Road Race Build Daily racecar

[Tyeler18]

This is my 91 GVR4 #736/2000. I purchased this car in 2012 with 180k on it and bone stock aside from some rally armour mud flaps and a double din radio. It has been my daily driver for about 90% of the time although the past few years it's slowed the mileage as I have 11 other vehicles I rotate around with. The car currently has 208K on the original SBE. I have the trans out right now for a refresh after destroying the OE clutch at 200k and damaging the 2-3 shift fork but the rest of the drivetrain is original/208k.

Mods currently are an FP red, FP manifold, ETS 1g street core with Tial BOV/38mm Wastegate. It has an old school buschur turbo back, 2150FIC's. Suspension is a set of modified evo 8 JIC coilovers, staggered 17x7.5/8 FN01RC's, 5 lug swap and stoptech pads. It's tuned on an evo 8 ECU with dual function Innovate gauges.

The 3rd day I owned the car. I picked it up from a buddy for a steal and drove it 11 hours home.

For a while I ran a set of evo 9 bilsteins with swift spec R springs. This was an awesome setup for a daily. Very comfy, not terribly low, but it handled really well. I also had enough ground clearance to play out on the ATV trails behind my neighborhood.

The headlights on the car have always been pretty poor. I've been lucky enough to find a couple of sets of rare crystal 93 model headlights but the light output was still fairly poor for my liking. I decided to tackle a set of projects into one of my sets and I was completely satisfied with the results. I added demon eyes just to try my luck at it. I rarely have them on other than to show them to people.

I put a 16g on at 190k to replace the wore out 14b but the itch for more power in the daily was there. I decided to pick up a (now orange) FP red. It came with a punishment o2 housing with a tial wastegate. I grabbed an ETS 1g street core and had a buddy build some intercooler piping. This car still has AC and I run a full size X-line 1g radiator. It was a challenge putting a back door intercooler on the car with AC and full size radiator, but it worked out well and I still have ample room to work. At 200k after installing the evo ecu and turning on launch control/NLTS the original clutch's life was cut short during a 2-3 NLTS which bent the 2-3 shift fork. I installed a v-drive QM twin to get me to MOD that year and just dealt with the shift fork. I finally had time to pull the trans apart and it's currently sitting on a work bench waiting on build parts. I have gear drive discs to convert from the v-drive that will go back in when its done too.

 

[Tyeler18]

Current trans situation- she didn't look to bad for having 208k on it. A couple of lightly pitted bearings and 3rd gear synchros were pretty wore which I knew going in, but everything else is in pretty good shape.

Had some free time at work one day and I have some sheets of stainless. I have an FP manifold blanket but wanted to put a nice heat shield over it. A few hours later I have a heat shield ready to be polished up and bolted on.

 

[Tyeler18]

This car has been down for almost a year now, I'm glad to finally have it running again as of this weekend. After having issue after issue dealing with the major trans companies on here, I finally said screw it and purchased a built trans and tcase to put in this car while I decided what to do with my stock trans. I was really skeptical on buying a used built trans as it seemed like everyone was selling a "stage 4" but no one ever had paperwork, no way to verify anything actually done to it, and it was always something they bought second hand- far too much risk for me since I know how dsm owners can be trying to pass off garbage as gold. After passing on countless "built" trans I ended up grabbing a jacks stage 2 with a fresh tcase off a member on here. My biggest requirements were that it A) shifted perfect, and B) didn't have a welded center diff. I was lucky enough to get this one with a 4 spider center in great shape, with paperwork.
I was a little upset to find the package covered in trans oil when it made it to my door. I assumed the worst right away, and while this wasn't a horrible fix, I'm still waiting on Fedex to finish my insurance claim for it. Looked like they dropped it on the end case and cracked the whole end case. I picked up a new end case and swapped it on and put it in this weekend.

