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1995 Eclipse GSX - 2.3 Stroker 400WHP

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To actually mount the AWD gas tank in the car there are again some studs that have to be added front and rear of the gas tanks for the AWD tank straps. The front 2 studs for the FWD tank are still there but farther inboard than the AWD tank. And in the rear we cut the FWD tank mounts earlier. Luckily the holes are already in the chassis for where the AWD tank studs should be you just have to figure out how to get bolts in them.

Here is another place where I found that AWD swap guides will differ. I saw many people taking a hole saw from inside the car and make an access hole so that a bolt could be dropped in from above. I found this method to be pretty messy and hard to keep looking good. So I went for a more subtle approach.

There are some other preexisting holes in the body near the holes where you need to add the bolts. These holes are already fairly large but I just took a die grinder and enlarged one of them slightly, enough for a bolt with decent size washer to fit through. Then I used some stiff wire and fished it from the large hole through to the smaller hole where I was looking to put the bolt. Tied some fishing line to the bolt and just dragged it through.

Took some fiddling but the results are that you can get the bolts in for the AWD tank without any serious cutting on the body. Only down side is the bolts are not held in place, I just welded some arms to them so that they cant spin in there. You just have to be careful when hoisting the tank into place that you dont push the bolts through. End result is this...
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You can see the larger holes I'm talking about to the left and right of the strap bolts in this picture.
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Here you can see the original FWD studs. About 2&4 inches inward from where the AWD studs go. I didn't bother to cut them off and grind them. May be able to use them for something else later on.
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The FWD exhaust hanger also just barely cleared the tank. I would have cut this off if I had realized ahead of time.
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And lastly I got all the lines hooked up and the filler neck installed. Everything fit great and much cleaner than the FWD stuff.
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Next comes the AWD sub frame install. Finally!
 
You missed another irregularity, I also have an early 98 and it has the oil cooler line run from the cooler to the block, and not to the thermostat housing like my 96

The early 98 is also missing a water pipe outlet for the turbo coolant return line, it is plumed into the block

So basically your water pump pipe has 1 nipple instead of 2

I'm assuming my early 98 (Jan 98 date) also does not have a split thrust block, and the water pipe is the indicator to that option

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You missed another irregularity, I also have an early 98 and it has the oil cooler line run from the cooler to the block, and not to the thermostat housing like my 96

The early 98 is also missing a water pipe outlet for the turbo coolant return line, it is plumed into the block

So basically your water pump pipe has 1 nipple instead of 2

I'm assuming my early 98 (Jan 98 date) also does not have a split thrust block, and the water pipe is the indicator to that option

That's funny you mention that because I was going to get into completion of the motor later. I think where I last left it in this thread I had just finished buttoning up the bottom end. But I did flip it over and put the cams, gears, timing belt, and of course the water pipe and t-stat housing.

Im going to have to go out and look at my 99 and see if the water pipe is like the one you just posted. Both of the other ones I had from the 95 & the 98 had the oil cooler port coming off of the water pipe right next to the pump. Since mine has the EVO 3 housing I cut off that port and welded it up. Then I powder coated the tube black. Crappy picture but here is where I welded it up.
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I can't seem to find a good picture of the block port right now but again I'm going to have to look at my 99 because I haven't seen that block tube you just posted. On both the 95 & 98 cars I had the block water port is just a banjo bolt fitting that goes to a hose nipple. I coated it and reinstalled it to use if for the water lines on the FP Green. You can just see it sticking out on the left side of the block in this picture.
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Well it's been over 2 years so maybe it's time I update this thread.

I left off last I had got the AWD gas tank bolted up and was getting ready to put in the rear subframe. At this point I had not completed putting in the longer AWD bolts.

I know I previously showed my front bolt mounts for the AWD swap but here they are installed in the unibody frame rail. I found these flap cuts were the way to go that way they could be easily rewelded afterward. Ive's seen a few hack jobs with hole saws on other cars that don't look very good.

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Man that is a lot of work just to get long enough bolts in the car. Really wish they had not designed those as being within the unibody.

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With those now in place I could weld up the inside and used the grinder to make it smooth again. Like it never happened:

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Then hit it with some body color. Believe it or not this is an after photo. I'm pretty happy with it even if no one will ever see it.

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Then it was time to get the subframe in.
 
So got the subframe cleaned up but the bushings were shot in it. At the time in 2018 I could only find 1 manufacturer selling rear diff bushings for our cars that were poly. I didn't want solid bushings so I went with these from Split Motorsports.

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You can see in that picture that these bushings were just liquid polyeurethane that someone had poured between two aluminum sleeves. I didn't know it at the time of this photo but man what a crappy idea that was and even worse for them to sell it to people. but more on that later.

Painted it and the Diff up and assembled.
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Pressed the bushings out of the rear arms as they were all pretty tattered.

