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1997 Spyder GST - Reliability Build

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tunernewb92

15+ Year Contributor
341
74
Sep 10, 2008
North Canton, Ohio
Well, I decided to bring another car home to the stable. This will mean the end of my red car. After getting a quote on fixing the body damage / paint / and my labor and time and redoing some other problems I had found underneath (including holes from falling off jack stands from previous owner) I decided that car would never be what I ultimately wanted. I will switch a few parts over to this car and part out the rest including the MINT black interior.

I have always wanted a Monarch Green Spyder since riding in one that a friend owned. I have always loved the color of them and the ability to top down and just cruise. This car was found cruising craigslist late one night. Initially the price was too high and my wife just laughed and walked off shaking her head. Not to be outdone, I decided to go for it and talked the guy down off some of the price. The pictures he sent were almost unbelievable the shape it was in. It was a midwest never driven in the rain / snow / etc. and frankly I believe him. There isn't a spec of rust and most of the nuts and bolts still have the stock zinc coating.

This will NOT be a power build. I will be shooting for around 350-375whp because I feel like that is a good number to be able to save most of my comfort and reliability.

These are some of the pictures he sent me to show the shape. We agreed on the price after about forty pictures and a few videos and I flew out there to pick it up. He met me at the airport and it was exactly as described which made me very happy. I checked a few things and hit the road for a 14 hour non stop trip across the NM and Texas desert back to Houston. Car drove like a dream not one single problem on the way over. Gas mileage in these still sucks even stock at just a hair over 25mpg at 77mph.:
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Seriously though have you ever seen an engine bay like that in the last ten years? Holy cow that thing is so much stocky goodness!
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Inpromptu photo session with a train in the middle of nowhere one street Texas desert town:
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The car was almost in to good shape to even touch. I wanted to leave it as a time capsule. I probably should have. Buuuuuuuuuuuut that just isn't going to happen.

First order of business was to get rid of the 1999 aftermarket stereo they had put in there. It had an Aux Port and thank god for that on the drive back. I just put my Pioneer 4500BT double din in there and for now will retain the factor amp and I believe infinity system.
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Second thing this time around was suspension and brakes BEFORE power. I wasn't going to cheap out either. I knew exactly what I wanted and went ahead and ordered it. FIC 441s 10k/6k with CTSV brakes. These brakes are huge on this car. Stop on a dime now!. I will be ordering rear evo calipers and putting on a 3g brake booster in the near future to compliment these fronts. I will probably have the rear evos PC'd silver to match these fronts. Also went ahead and put on some RPF1's that I got for a screaming deal.

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These brakes did need a little grinding to clear the wheels. They don't leave much room at all.
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This might be the most expensive box I have ever ordered. But I had to have the spherical bearings and there are almost zero other options. After this my wallet started hurting so I will need to sell some parts off red car before I continue building LOL. I have never had a like new unmodified DSM before and it was such a breeze to toss these on the car as everything was so fresh.
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Money shot. I need to wash it but it has rained every single day in Houston since I brought her home. Hopefully a quick wash tomorrow. The P/O waxed it for me the day before I landed and did a decent enough job (taped off) but the car will need paint correction at some point to knock some swirls out.
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Beautiful car, a really great find. I got my self a stock 99 gsx at the end of last year with low miles and also thought that I should keep it stock. But I think I will end up going almost the exact same route as you with the brakes, wheels, and coilovers. For the money you spend on all of those plus the power mods I just don't think you can get a cooler car. Look forward to more updates.
 
Well lets see. Life has changed and I've procrastinated this long enough. Let's start some updates here huh.

I decided to address cooling next for general longevity. Swapped in oil and trans coolers and mounted them up on either side of the stock fog lights. Added an ETS intercooler as well. Fabbed up some simple mounting brackets. Not really proud of them, but as of four years later they are still holding up excellent and you can't really see them anyway.

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Made some new ducting out of thin aluminum to seal the intercooler to the radiator. I'm still running stock fans with an "upgraded" N/A fan for higher CFM on the A/C side.

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Decided i wanted some ground effects from Carbonetics. Got a front bumper splitter, side skirt extensions, and v2 hood with the waffle weave CF. Good products and happy with the quality of them. I eventually decided these just weren't for me and sold them off. But this is how it sat for awhile.

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Added a light bar that i found. The guy I bought this from pulled one of these out of a pull-a-part out of Jackson, MS. The same pull-a-part i have visited hundreds of times. Small world. I love this light bar. Big fan of the look and glad i found one.

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End of 2019 my company called and said, "hey Its time to move to Ohio for a promotion." So I packed up and left. Company really takes care of us when we move, and they offered to move two of my cars but not three. Although they did pay mileage and the uhaul for getting the eclipse up there. I had them ship my Golf GTI but towed the Spyder. My wife and I had a great dane as well and the only way to move a great dane that far is laying the seats down in the jeep anyway.

