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Techboy's 99 4G63

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SUB FRAME ASSEMBLY PART 2

Several months ago I decided to splurge on a set of the Megan Racing rear trailing arms and do away with the OEM ones. I've never purchased a Megan product before, but it seems like a quality piece from what I can tell.

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Installed:

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Laid out the 3G upper control arms and suspension in respective positions.

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Bolted everything up:

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Different angle:

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Close up of those 3G upper control arms.

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Before moving this thing into position and bolting it up, I wanted to fill the rear diff, I figured it would be a lot easier to do now on the floor than once it was under the car. Picked up some Redline Heavy Shockproof, actually 2 of them since I'll be filing the transfer case at a later time. Rear diff. takes. .95 qrt.

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Time to fill up!
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New fill plug installed.

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Sub frame completely built. Time to bolt the AWD assembly to the GST for the first time. :hellyeah:
 
SUB FRAME INSTALL

Ok, so, with this thing completely built and assembled, it's time for the install. The first thing I did was use a 4 wheel dolly and shifted it around to the rear of the car. I didn't stop and take and pictures here, but what I did (with some help from my wife), was tipped it forward 90 degrees, slid it under the car, and then stood it back up.

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Once it was in place under the car upright again, I picked it up again and slid the jack under. With the jack I just gently pumped it up, adjusting as needed to get it to line up with the 2 rear most subframe bolts (shown in the square below). If you've read through this swap, you might remember I welded the two rear subframe bolts in place. The front ones (shown with the arrow) are not in place yet - more on them in a minute. Once it lined up with those two bolts and slid on, I tightened up the two 17mm nuts.

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Next, I bolted up the trailing arms. The bolt for this has a oddly shaped triangular shaped head that prevents it from spinning, so all you have to do is tighten up the nut on the backside. If I remember right, it I think they're a 22mm.

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Then I bolted up the upper control arms. This is a set of Ingalls camber kits I've had for a really long time. Hit then up with some fresh paint.

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Bolted up.

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NOT SHOWN: I also bolted the top of the suspension back up inside the trunk.

Now, for the front subframe bolts. If your doing this swap, you know the front bolts actually sit down inside the frame from inside the car. So, you need a way to tighten these bolts to the proper torque spec without them spinning. In a GSX they are encased in a square metal box from the factory that prevents them from spinning. So, what I did was I took the square head of the bolt and ground it on a grinder into hex head. I did it free-hand, so it took a bit to get them just right, but by doing so I was able to have my wife hold a deep socket on it while it hit them with the impact.

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The grinding wore off the factory primer on them, so I hit them with some black paint before I installed them to prevent them from rust in the long run since they are holding the subframe to the car.

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When I get a chance, I'll take a picture of these installed from inside the car and add it to this post.
 
So I finally made my first mistake with this whole project - nothing major, pretty minor actually, but apparently you can't install the gas tank shield AFTER you mount the subframe. The other day I went to install the shield after I was done wrapping up all the odds and ends under the car and it wouldn't go on. There was NO WAY I was going to drop the rear sub frame just to install a shield, so it was time to make a modification.

Here's the shield all re-finished in it's glory. The upper part of the "Y" would not slip over the rear diff - and I wasn't about to unbolt stuff or drop axles, so ....

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I got the sawzall out and cut it. I didn't really measure, just sorta wung it. I did take 30 seconds to smooth over the edge with a metal file.

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Bolted up no problem at all. You can see where I needed to cut it.

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Just to keep your hearts content - here's a picture of the completed underside of the car with the gas tank, shield, and subframe all installed. The largest hurdle of making this things a GSX is complete.

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REAR BRAKES

Other than removing the tires and putting the car up in the air, removing these rear brakes I think was the very first thing I did when I started this whole GSX swap process. Unfortunately, when I took them off I just tossed them in the container together and they've just been sitting there for the past 7 months and I haven't even looked at them. Well, some of the brake fluid leaked out and ruined the paint on the calipers and brackets. It's no big deal, I did a crappy spray bomb on these things probably 15 years ago (you can see the overspray) and they've been on the car every since. I wasn't planning on re-doing these, but I ended up doing it and I'm happier now anyway.

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I spent some time wire wheeling them down and then cleaning them real good with brake clean. Got off as much of the old paint as I could.
(NOTE: If you want to paint your brakes and they are really rusty b/c they never had a finish on them, you're best to disassemble them entirely and have them sandblasted)

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Taped them off, prepped for paint.

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Hit them with a spray Primer.

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Made a trip to Home Depot and picked up a can of Rustoleum, since I seemed to have fallen in love with this stuff.

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Hand brushed - 2 coats.

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A lot of people don't know this, but when you reassemble brakes and put the caliper pins back in, you can't use just any old "brake parts" grease. It will cause the rubber gaskets to swell and then you can't get them apart when you do need to disassemble them for real. Whatever product you use, make sure it says "Sil Glyde" on it. On the tube I have - It's right above the word "BRAKE". If you doubt me, Google it up and do some reading - it'll be worth it. Anyway, here's the caliper and brackets back together after paint.

