This is the Build Thread for 1990 rebuild after a 13 year nap. Reply below.

Day 1 in June 2021. Lots of work to do.


Mice had a good time, luckily the mothballs in the interior seem to have kept them out.

I'm starting to transition from disassembly, frozen fasteners and cleaning, to painting, repairing and reinstalling. I decided to brighten up the intake manifold some and mimic the factory valve cover colors. Bead blasting, 2 coats of Dupicolor aluminum color engine paint and a Duplicolor Bright Red touch up kit (paint & clear coat) produced decent results.

Red Rider said:

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I'm starting to transition from disassembly, frozen fasteners and cleaning, to painting, repairing and reinstalling. I decided to brighten up the intake manifold some and mimic the factory valve cover colors. Bead blasting, 2 coats of Dupicolor aluminum color engine paint and a Duplicolor Bright Red touch up kit (paint & clear coat) produced decent results.

Click to expand...

I you keep up this level of work on everything on the car that is going to be a beautiful engine bay! Looks great man.

Is your plan to do an all out restoration on the car or just clean it up for a nice daily?

Phase 1 is to replace all hoses, clean and paint where needed, install the rebuilt head, fix what I find that's broken, and install all new timing components. Then get the car running well. Once I have a good mechanical baseline, I'll paint it. From there I'd like to step up the zip, likely keeping the stock turbo, with a max hp of 300. Then at some point rebuild the front suspension and lower the car a little. The car has some but not terrible rust, but nothing structural, as it was only driven in the winter for 5 years before I bought it. The body seems 100%, the undercarriage has some rust. The interior is very good.

I expect it will be a summer errands and weekend car.

Badass man

How did the manifold look after just the bead blast? I had my transmission bead blasted (at TRE, not by me), and the case looked like it just came from the foundry. I’m wondering if clear coat might preserve it.
Also curious if replacing all the hoses includes all the intercooler hoses? Brake m/c hoses? Oil cooler hoses? Radiator and heater hoses are quite obtainable, but I’ve not located several of these others. I have a similar goal, and 30yo rubber hoses are suspect. The hose connecting the fuel fill pipe to the tank on mine was so poor, when I removed it I could literally push my finger right through the wall as it crumbled!! ( not the least bit unsafe..) I did replace all the fuel line rubber, except the one with fitting that carries the pumped fuel, though it actually feels supple still.

The intake manifold was structurally fine after the cleaning. The casting is a little rough all over. My exhaust manifold had a 1.5" crack on top, and a nearly completely across crack on the bottom. Needless to say I won't be putting that back on.

I'm replacing (mostly) all the hoses in the engine bay. The vacuum hoses so far look the worst. The IC hoses seem ok, I might leave those for now. Good point on the fuel fill hose, I'll have to check that. Once I'm up and running I'll likely do a brake job and replace the flex lines at the wheels. Some hoses look difficult to replace - AC for one, and yes, oil cooler. I'll inspect those and go from there.