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Techboy's 99 4G63

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techboy

5+ Year Contributor
534
420
Feb 3, 2018
Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania
techboy submitted a new DSM Profile :

Techboy's 99 4G63


So it's going to take a while to start all the way back at 2000 and bring this build thread up to current day, but I'll do some digging through old computer files and see what I can do.

CHAPTER 1 (2000-2005) - Post #1: Turbo'd 420A
CHAPTER 2 (2005-2007) - Posts #2-14: GST Purchase & Refresh
CHAPTER 3 (2008) - Posts #13-17: Bolt-on Modifications & other various things
CHAPTER 4 (2009) - Posts #18-19 : Time for a bigger turbo
CHAPTER 5 (2010) - Posts #20-21: Making things pretty(ier)
CHAPTER 6 (2011-2012) - Posts #22-23: Dyno Disaster
CHAPTER 7 (2013) - Post #24: Gates Timing Belt Upgrade
CHAPTER 8 (2014) - Posts #25-27: Intake manifold modifications & 1G TB rebuild
CHAPTER 9 (2015) - Posts #28-35: Uh-oh ~ Overheating issues
CHAPTER 10 (2016) - Post #36
CHAPTER 11 (2017-2019) - Post #37-130: GST --> GSX Swap
CHAPTER 12 (2020-??) - Post #131 - Current
 
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2000 - 2005

My journey with DSM's began in July of 2000 when I bought this 99 GS Anniversary Edition off the lot. It had roughly 7K miles on it at the time. Black w/ tan leather interior, the Anniversary Edition OZ wheels and the white-faced gauges. Apparently someone bought it, couldn't afford it and returned it - or something like that. This is the very first picture of that car, taken 2 or 3 days after I brought it home in my parents front lawn. It's a horrible quality picture, but it was 2000 and it was probably taken on a crappy digital camera (remember those?).

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I daily drove this car for about 3 years until I got the itch to make the car faster. So, I purchased a Hahn Racecraft turbo kit (they were pretty popular at the time) and over the course of a weekend I tubro'd it and drove it around like that for another 2 years. Overall, even though it wasn't super fast, it was a lot fun and gave the car the extra "pop" it really needed.
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However, eventually I started getting hungry for even more boost and potential than the 420A platform had to offer. I had already started looking into the 4G63 platform when I spun a bearing on this car. Fortunately, when I turbo'd the car, I pulled my entire stock motor and put it on the stand. I had built a complete 2nd motor with Pauter rods and Wiesco pistons and a dressed up head, so it was easy to drop the stock motor back into the car.

By the summer of 2005, I still had my GS Ann. Ed., now back in stock form, but I was now on the lookout for a suitable 4G63 so I could make the jump to the dark side ....
 
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2005-2007

After the spun bearing I had spent most of my spring and summer of 2005 trying to find a 4G63 I could my hands on - but I had severely limited myself - it had to be black just like my GS, it had to be a 99, a GSX, low milage, and not overly modded, if at all, b/c I wanted to put my own flavor on it. I was willing to travel a distance too, but, as you can image I was having a hard time finding exactly what I was looking for and I wasn't as patient then as I am now. I eventually settled on this 99 GST I found in New Hampshire with only 46K on it. Overall, it was in excellent shape and only had a carbon fiber hood, a 3" cat back, and an HKS intake. Other than that, it was pretty much stock. I had some days off over the July 4th holiday and so I made the 6 hour trip north to buy my first 4G63. These pictures are from the dealership in NH when I arrived to pick it up.

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After driving the car home from NH and having it a few days, a few things became very apparent I didn't notice when I had test drove the car. #1 - the oil seals on the turbo where shot, the turbo was blowing smoke under boost. I guess I should have driven the car harder during the test drive (I probably would have still bought it anyway b/c I wasn't going to be keeping a stock T25 for very long). #2 - after being parked in my garage I was getting the notorious oil leak from the timing cover side of the car. So, I did the normal thing - I parked the car in the garage and threw the cover over it for about 9 months until March of 2006 :confused:

I figured the best thing to do was to pull the motor and give it a refresh since I had no idea how the car had been treated and at least that way I'd know what I was starting with.
During the time the car was parked in the garage I started collecting parts. I can't remember that far back to everything I bought. But I did find a few pics from then. I know I bought an upper and lower gasket kit, all new timing components, a new water pump and a new oil pump. Probably a little excessive for a car with only 46k on it, but it's what I did. I also picked up a ACT light-weight flywheel and the 2600 clutch and pressure plate to match since I was gonna have the motor out I figured that was the easiest time to do a new clutch.

