The Contender

[midwestmopar]

midwestmopar submitted a new DSM Profile :

The Contender


Read more about this vehicle here...

 

[midwestmopar]

Not sure how many people will follow my build. Being upfront, for the most part its going to be boring for the first couple of years. I plan to keep it a street class until I've honed my skills with the car enough to be competitive in a national ranking ( I currently only have 3 regional events under my belt ) This year I most likely will only be running 4-5 events in autocross and plan to make 1 road course. Next year I will try my hardest to run every event in the Indy regional season including the 3 track days they normally hold. Now about the car, as I've said before, I've seen this car setting for 8 years, I loved the looks of it every since I laid eyes on it ( Besides for the painted on turbo graphics on the sides ). While its still on the trailer I don't do much with it, my garage is full of building supplies for my house currently but I plan to have it off the trailer in March. Some things that need to be address as soon as it comes off the trailer are as followed.
#1. the clutch pedal is to the floor at all times, there is brown fluid in the reservoir but I have not diagnosis it any farther than if I lift up on the clutch pedal it will stay up and if I push it down it stays down ( but clutch doesn't disengage) I have purchased a slave cylinder clutch, master cylinder, and a new rubber hose for it. I plan to flush the metal line with compressed air and new fluid and just put a complete new clutch hydraulic system in. While under the dash I will be checking for the return spring since I would assume it is missing since my pedal doesn't come back up.
#2 is the awful ticking the engine has in it. I'm planning on it just being lifters.... Hopefully! While I'm working on that part I plan to do the timing belt since its sat for so long and I have no history of when it was done last.

The plan for it is to have the clutch issue fixed, the ticking issue fixed, new timing belt and water pump installed, new brake rotors, pads, calipers, and hoses (we had to drag the car a couple of feet with a truck just to get it to roll for the winch to pull it up on the trailer cause it had sat so long) fresh rubber put on while the wheels are off the car, new spark plugs, oil change, and fix any thing else I may run into while getting this car reliable enough to go around the block for the first time in many years.

Well if everything goes well, I'll have fixed the issues I've stated above by May so that I can attend my first race with it.

I'll keep whoever decides to follow along in the loop.
Thanks for reading!

 

[dsmcrzy]

For some strange reason I dig the graphics. Good luck with the build. Welcome to the forum!

 

[Helaman-99]

I love the hood design man. Good luck with the build!

 

[midwestmopar]

dsmcrzy thanks, since graphics are painted on ill be leaving them for quite some time, but when its time to do paint in the future ill do the yellow and black but just leave off the "Turbo" on the sides
Helaman-99 every time i seen this car when I didn't own it the hood always grabbed my attention. I will always keep that hood design!

 

[Mech Addict]

I was also thinking the paint was pretty cool. I don't think it is stock, but almost looks like it could have been. Faux Factory? More tasteful than many wild eclipses from the fastnfurious days. Even the turbo part is fun, not too obnoxious, though I understand if you want it gone. Good luck on getting it roadworthy; looks like you have to fit it into the whole life-mix. I'm in the same boat, as I believe many of us are. We're lucky to have toys, and there is play time, and not play time (jobs, houses, regular cars, familiy [different kind of play time]). Keep us updated as you get into it! and Welcome!

 

[midwestmopar]

Mech addict you are right about it being tasteful. The turbo thing may grow on me. And that life thing is no joke haha, I have a 2 year old and a wife to support plus 9 other cars . This one just took the garage spot of my 91 spirit rt. It was suppost to be next up to be fixed but in reality the eclipse is alot closer to being road worthy. To go along with my slave cylinder and clutch master cylinder, I just bought the stainless steel braided clutch hose. . . . should be here Tuesday. Maybe by then I can have a spot cleared out in the garage. I'm itching to start wrenching on it.

 

[midwestmopar]

Well I finally cleaned out a bay for the car to be unloaded. Updates on the car will be coming up the next few days. Pretty soon I'll have it jacked up and maybe I can get some pictures of underneath and maybe someone can help me figure out what kind of exhaust is on this thing. Stay tuned! Thanks for all the support!

