90 AWD - Indianapolis Jones

[habitatguy187]

I got "Indy" back in 2011. I traded a good looking 2g tsi fwd for Indy straight up after only having the 2g for about 4 months. The 2g was cool and got lots of looks, had the basic bolt ons - 16g turbo fmic safc 550s and exhaust, but I was over fwd cars and beside that, I'm just a 1g guy at heart. Here's a pic of the 2g that I traded for Indy

I drove 70 miles south to meet the guy. We test drove each other's cars, he talked shit about the 2g and I talked shit back about the 1g, and after about 30 mins we traded titles and I drove Indy home. Looking things over that afternoon I found the oil pump off 1 tooth. Reset that and did a compression test. Came back 165psi on all 4! Was super happy about that. Drove it around the block that night. All good.

Now, I had really big plans for the car at the time. This was my 4th turbo dsm at the young age of 24, and in my infinite dsm wisdom, I decided to start tearing into a perfectly running awd dsm right away .

 

[habitatguy187]

So I began taking the car apart. The intention at the time was to replace all suspension components/bushings and treat for rust when I came across it. Also had a fmic and arp head studs I wanted to install. Well one thing led to another, and the car stayed in the garage from fall of 2011 until spring/summer of 2014 (maybe 2015??), which is when I took this picture.

So what got done in the missing years? I pulled the steering rack and did the "flyin miata mod" and ps removal, outlander rotors and caliper brackets, new fluids in everything, new o.e. replacement struts and springs, fmic install, arp head studs install, exhaust mani studs replaced, replaced the ebay 16g with an old 14b I had, slight wire tuck, and that's it iirc.

Yeah, those things took me 3 or 4 years to complete. Motivation was hard to come by. It had been so long since I had driven anything fun that I just forgot what it was like. So I drove the car out of the garage and around the block. The rear brakes were dragging and the car was running pretty rough. I still didn't have it titled in my name even so I got it back and parked it back inside the garage and again, it sat.

 

[habitatguy187]

So i drove the car around the block (just barely ) in 2015, then parked it again with intentions of finishing it up soon. Fast forward to June 2021, a divorce and 3 moves later. Thr car had been parked at my dad's for a little over a year. He was getting tired of it. That's when I found the gvr4 for sale . Price was right and the timing was too. I was about to move into my new home with a 2 car garage and 2 car carport! But I wasn't able to move in just yet and had to bring the gvr4 to my dad's, so I decided to bust ass and finish the talon and get it out of his driveway.

I had ended up taking the head off the car again and to a machine shop to check it over and replace the valves and valve seals. Head came back and I put it on the car. My dumbazz timed the car with the crank pulley "cover??" on backwards and instantly bent my new valves when trying to crank the car over .

So off came the head again and I ordered new valves and this time I replaced them myself after watching a few YouTube videos haha.


Head back on the car after my dad added a timesert into one of the fuel rail holes that had been badly stripped out. Thanks pops

 

[habitatguy187]

Well the day of truth had come. I had already bought and paid for the gvr4 and the talon needed to go from my dad's driveway. It wasn't time to move into my new place yet but I got lucky and was allowed to use the garage ahead of time . I decided to try and drive the car 3 miles from my pops to my new place with dad following me. I had JUST started the car and the intake lifters were tapping louder than anything I had ever heard before. I was tired tho and it was about to rain and i said F it, let's drive this 'bishi.

The car barely made it the 3 miles . Rear drivers brake was grinding the whole ride, and once it got to full temp it was misfiring real bad. What now? Got it to the new house, a buddy was over and he pointed out that the new composite headgasket was on wrong . I remedied that and the car fired RIGHT up and purred so well . Felt like I was dreaming.