One of my good friends/customers knew I was having issues with my v-drive clutches on my twin disc and was awesome enough to get me a set of gear drive discs to upgrade my twin disc for christmas 2 years ago. Finally got to try them out after waiting all this time! I bought this clutch second hand with supposedly 50 miles on it, in typical dsm fashion it wasn't as described, but I got it cheap enough that I just ate the cost and dealt with it. Flywheel resurface, 2 new gear drive discs, and I'm ready to rock again.

This thing is still annoyingly loud, but its way better than it was with the v-drive. I have an exedy in my evo that's super quiet in comparison, and every other car i've installed one of these in has had a loud exhaust. For a daily with a quieter exhaust it can be annoying. Part of my quest for a good daily again was to remove the poly mounts I installed the last time I had the trans out. 3 fresh stock rubber mounts and this has become 10x better to drive.

Just about ready to fire, my junk 7 year old duralast battery would barely run the car.

The car is super filthy, I've got a bunch of stuff to button up on it still and installing a few of the old parts I took off while it was down (COP etc), along with a thorough bay cleaning, but I'm happy to have it on the road again. Time to throw the 2150s in with some e85 and crank up the FP red.

I forgot to mention I picked up a C5 super cheap to use as another nice daily. Getting back into the galant was quite the change going from a torquey v8 to a 210k 6 bolt stock bottom end car. I've been road coursing the vette and I can't wait to compare how the galant does compared to it. They're 2 very different chassis that you have to drive very differently, so it should be fun. I just got done doing poly bushings, wheels, and a nitrous kit on the vette, so we'll see how they compare.

 

[Tyeler18]

I really need to do better about updating these things. Finally have a color matched front end with the addition of a JDM RS evo front bumper, the car is just past 212k and this FP red is just cranking away. Twin disc aside this thing is a perfect daily, a little laggy but manageable. I've been spoiled by V8's as dailys so it's weird having to cruise at 3500 everywhere. Now that my new montero is functional I think it's time to crank the red up and see what lets go.

Untitled by Tyeler Andersen, on Flickr

 

[Jacob5se]

VR4 and Montero looks great together. Car looks really good paint matched. Show us the engine bay!

 

[Tyeler18]

VR4 and Montero looks great together. Car looks really good paint matched. Show us the engine bay!

Thanks! My post above has a bay shot that hasn't changed much other than cleaning and a COP setup.

 

[RWD4G63]

I think it's time to crank the red up and see what lets go.

Untitled by Tyeler Andersen, on Flickr

I never understood this mentality. Why break things when you don't have to? Especially on cars with parts as rare as these. Also that clutch is kind of a recipe for transmission breakage.

Dig the car itself though. Are you planning to roadrace it then? Looks good, and nice wheel choice.

 

[Tyeler18]

I never understood this mentality. Why break things when you don't have to? Especially on cars with parts as rare as these. Also that clutch is kind of a recipe for transmission breakage.

Dig the car itself though. Are you planning to roadrace it then? Looks good, and nice wheel choice.

It's not a matter of trying to break things, it's that something is always going to break. It's a 212k stock bottom end that's been beaten on a 16g and now an FP red. I have 5 spare trans, 3 2.3 strokers, and a couple 2.0's on stand by for anything that breaks. This car needs a 2.3 regardless with how heavy it is.

Yes the car will be road raced, I don't drag race it and I rarely launch the car. The twin disc is exactly what I need, but not what I want. I've held together stock trans cars with more power on twin discs, the way I use this car the trans is my last concern to let go.

 

[Tyeler18]

Been a while so I guess I need to update these all again. Ive owned this car for 12+ years and while I have always enjoyed driving it there's always been quirks with the car that made me not want to daily it. One of the biggest ones was installing this twin disc quarter master. Noise aside the street manners of this thing were always a pain, the cars super heavy, low torque from a high mileage 6 bolt and the 30 year old throttle cables were getting really stiff which made throttle modulation somewhat of a chore. Well not anymore!