 

[midwestmopar]

 

[midwestmopar]

Well last night I got the car up in the air finally. . . . . which took entirely way too long, turns out the car is low enough that my "low pro jack" wouldn't get under it. I had to rob the scissor jack out of my truck to raise it and then get my floor jack under it on each corner.

Well it had wasn't too terribly bad underneath, the rear arms had some rust flaking off but I've seen worse on some of my other cars I've owned.

At least all of my lines look good

While crawling under it, turns out I have a somewhat solid under body which is very surprising cause there was puddles in the rear floor boards.

now, something that i'm not excited about will be pulling the seats, the slider on the passenger side is stuck where its at but would at least recline, and the driver seat will move forward and aft but it will not recline. It should be a interesting job for later in the week. I'm to my stopping point for now so I can work a little bit on my house. (the quicker I get that done the more time I have to play with cars haha)

I'll be posting a new thread later with some more pictures i took of my exhaust. it has an APEXI tag welded on one of the pipes under it but I'm not 100% sure they didnt cut up 2 exhaust to make one. hopefully someone can Identify if its a complete system or just a APEXI pipe welded in the center of it all.

One other update i made with the car last night, I finally got the top down. when I was in the buying process the owner tried to get the top to go down, the motor was working and it was pulling on the passenger side but it seemed like something was binding on the driver side only about 3-4 inches from just being released. The owner said it was cause he thought it was froze up since it was really cold out but I didn't care since the top may be coming off anyways. well I flipped the switch to manual so I didn't burn the motor out persistently trying to make it do all the work, I tried standing between the driver and passenger seat and lifting up in the center which I made it go back a little more but still binding. At that point i decided to pull the back seat out and gain access to the lift motor, I pulled it from the driver side and instantly relieved pressure, the top could then somewhat be easily pushed back but seemed to be resting about 5 inches up out of where i thought it should be when completely down. When I started working on the top issue my phone had died and with no charger. i would have documented pulling the lift motor for another post on here. I'll get more pictures of it with the top down today when I go to work on the house later today.

 

[210 dsm]

Im subscribed! I can't help but be interested in your car and build thread and will be following it as you go along. Watching you start a new journey on your Spyder reminds me of back when I bought, built, then sold mine. Especially the puddles on the inside. When I bought my 98' GST Spyder the previous owner let it sit outside for years and the convertible top canvas was 99% gone with only a tarp poorly secured to the convertible framing to keep water and elements out. Needless to say it did not work very well, and I had a hell of a time cleaning up the damage the rain water puddles did on the inside.

Also even though you say it might be boring for the first few years, that's all kinda subjective tbh it may not be boring to everyone. I'm already inspired by you starting a build on it and anxious to see where it goes from here. Another thing to think about. a DSM is somewhat related to the Mopar world, so when you mentioned somewhere that came out of your usual niche with this car just remember that . The 4G63 has been called a mini Hemi before.

 

[midwestmopar]

Im subscribed! I can't help but be interested in your car and build thread and will be following it as you go along. Watching you start a new journey on your Spyder reminds me of back when I bought, built, then sold mine. Especially the puddles on the inside. When I bought my 98' GST Spyder the previous owner let it sit outside for years and the convertible top canvas was 99% gone with only a tarp poorly secured to the convertible framing to keep water and elements out. Needless to say it did not work very well, and I had a hell of a time cleaning up the damage the rain water puddles did on the inside.

Also even though you say it might be boring for the first few years, that's all kinda subjective tbh it may not be boring to everyone. I'm already inspired by you starting a build on it and anxious to see where it goes from here. Another thing to think about. a DSM is somewhat related to the Mopar world, so when you mentioned somewhere that came out of your usual niche with this car just remember that . The 4G63 has been called a mini Hemi before.