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Cleaned up well with new bushings from Prothane
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The rear toe arm ball joint boots were shot but the ball joints were still good. Ended up replacing them with these from Prothane as well. Part number is there if anyone else needs it. I just took some measurements as I couldn't find any info out there on replacement boots.

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With everything all painted up if was finally time for some assembly. I also picked up a new rear sway bar from RM racing which measured to 21MM over the stock 18MM. Plus it's red to match.

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I went with the Prothane bushings everywhere on this car as I had had a bad experience with the Energy Suspension ones on my previous car. The Prothanes are a 2 half with a crush sleeve design which is pretty typical for aftermarket bushings. The ES ones are a single piece bushing that presses in and doesn't have much of a lip to hold it axially.

After a few thousand miles on my 99GST the uppers had worked out of this lip and were rubbing metal on metal along the sides like this:

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Didn't want that happening again so I wend with the Prothanes.

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As you can see also got the axles cleaned up and installed. The inner boots were torn and the outer boots were find. Best replacement solution I could find was this from Dorman.

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It is a universal solution and does not fit the "Tripod" design of the inner axle cups. So you have to cut the inner portions of your original boots off to use as plugs like so:

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They work just fine in the end

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Picked up some extended ARP wheel studs and fresh wheel bearings so back to the press I went

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I also can't recommend the Moog sway bar end links enough. Way stouter than the stock stuff and greaseable. For once a replacement part that is better than OEM.

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Obviously some more cleaning and painting that no one cares about and finally a nice AWD rear suspension:

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I just put it on the stock struts and springs for now. My DG coilovers need bearings. Plus Iv'e never actually ridden in one of these cars with stock suspension. Only lowered. Curious what it rides like stock haha.
 
So at this point I now had to change out one of the last FWD to AWD parts. The E brake cables. What's funny is they are very close. The AWD cables are a whole 3" longer than the FWD cables and have a sliding mount in a different spot that's all. FWD left AWD right

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Got the E Brake shoes in with a fresh spring kit.

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Now for the rear brakes. As I mentioned earlier when I tore down the 95 I found out it had the early 95 vented rear brakes. I figured this would be cool to keep and use on the car so I set about rebuilding the calipers.

Before
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After blast and powder coat
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Nothing better than a transformation that only costs $10 in seals and a whole boatload of time. But it was worth it.

What I didn't know going into it was how difficult the rotors for these calipers would be to come by. They are a special size that makes them 1 off for this application and only this one year. For anyone looking (you can find this information in the early 95 brake threads) the Centric part number for these is 121.46048 L & R.

Crappy part is that these are discontinued. So you pretty much have to convert to the standard brakes now. Lucky for me back in 2018 I was able to get the last 127.46048 L & R which is the slotted version of these from CARID. Hopefully they last a long time because there's no replacing them.

Went with Hawk HPS pads too.

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WIth the rear end all buttoned up (or so I thought) I turned to the inside. Always wanted to do a trunk mounted battery so I picked up an optima and a unviersal tray for those from Summit.

Cut out a mounting plate and welded some threaded inserts into it
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Welded in
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Had to trim the plastic a little bit. I used a piece of carpet to dress up where the plastic cover was cut away. You don't see any red when the plastic is installed.

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The cables are welding wire so they are super flexible which is awesome for running it inside the car. Also the ends are pre-solders which are easy to use you just stick the cable in and heat the end up with the torch. Goes right in. Then a piece of shrink wrap and you got a professional looking battery cable.
 
With the battery now way back in the trunk I was worried about having a short in the cable running up to the front. So right behind the rear seat I installed a 250A fuse. This also gave me a great spot to run my 255 fuel pump power feed to. Shouldn't have any problem with fuel press now.

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To wire up the fuel pump I now had to do the FWD-AWD sending unit wiring. Rather than hack the harness on the car I made a jumper harness between the two connectors and pulled off heavy 8 gauge wire to the fuel pump.

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So at this point the car had sat for quite a few months between working on it. I happen to look at the diff bushings one day and noticed just from sitting the Split motorsports bushings had completely failed. Fell apart just sitting. Never drove the car just quite a bit more dust from sitting than in the pictures above.

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Had to pull the whole rear subframe back out and at the time I could not find another supplier to buy bushings from. I went through a whole design process for my own bushings that I detailed here

https://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/rear-diff-bushing-options-split-motorsports-poly-failed.516311/

In the end I said screw it and bough the beautiful boston hatcher front mount kit and machined my own rear mounts out of polyeurethane.

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And finally back in the car. Needless to say I was not happy about having to replace a part on the car due to failure without even driving it. But in the end it was for the best.

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With that complete for the second time I went back to the interior. Decided to eliminate the rear wiper for a cleaner look. Found a nice machined aluminum plug online for a civic I believe. Just barely had to file the hole for it to fit.

