rustolium over the rust before it got bad luckily, even though now I have a black patch on the body, it doesn't really matter because I'm going to be going flat black with the whole car anyways eventually. Plus that's the only rust spot on the body I've found, Anybody got any suggestions on how I can get those side vent covers back on? I was thinking body mold?
My front seats and dash with my awesome JDM steering wheel (Lol) I tried to make it a little better by taking the little cardboard thing out that said JDM on it and putting the stock eagle thing inside instead (I found the stock on in the side pannel).
Before I got the radio and gauges in.
I had to rewire the fuel pump to the stock pump wire, he had it going to a switch where the cigarette lighter used to be.
The hatch after I cleaned all the bolts and grease out of it.
Nesting material in the air vents.
Rat poop and stuff that was under the passenger seat.
This is just a small amount of what I pulled from the air vents.
When I finally got the car started I noticed the power steering fluid was just draining when I took it for a ride around the block, so I looked under it the next day to find out that the line that goes through the bushing had rusted a hole through, so out the rack came to get new lines.
The new OEM lines on the rack, coated with bed liner to keep liquid from settling on top of the line and to keep another rusting incident from happening again. I hope...
The new Mishimoto radiator and slim fan.
The new down-pipe (The car had no exhaust at all when I got it).
I plan on getting a pipe welded from the end of the down pipe to a Dynomax VT muffler I bought and having full 3" straight pipe.
As she sits right now until I get the Bill of Sale from the guy so I can get it registered finally. I have a question for you guys about that but I'll ask it a little later so I don't get too off topic.
and my exhaust sounds great. Also, I got it registered last Wednesday finally and of course the problems began lol. My slave cylinder boot came off and wouldn't go back on and was leaking fluid all over while it was sitting. I was filling the fluid back up and driving it anyways and of course my Shift linkage boot for my 2,4, and Reverse ripped and so for now my shift linkage is zip-tied to itself (The new shift linkages should be coming in any day) and that's working for now. I also already replaced the slave cylinder. Pictures to come tomorrow. Also, I painted both fenders flat primer black to match the hood and other side. I have not re-painted the hood yet but that is to come next and then I will start working on the rest of the car.