UPPER KIT (opened) / LOWER KIT (still sealed)
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New OIL PUMP/ Front Case
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OEM TIMING BELT and Balance Shaft Kit
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New WATER PUMP:
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ACT Lightened Flywheel
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I believe it was March of April or 2006 when the weather finally got decent enough in PA to drive the car down to my buddy's house (where'd I be doing all my work) and finally get the motor pulled. It would be the last time the motor would ever look like this again. Time to clean up the nasty.

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After getting the motor out, the next I did was clean, tape, paint ... clean, tape, paint, and then I cleaned, and taped and painted some more. Here's some random photos I took at the time. Most of this work would have taken place summer of 2006.

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Those pics really make me regret not cleaning my tranny when I had the motor out. Mine is filthy but the motor was swapped in the middle of winter so I didn't even have a chance to hose it off. Now every time I look under the hood all I see is this grimy turd. You'll see...
 
Those pics really make me regret not cleaning my tranny when I had the motor out. Mine is filthy but the motor was swapped in the middle of winter so I didn't even have a chance to hose it off. Now every time I look under the hood all I see is this grimy turd. You'll see...

It was so long ago now I don't even really remember what I did. I know that either Purple Power or Simple Green are my go-to cleaners/degreaser. I always brake parts cleaner on hand along with some old tooth brushes. I think I painted with some sort of Gunmetal. Believe it or not, even though it's 11 years later and it was only spray paint, it's held up pretty good.
 
I figured while I had the motor out I would also give the engine bay a quick face-lift. This is the only part of the project that if I had to go back in time I would have told my former self to slow and do a more thorough job. It came out pretty good, but you can tell in the pics, I didn't really take the time to remove much. I just moved things around and painted. Since the car was black, I used a matte black on the engine bay just to set the engine compartment off a little bit from the exterior color of the car.

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With most of the parts cleaned up and painted and the engine bay semi-cleaned up, it was now time to turn my attention back to the motor and start putting it back together for it's minor refresh. I started with the timing components by removing all the old stuff.

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Next, I mounted up the new oil pump/front case and the balance shaft timing components. A side note, the kit I bought at the time was listed as 90-99 timing kit and so it came with a 1G balance shaft tensioner (blue pulley) and I didn't know better at the time. I found out a little bit later when I went to mount the CPS plate that didn't work with the pulley. They actually hit each other - so I had to buy a 2G tensioner. (Later on you'll see I eliminate the balance shafts all together).

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Everything complete with new components in place. Looking at this picture now, it looks like I re-used the same idler pulley.

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Time to put the head back on:
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New timing belt back on. All freshened up and ready to go back into the car.
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Somewhere along the line during the process I also wired up some gauges to the inside of the car as well. I went with Autometer Phantom Series gauges since the white face matched the white gauges on the cluster. Some of those gauges are still in the car today. The pillar pod I bought from Lotek, which I think is now Gaugepods.com

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It took the better part of the spring and summer to get everything clean up, reassembled and ready to go. I didn't have a garage at the time, so all this work was done at amy friends garage I mentioned above, as I had time. Which, between working and everything else ... took awhile. Anyway, it was August till I finally got the point I could go ahead and drop the refershed motor back into the car.

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My goal at the time was to make NO modifications at all and just get the car running well in stock form and, then, go from there. In the end, I decide to go with one modification. I already had a lot of positive experiences with Hahn Racecraft from my 420A days, and I was very happy with how their FMIC mounted up on my 420A, so I decided to purchase the same FMIC again, expect this time for the 4G63 application. The IC's where actually identical, you just mounted the in and outlets to the drivers side for the 420A and the passenger side for the 4G63. The only differences where the IC piping that came in each kit. While I was doing all the building, I had sent the IC pipes to be powder coated red. They used to come powder coated black from HRC. The only other thing I did was add the HRC logo. I made a little template out of cardboard and sprayed it on with some black spray paint.

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And there she is all put back together.

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A big difference over what I started with ....
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I wish I could tell you that after the motor refresh everything was fine and I was able to continue modifying the car from that moment on. But ... that's not what happend at all. The evening that I finished all engine refresh work I decided to drive the car home for the first time in 6 months. Don't remember the day, but it was August and I decided to stop at Wendy's on the way home, grab some food and get Frosty's for me and the wife. As I was sitting the payment window the car shut off and I saw something rolling across the pavement. It wouldn't restart, so I decided to get out and find out what I saw rolling. I recognized it immediately, it was the oil pump sprocket. :cry:

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Needless to say the car sat at Wendy's overnight and I had to get the rollback the next day. At this point I was frustrated with car. I had owned it over a year at this point and basically only drove it home from NH and to my friends garage. This time took it to my father-in-laws auto shop and put it one of his empty bays and walked away for 2 months. I'll never know for sure what happened, but I think's it's pretty safe to assume I forgot to tighten the sprocket bolt to spec and it just backed off.

