Z's Desert 1GA GSX

[zcopp]

This is the Build Thread for Z's Desert 1GA GSX. Reply below.

 

[zcopp]

Hello! I wanted to share a starting post for my new (to me) 1GA 1990 Eclipse GSX.

A bit about my history with DSMs before we get into the car details. I was a professional mechanic and tuner, to the point of running an AWD dyno and a shop focused on turbocharged builds in the early 2000s. I literally have a DSM turbo dash icon tattoo . That being said, I haven't had a DSM for around 15 years and haven't really been active beyond having a single barely running DSM in the garage for around 22 years! I haven't been a full bore mechanic for over 20 years, I'm now in technology after a long stint in the US Army. When I was super active with these cars, I had somewhere around 15 1G DSMs in various states from parts shells to running, dedicated, caged drag cars. During my super active times, I did just about all of the things you can imagine for early 2000s DSM tech. I'm very excited to get back into it, so much stuff has changed! Some for the better (new mods and better knowledge) and some for the worse (wow, it's really hard to find parts!!!).

So on to the new ride!

On a whim, I was looking at FB Marketplace and saw an interesting 1990 1GA GSX that was a few hours away from me in a notoriously dry desert location. I messaged the seller and decided to come take a look at it. The car was reasonably stock with only a small number of bolt on modifications done; quite a good blank slate. There isn't any deep rust so I don't expect many shenanigans requiring replacing floor boards or anything of that nature, so a major plus!

I headed over to check the car out. The previous owner was great and told me all of the issues that he knew about, we went for a quick drive then exchanged money. I got the car loaded up on the trailer and headed home.



As you can see, it's a white 1Ga GSX. It's got some Talon 16 inch rims that are also painted white swapped on. The body and paint are nowhere near perfect but there are no major issues that a body hammer, a bit of bondo, and a ton of prep work and an eventual respray wont fix. The black cab has been painted white; TBD if that will be redone to stay white or if I'll take it back to black. The Power Steering pump is removed (I have it in a box in the back). It apparently is leaking heavily so that will need to be restored or replaced. I have no clue what the state of the PS Rack is but it was allegedly leaking in the past from one end so it will need to be replaced/repaired as well. AC is NOT hooked up but most components are there. TBD if AC stays. It's hot in the desert!

Here are some pictures of the car.


Some notes...
- 1G Talon wheels
- Battery relocated to the rear area. Probably needs some beefier wires? TBD!
- Clean factory-like 20g installation
- Injen brand IC pipes
- Manual Boost controller of some sort
- AEM 350 LPH fuel pump installed
- FMIC is small, not sure who/what it's from yet but it's a bar/plate. I *almost* thought it was a Starion FMIC until I got a better look at it
- Black cockpit was painted white
- Has a few random dings and dents but nothing wild
- Plastic is in rough shape. Rear deck lid needs a total respray
- Front Bumper has the most issues. Both front corners of it seem to have been smacked. They are not deformed but there are cracks
- Cockpit trim is mostly peeled down to "chrome" strips
- Dash is craaaaaaaacked
- Headliner is trash, duh!

The vision:
- Go through it all, clean it all up and fix anything that looks broken and worn
- Fix up the creature comforts and make the interior pop. Headliner! Modern radio, etc...
- All suspension will be assessed. As parts come off, they will be stripped, painted, and restored with better bushings, new bearings, etc
- Engine will be freshened up as needed
- IC pipes will be redone with custom work
- Tial BOV venting
- ECMLink V3 installation and conversion to Speed Density
- New Intake, bigger TB
- New stoppers and pads all around, all brake lines freshened up. New Master Cylinder. Maaaaybe 1Gb calipers? That's an upgrade right?
- Gold 17x8 +45 Enkei RPF1s all around. Rear spaced out 10mm. Unfortunately they don't currently make these in +35 for the rear offset :/
- TBD if the turbo will stay. It may just stay and a o2 housing supporting an external Tial Wastegate or similar may be installed. TBD but the wastegate may vent or tie back in
- 2.5 inch true turbo-back. 3 inch Downpipe that I plan to Y off and have a 2 inch side mount exit with an electronic cutoff. Turbo-back will have a legit reasonable muffler so it will run quiet
- Go thru the transmission. It's a bit grindy on 1st. Surely it needs a going thru!
- Delete all the unnecessary "stuff" in the engine bay
- Tuck/Clean wires everywhere possible. Supe up the Battery relocation if needed
- Thick power wire to the fuel pump.

So I have some questions for everyone. I've done a bit of forum lurking but haven't found too many direct answers so I'll list them here if any has any thoughts on them.

Is it worth upgrading 1GA calipers to 1GB calipers which can readily be bought? I remember pulling 2 piston calipers from junkyard 3000gt/stealth a very long time ago but the specifics on "what's desirable to swap to on what models" evades me!

The cockpit trim (the chrome looking strips along the doors and windows... has anyone "restored" these? What's the best path? They had some kind of nice thick plastic but 35 years in the desert has killed them. Plastidip comes to mind? Is there some kind of thick permanent plastidip?