Thank you 210dsm, I will try and keep this up to date as possible. This car is going to be alot of fun to build, and I somewhat enjoy documenting it so I can look back where it came from. The worst part about this build is I'm finding it hard to make it a dedicated race car cause I've always wanted one. . . so I've been having the thoughts to register it and drive it on the street, plus i want to make it clean, which would be dumping money into it to make it "look nice" verse dumping money into it making it more effective on the race track. For now I'm still planning on not fixing trim or the top just the essentials to get it down the track. But hopefully I can come in-contact with another spyder in the future and have it as a nice clean car for the street. But at this point Our stable is pretty full (wife owns 4 cars/ I own 5/ kid owns 2 powerwheels haha)

As for the Mopar thing, I have not told any of my true mopar friends about this purchase, Ive been very loyal to my mopar roots since this is the first "Real non Mopar" (Meaning it hasn't directly shared the name brands), i have ever owned out of my +30 vehicles I've owned. But I'm extremely grateful it shares something with my ties in the mopar world. Yes its kind of silly to be brand loyal but thats me.

Since I am responding on here now I might as well share the internal conflict I am having with myself right now. finding out it has no Catalyst on it automatically puts me out of the stock class I wanted to run for the next 2 years. Pair Buying a new "like OEM" cat with having to buy the factory front and rear springs, and new stock brake calipers, rotors, and pads I will need to drive this thing kind of seems like a waste of money since I dont really plan to be in the stock classes with this thing forever and will be upgrading everything i just put on in the next few years. Or maybe i should make it a goal to run this in a stock class until I place close to the top on a national level? So many decisions!!!

 

[midwestmopar]

 

[midwestmopar]

Well this is the ticking I was talking about, I'm pretty sure I have about 2 to 5 lifters that loss pressure and I for sure have 1 that is completely bleed out. Sounds like they are on the back end of the engine, the one that constantly ticks is on the intake side but every now and again ill get some ticking from the exhaust side for a few minutes. It's best to just go ahead and put a new complete set when I'm doing the timing chain. Hopefully the cams are ok still. It was nice to hear the car start up, and it was the first time the wife and kid had the chance to hear it run. After i post this I'll switch back to my phone and post some pictures of the car with its top down. I'm exhausted already mid way in the week, tonight will be my rest night, AKA a date with my forza 7 simulator with the gsx i have built to look and hopefully feel like this car. Also my SS clutch hose came in last night. When i get back to working on the car ill get a picture of the parts I have for it so far.

 

[midwestmopar]

This is the work space I have so far. Not much room around the car but hopefully once the house is done I can get back on the garage, clean it up and install some more lights in there. Maybe in the fall I'll have saved up for a lift to go in the big bay (fingers crossed)

Another great find! It shares one more thing with my beloved mopar family. A dodge yellow paint code!

 

[210 dsm]

Timing belt*
If you do go with new lifters it would be best to use the revised design (3g lifter) thats assuming what's in there now are original 2G lifters with the smaller oiling hole. Either way a good cleaning and bleeding of what you have now maybe cheaper fix for the meantime.

 

[210 dsm]

You said the car had been sitting for 8 years right? I assume you've changed basic stuff like motor oil before starting?

 

[midwestmopar]

Timing belt*
If you do go with new lifters it would be best to use the revised design (3g lifter) thats assuming what's in there now are original 2G lifters with the smaller oiling hole. Either way a good cleaning and bleeding of what you have now maybe cheaper fix for the meantime.

haha good catch on the timing chain thing, sometimes when i get talking about non LA/magnum engines I slip up and use chain as a catch all. it really sucks cause the belt looks like it has very low miles on it but I'm not willing to chance running it. I've been eyeballing the extreme PSI topline revised lifters for $99 right now. seems like a pretty cheap solution. unfortunately I did not change the oil before starting it, I do know it was a no-no to do that but I figured since it was started a few weeks ago when i bought it, it wouldnt hurt much more if i started it for a few mins yesterday to diagnose it further. The guy said he originally parked it because it had developed the tick so i figured if it ticked back then, it probably wouldn't change much doing the rev up and down preload process after changing the oil.

 

[210 dsm]

Heard that. Man my car lives off of extremePsi hahaha. I personally would put some seafoam or motor flush in the oil now and run that before changing it too. So what kind of car did you use to use in your autocross prior to getting this eclipse?