Here's a pic of it at the new house

 

[habitatguy187]

So I had the 1g running and "driving" in June, and that's also the same month I got the vr4. The vr4 had been daily driven for years and just needed a new clutch disc, it even came with an extra. So i fixed that quick and really spent pretty much the rest of 2021 working on the vr4 while the talon sat in the garage. I ended up robbing a few parts of the talon for the galant. I was having a lot of fun with the vr4 and had my hands full getting it up to snuff again. Now "all" (haha) the 1g needs is rear caliper rebuilds and a tps plug

Here's the 1g as of last weekend.

Currently have both rear calipers off to sandblast and rebuild em.

 

[habitatguy187]

My buddy works nights as hospital maintenance, and "sneaks" me in to use their huge sandblast cabinet.
My bro

Still took 2 hrs just to do both rear calipers and a wastegate actuator. Next up is a self-etching primer, paint, and rebuild.

 

[AWD-Tony]

Haha that’s awesome . Why does a hospital need sandblaster?

 

[habitatguy187]

Haha that’s awesome . Why does a hospital need sandblaster?

He said they use it to clean the gasket area on "pump housings".... im guessing something to do with the boiler system. I think it needs new media though. Kept having problems with the pickup not delivering enough sand. When it works right it works great. Last night was pretty rough tho

 

[habitatguy187]

First update in about a year!?? Yikes. Ummm let’s try to recap.

Ended up finding some rear calipers on rock auto and one from autozone. Got a cheap $105 Amazon wideband kit (uego brand). Had to replace the clutch as it started slipping on the highway. Installed a eBay clutchmasters 6 puck unsprung disc and sheared the splines off of it about 30 miles in.

Replaced that with an xtd 6 puck unsprung which currently has about 220 miles on it.

Drove the car around a little during the summer but mostly stayed keeping up with the vr4 and ignoring Indy. Probably put a total of 500 miles on it in 2022.

I’ve been driving it a lot more lately though as it’s getting more and more enjoyable. I’m really happy with how fast this engine fires up. It’s instant. Current mod list is
Fuel pump
450s
Link v2.5
“Uego” wideband
eBay fmic
2g mas
Outlander rotors
14b
More updates to come soon I hope

 

[habitatguy187]

Drove the 1g to work yesterday. On the way home, a rubbing/growling sound developed, but everything felt pretty normal! I was almost home so I said F it and kept driving…. I got lucky.

The side motor mount bolts stripped. I Stripped one while tightening awhile back and forgot about it. The other one decided to let go too. These cars are getting old . The engine was sagging and the timing cover tore into the belt a little.

I pulled the side mount along with the front roll stop and plan to window weld them today. I have another t belt on the shelf to put on it too.

Weather was super nice yesterday so I cleaned up some wiring and replaced the fuel filter, making sure to line up the banjo bolt with the fuel line

 

[pauleyman]

You do not have to line up the banjo. You have a serious groove in your timing belt. You oil pan bolts are not installed in the correct position. Two of them are shorter.

 

[habitatguy187]

The groove is due to my engine falling down and the timing belt cover was rubbing into the belt.

And I’m aware that you don’t have to line up the banjo bolt, but the way I see it, that is the biggest restriction in the stock fuel system. Figure it certainly doesn’t hurt

Edit: I will double check those oil pan bolts

 

[pauleyman]

The groove is due to my engine falling down and the timing belt cover was rubbing into the belt.

The circumferential groove on the valve cover side?

And I’m aware that you don’t have to line up the banjo bolt, but the way I see it, that is the biggest restriction in the stock fuel system. Figure it certainly doesn’t hurt

Edit: I will double check those oil pan bolts

 

[habitatguy187]

Poly’d the front roll stop and drivers mount and also fixed the stripped engine mount bolts. Found and fixed a decent boost leak at the j-pipe. Also replaced the little section of fuel hose from the fpr to the firewall.

Time to take the car for a test drive….. ope.

Blew an IC coupler and the cel is on for barometric pressure. I believe it is a short since the cel is intermittent, but I re-checked the wiring and everything appears fine . I’ll be happy when I can get this thing off mas and on sd

 

[92AWDHX40]

You like that sd. Those 2 bolt ms on the timing side. Usually a culprit for those who don't know.