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I have literally had these steel-braided brakes lines in my stash of "future-parts-to-install" pile for 7 or 8 years. Anybody else have parts laying around they bought new and never got around to installing???:idontknow:
After all those years, today was the day to open them.

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I also jumped on Rock Auto quick in the past week and ordered up new clips from Bendix. I'm re-using my pads since they have plenty of life left. They are EBC Greenstuff pads - not sure that these are available anymore, I haven't seen them around for years now. I painted the outside black years ago b/c I didn't like the look of green pads loaded in red calipers - looked too "Christmas" for me.

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Here they are reassembled with new lines and fresh paint. Look pretty freakin sweet if you ask me for the cost of a can of paint and new clips. I think I spent less than $15 bucks if you don't count the braided lines - since I bought them so long ago :rolleyes:

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And here they are back on the car. As you can see, I'm also re-using my rotors from my GST, the rears are the same as GSX. I did NOT bleed the lines yet. I still have swap the front GST brakes to GSX fronts, so when that step comes near the conclusion of this project I will do the whole system at once. No use doing it now.

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So, it's been about 2 weeks since I've been on here with an update on the swap process. Truth is ... being the dead of winter here in PA I've kinda been taking it easy a bit and I'll get back to a more steady process of work when it warms up a bit more.

Here's what I got though ... I put the tires back on, and after 7 months of being up in the air, she's back on the ground.

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CLEANING UP THE TRUNK

We had some snow and ice here the other day, so that meant no going into work for me, so I did what I usually do on these days and went out to the garage for a bit to work on finishing up the trunk area.

I've been storing a lot of parts in the back of the car.

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Since I had to do some cutting and welding back here, things got a little rough looking, and because I like things nice and clean looking I decided I would just repaint the whole trunk area black. Turns out Mitsu doesn't spray real well inside the car anyway, its mostly bare metal and grey.

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I have never removed the washer fluid tank before. I should probably just ditch the whole stupid thing. I didn't feel like messing with all the lines so I just pushed it off to the side so I could paint.

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Here's it is with a fresh coat of paint. You can see the welded plates look much better now and much less noticeable.

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Here it is a few hours later with the paint dry. (Sorry for the quality of these pictures - a garage is a hard place to take decent pics)

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When I was putting the L/R trunk panels back in I did run into one issue. The plate I welded in place was over top of one of the mount points for the trunk panel. So, I had to drill a hole so I could still put a screw in.

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With both trunk panels back in place, you can just see a smidge of the welded plate. Not too bad.

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Just an aside for fun, I made this little cubby area years ago from a piece of acrylic.

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All back together.

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I don't really have any plans to swap the transmission, axles, and flywheel until it gets warmer, so for now updates will probably be light. However, in the next few weeks I do plan to replace the universals on the driveshaft, degrease and paint the GSX tans, and rebuild the front GSX brakes, so there will be few things coming your way. Stay tuned.
 
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DRIVESHAFT

RockAuto had a sale a few weeks ago and I decided to pick up some universals for the driveshaft. I hate replacing universals, but I figured now was the time to do it while the shaft was out.

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Here she is in her glory ready to worked on:

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I found for me a 15mm impact socket fit just about perfect and a 5lb hammer. I started with the mid-ship joint.

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There she is all whacked apart.

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Next I turned my attention to the flange yoke.

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After getting it disassembled, I gave it a good run over with the wire wheel to knock off all the loose dirty, rust and grim. You'll notice I didn't knock apart the tube yoke - that was because it still moved really smoothly, and it was obvious to me upon closer inspection it had been recently replaced.

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After cleaning it up a bit I gave it a first coat of paint.

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That's as far as I am right now. I need to hit it with a second coat of paint and reassemble with the new universals.
 
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Do you paint stuff with a brush? Does it not leave streaky marks or distribute the paint uniformly?

I used to spray paint everything years ago, but since I really got serious into restoration I started brushing everything. Much more control and lasts a lot longer. The oil-based stuff I use levels out so there are no brush marks. The only time I've seen oil-based paints get streaky is when the can gets low and the paint gets "thick" - it won't level out then and it'll dry streaky. Otherwise, I highly recommend if you have the time and patience for it.

Oh, also, I just buy throw-away chip brushes from Harbor Freight instead of washing everything with paint thinner.
 
DRIVESHAFT PART 2

Spent some time cleaning and throwing some new paint on the driveshaft carrier bearings.

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I forgot to take pictures of the process of pressing the new universals into the driveshaft, so you'll just have to trust that it happened. I do have proof though. Lol. The GMB's I purchased came with greasable zerks.

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Here it is all back together in it's glory. Another part rebuilt. Another part to check off the list.

