AWD Spyder build

[gst noob]

Ok, So lets start at the beginnig. first i owned a 99 eclipse gs it was pretty cool or at least i thought. i was sure i had a super fast car and a way nice one at that. well i was wrong i soon found out about the turbo versions and imediatly hadd to have one so as soon as my tranny went out last spring i sold it off and was on the hunt for a turbo. i had found a spyder gst not to far from me but i wasent that interested because people always told me to stay away from the spyders because they are totally different.

well after a talk with my good DSM buddy id decided i was going to buy the spyder. it had a spun rod bearing and the kid stole the turbo. i payed 800 for it but it was a good deal the car had a fresh paint job and the kid had a receipt from a local shop that put 2500 bucks worth of stuff in to it. but throughout my tear down precess i never found that 2500 bucks.

the day i got the car home first thing i did was pull the motor and tranny.i tore the motor down and soon discovered the crank needed to be reground... yay so i sent the block and crank in to Arnold motor not to far from where i was building the car. after some convincing my grandpa talked me into just having them hang the whole rotating assembly that way we know its right and dont have to worry.

picked the block up after it was all put together they charged me 867 bucks! i about shat my pants. i specifically told the guy i dident want to spend that much for that price i could of bought a forged crank and a 6 bolt block! but what was i to do.

about a week later i got the car put together completely stock except for the 1g head and intake i had on. oh and the BSE kit i did. the car came right to life! but unfortunately it ran really hot and i was never able to keep it cool i got fed up with it and switched back to a 7 bolt head this seemed to fix the problem for a while.

Tragedy strike...
driving home from the local fair i start hearing an obnoxious clicking noise than a loud boom! immediately i shut the engine off and coast up the nearest on ramp about 2 miles from my house. keep in mind its 2 am. with only a phone light i start looking things over and cant figure it out. my buddy lays underneath and conforms my greatest fear..... thrown rod on the rebuilt bottom end 96 miles on it.

so me and my buddy pushed it the rest of the way up the on ramp and down a hill to my friend Steves. where it sat for 2 days. the oil spot on the on ramp from me stopping their is still their. i had a friend haul it the 2 miles back to my house and it sat for a good 2 weeks i was just pissed and tired of the damn car.

but than one day i get a call from Adam (the guy who talked me into buying the cart to start with) and he is super excited he found a replacement motor about an hour and a half away from us AND it was a gsx!! so we went and bought it together we payed 500 not to bad for a running (like crap) gsx.

in 3 days we had every bolt out of that gsx and it the shell was scrapped it was truly a piece of work.

now whats funny about the GSX we bought is that about a month earlier my friend Noah bought a GST and the kid that owned the GST also owned that GSX we had bought just weird how small the world actually is.

sorry i dont have any pictures for every thing thats happened so far my camera broke oh well but from this point on i have tons of pictures. check back for updates.

 

[n0de]

I like the story. Post pictures!

 

[gst noob]

Ok I did manage to dig up a pic of my old gs. Not to bad sence I traded a dodge with a blown tranny for it.

After we bought the gsx for the awd convo we also indeed up swapping the gsx motor in to my spyders. Here is the only pic of the awd swap I have and of corse it's a rair look at my black friend doing work Jk.

Sorry about the horrible pic quality I'm having technical difficulties. So the problem with the gsx motor was that it always over heated so here we are in Walmart parking lot after all the swapping is done. also did a bse kit from parts dinosaur on the gsx motor.

Did I mention the parts gsx came with 1000 dollar coil overs we made out like bandets on that deal.

 

[acorn3583]

Finally, your own build thread! Keep that wrench turning

 

[gst noob]

well even though it over heated all the time it still looked amazing. Its pretty dirty in the pics and could use a good wax job but here you go enjoy!

Keep in mind that it is AWD swapped and setting on coil overs at this point.

I sold my block that threw a rod to a guy down in Cedar Rapids and he pays me o deliver them. I had no problem doing this my buddy Adam has friends down their so it was settled on a Saturday afternoon around 6 we left for Cedar Rapids every thing was going good as long as I wasent hammering the trottle the car stayed cool.. Than some thing very in expected happened......

It started with the radio turning off. I looked at Adam and was like well I guess the radios broke. We kept driving and about 5min later Adam was like why are the lights so dim? I had no idea. Together we came up with the idea that the power wire on the amp (that wasent in to make room for the block) must be shoring out in the trunk. We decited to keep doing to the next off ramp. Suddenly the guy behind us kept flashing his lights at us so we stopped it was dark by than and we had no idea why he was flashing us. We checked the wire and taped it up. (We should of done this sooner)

We got back in and attempted to start the car ... Click click click.... click click click... Oh crap the battery's dead and were 10 miles from Cedar Rapids on some random off ramp in the dark...