Are there options for 12v air conditioners so I can delete the belt driven AC compressor? Doesn't need to be wild, just enough to cut the heat in the summer.

The power steering is a mess on this car. Would it be worth waiting and getting an electric MR2 pump and an upgraded alternator/beefy battery or should I just rebuild the rack and pump? Can new/reman racks and pumps be bought these days? There IS a reman rack but it just says "1990 Eclipse" and doesn't list what trim its for. I'm unaware if the GS/GST/GSX pumps and racks are different in any significant way. Are there any other power steering options that I'm missing? Or is a manual rack worth messing with? I have no frame of reference on a manual rack and if it's basically the same as a depowered power rack.

What's up with the rear light cluster? I feel like the "center" part is possibly from a laser since it solid white? I believe the Eclipses had the solid light bar all the way across the back; maybe this was swapped and a laser center was sourced. I don't like it!

Dashboards... How are people dealing with those? I'm tempted to just pull the entire dash and strip all of the foam/vinyl off and find some reasonable coating for it. It's cracked like a mofo!

Bumper "oopsies". How are these dealt with? Or are they? I DO see a front bumper cover "new" for sale online. Am I better off just buying that or are these simple enough to fix up these days? Folks were fiberglassing these to mixed results back in the day, is there better tech/methodology now to make this "new"ish?


That's about what I've got for now! I'm going to start ripping off bits and cleaning things up. Please let me know what you think about the car, my plans, etc. I'm not doing anything too wild with this but want to do it all well, eventually leading to having a nice, clean street car.

Cheers!
Z.

 

[dwb]

Welcome! Nice to see a build thread/profile right off the bat!

Is it worth upgrading 1GA calipers to 1GB calipers which can readily be bought? I remember pulling 2 piston calipers from junkyard 3000gt/stealth a very long time ago but the specifics on "what's desirable to swap to on what models" evades me!

If you can find 1gb, yes, direct upgrade. 3kgt/stealth NA model also have 2-piston that work. If you plan to replace the lines too, look into 2g or better yet, Outlander calipers (but mind your wheel size).

The cockpit trim (the chrome looking strips along the doors and windows... has anyone "restored" these? What's the best path? They had some kind of nice thick plastic but 35 years in the desert has killed them. Plastidip comes to mind? Is there some kind of thick permanent plastidip?

Those are NLA with no aftermarket replacement so you have to get creative here, unless you can find a good used set.

The power steering is a mess on this car. Would it be worth waiting and getting an electric MR2 pump and an upgraded alternator/beefy battery or should I just rebuild the rack and pump? Can new/reman racks and pumps be bought these days? There IS a reman rack but it just says "1990 Eclipse" and doesn't list what trim its for. I'm unaware if the GS/GST/GSX pumps and racks are different in any significant way. Are there any other power steering options that I'm missing? Or is a manual rack worth messing with? I have no frame of reference on a manual rack and if it's basically the same as a depowered power rack.

Best bet IMO would be to rebuild both. Reman racks might be available, but do some research on that topic here and you'll understand.

 

[1cleangsx]

I plastidipped my door trim years ago, it’s held up pretty well after all these years, however I’d recommend fully stripping/sanding them clean, I just sprayed mine so up close you can see what I did , but from 10 ft you’d never know, still looks better than 2/3rds of the metal showing

 

[zcopp]

Thanks @dwb and @1cleangsx for the feedback!

I really wish I could track down my old build thread from circa 2003-2004! I don't even know what my username was. Then again IDK I was a lot younger so maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie .

I will be replacing the lines, I'll probably just pick up some 1gb reman 2 piston calipers as they seem to be available. I'm going to be doing street build and I'm guessing I'll be able to lock the wheels fully with some 1gbs anyway. I don't anticipate needing to deal with brake fade or anything with how I plan to drive it but it's neat to see other options for calipers these days.

I was guessing I would need to fix up the now-chrome trim bits. I was thinking about plastidip, guess that's the route I'll go! If something better comes along later, I can easily upgrade them. I'll also be coating various other pieces like the trim piece that the front washers stick out of. Lots to clean up!

The other night, I almost bought both a reman rack AND rebuild kits for the existing rack and pump. I ended up going just with the pump and rack rebuild kits. We'll see where that gets me! I'm going to hunt down some threads related to MR2 or other electric pumps; I've seen too many threads where people have PS fluid barf all over their alternators and kill 'em! I'd also love to move the alternator to the rear, which is what I did with former heavy drag cars in the distant past.

So far I've just done some detail work and ordered parts until my eyes (and wallet) are bleeding. I'll probably make a move to get some of the various removable trim parts off the car to get them cleaned up and resprayed. If I cant find good articles on what I'm up to, I'll try to generate tech articles for the work.