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TRANSFER CASE PART 2

So I've been working on finishing up the transfer case lately. I've also been working on completely rebuilding the GSX front brakes, which I'll post up about in the very near future. Anyway, I started by painting up the gear box of the transfer case black.

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Next up, I painted the aluminum part of the case in an aluminum paint I had laying around.

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While I was doing some of the painting, i went over to Extreme's website and ordered up some new parts. The oil-fill plug looked liked it got ran over by a train so I ordered a new one, I picked up a new output shaft seal as well as a breather since that was missing.

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Here's the old seal. I actually doesn't look too bad, but now is the time to do it.

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Digging it out. I lent my gasket seal remover to a friend and haven't gotten it back. So, it's a screwdriver for now.

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Here it is out.

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Here's the case with the seal out.

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Tapping the new one in with a big socket.

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And ... here's the new seal installed.

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TRANSFER CASE PART 3

Finally put the final touches on the transfer case ... Installed the new breather I ordered that was missing.

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I also went ahead and ordered up some new crush washer from STM. I usually buy everything from ExtremePSI b/c they are so close to me and I usually get items next day, but, they don't sell the crush washer, so STM it was.

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Here is the transfer case totally complete.

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AWD TRANSMISSION - PART 1

With the driveshaft done, the transfer case completed, and new axles ordered up and on their way ... there is really only one piece left - the transmission. Truth be told, I've been avoiding the transmission like the plague. It's been sitting on a dolly in my garage since I picked it up from another member, and it's every bit of nasty as the other parts were. So, I haven't really been looking forward to working on this thing. But ... here goes.

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Maybe it doesn't look to bad to you guys from a distance, but up close, you can see it was pretty grimy. You can see in the 2nd pic it was covered in mouse terds.

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Lucky for me I have an Autozone right around the corner, so I ran over there quick and picked up 2 cans of Engine Degreaser.

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I drug the trans outside, put some paper down on the driveway, and soaked it both cans of this stuff.

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The can says to let it set for 5-7 minutes, I let is sit for a full 1/2 hour while I went in to eat. By the time I got back outside the sun was going down, so I made quick work of blasting this thing with the pressure washer.

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After the degreaser and good blast, this is what I was left with ...

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AWD TRANSMISSION - PART 2

While the degreasing and blasting got the major dirt and grim off, there was still alot of junk clinging to this thing, so I started next by removing all the rubber and taping off some part parts and then pulled out my trusty wire-wheel for more clean up.

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Here it is after some work with the wire wheel.

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I'd say I made some major progress pretty quickly. Next was wheeling this thing back outside, and some prep work before primer.

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Time for some primer.

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Last, I hit up Extreme and ordered up a new fork boot since mine was looking pretty ratty, and a new throwout bearing since this is really the time to do it.

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So this weekend I was all pumped to get my transmissions swapped. It almost happened. More on that in a minute...

I had no problem getting my FWD transmission removed.

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Popping the clutch off was no problem either.

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Here's where I made an interesting discovery that I should have realized. The starters on the AWD and FWD transmission are mounted in a slightly different positions, which is why the flywheels on the AWD and FWD cars are also different. What I didn't think about was that means the starter plate that goes between the block and transmission is also different between the two cars. I didn't have a AWD one. So that means no AWD transmission install for me. Luckily, STM carries them so I ordered one up along with a few other things and now I'm the ever-famous car guy dilemma .... waiting for parts to arrive.

And so sits my transmission exactly where it was:

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Still waiting on my parts from STM. I think my order somehow got missed since I ordered over Memorial Day weekend. It's been 2 weeks and I had to email them to get things sorted out. Hopefully its here by this weekend.

I decided to do some little things while I was waiting ....

Installed new breathers:
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Installed new pivot ball:
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Reinstalled the clutch fork:
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Installed new OEM throw-out bearing:
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Installed a clutch fork gasket:
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TRANSMISSION INSTALL

Got the new AWD starter plate installed.
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AWD Flywheel installed

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I went with the ACT, which I was previously running the FWD version of and had no problems, so I went with what I was familiar with.

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I reused my same ACT clutch and pressure plate from before.

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Took a couple minutes to throw some paint on various transmission brackets.

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My best friend came up and helped me get this thing installed. Because it was pretty much a 2 man job, I didn't stop to take any pictures during, but here it is bolted up ... finally!!

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TRANSMISSION MOUNT SIDE PROJECT

Since I had the transmission mount out, I figured this probably the best time to quick modify this thing to accept the poly mounts I bought a long time ago.

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Busted out my sawzall with a metal blade.

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I soaked the blade with WD-40 so it would slide through the rubber like butter. You just want to cut through the metal encasement of the rubber, but not the mount itself.

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What I learned ... I should have done this alone time ago. I think it took me less than 5 minutes.

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Wire wheeled the inside and hit it with some fresh spray paint quick. Not my best work. Good enough.

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All done.

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