Techboy's 99 4G63

[techboy]

While I was working on the intake I sent the 1G TB out to be powder coated. Nothing fancy, just a gloss black to clean it up. I also picked all new gaskets from Extreme PSI's website.

When I got it back I immediately went to work. I started by disassembling it.

You can see here the shaft seals are totally shot and desperately in need of replacement. If you have a wandering idle or a slight boost leak from somewhere, it could be TB shaft seals that are causing you problems.

I also pick up a FIAV block-off plate from JMF. No need to be dealing with this for a car that's only driven during the summer months.

In order to clean up the throttle shaft real well I had to disassemble it a bit further.

 

[techboy]

Before just mashing the new shaft seals in there, I put a little grease on them so they wouldn't tear or get damaged during install.

I used the butt end of a screw driver to install the shaft seals.

Then I was able to slide the throttle shaft back in place.

Now I could re-wrap the spring.

Time to put the throttle plate back in.

I used thread locker in the throttle plate screws. Don't want those getting sucked into the motor.

New FIAV gasket.

Dropped the JMF block-off plate in place.

Since I blocked off the FIAV, there's no need to run coolant through this thing anymore, so the lines can just be capped.

Before installing this thing, I decided to go with all new allen head hardware I scored at a local hardware store.

All done.

 

[techboy]

2015

Soon after the car back together and running with the 1G TB I started noticing my temperature gauge climbing whenever I was under boost or climbing a hill. At first I thought it was the thermostat so I replaced that. No change. Then I installed an aftermarket water gauge to watch it more closely. It was still getting hot. So, after 2 months or so of dealing with this and trouble shooting various things I came to the conclusion it must be headgasket on the verge of going. I figured it was time for a new HG and maybe some cooling system upgrades along the way.

I started, of course, by removing the head.

Because I wasn't totally sure of the source of my overheating issue I decided to send the head out to be pressure tested just to make sure there were no cracks. I also removed the water pump to check that out. Everything was fine, the propellers were moving freely and didn't show signs of odd wear.

Once I got the head back from pressure testing - which came back fine, I decided to give it a repaint since I had if off the car anyway.

Then I had I put the cams back in.

 

[techboy]

I also decided since I had the head off it was a good time to replace all the fuel injector o-rings and freshen all that stuff up. I sent the OEM fuel rail out and had the powdercoated as well.

Injectors and old o-rings.

New stuff from Extreme PSI:

Putting the fuel rail back on:

Putting the manifold back on (so much easier to do on the bench!). New gasket from Extreme PSI as well.

 

[copenhagen6123]

Solid work on the throttle body porting. I went with a S90 throttle boday and had to do some mild porting myself. Kind of wish i would have kept the isc valve on my setup.

 

[techboy]

Thanks. Took a little bit longer than I thought it was going to. But once I got in the groove of it, it went real smooth.

 

[techboy]

At this point it's still early 2015. It's the dead of winter still and I got time until driving season comes around, so I figured while I got the car tore apart, why not send out some more parts to have powdercoated. I wanted to use the same metallic lipop red I red previously on the IC pipes and valve cover (pictured earlier), but by this point in time I had switched powdercoaters. So, we had to do a digging and research to figure exactly company and powder my previous coater was using. Luckily we were able to figure it out and my new coater did a great job matching the new stuff up with the old.

Here I had the water pipe done a straight silver. And the water pump pulley, alt pulley and bracket done to match the rest of the car.

And over here I had the thermostat housing, dipstick, rad brackets, and fuse box holder done to match the car as well.

I also thought I would be cool if he could just hit the lettering on this spark plug cover. I always loved this JMF cover, but I thought it kinda got lost in the engine bay. I needed something to help it pop. I thought this might do the trick, but my coater wasn't sure if he could pull it off. I think it came out pretty darn good.

 

[techboy]

With everything back, the head checked with the pressure test and new OEM HG, it was time to put the car back together so it would all be ready for the 2015 driving season.

First I cleaned up the surface of the block a little bit, just got the junk and old gasket material off.

Grabbed my new water pump gasket ...

There was nothing I could see wrong with the pump I had, so I put it back on.

Put the freshly coated water pipe on...

... and dropped the head and intake mani on the new gasket.

Valve cover back on and the thermo housing mounted up...

I took a quick time-out from the car to freshen up the power steering pump. I was putting the pulley on, so I figured why not clean the whole thing up with some new paint.

I also decided to spend some time on the turbo coolant lines. We have a giant wire wheel at work, so I took them there, made them look pretty and then cleared them so they would oxidize again (at least for now).

I also picked up some new push-lock hose from Summit Racing. I heard good things about, so why not.

With those things in order I could put the manifold and turbo back on...

