92' Eclipse GS 2.0L (slow build)

[SkURTnDSM92T]

WOW.. talk about involved.. you make me feel like a punk for not getting going..

Hmmmmm....

Keep us posted!

 

[buhay6]

Well due to much financial difficulties its looking like I will have to sell my dsm, its not a for sure yet but its going to be close! All the blood, sweat and tears I put into her might be for not, if I have to sell I'll be taking a huge hit on it.
Selling Nekid my 4 bolt diff and axles for a good price, and I've sold everything else that's worth any money. Still needing $400 more to get me through this predicament and then I'll get to keep my talon

Keep you guys posted.


@-SkURTnDSM92T
Thanks man, its took 2 years but I finally made it this far after a lot of work. It took a lot of motivating myself some times to get going on it so I know what your feeling there haha good luck on your build man!

 

[buhay6]

Well Little update, I got a slightly bigger tax return then I was expecting. It was just enough to save me from having to sell the talon. For the first time EVER I can say thank you to the government!

That out of the way I went a head with starting to pull the engine and tran from the talon on Thursday night after work. That night I was able to remove the intake system, wiring harness along with most other related components required to be removed for the pull.

Then Friday night once again I continued with prepping for the engine and tran removal with draining all fluids, pulling the fuel feed/return lines and dropping the down pipe, pulling the front CV axle's and dropping the T-case.

What I found after draining the tran fluid......hhhhmmm synchro much?? (hard to see I know but all those little specs are synchro!)

Once I had all that done I realized it was only 6:30 p.m. ......so I decided to go ahead with pulling the engine.

Setting up the picker I noticed that I forgot to take off my heater core hoses! ooop's crisis Averted!

Mid pull I realized I had made an Error with how much room between the picker and garage door I had. I ended up having to re install a few things quickly and drop the front end back on the ground to clear everything. But it all worked out in the end.

After Destroying some more of my engine bay paint the big girl was finally moved out of the way and on the floor. Called it a night and moved my bike back into the garage as it was supposed to bloody snow again......and it did.
Tran that I'm swapping in. (seen previously in the build thread.)

Acid washed, painted and cleared with high heat engine paint.....see how it holds up I guess.


Probably going to be another update tonight as I have all night to work on swapping the tran and cleaning things up for the re-install. Looking to have it back together by Wednesday and no later, have a few oil leaks to source out and refinishing work to do but hopefully things will work out.

 

[buhay6]

Well I obviously didn't make my Wednesday dead line for having the talon up and running......here's why!
Been selling a lot of my parts locally and was contacted by a guy doing a Hyundai Excel swap looking for stock pistons and miscellaneous FWD parts. Got talking with him and found he had 2 AWD transmissions and 1gb spoiler I was looking for, so we opted a trade straight across (I got a really good deal!).
Saturday I left work work around 4:30 pm and made the 2 1/2 hour drive down to Regina to do the exchange. Got there around 7:15 pm (hit a down poor of rain which turned into a blizzard for a few km's)met with the guy, helped him fix his dodge ram in the parking lot talked a little bit. Might be getting some goodies from him later this month if finances allow. Left Regina around 9:00 pm and started making the trek back to good ol Saskatoon.
Got back into Saskatoon around 11:30 pm and went straight back to work to clean up the parts I had acquired (like usual I forgot to take before pictures). Left work around 12:15 am, which by that time I was starving as I hadn't eaten since 5 am the previous morning so I did a quick stop at Mc Donald's for a bit then hit up a fuel station to fill the tank.
All in all it was a long day but thankfully it only cost me $50 in Diesel and my time. Was going to pull an all nighter and get the engine back in with the new tran that morning but since I was low on sleep I fore went that option and opted for bed.

Hopefully every ones still with me and didn't get bored reading that.

Anyways the next day was go hard retard day, I cleaned a lot of things up and installed my new parts.

New throw out bearing and miscellaneous gaskets to hopefully avoid any boost leaks there might be. My old throw out bearing was screaming like a banshee when the clutch was depressed so I knew it was foobared so that was a must.
I ended up painting my upper/lower timing covers, 2 14b j pipes (didn't know what color I'd like better so i did both), flywheel inspection cover, intake brace and lower t-state housing.

After that was done I kept looking at my engine.....I hated how the VC looked so I painted that as well along with the fuel rail

I still wasn't happy, the DS engine mount really started to annoy me so it got a shot of paint as well.

Which brings me to Monday......Engine install day. I didn't want to rush like I had originally with installing the engine the first time as it amounted in a lot of rework for me this time around. I decided to seriously take my time and not force anything. I used foam from my welder packaging to protect the paint from the tranny and crank pulley this time, which thankfully worked extremely well!