The future is now old man and boy do I wish I had done this sooner. Both my montero and e30 I switched over to drive by wire when I did the LS swaps and it makes everything so much easier, naturally I wanted to make the switch on my 4g cars but I need 10+ ecus and I was on the fence with a Link ecu or haltech. Haltech released the rebel for the LS, I did a bunch of research on how people were liking it vs my holley systems and decided to ditch my holleys grab rebels for the LS cars and S2's for the 4g cars. The galant being the first one I was going to swap. I opted out of the $400+ pnp adapter harnesses and decided to hard wire them in. I have the amp seal crimpers and had plenty of experience pinning the harness so I chopped the ends off the stock harness and went to town crimping in new amp seal terminals for the S2. This wasn't my first install like this but the first on my own car. It takes less than 4 hours to go from running "stock" ecu to running haltech. Since I knew I was going to be buying a bunch of these I opted to try my luck with some amazon specials for the throttle body and pedal. The throttle body is a $46 endeavor 65mm china special and the pedal is actually a standard brand base model lancer pedal. All in for DBW conversion was under $120 with connectors. I will say I have had one bad out of the box endeavor throttle body on my mighty max but amazon made quick work of that and got me a new one that works fine. It's actually incredible how much better the car drives now. No more stiff throttle, I actually slowed the ramp rate the throttle closes at which keeps the momentum lightly rolling and made for a world of difference getting the twin disc to drive nicely on the street.

Naturally as soon as I get this thing swapped I was doing some testing and while doing a boost leak test I noticed my nearly fresh FP red had a horrible corroded compressor wheel. I have had issues in the past with water getting into the intake from my 3rd hood vent and I had a pretty high coverage water shield on the filter to protect it but it still managed to get plenty of water in it. Less than 500 miles on it and it was back at FP with a bad bill of health. They ended up swapping me out a brand new CHRA and on my way I was again. While I was waiting on parts I sent all my hot parts off to get ceramic coated and it turned out great.





I decided to ditch the stock galant intake routing and opted to put the filter in the wheel well. Theres a nice fresh air duct in the JDM bumper right where the filter fits and now I don't have to worry about rain or the pressure washer flooding my new turbo out anymore. This also likely dropped my IAT's drastically as it always heat soaked up in the bay and now theyre rarely above ambient while driving around.





Brought the galant, my buddies haltech powered 1g, and my evo out for one of the local car meets. If my 2g was finished we could've had a bunch of white awd 4g cars out.



My favorite picture I have of this car, while out dialing in the DBW we had a crazy sunset in the background. I wish the car was clean for the picture but it still turned out great.



The haltech has completely transformed how the car drives. I have been slowly swapping every car over to them and I have zero regrets about it. The new nexus ecus are awesome to deal with and the haltech app for your phone works so well I've been removing every aftermarket gauge in my cars. I was able to get the factory galant boost gauge to work as an accurate 30psi boost gauge with the haltech as well

 

[Tyeler18]

My dsm friend Eleanor was in town at the end of summer, shes done a bunch of car photos for me. The staircase going to my second floor has one a bunch of canvas prints of each of the cars she's photographed for me and while she was here she did a shoot of the galant for me. My girlfriend gets me a canvas print pretty much every christmas of a new car to add and I hadn't seen the edited photos she took until today. Only 3 I've received so far, I didn't ask if she planned to edit any more but these turned out great.







And the printed version added to the wall

 

[302of2000]

It's not a matter of trying to break things, it's that something is always going to break. It's a 212k stock bottom end that's been beaten on a 16g and now an FP red. I have 5 spare trans, 3 2.3 strokers, and a couple 2.0's on stand by for anything that breaks. This car needs a 2.3 regardless with how heavy it is.

Yes the car will be road raced, I don't drag race it and I rarely launch the car. The twin disc is exactly what I need, but not what I want. I've held together stock trans cars with more power on twin discs, the way I use this car the trans is my last concern to let go.

where did you get so many spare engines/transmissions? I need a backup powerplant and driveline parts.

 

[Tyeler18]

where did you get so many spare engines/transmissions? I need a backup powerplant and driveline parts.

Ive been in the dsm game since 2005 and have had a performance shop for a large portion of that time. Just an accumulation of 20 years of doing it unfortunately