It would be late October again till I resumed work on the car. As you've probably guessed, that sprocket falling off caused the head to crash and bent all the valves in the head. I left the motor in the car this time and pulled the head. I decided since we were heading into winter in PA I'd send the head out to a local machine shop to be machined out to improve airflow and have O/S valves installed. I don't have any pictures of this time period. I think I was too angry to take pictures, but I do have a few of the valves and the head after I got it back from the machine shop. It cost me a bunch of $$, but it was worth it in the end.
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Here's the head all done. I think I may have had revised lifters put in at the time too, I don't remember.
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2008

Till the debacle that was described above was all sorted out it just about winter of 2007 in PA, so it was really 2008 until this car was up and running. And so I did what anyone else would do after such a long ordeal - I just enjoyed it for bit. Here's a pic I found from a car show sometime in summer of 08.

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I didn't take long though till I started doing some other things. One of the first things that I needed to do was get the exhaust system straightened out. I had purchased Greddy EVO2 when I had my 420A and I had removed it before I sold it. So I had that, but I needed to have a downpipe made up. Fortunately for me I don't live very far from JMF so I had them whip up a custom downpipe for me that would work with the Greddy. That same exhaust system is still on the car today.

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I also was not very fond of the OEM valve covers that I knew where prone to cracking due to the thin aluminum casting. I'd always heard the Hyundai valve covers were a thicker casting, so I tracked one of them down and had it powder coated red to match the IC piping.

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In the picture above the VC is installed with just some longer 8mm bolts b/c the OEM ones are too short for the Hyundai covers, however, they are actually meant to be installed with studs & acorn nuts. I found out very quickly this setup weeped oil all the time, so it was off to the dealership for a set of studs and acorn nuts. It cost me a pretty penny for all that hardware new from the dealership, so anytime I find them in junkyards now I snatch em.
 
By now it was fall of 2008, and the next thing I did I will forever regret. My car is originally a leather interior car - however, when I bought the car in NH, it was missing the back seat (the dealer gave me $300 off b/c of it) and the drivers front seat was in really poor condition considering the car wasn't that old at the time. So, I removed the two leather front seats and went to a local a junkyard and found this really nice set of cloth seats to install.

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But ... being a purest and wanting to get the car back to original, within a months I tracked down a set of leather seats for the car and swapped those in instead. The part I regret is that I actually put this cloth set into storage for 4 years, but in 2012 my wife and I decided to move so I pulled these out of storage and sold them. I'm still kicking myself today. I like the leather, but this set of cloth was so nice, I should have never sold it. :banghead:

Anyway, here's the leather swapped in that is still in the car to this day.
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Sometime after that, I decided it was time to start keeping this engine a bit cooler, so I purchased a Mishimoto Rad and some slim line fans and bolted that setup in. I went to the junkyard beforehand and clipped off some OEM wiring harness and soldered them onto the slim lines so the setup would be plug & play. It's been a great setup and has serviced me well.

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2009

By now it was spring / summer of 2009. In preparation for a turbo upgrade I also wanted to upgrade the manifold a bit from OEM, so I found an EVO 3 manifold on eBay and sent it out to be ceramic coated. The coating didn't hold up very well in the long run, I think maybe the coating wasn't the best of quality. It looked good for a while though.

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The kinks had all been worked out, some supporting mods were in place, and it was no time to start laying down a little bit more power. Being a FWD I didn't want to go too crazy with a turbo knowing that traction was going to be an issue. I had had only positive experiences working with Hahn Racecraft with my turbo'd 420A, so decided their Super16G would be just a slight step-up from a "regular" 16G and get me a bit more streetable power. Plus, I already had their intercooler setup and I know the turbo would work without too much modification to the piping.

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I had the guys at JMF weld on a 90 degree elbow so that I wouldn't have to use a silicone 90 coupler.

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I think it was sometime in the early summer when I finally got around to doing the install.
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The install was pretty straight forward and there was were little difficulty since it wasn't all the different than the OEM setup.

While I was down at JMF, I decided to pick up one of their spark plug covers just for a little added bling. :p

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Next, it was time to get rid of the crappy looking coolant overflow bottle, so I called up the guys at JMF again and grabbed one of their bottles. Unfortunately, they discontinued making these long ago, but I'm glad I grabbed one when they still had them.

