2G Soon to be DD GS not so happy...

[Optiskate76]

So I just picked up a 1995 GS. I guess I learned my lesson, never buy a car at night. I had planned to use it as my DD shortly, but I need to iron its issues out. It was cheap and the kid obviously didn't know what he was doing. He told me it needed an O2 sensor. I took it in to get the codes read to see whether it was the up stream or down stream O2 sensor and the code reader just errored out. So I did the whole key on deal and tried to catch the blinking light as best I could. It was running noticeably rich. It also has a tendency to rev by itself after you push in the clutch while braking at say a stop sign. It revs like I blipped the throttle and it only does it once. It had a rough idle as well and an ever so slight almost imperceptible stutter some times while cruising at a constant speed. Now that said, the first time I checked the trouble codes I got that it needed a new IAT sensor. I just swapped that out, pulled the negative on the battery for a bit, put it back on, and took it for a drive. Now the stutter is much more pronounced, but it doesn't seem to be running rich. The IAT sensor was fouled for sure when I pulled it out and replaced it. It also revs up by itself much more when coming to a stop. The idle smoothed out slightly though. However the check engine light is still on and now I'm getting an issue with the MAP sensor, the EGR, and a couple other things that I cant seem to catch. I know 12 is the beginning of the codes and 55 is the end. I've caught the 14 and the 32. It is still flashing the 23 even though I replaced the IAT. I find it incredibly hard to watch the blinking lights and decipher everything though. One thing is for sure, the more I dig into the car, the more I wonder what other hill bill butch hacks I'll find in the engine bay. The airbox is disconnected, bolts missing, from where it connects on the side of the engine bay. It must have been stuffed in placed when the guy popped the hood. There appears to be some sort of sensor or something capped hanging under the air box, but I don't know what it is. The kid said at 120,000 he replaced the water pump, timing belt, tensioner, ect. I've always loved these cars, so I just want to get this thing in good running shape. Any ideas what in the hell is going on here?

 

[Optiskate76]

I ordered a megan racing header/down pipe and a test pipe. Hopefully that goes a long way to helping fix my issues.

 

[OGDSM1989]

The exhaust manifold should help, altough take a few cycles to get the O2 sensor to read better ...all the soot and fuel particles will need to burn off, as for the test pipe I cant remember on the NT but doesnt that get rid of the down stream O2 / and cat which will certainly throw a code. You may start chasing your tail going that route ( my 2 cents) ... good choice on the exhaust bits ....post some pics of you putting them on will maybe help other when or if they decide to go that route.

 

[Optiskate76]

That being said, I can not find side skirts and door caps to save my life... well... ones that aren't like $700. I've been looking for 2gb stuff to replace my 2ga stuff and the 2ga door caps that my car came with (not installed ) have all the clip retainers busted off.

 

[Optiskate76]

The exhaust manifold should help, altough take a few cycles to get the O2 sensor to read better ...all the soot and fuel particles will need to burn off, as for the test pipe I cant remember on the NT but doesnt that get rid of the down stream O2 / and cat which will certainly throw a code. You may start chasing your tail going that route ( my 2 cents) ... good choice on the exhaust bits ....post some pics of you putting them on will maybe help other when or if they decide to go that route.

I do plan on running an O2 simulator on the down stream O2 sensor. I just have to wait until I get my next check. I'll be sure to get some pics. If my journey help others out, then that's awesome. That's kind of why I keep posting my car issues. It's also why my buddy and I are working on a YouTube channel for long distance shooting.

 

[Optiskate76]

I did a little dinking around today. I remember reading an intake tube is a tube is a tube some where. I think it was 2gnt where I read that it was a good idea to just buy a cheap ebay CAI and replace the filter with something like a K&N. Boy was that wrong. The "universal" mounting brackets blow goats. I highly dislike them to say the least. I ran out of time, but I'm going to make a new mount. I'm a sheetmetal worker, making things is what I do. I've got access to everything I would need to make things like intake manifolds and such. I've toyed with the idea, but I'm not there yet. I just want my damn car to run right. I did get my vacuum leaks down a bit more. At idle I'm now around 15.2 to 15.5psi. The idle is still a bit rough and I noticed from behind the car it sounds horrible and it chirps a bit. Looking under the car you can see mirage (for lack of a better term, if you shoot long distance you'll understand) coming off the cat. Its not glowing red hot or anything like that. I couldn't tell if it was hot exhaust escaping or if it was heat related mirage, but it was just from the cat area.

 

[Optiskate76]

I have a question. On the side skirts, air dams, and door caps, are the door caps or air dams the same between the the 2ga and 2gb? I know the skirts are different. The caps look like they probably are as well, but I am using sure about the air dams. It would definitely save me some money if they were the same.

 

[Optiskate76]

So, much to my surprise, I jumped the car this morning to go get coffee (I have the week off) and realized that I had no power steering. I popped the hood and the belt is in fact shredded. It didn't take anything else with it as far as I could tell. One more thing to fix.... yay...