It only took about an hour to carefully install the engine this time around, if I'd had just taken the hour in the first place it would have saved my 5 hours in paint fix's!
Being dropped in:

After I got the engine mounts hooked up I started to hook up the drive line, exhaust and other miscellaneous engine components.

All in all it was a good 7 hours I got to work on it at that point it was 9 pm and I still had to eat, so I dropped it for the night.

 

[buhay6]

Once again I got carried away with getting things buttoned up and adding more things to the "to do" list. Also being going to truck driver training to head a new path career wise which will make for a more flex-able budget, but its also why I haven't updated for the last while.

I spent another 2 hours re-installing electrical, hoses etc and filling fluids over the 2 days after my last update. The car started up fine and ran great, bleed the coolant system and when to through it in gear only to find......I'm missing either all of my top gears or if I re adjusted the shifter cables I'd loose all the bottom gears (2,4,R).


Did A little research when I had spare time and made a check list of known problems that caused the symptoms I was having. I re-bleed the clutch just to be sure, then moved onto checking the shifter cables travel. I moved the cables as far as they would go for each gear selection and found the primary arms through was a half inch to short when I popped the cable off and put it into gear. So since I had a full 91+ setup I made the swap last night and problem solved as far as I know right now, it shifts into every gear no problem. Its going out for its first test run tomorrow so we'll see how it goes then.

 

[buhay6]

Well it's long over due for an update and a good bit more has happened since the last update.
During my haste to install the new tranny I didn't do any checking over it which came back to bite me a little. After I had got the car all back together and shifting right I drove it around town for awhile. It didn't take long before I noticed something was wrong yet again. There was oil litterly puking from between the engine and transmission bell housing with a meager 25 km on the new tran it was back to the garage again.
At first I was unsure where about's the oil was coming from because it smelt of gear oil yet had the viscosity and look of engine oil. Put the car back on jack stands took off the t-case and found my first leak, the output shaft for the t-case was soaked in oil!

By happens chance I looked up farther and noticed my drivers side cv seal was leaking as well.

I thought it was weird that so much oil could come from only 2 seals, and they didn't look like they were leaking that profoundly but yet enough to be notice-able. I looked at the rear main seal housing and it also looked wet, but I though it could have been from the flywheel throwing around oil as well. It had caught my attention when I had the engine out last but I didn't replace it because I was unsure if it was leaking or not, typical don't fix it if it ain't broke rule comes into affect. So I break cleaned it off everything off all spiffy clean, pulled the front tires and steering knuckles off to start the repairs.
Pulled the DS CV out and popped in the new seal carefully with a rubber mallet, then re-installed the CV and knuckle to finish that job off.
I did a little humming and hawing at whether to just say screw it and pull the whole setup out again to double check everything. Decided against it, figured it'd be to much work so I just popped the rear case off the transmission, pulled the VC and popped that output shaft right out.
This is what I found:


I would have found this before I had installed the transmission if I had went with my original plan of swapping output shafts so I wouldn't have to second guess spline's but being in a rush yet again kicked me in the butt.
Lucky me I had all the parts on hand to fix the issues (or I thought I did) so in 3 hours it was a done deal.
Took the Talon back out to make some pulls and see if anything else would pop up that needed attention......

I went and fueled up the car with some fresh 93 octane went and did 3 good pulls then pulled over to check for leaks. I found the same problem that faced me either that same day, oil cascading from between the engine and tran. I was so mad I drove straight back home and parked for the night.

 

[buhay6]

It took me a couple days to build up the energy to diagnose what was leaking and see what parts I'd need to order next, so I started with the typical Dsm thing....jack stands!
Dropped the t-case (had left the exhaust off from last time yet) and pulled the inspection panel. There was oil every where, what confused me the most was there was only oil on one side of the engine/tran bell housing. I couldn't make sense of it, the rear part of the engine was completely dry yet the front was soaked in oil. So two scenarios crossed my mind either the rear main was pooched or I possibly had a cracked tran bell housing.
At this point there was no way around it something had to come out, either just the tran or the whole unit at once again. This time I opted for just the tran as disconnecting all the engine harness/ mounts would add a good bit of time to the repair. I had never pulled just the tran so I looked in the FAQ forum for a tech article on it, I found none so I then turned to Jafro's video for a quick walk through. I didn't know if the process was the same between 1g's or 2g's but figured it had to be some what similar in the fact you had to pull the role stop bolts.
So I brought my handy dandy impact from work with my impact sockets to help speed this job up.

I went ahead and moved everything out of the tran area of the engine bay, pulled the cv's again.

hour and half later the tran was ready for removal so I called it a night.
Day 2
Next day I got home from work and was ready for the moment of truth.
Pulled the tran bell housing bolts and worked the tran loose from the engine.