Adam calls up his buddy and he starts on his way once he gets to us we hook up cables and charge the eclipse with his Beemer. Which runs perfect by the way and has no issues. Lucky we put together that for some reason the alt wasent charging the battery had no idea why.

After about 10 min of charging we were off fast as we could to the next exit where we planned to stop and charge up again.... We dident make it we had to stop on the side of the freeway and charge up again. Boy that was interesting.

Another 10 min and were off yet again this Time we make it a lot farther but the car is cutting out. We had to drive through Cedar Rapids about 3 miles in the dark we kept switching off the light when ever we could to save battery. Also avoiding cops

Finally the car dies right out side our friends apartment and we give up for the night. We would fix what ever the problem was in the morning.

Morning rolls around we deliver the parts to the guy in another car. Once we get back POW it hits me this monster migraine and I'm about as use full as a banana in the situation now so I went back inside to take a nap.

I wake up like 6 hours latter feeling much better. Low and behold Adam had fixed the car! Sort of. He figured out that the bolt that holds the tensioner arm on had broke. So he made his own tensioner sence we had no tools and worst of all no dsm bucket!

So here's what he did he went and bought a ratchet strap and looped it around the alt than around the radiator support tightened the crap out of it and it kept the belt tight the entire way home. By the time we got home It was bed time... Again hahaha


So the Next day after school this is what I came up with as a more permenant tensioner. In m opinion it's better than oem.

As you may notice the motor is out of the car in my tensioner pic you'll have to keep watching to find out why.

Theirs a few things I left out we figured out why the car on the free way was flashing us so much. Turns out when the. Car was cutting out real ad we were shooting about a foot long flame out the exhaust pipe. And some where along the way we named my car Luke. You might minder why we named my car after a guy most people give their car girl names but my cars name Is Luke. Luke crankwalker.

 

[acorn3583]

It just so happened that we broke the alt tensioner bracket holder bolt off in the front case. Stranded with no idea how to fix it with what we had. Called another buddy of mine (this one drove a Honda, so i was confident we would make it where we were going) and he took me to Menards for the best idea we could think of. Next thing you know, I'm running the end of this ratchet strap around the top and bottom of the radiator support and around the back of the alternator and pulled it as tight as i could and, bobs your uncle, started right up with a jump and took it for a cruise around the parking lot. We decided on Hu Hot and cruising around downtown Cedar Rapids with the top down listening to Christmas music in lieu of our engineering success.

 

[gst noob]

After fixing he alt tensioner the engine tended to stay cooler and we dident really have any problems. When your not having problems with a dsm upgrade some thing so ou are! We upgraded the turbo to what we think is a big 16g it came off one of Mitsubishi trucks. The down side is that it had a 14b hot side. We thought about it the wrong way thinking it was going o spool really fast with a small hot side. We thought about it backwards though it would spool really quick with a bigger hot side and a small cold side.

even though when it spooled it sounded like a semi we had to take it off. The boost just wasent quality.

 

[dfwdsmer]

Nice man will be fallowing this. How hard was the awd swap I have a spyder as well and as soon as I got done with my rebuild I plan on doing it just was to get someones opinion that has experience doing it

Also, that Turbo is a 17c I believe

 

[gst noob]

Nice man will be fallowing this. How hard was the awd swap I have a spyder as well and as soon as I got done with my rebuild I plan on doing it just was to get someones opinion that has experience doing it

Also, that Turbo is a 17c I believe

it really wasent that bad. the only thing i had trouble with were the gas tank mounting bolts the metal under the car where your supposed to mount them wasent heavy enough or at least thats how i felt. so i bought 4 6'' long bolts and ran them under the back seat they go through alot more metal this way. I also found a short cut sort of they say your supposed to cut out the bracket in the middle of the car for the drive shaft mount that weld in the gsx support. well the supports are exactly the same so i left mine and cut the bolts out of the gsx mount and was able to fish the driver side bolt in pretty easy and put a few tacs on it the passenger side i had to cut a little hole in the pasenger side of the console and drop it in. thats alot easier than drilling out all them spot welds and its held up just fine so far.

So we figured out why it was over heating I have just one more crappy pic for you to check out.

