After a Desmodronic learning curve, multiple trips to my favorite Duc shop to borrow some critical tools, lots and lots of measuring, and plenty of sweating the details, my Testatretta is back together and ready for action with upgraded 1098S main bearings, secret sauce crankshaft shimming, a...

That's a great question, and I didn't know the answer either. I thought this guy gave a good high level explanation of general electrolysis:There's also a more specific explanation about electrolysis in water and in HCl that goes into more detail about the chemistry taking place in ionic...

Glutton for punishment that I am, valve adjustment on a Ducati with a fancy pants Desmodronic system:

A lot of people are drawn to the thrill of an engine firing up and the excitement of a powertrain tearing down a straightaway, but me, I'm a hard braking guy. To me, there's nothing sexier in the world than going deep on the brakes to get around an opponent on a racetrack. So, though to many an...

More progress to report. Brake prop valve and associated hardware came in:Kicked off the work with a quick test fit. In spite of the 1 star rating on Summit racing, the adapters seemed to fit just fine. I'm guessing the complaint was for a single flare line instead of a double flare, because...

I bought a DSM thinking it would be a fun winter project.... 10 years ago.

This thread is hilarious and completely reinforces my approach to projects which is something like: if I don't have atleast 5 too many at any given time, then I don't have enough.

This thread is fun and a good idea! Lots of interesting stuff going on.For me, I have race season prep for my Duc:Motorcycle racing is a very physical thing to do, I know what's required from previous years' experience, so another project is getting into shape for racing:My tow vehicle...

I tried a handful of things with the OEM prop valve, concluded that the damn thing is just seized, and conceded defeat by ordering new parts:To be continued when this stuff arrives in a week or two.

Right now that's the only logical thing to do with the car, so that outcome seems likely.Several years ago, on paper anyway, the car seemed like a legitimately competitive option for DSP and it made finding a purpose for the car very easy. It was also something that fit well with my...

While thinking about the future of this project, as I sometimes do, I decided it was worth taking a look at the current SCCA rulebook to see where the car stands with the DSP plans I once had for it. As it turns out, the SCCA, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the DSM platform was to be...

Nice to see one saved from the scrapyard. Good luck with it :)

I wanted to wait on the next post until I was done with the brakes completely, but I thought what I just did might help someone else who might be doing something similar. Marching toward stopping the car, I had to go back to the pedal assembly. I've already covered the teardown and refurbishment...

On to the fluid reservoir which started out looking not so great:Tore it down to start the cleanup:Thought this would be fun; it's the guts of one of these reservoirs (after cleanup) for those that have never torn them apart:Sand blast, zinc coat, inspect. This part didn't come out looking...

On to the parking brake lever. There was some surface rust here and there and, though there was no way I was going to tamper with the semi-permanent assembly parts, I still wasn't content to leave it alone without cleaning it up as much as I could. Here's where I started:Pulled it apart...

I had to start the parking brake lever by, of course, backtracking to the parking brake cables. Upon trying to put them in, I realized I was missing 4 brackets. I found 3 in my parts bin and made the 4th from scratch:Added some zinc plating too:To get the cable to stop crashing into the...

On to the parking brake cables. As far as I can tell these are either very difficult to get or discontinued. As with so many other things on this car, I had to salvage what I had. I wasn't starting out with anything stellar, but atleast I had a pair of assemblies so that I could combine the best...

The last few years have been nuts and not always in a good way. My bandwidth has been so limited I went atleast a year without even thinking about this project. Thankfully things are starting to settle down a little bit and I've been finding the spare hour here and there to widdle away at my...

Lol. Nah, I'm still here. I'm going to finish the parking brake over the summer to 100% finish the brakes and to keep the project alive. Given my age, I'm taking care of a bucket list item that is currently consuming 100% of my spare time and money:https://www.adammillerracing.net/updates...

Thanks man, really appreciate the support. I've said it a few times in this thread, but having the community rooting me on has definitely kept me going sometimes when I wonder if it's worth it.

Hi Folks,I've searched GrabCAD.com and Thingiverse without much luck finding 1G DSM or GVR4 vehicles. Does anyone have a line on a potential supplier with a GVR4 vehicle CAD model. It doesn't have to be extremely accurate; I'm just looking for something rough I can start with to play around...

I thought this photo deserved its own, dedicated post. I added some choice clothing to my wardrobe and took this photo to summarize DSM ownership.Owning a functional DSM is an awful lot of work, but you do it anyway because you’re the type of moron who buys clothing depicting his shitbox...

Big milestone completed on the brakes; all lines have been completed!!! To finish this up, I started by running a line to the rear to create a t-junction back there:After attempting my first flare on the line to the rear right, my flaring tool gave up and I had to perform some surgery to...

As I suspected, the rear lines, while much simpler to route, had their own challenges to overcome because FUBAR. I had to drill out several bolts and chase some threads to preserve the original line routing bosses. I did this about 4 or 5 times:I was not too happy about my routing options in...

I finally got the front brakes completely done. The last line was definitely the toughest. I had to start by cleaning, drying, and mounting the firewall cover because that's a critical system interaction for the line that runs across the engine bay. It's a delicate piece, so dish soap and the...