Also got the new 1G TB and elbow installed...

Just about buttoned up...

All done:

 

[techboy]

One of the things that I failed to mention above, was, that because this whole thing started out as an overheating issue, I decided to make some changes there too along the way. I didn't just replace the HG and call it a day. I had been running Mishimoto's rad for a few years, but I was running it with my own fan setup. I thought it might be time to get their shroud and fans since I've heard it's actually waaaay better to have the fans pull the air through the shroud. I also decided to pick up their heavier lb thermo cap.

Even though I always tend to do things slower than most, i did have the car up and running by car show season and enjoyed driving around the rest of 2015 with NO overheating issues.

 

[techboy]

2016

So after all the hassell I went through to figure out the overheating issue in early 2015, I just wanted to enjoy driving the car, so that's what I did for the remainder of 15 into 2016. Plus, I was knee-deep in a full restore on a Starion, so there really wasn't much time dedicated to modifications on the Eclipse. I did, however, happen to be down at JMF over the summer of 2016 b/c they were working on prototype rad mounts and needed a car to test them on. Since I've known the owner for a number of years now, he gave me a call and asked if I could bring the car down. This photo is from the JMF web site. That's my car with the proto mounts test fit. My very minor claim to fame ...

The other thing that came of that day is I noticed they had some 2G polished radiator pipes on their shelves. So I bought a set on site. Unfortunately this beautiful set is no longer manufactured by them. Glad I go them when I did.

Here they are installed:

The only other thing I did to the car in 2016 was pick up a set of poly motor mounts and install them. Well ... almost. I installed the front and rear, but I haven't installed the left and right yet. Someday.

 

[techboy]

Somewhere in this timeframe ... I don't exactly remember when, my wife picked up a new Canon DSLR camera so we went to a local spot to mess around with the camera. This is what we came up with. Car looks pretty much the same as this 2 years later.

I also got new tires, and had a MUCH NEEDED wheel alignment done at a local speed shop.

 

[techboy]

2017 - 2018

It's taken me several months to get this build thread caught up to the current project, but I've finally been able to document this thing all the way up to what is going on now ... and that is what I've dreamt about for a long time >>>> Swapping the car from a GST to a GSX. I toyed around with idea of selling the car and trying to find a GSX, but I realized I'm way too picky and no car would ever been clean enough or low enough mileage, so why not just stay with my car and swap it.

I was only going to do the swap if I could find a whole donor car. I didn't want to piece-meal the thing together, so I got lucky on a very cold day in Jan. of 2017 when I found a local ad for an AWD Talon for sale. I went to check it out.

Now, before you go thinking that's a perfectly fine Talon, why would you hack it up for a swap ... let's take a closer look. There was a bunch missing from the engine bay:

And, the interior was hacked to bits:

But, the rear subframe was there, gas tank, driveshaft and transmission ... everything I needed. So, I bought it.

Life got in the way over the spring and summer so I actually stored the car and didn't bring it to my house until October of 2017.

It was officially time to let the stripping begin!

 

[techboy]

DONOR CAR TEAR-DOWN

So with the Talon in the garage and the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays I had some time to work on the disassembly of this car. I started by removing the bolt-on things I knew I needed for the swap.

Up first, the driveshaft:

With the interior completely removed/missing from the car, it made disconnecting the e-brake cables and accessing the strut tower bolts a cinch. After that it was just a matter of unbolting the 4 subframe bolts and I was able to drop the whole entire rear-subframe as one piece.

Next I dropped the gas tank and removed the filler neck. This car was a 97, and mine is a 99. In some of the research I did beforehand I read that there is a difference between the 95-97 and 98-99 filler necks, and and the way they vent. I read if you didn't have the correct match for you tank the pump won't kick-off during fill-up. I'm really not interested in having a mess everytime I fill the car, so I made sure to remove the neck too.

With those things removed I turned my attention to making some money back off the car and selling off some of the still-good parts. I sold the motor, turbo, wheels, and all the manual parts to someone doing an auto>manual swap.

One thing that I did learn that was interesting though - that is how few people are really interested in DSM's anymore. I have bins of parts in my attic from this car that at one point or another I had for sale - and for cheap too. But, with the exception of the stuff listed above I had a hard time moving the stuff. Some things I just ended up throwing out. I made out alright though.

Here's a random picture of the Talon at some point during the process.

 

[techboy]

REMOVING SUB FRAME BOLTS

Once I got the easy stuff removed, it was time to move onto the harder stuff. I decided I would first remove the longer subframe bolts needed in order to mount the subframe in my GST.

I began by IDing where the subframe bolts are in the trunk and drilled a pilot hole on the driver and passenger side.

Then I got out the hole saw and started making some holes. I kinda missed on the first one, so I had to drill a second hole.