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I wanted to keep it relatively close to the OEM location, so I bent up some sheet aluminum and made a mounting bracket for it using some bolt holes already in the inner fender area.
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Pretty straight forward install.

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2010

By 2010 I had the car where I wanted it for the time being, but I wasn't real happy with the look of the engine bay. I had long grown tired of the crayola red I had everything powder coated when I put it all together in 06 and 07, and I also wanted to clean up some other parts that were starting to show age and wear. So, I took a bunch of things apart in the engine bay and sent them back out to my powder coater - this time for a new color - Lollipop Metallic Red w/ an Alien Silver base.

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2011

2011 was probably the year I did the absolute least to the car. The only thing I did was buy set of steel braided brake lines (which still aren't installed on the car to this day) and purchased a CC elimination cable to just to get the giant box out of the engine bay. Only thing I got from that year is a picture of the car from sometime around that time period.

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2012

By 2012 I had grown tired of the Evo III exhaust manifold. It had been on the car about 3 years and I never had any problems with it, and it definitely seemed to flow a bit more than OEM, but it just didn't look "pretty" or very "aftermarket". To the untrained enthusiast, it just looked like a stock manifold. So, I did what so many people before me have done and I picked up probably one of the most reliable manifolds around - that being the FP manifold.

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I don't have any pictures of actually installing this thing, but I don't remember it being too hard or taking every long. I just swapped manifolds and sold the Evo III.

By mid-summer 2012 I really wanted to get the car running as well as it possibly could, so I decided it was time to schedule some dyno tuning time. I had the car on the dyno before for some randoms pull during some dyno days, but never for the intent of tuning. So, I scheduled some time at R/T tuning in Lansdale, PA, one of the best tuning shops around these parts.

And ... that's when disaster struck. It was a HOT HOT day in July when I got the car in there. And even though we had the fans on it, after about the 5th pull we heard a loud BANG, some parts went flying through the air and the car shut off. After we had some time to assess the situation it was determine that my balance shafts had seized and blew everything up. I guess between the heat of the day and the heat of the turbo the block got hot up front and the shaft just had enough. A few days later I picked the car up with a rollback and took it back to my friends shop. I ordered a BSEK immediately, pulled the motor (again) and got to work. I have no pictures from the job b/c I think I was too sick over what I might find to take pics. But here's two very telling ones....

This "was" my crank shaft sensor:
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And this was what was left of my balance shaft belt:
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In the end, it turned out I was the luckiest DSMer on the planet. My front balance shaft has seized and snapped the belt along with it destroyed the position sensor, but my timing belt was completely intact and I didn't crash the head. Other than myself, I never meant anyone else that has happened too. Needless, to say, I was able to install the BSEK, replace my CPS, install a turbo blanket and drop the motor back in over the course of a weekend.

Very. Close. Call.
 
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2013

By 2013 the near major mishap on the dyno scared me enough that I thought maybe it was time to upgrade the timing belt ... just in case it was strained or compromised in some way when everything went BOOM. So, I pulled off my cam gears and sent them out to be powdered. In the meantime I picked up a Gates Racing timing belt, bought and AMS alignment tool and got a 4G63 alignment kit from chbuzz on eBay. When I got the cam gears back I went to work. Up until now I had always done 4G63 timing belts on a stand, this was first time doing one in the car. Not the most pleasant, but doable.

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2104

By 2014 I decided it was time for a little more responsiveness. I wanted to open things up a little bit more coming into the head, and I wanted to do in an economical way, so I decided to pick up a 1G TB and a spare 2G intake manifold. The 2G TB is 55mm, while the 1G TB is 60, so that would get a little bit more airflow. I bought the spare intake so I do all the work and then just swap it onto the car when done.

First, I had to buy an nice single flute aluminum grinding bit.
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I started by clamping the intake to my bench and then matching up the 1G TB and scoring a line so I knew where to grind too.
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Even though the intake was off the car, I still stuffed a towel in there to minimize shavings entering the intake. And then I started grinding. It took a bit.
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After I had it bored to match in the 1G TB, I switched over to a smoothing stone and cleaned up the rough edges.
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Last, I put a sanding disk on my dremel and really smoothed it out.
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I finished by cleaning up some of the accessories and bolt things back on.
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After the intake mani was done I turned my attention to the TB elbow. I marked a line on that for 60mm as well and went to town. You have be a little bit more careful with this piece as it is thinner and starts to bend fairly quickly. You don't want to grind right through it.

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