I'll give you one guess about an upcoming modification to the car:It rhymes with shalance baft and it's required to make the engine DSP legal. BTW, I probably should have hoarded parts for this car about 5 years ago. Mitsubishi is discontinuing a lot of stuff.Now that the brake system finish...

The discerning observer will notice a mistake here:Although you can find a few pictures on the web kinda sorta detailing this area, if I'd have just thought about Bernoulli's law for a second, it'd have been a no-brainer. Anyway, I had to redo the line going to the prop valve, this time...

I made more progress than I expected today. I've now run 5 of the 9 hard lines I'll need to finish the job. Started with the t-junction for the front calipers:Ran this buster to the front left:Ran the jumper between flex lines at the front left:Ran the jumper at the front right...

Well, after taking 1.5 hours to run the first hard line, I'm really hoping the other 8 I still have to run take a little less time. Now that I have some practice with the tools under my belt the crimps may go a little faster, but I doubt the routing will... we'll see.I had to practice a few...

Had a decent couple of days of progress recently. I started by ordering some new parts from JNZ (flex lines, EBC pads, and Hawk pads.. yes the brand mixing was intentional; coefficient of friction/sourcing combo of issues there). I had to buzz the paint off the EBC pads to make them fit. I also...

This is another good point you raise regarding stock pieces. Since I'm doing the fuel system almost from scratch, maybe it would be worth the cash to go ahead and splurge on an aftermarket anodized fuel rail... I think with my original plan the fuel rail would have been the only OEM piece left...

Good to know that some stuff may come out black. I'm generally ok with whatever color anodized parts come out to be. I'm much more interested in functional protection of the aluminum in the fuel system from ethanol than I am about aesthetics.Are there alternative aluminum surface prep...

Good point. I'll take a quick look on Craiglist for the high quality stuff before I make a new purchase.

Holy cow. You, sir, just won this thread! Thanks so so much for putting in so much effort. Gotta love the DSM community; very helpful bunch :D

You're right, that looks pretty much like an unbranded Aircat at nearly half the price. Veeeery interesting :hmm:

Awesome feedback. Thank you!

Cool cool. Well you got me thing about the whole build/buy/purchase differently now, which is good because I sometimes get stuck in a complete DIY literally everything all the time rut. I'll look into local shops to see if they can quote me costs for larger parts... sounds like the fasteners are...

Much appreciate the input. For the zinc plating, right now it's limited to a lot of the OEM nuts and bolts, and a handful of steel brackets throughout the car that I'm currently refurbishing. Many of them have enough oxidation that it's hard to tell whether or not they were originally zinc...

Good info! Have you ever had them prep and plate larger items like bracket or mounts? If so, was the cost on those pretty minimal as well?

I did a quick search and found a 9 year chat about impact gun preferences (they've changed a bit since then), and couldn't find much on zinc plating so I'm starting a new thread to ask around about preferences and/or experience. Google searches are filled with commercial influence biased...

Once again, can't stress how much of a time saver the blast cabinet and parts washer are. If you're on the fence, just go get some... they're awesome.For the brake booster, from the outside it was looking pretty terrible. It's obvious that the brake fluid sat on that outer surface for quite...

As with everything on this damn car, the first step tend to be cleanup, rust removal, or both. The pedal assembly was certainly no exception. Assessed the filth on the workbench:Tore everything down:Did some sand blasting in the new cabinet while thanking myself profusely for making that...

The factory lines were completely shot, as were the old aftermarket lines on the car:For the flex lines (and pads for that matter), I have stuff in the mail right now from JNZ (damn good company to do business with thus far). However, to "connect the dots", so to speak, I have to get both ends...

Brake System ConstructionI finally got some new parts in the mail and did some work on the car. After playing some games having things shipped to a friend in Texas, then here, because Colorado and Rock Auto are currently in a fight with one another, I was able to get all the calipers...

Thanks for the suggestions, folks! That Amayama is clutch and I'll probably be using that in the future at some point. This time around I phoned a friend in Texas to receive a Rock Auto shipment and he will ship the parts along to me.

I just had a pretty terrible experience with Parts Geek and, unfortunately, Rock Auto does not ship to Colorado.Does anyone have recommendations for a solid OEM parts vendor that has the same wide variety of OEM parts as Rock Auto and Parts Geek?

Not sure what you're saying about the manifold, but everything you are sharing points to a textbook case of a block to head sealing issue. Low compression, white smoke, fluid mixture in your coolant between oil and coolant, a leaking coolant system... that's all classic head to block sealing...

95% sure you have a cylinder head to block sealing issue. Likely culprits include: bad machining on head, bad machining on block, bad head gasket, not enough bolt preload to seal up the head.Good luck with it.

Brake System EngineeringI finally did some ACTUAL work on FUBAR again, for the first time in a long time. Granted, the majority of this work is engineering and Bill of Materials work, but it still counts because it has put a $1000 worth of part on my purchase list about 10 days from now.I've...

I'm finally about to return to work on FUBAR, which is very exciting, indeed. Leading up to this point has involved quite a bit of final garage prep. Because I'm me, that work snowballed into a bunch of sub-projects.The first step was freeing up space and organizing all of FUBAR's parts a bit...