Nailed the passenger side!!

Then I got out the whizzer and started cutting through the metal jacket the bolts are housed in.

Didn't take too long and I was able to pop out my first subframe bolt.

Although not necessary, I decided since I had a donor car that was headed to the junkyard anyway, I would practice on this car locating the forward subframe bolts and removing them so that knew exactly where I would be cutting in my car and do it with the smallest incision possible.

And now - the infamous picture that anyone who does this swap wants to see ... here are the AWD subframe bolts needed to make this possible

 

[techboy]

REMOVING DRIVESHAFT BRACKETS

With the subframe bolts removed, there was really only one thing left to do before I could get rid of this car, and that was drill out the driveshaft hangers from the tunnel.

For starters I went to Harbor Freight and bought some of these crappy spot weld drill bits.

The two hangers that need to be drilled out are these bad boys. The rear hanger (1), and the front hanger (2) that also has a mount on it for the exhaust.

You can see the spot weld from the factory pretty clearly.

And here's both of them together.

 

[Techn0Nut1996]

Love this journal, I am looking at doing the AWD swap eventually so this is incredibly interesting and helpful to read.

 

[Issues]

That's crazy work you've done there! Can't wait to see how it turns out.

 

[techboy]

Love this journal, I am looking at doing the AWD swap eventually so this is incredibly interesting and helpful to read.

That's crazy work you've done there! Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Thanks to both of you. Progress wise, I'm actually about 5 months ahead of where these photos are at. I'll be consistently updating it though with lots of pictures. I'm trying to document the swap process pretty thoroughly. There's some great documentation out there about how to do this swap, but some gloss over some of the steps and the details. I hoping to fill in the gaps.

 

[techboy]

So with everything I needed off of the Talon removed and the rest of the car pretty much gutted, it was time to get rid of it. I literally drug it outside on a temporary cart I built and put an ad up on CL for it. After several weeks and no bites, just a few phone calls looking for parts that were already gone, I called a junkyard and had them come pick the car up. This was what it looked like on it's last day.

As you can see, there wasn't much left. It was a shame though, the chassis was really pretty rust free.

 

[techboy]

GST TEAR-DOWN

So, with the Talon out of the way, it was time to hit the reset button and get going on my car. My buddy works at this sign making place and they are always throwing out these huge sheets of heavy wax-covered paper. They are perfect for laying down on the garage floor - the paper catches all the fluids and wax keeps if from bleeding through into the concrete.

Got my car backed and positioned where I wanted it so I could start by disassembling the rear.

Since I was starting with the back of the car, I need to drop the subframe, gas tank, etc ... I needed access to everything, so the interior had to be removed. This is the first time in 18 years the interior was completely removed from this car.

My carpet always seemed pretty clean to me inside the car, but outside the car in the sunlight, it's pretty filthy, I'm gonna have to do something about that before it goes back in.

Anyway, with interior removed, I started on my car where I started with the Talon. I removed the subframe, gas tank, and filler neck.

Holy emissions crap on the back of this gas tank batman. Could Mitsu have made it anymore complicated?

Filler neck wasn't much different. For being a garage kept car I was surprise at how much surface rust was on the filler neck. But, I guess with it being the wheel well, I gets a lot of water and junk tossed on it.

 

[jinscho]

Anyway, with interior removed, I started on my car where I started with the Talon. I removed the subframe, gas tank, and filler neck.

View attachment 555633

Filler neck wasn't much different. For being a garage kept car I was surprise at how much surface rust was on the filler neck. But, I guess with it being the wheel well, I gets a lot of water and junk tossed on it.

View attachment 555635

Saw these up on Craigslist a few weeks back, knew the AWD swap was finally underway!

Actually thought about hitting you up for the rear subframe, but then I heard my wife's inner monologue of 'haven't you bought enough crap for your car lately??' .

Love the updates, keep 'em coming!

 

[techboy]

SUBFRAME BOLT & GAS TANK BOLT INSTALL

With the subframe and gas tank out of the way, there is a boat-load of room under the car to do the things you need to. I started by getting the subframe bolts I removed from the Talon in place. I didn't show pictures of cutting through the trunk to drop the subframe bolts in place, but it's the same process I showed above with the Talon. I believe I used a 1-1/8 inch hole saw to keep the incisions to a minimum in my car.

If you're interested in doing this swap, then you probably already know and have read that the holes for the forward mount on the awd subframe are stamped into the frame already from Mitsu. You just need to cut access holes to them by the rear seats and drop in the bolts (right bolt in pic below). This is the passenger side of the car, you can see I have the Talon "longer" subframe bolt in place on the left. At the arrow, you can see the "shorter" fwd subframe bolt - later I'll need to cut that off flush b/c I think gets in the way of mounting the awd subframe.