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Next with the interior gutted I blew out the sunroof drains. Interestingly enough while I had the sunroof off I noticed that the 95 glass was tinted a different color than the 98. Both of these pieces are the factory clear glass tint no film on them at all:

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Interesting. But I stuck with the one on the left.

With the drains clear the headliner on the sun roof shades was coming off so I pulled it off and wrapped them with some carbon fiber vinyl.

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From my 99 I had a black headliner and black carpet so I pulled those for this car. Before I put the carpet in I pulled the dash so I could finish running the battery wire.

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Ran it out through where the washer fluid tube goes.

From the inside:
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And then under the hood:
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Next I went to install a short throw shifter. Bought a Megan racing one from Ebay and it was crap as expected. Had so much play side to side it wasn't funny. took it apart and found that there was a tiny stud and a bushing that was about 0.02" too big. Drilled out the fulcrum for two shouldered bronze Oil-lite bushings and drilled and tapped the arm for a shoulder bolt.

Top row is factory with the crappy plastic washer. Bottom you can see the bushings in the fulcrum and the much larger shoulder bolt.
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Nice and tight with this modification so I could actually stand to put it on the car. I did notice when doing this that the 95 & 98 shifters had a different angle. And also that the megan racing one doesnt match either of them.

95 shifter on the far right. This view is left to right side of the car.
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Also front to back the angle was not right either. Again 95 on the far right.
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The 95 shifter felt better to me so I heated up the megan shifter with the torch and bent it to match the 95.
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Ended up going with the factory shift knob on the megan shifter. Gives it a sleeper look. You don't expect how short it will be when you grab it for the first time
 
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Again from my 99 I had a black leather rear seat which I again robbed for this car.

Then I made the part find of my year. 50 miles away from me I traded a guy $400 and these:
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For these:
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Yep that's right EVO 9 seats with wedge brackets all ready to go just bolt them in. I couldn't believe it. I LOVE these seats always wanted a set ever since I saw a thread on here where someone put them in their car.

The drives side has one cigarette burn which I will have repaired eventually but overall a steal for these seats with the brackets. It is funny to think though that I paid almost as much for these seats as I did for the entire GSX.
 
Before I could install the seats for good I had to put the dash back in and it was time to install my wideband controller. I put the wideband in the factory rear O2 location and ran it up through the floor before I put the carpet in.

So then I mounted the Innovative LC-1 under the console just to the left of the shifter
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The LC-1 requires a calibration button which I put into the kick panel with it's light.
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Pics of the black headliner? Only ever seen one factory color for headliners. Custom?

Yep custom. Was originally the ugly light tan/grey just like everyone else's out of my 99. Took it to an upholstery shop in like 2012 and had it redone in black. Was only like $80. You can see I never paid to have the visors done to match though. Maybe at some point. Doesn't look too bad the way it is. More pressing things to take care of at the moment.

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That does look so much better than the oem color. I recovered the one I had in my last Talon in black, but it wasn't the right material. It looked ok, I guess, but no where near as good.
 
Decided to start tearing into the GSX this week. I will need the transmission to make the AWD swap and I also found a great deal on some 0.020" Wiseco stroker pistons. Since the block from the GST turned out to already be 0.020" I needed the hopefully standard bore block from the GSX.

I went for a different approach this time, usually I pull the head and lift the motor and trans out from the top with my cherry picker. Installed a nice Bendpak 2 post lift a while back so decided to drop the motor and trans out the bottom. Of the two methods I must say that I like out the bottom much better as you don't have to fight the transmission mount on the body. Although you probably wouldn't be able to do it without the lift.

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Tore this block down and found that it had in fact spun a rod bearing. Crank was trashed. But the block is good and it has a standard bore. So off to the machine shop it goes. They will be doing the following machine work:

Bore & Hone at 0.004" Wall Clearance
Deck Prepped For MLS
Pin Fit and Hang the Wiseco Pistons 8.5:1 Pistons on the Eagle H-Beams
File Fit Piston Rings
Polish the OEM 100m 2.4 Crank
Spin Balance Crank with Fidanza Flywheel
Install Balance Shaft Eliminator Bearings and New Freeze Plugs

They will also start on the head but I'm hoping to get the short block back ready for assembly by the end of next week.

That is soooo awesome you have a lift like that. I would kill to have a lift like that. Man I'm so jealous and so happy for you at the same time. Cars going to be sick. Cannot believe you found those prices on those DSMs. Well done
 
That is soooo awesome you have a lift like that. I would kill to have a lift like that. Man I'm so jealous and so happy for you at the same time. Cars going to be sick. Cannot believe you found those prices on those DSMs. Well done

Thanks man. I'm definitely spoiled with the lift for sure. It really makes motor removals/installs a breeze. You'll see what I mean with some posts I got coming here shortly.
 
Pics of the black headliner? Only ever seen one factory color for headliners. Custom?
Great job - looks bad ass. Love the headliner too. This is very much how I wanted to do the Talon. Nice to see someone follow through with what I was picturing.
 
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