I couldn't believe how much of a pain it was to squeeze it out under the frame rail, Jafro made it look so easy.
Once I had the tran on the ground I instantly turned to poping off the pp and flywheel. At this point I had found my problem, the rear main was definitely the source of all my frustration.

At this point I started looking at what else needed replacing, I had noticed that my shifter cable bushing were rounded out and I also found my CAS was puking oil as well. So I added those parts to the list.
Order from RTM racing again that night and had my parts 2 days later! thanks a bunch Ziggy.

I popped in the new seal (had prepped everything while waiting for parts) re-siliconed the rear main housing then gently popped in on to the crank and bolted it in.

I did notice my flywheel didn't have a perfectly flat surface and definitely needed replacing (probably due to my old throw out bearing) but not having the fund to pick up a new unit left me no choice but to reuse it for the time being. I measured all my flywheel bolts to make sure they were all the same length and bolted the flywheel and clutch assembly back into the car.

Re-installed the transmission the same night (what a pain!) then took a look around from more things that needed attention, I found two! My oil pan was yet again leaking so it needed to be fixed again, and I noticed my front role stop wasn't in the greatest condition.
I decided to fix the oil pan first as the role stop was still use-able for a while longer (plus I couldn't afford to fix it yet). So I popped off the oil pan and got to work cleaning the mating surfaces.

I forgot to take pictures of it finished......
But after that was done I figured I had fixed everything I possibly could at this time and it was time for it to get all put back together.
This its how it looked by the end of the night:

 

[buhay6]

Since the repairs I've put 500 miles of trouble free driving on it, enjoying it thoroughly. I'ts nice to have a slow car that's respectable (I'm not talking appearance wise hahaha!), its definitely fast compared to my oober slow golf tdi.

Let me just recap where its come from and where its come to since I've got this poor poor shell.
Before:


After:




Before:


After:


Before:



After:

 

[buhay6]

Timing Jump

Over the last while I was fighting idling issues, the idle was all over the place continuously. most notably after letting off the accelerator. For the first while I thought it for sure was just a big boost leak and I'd fix it at a later date. The spark plugs seemed to support my thoughts as they were white and seemed to be indicating a vacuum leak, along with my lumpy idle, and sporadic boost reading on the factory gauge.
I stopped driving it very often for a while, then two weeks ago did a little prying around here on tuners looking to see what else I could find. There were two possible answers to my situation in conclusion, either my though a big boost leak or jumped timing. Decided to bite the bullet and finally look into the issue after reading up on it.
I pulled the Talon into the garage and took a peak:


Turns out my timing did indeed jump, farther investigation found that my 1 year old hydrolic tension'er was leaking so I'm thinking that was the culprit for my timing jump. Order a new timing belt and tensioner and reassembled when the parts came in the next day from RTMracing.


After this whole churbobole I thought it best to do a compression test to check for potential bent valves, the results were very pleasant to find:
Cylinder's starting from timing side
#1- 138 PSI
#2- 150 PSI
#3- 151 PSI
#4- 152 PSI
Cylinder #1 has the biggest difference but doesn't seem to be causing any problems as of yet, I'm just planning to run it till it blows anyways.
I took the car out for a test run which didn't last very long before something else went wrong, 3 blocks down from my house the accessory belts started squealing very very badly. I figured I'd look into it when I got back from the test run. Got onto the highway and did one really good pull then I lost all power steering so I made a be line right for home. Soon as I pulled off the highway my alt light and battery lights kicked on so I shut the car down and got out to take a look. Turns out I hadn't tightened the bottom alternator bolt all the way and the top bolt loosened off, then the tensioner bolt shot up and took out the PS belt. I was really pissed off after that so I limped it home to fix it and try again. Found my alternator bearings decided they'd call it quits to.
So Now I'm trying to source a alternator and PS belt so I can drive the Talon yet again

 

[buhay6]