 

[midwestmopar]

I may do that, I'm trying not to run the engine too much without knowing the condition of the timing belt, I may just be paranoid. Anyways i cant find pictures of my first race, I came in 3rd overall in pax scores with a Rented (enterprise) 2018 nissian maxima, the few other times I took my daily 300c. It was not very competitive since it was on goodyear max life tires but i got to really push the limits of those with this heavy car haha.This picture came from my last event, it was an Indy regional special race called dragcross. Alot of fun but again was eliminated in the second round since I could not stick the tight sections without blowing the rear tires out while just trying to maintain corner speed haha

 

[midwestmopar]

Update on the car. I didnt do much on it this weekend, I worked about 2 hours on it. Managed to pull the seats out, the driver seat was decent, I'm pretty sure the back left welded in nut was working itself loose because of the rust.

well the passanger side was not as easy, the back two bolts broke off and since the seat would not side forward or back on its bracket I couldnt get a socket or boxed end wrech on the nuts. The left one came off with a little mopar rust penetrant but the right side wouldnt budge

.
I was left with no choice, sawed the sliding braket in half then slid the top peice back far enough to get a socket on it. Once I removed that seat, I found that my amp bracket was pretty much rust and broke away with little force.

I pulled the still soaking wet carpet up and threw it away.

once I pulled the carpet I noticed that the sound deadening was soaked underneath and was easily pulled up. The last thing I did was removed the ecms to see what I was working with. In hopes that it had been swapped with another I was disappointed to see that it was a non eprom.

 

[AWD-Tony]

When I got my car in 2017, it had lifter tick on cold start for a few seconds and would eventually go away. When I rebuilt my head, I soaked them in seafoam, bleeding them in it. Reinstalled them and they've never ticked since. They're the original 1g lifters. Glad to see you getting to work on this

 

[midwestmopar]

Alright, update time. I feel old, 5 days in a row I've woke up with my neck felling like I pulled something in it. Sunday was the worst. I immediately went back to sleep and didnt wake up til 5pm, Monday and Tuesday where a dull pain, yesterday I went home from work after only being there for an hour and slept til 3pm. And today I woke up with a dull pain again. Fingers crossed it goes away by the weekend cause I'd really like to get some stuff done. Anyways the few hours ive been able to work on the car have yielded nice results.

First off I took the master cylinder off, slave cylinder off and sprayed the clutch "absorber/resivor" thing with rust penetrant to get it ready for deletion by SS line.

I also managed to find the lug nut socket while I was taking off the glove box. Words could not express my reaction when I seen that thing in there!

That's pretty much it since I've been trying to rest up. Something that I am grateful for is the fact that my wife allows me to have this massive thing in our living room.

In my down time and winter months I use this to keep focused on racing, does anyone else have a set up? I made this one last year using a ram seat I had left over from an old truck. Am I the only one that likes to make their car on also? Haha, I need to take it back to the garage and finish it so I can ditch the dining room chair I have to mount my shifter to. Id love to play more than I do but the wife and kid takes up alot of my time(side note, it's a great way to teach a toddler how to steer). Since forza 7 only has a gsx I had to tune it to balance the power to 100% FWD only and ive left it a C class, somewhat of a driving simulator for what to expect when this car gets on the track. I've managed to rack up 7 hours of seat time with this thing.

Also tk106 since its been said to me twice now, and the more reading I do on the subject comparing the stock lifters to the 3g, I'll more than likely take your guys advise and attempt to clean the lifters I have now. Since this will mostly be a track car I figured anything I could do to keep the oil pressure from dropping would be better for me. There is so many different opinions on here about the new lifters that I figure I'll just run my old ones then if the time comes swap them out with new ones so I can have my own opinion.

 

[AWD-Tony]

Your neck pain might be from being on the simulator too long. Lol jk. I feel your pain too though. Had the trans in and out 4 times since my clutch decided to take a dump. I pulled a couple of muscles that took a while to heal. Getting old sucks. Time to get back into shape

 

[midwestmopar]

Your neck pain might be from being on the simulator too long. Lol jk. I feel your pain too though. Had the trans in and out 4 times since my clutch decided to take a dump. I pulled a couple of muscles that took a while to heal. Getting old sucks. Time to get back into shape

You may be right haha. It'll hurt even more once I get a three tv set up and I have to actually turn my head to look through the turns haha. luckily sitting close to the 55in tv I can just move my eyes now. I swear I accused the wife of beating me in my sleep sunday. . . .come to think about it maybe she got upset that I accused her and she beat me again