 

[sinisa]

you can look Miller import Parts for 2gb parts, i bought my front bumper from carid and all other parts from him. his dsmtuners nick is stangmurdera

 

[Optiskate76]

you can look Miller import Parts for 2gb parts, i bought my front bumper from carid and all other parts from him. his dsmtuners nick is stangmurdera

Thanks for the heads up! I'll check him out.

 

[Optiskate76]

Replaced the alternator and ps/ac belt today and installed the header, down pipe, and test pipe. I had some issues. One pretty serious one. I'll post stuff up in a bit after I get the kids to bed.

 

[Optiskate76]

Alright. So now that I have a few minutes, I'll share how my day went with every one. Let me preface this with, I don't typically epically fail like I did today. None of this should have been hard and in fact, most of what went wrong today was caused by things that previous owners of this vehicle have done to it. I honestly feel like I am rehabbing this car, which wasn't my intentions when I set out to buy a new car. In fact, it was the exact opposite. I do like working on cars though... scratch that... Jeeps, trail rigs, and rock buggies. I've decided I don't like squeezing under cars when I could crawl on my hands and knees under my Jeep. So any way, as I said, I had issues with a belt the other morning. It failed on me and I lost my power steering and AC. So today I drove it over to my dad's shop and decided to go to work. The broken belt came off easy, but then I noticed the belt for the alternator was also broken. However, it wasn't broken in such a way that it failed so much as it was only half a belt. So I replaced that too.

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And as you can tell in this next image, the Alt belt was only half a belt for some reason....

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Then I noticed my passengers side strut was completely blown out. I thought my suspension was a bit loud and bottomed out easily, but I've got so many other things to focus on I just pushed off checking until I was down there. I got my belts installed and decided to do the Megan Racing header, down pipe, and test pipe since I had the car ripped apart any way.

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I went to pull the cracked factory manifold off and when I got it off I realized that it wasn't even tight, it had been taken off before, and it was leaking on the passengers side of the manifold. The gasket was new. I've said it before, but I suspect this car was once heavily modified and then stripped and half ass put back together. Its pretty straight forward to remove the manifold. It all just unbolts and comes right out pretty quickly actually.

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I then went on to taking out the down pipe and cat. My cat was literally falling apart and you could tell that it had been incredibly unhealthily hot. Probably clogged from running rich. The kid I got it from told me the O2 sensor was bad, but that it didn't affect how the car ran and that it was no big deal so he didn't feel the need to replace it. I kept my mouth shut because I knew better, hence why it was one of the first things I had replaced, but I didn't realize how bad the cat was. I had planned on putting a test pipe in any way though. Any way, everything came out and straight forward until I got to the flange between the back of the cat and the rest of the exhaust. Those nuts were toast. A 1" drive air impact did not even phase them. In fact, it made my cat crap itself all over the ground. In order to get the cat disconnected I ended up having to cut the nuts off with a skinny wheel (best tool ever invented) and then beat it until it fell off.

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As you can see, the cat did not like the rattle gun and completely puked its guts all over the driveway. We ran 3 different impacts on it, even the 1"er failed. It doesn't really surprise me though. You should see what we have to go through to keep some of the unit bearings off of our Jeeps. I'm glad my new axles have hubs... which will get drive slugs because hubs fail at the most inopportune times.

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Even after we cut the cat lose, it still wanted to hang on....

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At that point things became straight forward again. I attached the test pipe to the down pipe and slung it up under the car. It all went in pretty damn easy. One thing I noticed is that the test pipe had beautiful tig welds. Some one can weld. Very uniform bead, beautifully gold colored as a proper stainless weld should be, I mean damn near freaking perfect. Then the down pipe and header looked like some one who had only been on a tig for a few hours their whole life. Granted, I don't thing it would leak, but they had an excessive amount of starts and stops like they couldn't even weld 1/4 of the a joint at a time without stopping. Not only that, but their bead was incredibly inconsistent. At least they didn't burn all the alloy out of the metal, it still had color in it. I'd be worried if it didn't. Maybe I'm just nit picking, but part of my job includes being able to weld GMAW and GTAW among various other things and a couple of the welds would definitely not fly if they were in visible places.

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Look at how awesome those welds on the test pipe are...

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Then you get these welds...

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The header also went in easy. Best I could tell from the vast interweb the torque specs on the header was 18-20ft lbs. So that is what it got torqued to.