Only time the MK7 has ever been on a tow truck ... headed to get put on a transport truck. I've had this car big turbo and tuned at ~400whp for 100k miles. I've beaten this car like a one legged red headed step child out back behind the woodshed and have had zero issues other than a dead battery. I tell you this is the most impressive car I've ever owned.
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Lifted the front up maxed out the coilovers

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Taped up. Tape held up from Houston to Canton, OH thru snow storms and a week of sitting on the trailer. No problems. Happy about that because the front got salt caked due to snow storm we drove through.

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Tow rig is a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7L Hemi 2x4 with tow package. She is a beast and drinks gas faster than Amber Heards career ended.

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Made it to the new garage. Snowed on the way in. Ive driven in the snow for work for years but I hate towing my own car in the snow.

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Made the trip fine. Cleaning everything up
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Big garage in this house so I finally got a bigger toolbox. During COVID, Lowe's was giving these things away.
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Also had a basement so I could store so much shit down here. Man you northern guys really have it on the deep south with these basements. Really big fan.
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Summer 2020.

Well we are in full COVID swing here. Lockdown and I am bored. Also just had a baby so we aren't sleeping a whole lot on and off. I do work in oil and gas, but luckily didn't lose my job. Just was tough couple of months for us.

Decided to work on the underneath. You will start to see just how clean this car is. Stupid clean.

Added rear MachV sway bar, but due to it being a GST, I wanted a stiffer front far than stock, but didn't want to run the MachV as I feel its too stiff. I settled for a ST front bar. Really happy with that setup. Also added Bobby's (@ec17pse) billet bushing brackets. I added his front reinforcement bar too, which i only had for a few months before a boulder in the highway ruined it. But it saved my car so it did its job and i appreciate that.

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Decided the Apexi N1 exhaust was too drony for a convertible. Made a call to my buddy at TwoStepPerformance.com and told him I wanted an Apexi WS2 and I wanted it brand new. He struggled to source one but finally found the last one. From what we were told, Apexi will no longer be making any exhaust for the 2g GST any we believe this is the last one sold. Twostepperformance has really stepped up for me during this pandemic and sourced some hard to find stuff.

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Last day with the carbon fiber accessories. I enjoyed them, but its was time to move on. I was going away from my initial goals for the car and I knew it. I lost a lot of the pictures of it, but the tan cloth top was also replaced around this time. I did it myself and felt it was fairly easy. I think it took me about four hours total.

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End of 2020

Had some things I wanted fixed. Paint was fair, but I wanted better. I had a couple dents from a rouge shopping cart, and some bad rock chips from when the car lived in the desert. Took the car in and had the front repainted. They did a good job on most everything. Found a couple things I wasn't just thrilled with but we move on. Especially for the price.

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New Paint

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Time to start the rebuild and recleaning and recoating of stock parts. Dropped some stuff off at the powdercoater.

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Started having issues with my lights pulsing and i knew the little odessy battery i had wasn't holding a charge anyway. Switched back to a big Optima battery.

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Still having issues with the lights pulsing. Man why? Alright started doing some research. Apparently every single aftermarket alternator for this car uses a shitty regulator that cannot properly output the voltage for these cars. Well every aftermarket except for one.... You can't buy an OEM unit but you can spend the coin and buy an actual Denso unit. Yeap that fixed the problem. Que the overnight parts from Japan.

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Alright now we are cooking with gas. Back to how I envisioned the car looking when I bought it. Except the door handle broke. Temporary got a plastic one painted. I have since bought some metal door handles and will get around to painting and replacing both sides at some point:

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Hated how my FPR sat so I redid all of that.

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Engine bay getting how I wanted it. Got the valve cover done up in purple. Its a shade off and I'll have to get it redone over winter at some point.

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Needed some engine bay work done. My IC pipes were beat and I wanted the intake pipe changed. And when you have a car this clean you want the best working on it right? And when you want the best and you live in NE Ohio there is only one ....

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Start of 2022

Now that Buschar is back under proper management I trusted work would get done as I wanted it. I wanted stainless IC piping and stainless intake pipe. I also wanted the car dyno tuned. Knock it all off. Some of you may have seen Mike post about the car when it was up on the hoist. I can't be more excited about how good the underside of this car is. I have toyed with the idea of having it dry ice blasted, but as it stands this is how the car is with no cleaning at 22 years of age.

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New piping done and installed. Switched up to a Tial BOV. External. Also went with SD tune.

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I really wish i could get a new OEM coolant overflow bottle.

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Took the lightbar off. Sent it to Sergio to hopefully have it molded for CF. I hope he comes through I really wanted to take the risk of sending it off for the greater community as they are almost impossible to find for Spyder guys. I hope I don't regret this.