 

[habitatguy187]

Spent about an hour dicking around with the shifter yesterday. I had an old short throw shifter with 2 good bushings in it still… just so happened to be the bushings I needed! Shifter feels sooo much better now and enjoyable to drive.

On the test drive after changing the shifter bushings, I started hearing exhaust noises . Pulled back into the driveway and changed the exhaust mani gasket.

Car is running well. Gasoline tune is fully sorted out. I’ve been running only 87oct but I’ll be switching to e85 very soon. Currently on wastegate pressure (9psi) with wot timing pulled 3 degrees. Still gets .3 counts of knock during a pull even in cooler temps and a fmic. Not worried about that though just happy it’s running so well after sitting on jackstands for sooo long

 

[habitatguy187]

Feel like I got my ass kicked tonight. Changed inner and outer tie rods along with sway bar bushings and links. I didn’t have the inner tie rod tool so I dropped the rack down a little to help get at the inners with a pair of channel locks (Rack is already de-powered with lines removed). Dropped the downpipe, removed both crossmembers and gusset. It wasn’t fun, but the car drives 10x better now. The sway bar bushings and one link were shot. The inner tie rods were toast along with one outer.

Had to remove this nut so that I could re-use the tie rod boot and it did not want to cooperate. Busted out the sawzall (I try to avoid circular cutting wheels these days ) and she came right off.
I also had to fight the 20mm sway bar bushings. Grinding them down slowly and test fitting. I probably got up and down from under the car to the grinding wheel 10 times! Idk what I was doing . Even after that they were still a mf to get bolted back up.

New inner booted up

All in all this job sucked (along with the backyard alignment that followed) but it was 100% worth it. Check that off the list.

I have a feeling my fuel pump is going to crap out soon. It’s SOOO loud . Also it still needs re-wired. I figure that will only make it louder?

 

[habitatguy187]

Ended up getting a fuel injector malfunction dtc and low and behold my injector clips were SHOT. Replaced them using this little torch to solder instead of a soldering iron. Worlds difference. My $38 soldering iron doesn’t compare in the slightest to the torch. I hope I never have to use a soldering iron again

While I was doing that, I went ahead and replaced the stock 450cc fuel injectors with some fic 850s that used to be in my Galant. Injector data was super close to being right. Drove the rest of the gas out and then took it to the ethanol pump and switched it over.

Bumped my timing back up to stock and did some cruise tuning and that’s it for now. Going to do some wot tuning soon then turn the boost up toooo idk at least 18psi. It’s still on the 14b.

 

[habitatguy187]

Photos from about a month ago

Yeehaw. Was cruising on the highway and it popped out of 5th. Grinds when I push the clutch in. My TOB had been making a lot of noise ever since I shimmed it during the last clutch change.

I think that shimming the pivot ball put too much preload on the bearing and made it fail…. I hope. I got the car home and haven’t touched it since. I’m done rebuilding the head for my gvr4, but I’m debating going further with that “since I’m already in there”. Going to pull the trans on the Talon and make my decisions from what I find there.

I’m a little worried that the previous clutch disc (that sheared splines) may have damaged my input shaft. If it did, I’m going to pull the rest of the drivetrain out of the gvr4 for a prolonged rebuild/restore and use it’s Jacks stage 2 for the Talon in the meantime.

I went from 2 running 4gs to 0 in about a week’s time

 

[habitatguy187]

Splines on the xtd disc stripped.

The splines on the input shaft look worn visually, but are they bad? I put a old clutch disc on the shaft and tested for free play and I can’t visually see anything. I can hear the slightest clicking when I move the disc back and forth but visually I see no slop.

 

[1990TSIAWDTALON]

They're wore but I don't see them eating up the splines on a clutch disk bad. I would be looking for sharp to the point splines IMO. Maybe just a shitty disk?