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Now, this is where my problem arose. The connection between the header and the down pipe. It leaks bad out the passengers side of that connection. However, its not a flange or anything like I would expect or have seen on any other vehicle. You cant even gasket it. It looks like its supposed to be some sort of compression fitting or something. If you scroll up to the pic of the assembled test pipe and down pipe you can see the down pipe side of the connection. The header slides into that and there are two pieces of small tube welded to the sides of it that match the ones on the down pipe and a set of screws to sinch the two together. So what is the deal with this? I've never seen something like this done before, but I'm new to the DSM/import/tuner/car world. Maybe its common practice, I don't know. There are just two bolts that go through some tubing welded to the header and the down pipe that pull them together when you tighten them up. They're tight and like I said, it leaks bad out the passenger side of the connection. It leaks bad enough that I had a head ache after driving a short distance home. I should probably fix that before I have to drive to work an hour Monday morning. So how do you get such a connection to not leak? Do I need to loosen it up and try to get it to seat better or what? Is there something I need to put in the connection. I mean it didn't come with any instructions (not that I'd typically need the manufacturers opinion any way ) or anything. This leak seriously worries me though. Carbon monoxide is a bad deal, especially that much of it. I guess on a positive note, my car isn't running rich any more.

And after all of that... one of my belts squeaks... mother f*cker....

 

[1990TSIAWDTALON]

Can you cut the flange off of the original downpipe and weld it to the new one with that "skinny wheel"? It would be my thoughts but without seeing it in the installed position I can't tell if that's what it needs is just the flange. I didn't see a picture of the exit part of the header so does it have a flange like manifold?

 

[Optiskate76]

Can you cut the flange off of the original downpipe and weld it to the new one with that "skinny wheel"? It would be my thoughts but without seeing it in the installed position I can't tell if that's what it needs is just the flange. I didn't see a picture of the exit part of the header so does it have a flange like manifold?

The header slips inside the down pipe and then a pair of bolts pulls them tight together. I'll try and get a pic of the connection later. I can weld a flange on both sides but I don't have 1025 or stainless wire. I also don't have access to a tig right now. I'm hoping I can find an easy solution to this.

 

[1990TSIAWDTALON]

Could it possibly just need a "donut" gasket or does it have a cupped area for one maybe? Like you thought, maybe you just need to loosen it up and reposition it which would be the logical thing.

 

[OGDSM1989]

Exhaust putty .... if it is leaking where the two pipes slide together? I have used it a few times myself

 

[Optiskate76]

Exhaust putty .... if it is leaking where the two pipes slide together? I have used it a few times myself

That is exactly where it is leaking. So tomorrow some time between finishing my stairs an when I go to bed I need to find some exhaust putty and fix that leak.

So is there anything special I should know about this stuff?

 

[OGDSM1989]

Use nitrile ( blue gloves) when applying that stuff ..... most Auto parts should carry it, clean the outside and inside of the pipes so it has clean metal to adhere too, unless its a massive gap it should seal it right up.

 

[Optiskate76]

Use nitrile ( blue gloves) when applying that stuff ..... most Auto parts should carry it, clean the outside and inside of the pipes so it has clean metal to adhere too, unless its a massive gap it should seal it right up.

It's probably a little less than a 16th on one side. Hopefully I can research it and that stuff will work.

 

[Optiskate76]

So I put some high temp sealant in the joint between the header and down pipe. Even after it cured it immediately blew out...

 

[Optiskate76]

So I had school this morning (4th year sheetmetal apprentice, we go to school one week about every other month). I got up, got ready, and was headed out when, as I was walking out the door, a kid came flying around the corner and plowed right into the back of my Eclipse. It doesn't look bad in the pic, but that corner is pushed in like an inch or more. His car was done, undriveable. He was going incredibly fast, I'm surprised there wasn't more damage. It was a simple case of a young kid driving like a freaking idiot. Luckily he did the right thing and came to me rather than trying to drive off, although he wouldn't have got far in his car. He was so freaked out he was stuttering bad. We got insurance information, but he keeps offering to pay and doesn't want to go that route. I don't know what we're going to do as of yet. I haven't had much time to do anything as I've been in school and just found out, when it rains it pours, we have other family issues. This really sucks. I've half way tossed around the idea of having the car checked out to make sure everything is safe and driveable, selling the car cheap, having the kid make up the difference in what I paid (it would probably be about as much as fixing the body damage) and just looking for a GST or GSX. I don't know though. My wife now has a bad taste in her mouth after this Eclipse. She didn't want me to get one in the first place, so getting her to go along with another might not happen.

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[Optiskate76]

I talked to the kids brother this morning and the kid actually had a good excuse and I say that because I had the same issue he had this morning. Traveling the direction down the street that he was going, the sun was absolutely blinding. He can around the corner, got blinded, and tagged my car. He walked away and no one was hurt, that is the important thing. Its always a bad morning when you wake up and have to pull some one out of a car and stabilize them. I talked to his brother and worked things out with them. The Eclipse is going to get fixed, so life is good. No harm no foul. The kid doesn't need to be punished, I'm sure hes already embarrassed enough and this car situation is a whole lot worse than mine. As in his car is car is toast and hes going to pay for mine to get it fixed. I'm sure hes already pulled a few lessons from this ordeal, no need to make it any more hard for him than it is. So long as the Eclipse is taken care of right, I'll be happy.