Don't ask me how this works we ran the car for who knows how long with 2 broken exhaust valves just chillen on top of the piston. Amazingly no other damage was don't the top of the piston had no marks and the cylinder walls were still perfect so we swapped on another head and every thing was just fine. No more over heating.

Now that we had FINALLY fixed the over heating I decided it was time to pay some attention to the interior. I did a complete over hall. Stock I had the grey interior. First thing was to strip it completely and wash my black carpet ( turns out the carpet was grey after I washed it)

I painted all my plastics blacks with SEM spray paint and I used an adhesion promoter. I swapped out my grey dash with a black one I had and picked out a different fabric for door panel inserts. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Doors...

 

[acorn3583]

Actually, it was a 17C turbo! Also, be sure to mention the electrical issue you fixed when er got back from cedar rapids. Something to do with the coil pack and the 1G CAS? I wasnt really listening when you told me about it

 

[gst noob]

Ohh we had this weird issue when we would b driving down the road the car would seem to misfire but only between 3000-3500 rmp it was super weird. So after this whole adventure with the ratchet straps I decided I was going to reall rid his problem. Well heres what was wrong I have a 1g cas on my 2g head and I was running a 1g coil pack and a 2g transistor I changed the transistor to a 1g one and the problem was fixed. I dident think their was a difference in transistors.

 

[dfwdsmer]

I like those doors man looks good. giving me some ideas for my interior

 

[gst noob]

I finally got fed up with the over heating 7bolt and decided it was time for a 6 bolt swap. First the plan was to do a .20 over block with eagle rods and 2g .20 over pistions. I got the block for 100 bucks 3 eagle rods for 130 and the pistons for 90 unfortunetally I cannot fine one more rod.

 

[bradselph]

EXTREME PSI : Your #1 Source for In Stock Performance Parts

cost more but its a single rod

 

[gst noob]

EXTREME PSI : Your #1 Source for In Stock Performance Parts

cost more but its a single rod

Thanks for the link! I might look in to getting one like that what I wanted to do was come across two more sets of 3 and have 2 complete sets with 2 extra.

Pulled out that stupid 7 bolt to get ready.

 

[Miasma]

I clearly need to shop around more for my internals. Damn you got that cheap.

I about to begin my own 6 bolt swap...everything I've been getting close to ordering is double that. Where did you order from?

 

[WES_393]

You cannot use stock/OEM press-fit pistons on full floating rods. The pins will walk out and score the bore. Ask me how I know.

 

[gst noob]

I ordered all my internals off of tuners.

And their not stock pistions ther .20 over toplines not the best but hay.

 

[crash89]

They're still an OE replacement. Still press fit wrist pin.. Those arent going to work with Eagle rods man.

Whats wrong with a 7 bolt?!?! I dont know why everyone is so scared of them.

Oh, is there a way you can do something better with your pictures? The quality is terrible! But you're on your way! Keep it up

 

[gst noob]

They're still an OE replacement. Still press fit wrist pin.. Those arent going to work with Eagle rods man.

Whats wrong with a 7 bolt?!?! I dont know why everyone is so scared of them.

Oh, is there a way you can do something better with your pictures? The quality is terrible! But you're on your way! Keep it up

well i wish some one would of told me that before i bought them. yea i know the pics suck but thoes are the only bad ones.

i got the 7 bolt all pulled out and just chillen out untill its next stage in life.

 

[WES_393]

well i wish some one would of told me that before i bought them.

It could have been worse. You could have been like me and got 100 miles down the road just to have the engine fail. I would either sell the rods and buy stock 6-bolt rods, or sell the pistons and get forged pistons. One of course being more expensive than the other.

 

[gst noob]

good thing im selling all that stuff now

 

[acorn3583]

Uh Ohh, rumor has it that there's some pretty gnarly interior mods coming our way.

 

[gst noob]

I sold the 7 bolt I pulled out to a guy in Texas so we built a crate for it and sent it off

So the cars been sitting for a while so I decided to do a crazy wire tuck. I moved my engine fuse box to the passenger air bag location.

Ran all my head light wires through the fenders

Getting every thing all buttoned up

All the wires are ran

Inside parts all done

Under the hood don't look that different but it just needs some loom I took every thing off of the fire wall and relocated any thing electrical to under the dash. The plan is to have the wires run up the back of the block than around the driver side of the intake and across the top under the rail and that is all tucked and hidden.

 

[Paintballaa5]

Interior fabric reminds me of the new GTI's. I like it!