'95 GST

[eclipsek17]

This is the Build Thread for My Blue GST. Reply below.

 

[eclipsek17]

Done a few little things to the car over the past few days, cut the front bumper out and repositioned the intercooler and fixed part of the front bumper that was hanging, removed a viper alarm, and removed the cruise control components and replaced them with a straight throttle cable. Also I replaced the slave cylinder that was leaking and replaced the passenger side door handle that was broken and am currently waiting for the driverside door handle to come in to fix that as well.

 

[eclipsek17]

Started tearing down the engine this week to fix the head gasket, but first I wanted to pull the ecu because it seemed like it had been chipped and tuned a little already because I noticed it had a 2 step and the MAF has been removed completely. After pulling the ecu I was happy to see that it already had a V3 chip installed, so I just need to get a link cable for it.

Before attempting to drive the car anymore, I knew there were some serious issues I needed to address, the first being the over heating issue cause by multiple things. The radiator was cracked, so I removed that, the water pump was seeping from the gasket, which I found out was not tightened properly causing the gasket to blow out the side, the 1 fan that was in the car was half way melted, assuming from being too close to the turbo at one point, and from sitting I think the thermostat got rusted closed. All these combined and me trying to baby the car back to my shop, I believe resulted in either me blowing the head gasket or it was already blown. When I first overheated the car when I first got it was the only time I got the temp too high because I wasn't paying attention and it seemed to be running good, so if I blew it, that was definitely when it occurred. Luckily, after knowing about the over heating issue I babied it all the way to my shop driving it a little until I saw the temp get slightly over normal operating temp, then letting the car roll to a stop until I pulled over and let it cool down. Took me like 4 hours to get it to my shop like this, but AAA was trying to tell me anything over 7 miles they would have to charge me a crazy amount. More than likely though, I probably blew the head gasket.

Before pulling the head, I did a compression check just to verify the current condition of the engine and I was really happy with what I saw, until I got to cylinder 4.
Compression Test Results
#1 - 140
#2 - 150
#3 - 150
#4 - 90 dry / 110 wet
So the rings are leaking a little bit, but I wasnt too concerned with that at the moment, because I plan on putting new pistons and connecting rods in it once the car is all fixed and running good again and I find a 7 bolt head to swap to, but the valves/head gasket was for sure leaking. I was going to do a leak down test, but I assumed if the head is coming off, I am going to do the head gasket and valve job anyway so why bother.

While pulling the head, I came across a lot more things I am going to need to repair on the car and one really really good thing about the car. When I got down to taking the timing belt off, there were 2 huge issues I noticed, 1 being that the crank gear was misaligned by about 2-3 teeth which really surprised me as to how it was even running smooth like that at all and the other issue being that the balance shaft belt was removed, but the balance shafts were still in place. So instead of just pulling the head, I pulled the block out, removed the balance shafts rotated the bearings for the balance shafts now Im just waiting for my stubby shaft and plug to come in. Once the head came off, it was also nice to see that it already had ARP head studs in place as well, but the best thing I saw when I pulled the engine was that there is an ACT twin disc clutch installed already. I couldnt really make out the numbers very well to tell which ACT clutch it actually is, but I am going to start cleaning parts monday so hopefully I can make it out better once I clean it.

 

[eclipsek17]

Car is gone, I have no idea where it is, I wish I did.