Here's the drivers side: (sorry, this one is blurry)

The next thing I did, was mount four bolts with the awd gas tank straps. The fwd tank just bolts in around the flange on the tank, the awd tank is held in place by straps. Again, the holes are already in car from the factory, but you need to get the bolts into the holes. For the rear 2 bolts, there's already an access hole in the frame large enough to feed the bolts through, but you'll need a magnet and a dose of patience to phish the bolts over and get them to drop through the holes where the straps mount. I took me a few tries, but I go them. You can see the rear 2 strap bolts in the first picture above with the red annodized nuts on them.

For the front 2 strap bolts, there are no access holes nearby big enough to use, so you'll have to cut them. I used a hole saw again, I think it was a 1-1/4" hole saw. I pretty much drilled directly above where the bolts needed to drop in and made easy on myself. Holes I cut are marked with the arrows. Front 2 strap bolts below.

 

[techboy]

WELDING IN DRIVESHAFT HANGER BRACKETS

Once I had all the fuel strap bolts and subframe bolts in place it was time to drill out the FWD fuel tank brackets and the exhaust hanger in the driveshaft tunnel. If you're doing this swap ... this is the point of no return ...

The FWD fuel tank brackets where a bear to get out. The metal on these is a lot thicker than the metal on the driveshaft hangers I encountered on the AWD car. So, it was a quite a bit of work to drill out the spot welds. If I had to do it over, I may consider using a torch or a cut off wheel and cutting them out instead of drilling. Anyway, i drilled them out, filled the holes in my frame with Bondo.

Then I turned my attention to the tunnel and removed the exhaust hanger bracket that will be replaced with the same AWD bracket.

With everything removed that needed to come out of my car, it was time to start going the other way - start putting things back together. One of my best friends is much better with a welder than I am, so he came up and gave me hand. I marked everything out ahead of time with black spray paint under the car. On top of that, I also mounted up the driveshaft and made sure everything lined up. The driveshaft does hang from rubber grommets, so you don't have to be dead-on - but you want to be within a mm or 2 I'd say.

Rear Driveshaft hanger:

While we were at it, I wanted to put a tack weld on the rear subframe bolts so that there was no way they could shift, spin, or whatever while trying to mount the subframe in place.

Here's the holes I cut in my trunk and the drivers and passenger side bolts in place with the tabs folded back over the top of them.

And here's the weld that'll hold it in place.

Here's some in-actions shots...

And finally, we welded plates over the holes in the trunk. We actually used metal from the FWD exhaust bracket - just cut a chunk off and used what we had. This is the drivers side ... I still need to clean it up and smooth it over with a grinder and wire wheel. I forgot to take a pic of the passenger side, I might update this thread later with another pic of that side.

Now it's time to get the AWD gas tank installed ...

 

[techboy]

UNDERCOATING

Last time I posted I said it was time to get the gas tank installed. I decided to pump the brakes on that actually as I realized it might be a good time to undercoat the car. With the subframe removed and no gas tank there was no time like to present to get it done. My car has been garage kept so there's little to no rust, but thought was if I do this I'm basically set for life. So, here goes ...

I took some before shots of my rear driver/passenger shock towers and then the underside of the car.

I'm not totally sure how much time I spent under the car grinding all this, but I know it was more than 3 hours. It took awhile. I ground down both rear shock towers and the whole underside up to about where the rear driveshaft hanger is. Here's what I ended up with after all the grinding ...

This is the PASSENGER SIDE REAR:

DRIVERS SIDE REAR:

REAR UNDERSIDE:

Whatever coating/spray they use at the factory is so thin on the underside of the car it literally took no time at all to grind that down to the bare metal. The wheel wells a little bit more work. I used a brush on undercoating on this car. I used a spray 3M undercoating on another car project I did before, but if you scratched at it hard enough it would come off - it was like a rubberized coating. I've also used POR15 on another project, and while I really like that stuff it is very expensive and didn't real feel it was necessary on a relatively "modern" car. So, I went with a more affordable Rustoleum undercoating product. I've never used it before, but I have a good friend that used it on the underside of a pickup truck bed and it's held up well.

Here's how it came out ....

This is a shot I took of the underside 1/2 way done (the trunk area).

And the whole thing ...

I still have to do the front 1/2 of the car which I probably will since there's not exhaust or driveshaft in the way. (If you look in front of the rear driveshaft hanger you can see the front area that's not done). If this car ever rusts, I should be long dead.

 

[Techn0Nut1996]

I was wanting to do this to my car as well at some point, I'm glad you chose to use the Rustoleum bush on stuff because that is actually what I was leaning more towards personally. I hope it holds up well!