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Got a new OEM spark plug cover. It really is the little things on these builds isn't it?

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Evo 9 Wheel came in. I wrapped it with a kit from Amazon. I also kept the airbag function and cruise control. There is a guy here @Gsx-Dude that makes the brackets for the cruise control stalk for a 2g DSM. Pretty impressive.

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I also added @Gsx-Dude 's air bumper grills as you can see below. I think this really helps modernize the look of the car and also helps provide protection to the trans and oil coolers behind them.

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Showed a little love to the rear. Some ceramic brakes and some VOLK rear trailing arms. I will eventually switch out to all volk products on the rear. I'm sure these volk things save weight, but I think they look boss and they really help stiffen up the worn out slop suspension

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Mid 2022

Took the car on its weekly trip to work. On the way back noticed a strange suspension knock. Looks like my passenger side CV axle tried to make itself bluetooth wireless.

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Decided, well hell, if I'm going to pull some of the suspension off lets just do it all big. Tore everything on the front bottom of the car off, yeah even the subframe. Added @Gsx-Dude 's POM subframe mounts in. Took everything in to be powdercoated. Gotta use the BFH if you want to take ball joints off even nice clean cars it seems.

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Best thing about work is we have a full welding area and torch. Really gets the bushings out quick.

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Getting clean for paint. I decided to paint this with high temp gloss paint as apposed to PC. I may regret it but it was so much cheaper.

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New bushings in. Really like how these feel. They still have some give so they don't realign your spine every bump in the road.

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@ec17pse 's parts installed. Finally put on the front sway bar bushing brackets. Also installed his tie rod ends and his sway bar endlinks.

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Suspension parts all back from powder coating. Gloss black for suspension. Gloss silver for engine bay.

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All of my engine mounts were busted it. The car doesn't have many miles on it, but apparently that desert heat wrecked the OEM rubber mounts. Switched up to Poly Mounts. You notice it now, but all my cars have had poly mounts so I'm not concerned. I also injected the front and rear roll stop mounts and added the inserts.

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Since I don't have my light bar, i put in some older rear inner plastics so i didn't have holes cut in them this summer. They needed repainted so I picked some SEM paint. The one below is dead on color match for our tan interior.

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Added 100% all new front suspension. Moog is also not making full suspension for the 2g anymore so I went with Delphi brand suspension. Its made it Turkey per the stickers. I'm okay with the quality and it really made a difference on the front end. Again all the rubber was destroyed by the desert heat. Timken front bearings were changed out as well. I plan on having the wheel wells dry ice cleaned this year at some point so I did not strip and redo them.

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Cleaned and all ready for the weekend. Man this thing rips on the roads now. Extremely planted.

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Current

Finally got around to changing out the timing belt. The car only has 68k miles on it now, but i have no record of when the timing belt was done by the previous owners. I decided to do all the belts, idlers, water pumps etc. I haven't ever done this with the engine in the car shockingly, but while it did add an hour it wasn't too bad. Forgot how hard it was to get the gap between the tensioner and arm to set within 0.02" gap. Went with Aisin water pump (OEM manufacturer), OEM tensioner, Gates white box pulleys (OEM), Gates Racing timing belt and balance shaft belt. Also put on new all new gates accessory belts and a new A/C idler pulley. I had to watch my 2yr old so didn't get many pictures of this unfortunately.

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Now I'm just enjoying the car. Got some photos at an old gas station. I have some big plans for the car this year. With all I have done I am confident in the trip we are planning out. Stay tuned for the trip and for pictures.

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Can finally bring my son along too
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I forgot to reply when I saw the tag come through so sorry for the response time!

this is one heck of a resto and so much time being taken to get all the parts back to being fresh and looking sharp once again! very good work and keep it all up! I love see ing these come back to a good state again as they are so awesome!

Thanks once again for your continued support on my items and me personally! I love seeing people love my items and happy with them and what it transforms the car into with them on!

look forward to joining you again on the remainder of your journey with the DSM
 
Great looking car! I really hope Sergio starts making the light bars, I'd send him my money in a heart beat.
It's been awhile, but my Spyder lightbar from Carbonetics arrives on Friday. Ill get it mounted and pics will be up online and on social media over the weekend.
 
Well I had a bunch of plans, but it all got derailed. I have just pushed my body too hard in the oil field for too many years and it broke down on me. Two years later and nothing on the car has really changed. This year though is the year.

Only update is going to get a cat installed on it. Ordered a GESI cat that my friend uses on all the 10thgen civic downpipes he manufactures. Really just don't like the idea of my kids riding around with the top down and the exhaust not going thru a cat.

Plan to take the car down to the tail of the dragon in three weeks for a weekend. Plan on also going up to Newfoundland at in October as well to see the leaves changing and ride the Cape Breton trail which is considered one of the top five roads to drive in the world.
 
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