Boost problems/Turbo swap

So over the last while I've put on around 2k miles on the talon while fighting boost problems. Wouldn't build just a set level of boost, one pull would boost such and such a PSI then another pull would build a different PSI. Along with having no power steering and a squealing alternator belt, things needed attention yet again.
I did about 3 boost leak tests which I found a few leaks, J-pipe and a few hoses not sealing well. But it still wouldn't pull as good as it did on my very first drive when I got my car together. At highway speed it would just fall on its face and have no power, I'd have to drop a gear or two to pass which I know wasn't right at all. Plus under full boost I'd get the sensation of clutch slip and fuel cut all at once, I didn't understand it. I checked timing once again, it was perfect, did another boost leak test and could barely hear one around the intake mani mounting area when I good right down to listen but couldn't find where it was coming from. So I met up with Nekid from here on tuners (Andrew) got him to take it for a rip, he was also a little confused by it, it felt very very weird. We both kind of felt like it was a fuelling problem possibly a clogged injector, but he said I should do another boost leak test first. I drove it a few more days before going through with another boost leak test, because I really didn't want to do it.
Soon as I tried to fill the the intake system with pressure I heard a very loud very obvious leak, took me awhile to find out what exactly it was tho. I ended up following the soot, what I had heard leaking before wasn't my intake mani mounting flange gasket but my EGR Valve was a little loose before. Fast forward 2 more day's of driving and the whole EGR valve and bolts are all but gone!
After I found a new EGR valve and bolted it on I decided I'd take a quick peak at my turbo to see how it was holding up after sitting for so long. I wasn't good new to say the lest, it had substantial in and out play now, plus the intake turbine was making contact with the comp housing. I caught it just in time, so it should be rebuild-able. If I'd have ran it much longer I know it would have blew to pieces.
So que the new turbo!
Did a little porting work first to help with flow

I cleaned it up nicely and used VHT flame proof black on the Exhaust housing to clean things up a bit.


The Exhaust mani and O2 housing got the same treatment (pictures from the next update, forgot to take one when it was freshly done)


Que the new parts!
FP exhaust mani studs

Front mount j-pipe

Pro sport digital Boost gauge (blacked out when off)

Installed

ALt belt

P/S belt

FPR install kit

Pillar pod

EGR delete kit

Also got all the nessesary gaskets/seals, a new OEM dipstick.
Only part I'm not overly happy about is the pillar pod, it's very poorly moulded and required/'s a lot of tweaking to fit right.
Before I could install my new/used ported 14b I had to get the coolant line from the old turbo off of the water pipe, and what a pain! Took me 2 hours of gently heating and loosening/tightening it back up to work the rust out of the threads with out causing damage to my only water pipe. I was stuck using vise grips as the fitting was so rusted no wrench would fit tight enough to loosen it (metric or standard), had to hammer the vise grips back and forth.


Got everything bolted back up and torqued to spec, did another boost leak test.....found more leaks yet again! This time I could get enough pressure in the system to find the smaller leaks. The leaks turned out to be the TB seals and biss screw. So I placed yet another parts order and work began again.
The foobar'd seal

Done!

Only took 30 min to completely rebuild the TB which surprised me, I was dreading it.
Also found some really good deals in the classifieds that I just couldn't pass up!
FuelLab FPR

Punishment racing FMIC kit (missing the J-pipe and TB flanged pipe)

Walbro 255 LPH with install kit (no picture)

I also Got sick of seeing the ugly paint on my car not to mention the silver painted door handles and mirrors UGH!!
So I thought the hell with it, bought about 13 rattle cans of krylon italian olive paint (only colour I though would look good) and went to town! (more pictures coming soon)

Still have to paint the middle piece of the rear spoiler and front bumper but it looks SOOOO much better!

 

[buhay6]

Clutch swap/oil pump

Well 2 weeks after installing my new used 14b the clutch started to call it quits. Started slipping bad on full boost at 15 PSI, so I had to keep of the throttle as much as possible to make it last longer. I didn't want to have to afford a new clutch so darn soon, really needed to build up the bank account for once. The slip only got progressively worse over a week and soon passing on the highway became a serious struggle it couldn't hold 9 pounds of boost anymore, along with a leaky front main seal and what seamed to be a low oil pressure reading on the stock gauge I decided I didn't have a choice. So I placed yet another order with RTM racing and got on tearing down the car for the new parts.
Turned out my credit card had been stolen (because I had a retard brain fart!) so I couldn't buy the parts for 3 weeks which really put a kink in my plans.
I got to carried away in the tear down so I forgot to take pictures, but it was a lot of what we've seen in the last few posts. I did find a few things that weren't good tho, my brand new less then 1k mile hydrolic tensioner was leaking, my oil pump was at the end of life spec's and then my knock sensor had the back of it melting away onto the block. So that added about $400 more of unexpected expenses to my initial order, which then meant I had to break it up into two order's which I didn't want to do.
My first order came out to $1045, I was very thankful for RTM shipping it to me so quickly after I told them my dilemma. The part's were on my door step by 10 am sharp the day after ordering them.
Parts consisted of:
1-New Fidanza Flywheel surface plate
1- 7 bolt oil pump and gaskets
1- 7 bolt hydrolic timing tensioner
1- Southbend stage 1 clutch ( were sold out of the stage 2 dd kit)
1- Jays racing timing tool kit
1- New knock sensor
1- TOB retaining clip
1- TOB pivot ball
1- Aluminium flywheel install kit
1- Crank bolt and washer
2- Transmission locating dowel pins
1- Balance shaft Delete plug


Continued tomorrow!