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Galant VR-4 Restoration #129/1458

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Great pictures and work - This thread is going to come in handy - I've got a 6-Bolt on the stand - head just came back from the machine shop - but all the block work needs to be done to get that ready.

Love the progress -
Thanks! I documented a restoration of another car on different forum and it ended up being 34 pages! ROFL Hopefully when this is done it'll be a pretty thorough guide for anyone looking to restore a VR4.
 
We finished up the engine bay this weekend.

Started down by this cross-member.
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And this is where we ended up...
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Very pleased with how this turned out ... time to start putting things back together and get an engine in this beast.
 
Had off on Good Friday so my son headed out to the garage for several hours and knocked out some more things.

Started cleaning up the brake booster by grinding off the ruined paint by leaking brake fluid over the years.
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Then hit it up with some fresh paint.
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Also took care of some of the wiper cowl items.
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Gave that stuff some time to dry and got them reinstalled on the car later that day.
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We got the firewall blanket reinstalled. Used a little bit of construction adhesive behind it as well to help secure it in place.
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Had to wrestle the brake booster back in. This has got to be one of the hardest cars I've ever worked on to get the booster in and out. It is really slammed against the shock tower. It'll go, but it has to be just right. If you own a VR4 and you've done this - you know what I'm talking about.
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Also decided to install the new clutch master as well. We need to pre-prime it yet, but we'll do that shortly.
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Progress.
 
Mounting up the brake master cylinder was a little bit more than plug and play. Turned out the fittings for the feed lines from the reservoir were not facing the correct directions, so we had to reuse some fittings from the old cylinder. You can see the one on the left is angled away from the firewall, but the reservoir is mounted on the firewall.
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Here's the old fitting. You can see the difference in the angle.
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With fittings swapped it's time to bench prime.
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Prime until the bubbles are minimal.
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Here it is bolted back on.
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Here's a pulled back look of how things look right now.
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Brackets ... Mitsu loves brackets. Tried to pull off as many brackets as possible and get them ready for refresh.
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I've used Evaoporust before in other restores ... I like the stuff. Strips all the junk off back down to the bare metal.
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We got everything soaking in a container.
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Here's all the brackets after a day of soaking.
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And here they are a day later with some fresh paint.
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Should you bench bleed a new clutch master cylinder like a slave? Is that what you mean by priming?


Asking because I plan on replacing my clutch master soon and was curious.
 
Should you bench bleed a new clutch master cylinder like a slave? Is that what you mean by priming?


Asking because I plan on replacing my clutch master soon and was curious.
Yes I definitely would bench bleed it. Get as much out as you can before installing on car.
It helps with bleeding the air out of the system. And can make life easier for sure!
 
Brake masters I always bleed in the vice ahead of time. Clutch masters I always mount to the firewall and hook up to the pedal and then bleed the cylinder itself before hooking up the line. It works nicely because someone can sit in the car and pump the pedal. I didn't take pics or show it, but thats exactly what we did with the clutch master. If you look at post 104 above and see the pic where my hand is on the new clutch master, zoom in just below there's a white plastic fitting in where the line should go - that's capped for now since we bled it.
 
Worked on the car for about an hour with my son the other night. Got a few more things bolted back into the engine bay.

Washer fluid tank.
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Got the charcoal canister back in.
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Got this random bracket back in place.
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Go this sheet metal plate up front back in. I'm not a huge fan of this thing, and I'm wondering how necessary it is. It seems unnecessarily large just to have a mounting point for the IC pipe. Might end up eliminating this thing down the line, esp if we end up with a custom IC setup.
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Almost done with STEP 2, I think in a few short weeks we'll dropping the gas tank.
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Go this sheet metal plate up front back in. I'm not a huge fan of this thing, and I'm wondering how necessary it is. It seems unnecessarily large just to have a mounting point for the IC pipe. Might end up eliminating this thing down the line, esp if we end up with a custom IC setup.
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I've never seen that plate! All my Galants were purchased with ETS front mounts already. I'd %100 leave it in. Without it there is a huge hole for air to go around the radiator as opposed to through it. I'm actually working to seal up that same area right now with a new intercooler/radiator install.

Any chance you could snap a few more pics of it and where it mounts lower down?
 
I've never seen that plate! All my Galants were purchased with ETS front mounts already. I'd %100 leave it in. Without it there is a huge hole for air to go around the radiator as opposed to through it. I'm actually working to seal up that same area right now with a new intercooler/radiator install.

Any chance you could snap a few more pics of it and where it mounts lower down?
This is exactly why I still love forums, even though they are a bit old school nowdays and why I take lots of pics and post. I love the idea of people looking over your work, offering their advice and experience - and most of all catching your mistakes.

I will totally leave it in now. And yes, without it there would be an air hole there - I didn't even think about the fact that it would force air through the rad, but it would definitely serve that purpose.

I'll be out in the garage tomorrow night, I'll take some more pics for you. It has a bolt hole all the way at the base that mounts to the lower rad support. I guess most guys just tossed it like I was tempted to do. (BTW - there's a few more pics of it in post #111)
 
Did you use anything in particular to clean that washer reservoir? It turned out way better than my efforts to clean my reservoirs.
I'll have to ask my son. He's the one that cleaned that up and installed it. He watches tons of details video on YouTube and has learned a number of tricks that are new to me.

EDIT: He said he used Purple Power, a scrub brush, and a LOT of scrubbing.
 
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Last week we did a quick rebuild of the wiper motor. I've found from restoring cars before that the grease inside these things is almost always dried out and crusty.
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We open it up. Yep, crusty dry grease inside.
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Scrapped out what we could with a screwdriver.
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Dropped in some new fresh general purpose grease.
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Repainted the cover black while we had it apart, let it dry and then put it back together.
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Much better.

We also installed a new OEM style fuel filter in the engine bay.
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Didn't hook any lines up yet, just bolted it up.

Next up, we're going to tackle dropping the gas tank, making sure it's not rusted out or other issues, and install a new Walbro fuel pump.
 
Monday night was a big night for us as we moved onto a new section of the car. With a large portion of the engine bay where we want to be, it was time to turn our attention to the gas tank. This is largely an unknown. We don't really know how long this car has been sitting and whether the gas tank is rusted or what might be going on. So, it's time to drop it and look things over.

Started by removing the filler neck bolts at the gas cap. There's 3 large phillips heads in here.

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Next we put the car up in the air and removed the drivers tire and started removing filler neck couplers. There's only two, the filler itself and a pressure release line. You can't see it in the picture due to the shop light glare, but I had noticed when I was under the car previously the coupler is complete rotted and had large holes in it. So, we're gonna have to come up with another solution there as the VR4 filler neck is discontinued.
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Lastly, before dropping the tank you need to disconnect the 3 lines that attach to the tank. The feed, return, and EVAP. Some more modern cars have more than this going on, but the early 90's was a simpler time. It looks like the return line was leaking at one point b/c someone put a hose clamp on there and left the OEM clamp hang.

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Rubber lines disconnected.
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The fed line requires a 22mm and a 15mm flare nut wrench ... or maybe it was a 14, I forget. I hit with some WD-40 first and it took a little muscle, but it separately cleanly.
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There's some wiring for the pump on the left side of the trunk you need to disconnect, but once that's done your already ready to drop the tank. I used my regular pump jack and a small sheet of plywood.
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She's a little crusty on the outside, but not too bad. It'll clean up just fine as long as the inside is good. Luckily it feels completely empty. So it was pretty easy to drop. Took about 2 hours to do all this. We'll be pulling the hanger next week and inspecting the inside. Stay tuned.
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