V/r

 

[1cleangsx]

Not a cheap hobby

 

[zcopp]

Not a cheap hobby

Between my own, friends, or shop cars, I think I "did" a cool 200k worth of parts/services on DSMs in 2003-2004. It's wild. I think I can make something super unique that will turn heads for a reasonable amount... as long as it doesn't break every time I look at it funny ...

 

[zcopp]

Update Time! Maybe some spicy, interesting news!

I have a few big boxes from STM and a ton of other boxes from PartsGeek and even some Amazon stuff as well. Lots of "Oh, I'm going to replace that" items in hand to rebuild critical systems, broken bits, pretty bits, etc..

There's also one very special delivery that I'll talk about down below...

While I haven't starting hunking new parts on the car yet, I have started taking off worn out bits that I want to do some work on. Here you can see the popup bezels and the wiper "tray" that I've cleaned up, primed, and painted fresh black:



Now to get into the special delivery. I rebuilt my power steering pump the other day. This included teardown, running all the pieces through the sonic washer, fresh paint, reassembly. However I wasn't very happy with the results, the retaining clip on the top of the pump's shaft warped and didn't want to recess into the end cap. Overall no bueno!

Now everyone has told me that new or reman PS pumps are pretty much unobtainum. This didn't sit very well with me so I started doing some deep internet sleuthing and found something quite shocking. While you can't find 1G DSM coded Power steering pumps new/reman today... You can find the actual pumps if you look around.

I specifically was looking at Edelmann and found a "new pump" that they sell that's internals look almost exactly alike the internals of a Pump for a 1G DSM! The casing wasnt right and it was significantly newer, like mid 2010s but it lead me to dig a bit further.

I then started finding some shocking things. It turns out the Mitsubishi L200 "Tritron" which we affectionally know as the Might Max or Dodge D50 uses... virtually the exact same pump as a 1G DSM. And it also appears that these are being manufactured NEW in Asia these days to support all the Mitsubishi pickups running 4GXX inline 4 motors in places like Australia, etc.

I even found that there is a direct clone of the 1G DSM pump, however with the housing mounting points in different positions which would require custom bracketry (and pulley swap...).

2010-2012 Santa Fe pulley. Look familiar?


Ok, so custom bracket fab sounds messy. So how about those L200 Pumps?

I learned that the Mitsubishi L200 from ~1986-1994 is virtually exactly the same as a 1G DSM pump. I ordered one for about $85 bucks shipped and have some side by side pictures. I still need to go thru my car's rack before I actually run this but I will get to that at some point hopefully soon!

Bagged new L200 Pump

Pump on stock mounting bracket, boltholes line up perfectly!

Another view

Looks like the back-side bolt hole for the L200 is a smaller thread... Easy enough!

Measure from the sensor knob to the banjo bolt mounting surface on the l200 pump

Another difference, the pressurized hose mounting port protrudes a bit further out (and is not a banjo stud...) compared to the stock pump shown below. Hopefully this is negligible.

Here is the L200 with some different hose fitting on the left and the stock pump on the right with the banjo stud hole. I don't know what the l200's fitting size it but it looks like it will take a large JIC type fitting? TBD!

Finally the pulley. It's virtually 1:1
Here's the stock pulley on the left and the new L200 pulley on the right. I did measure from the outside. I also measured from the bottom of the V channel but it was hard to demonstrate that they're virtually the same. I would guess the L200 pulley is about 1mm smaller.


So what does this mean? I think we will be able to start buying new in box 1G DSM Power Steering Pumps, assuming there are no other major issues like significantly different pressures, etc. These appear to be virtually the same.

Now normally I would want to do a teardown to see if there's any significant difference internally but... We dont have to!

There's an entire remove reman replace video of an L200 pump on Youtube. We can see that, internally, as far as I can tell, there is no general difference between these L200 pumps and 1G DSM pumps. Ironically that KYB pump in this video appears to be the exact same KYB pump I serviced and did comparisons with.
how to replace oilseal steering pump L200 Mitsubishi

Of course time will tell if these work but I did not find anyone else mentioning L200, Mighty Max, D50 Pumps across the forums.

Either way, I wanted to share this as I know other folks are stressing about the unavailability of PS pumps... So have at it!

Cheers!

 

[zcopp]

I rebuilt the 1GA wing tail light assembly, here's a short tutorial on that in the exterior tutorial section:
1GA Wing Tail Light Assembly Bench Rebuild

I also designed and 3d Printed some plugs for the injector ports:

Since I'm basically redoing all things touching the engine, I've got the car stripped down to nearly a long block. You can see various other bits such as the AC system removal including condensor and all lines, LED lights installed in some of the plugs, General clean up, some cut electrical where things were hard wired in, etc.

Since I'm not pulling the engine, I'm refreshing the motor mounts one at a time:
Here's the rear mount in a vice and my preferred way of removing the old mounts since I don't have a press handy. I remember this used to be a terribly painful job back ~25 years ago, pretty easy with a cordless sawzall. Be careful when cutting these out to not damage the motor mount housing with the sawzall! This rear one sagged and the stock mount literally fell out, the rest are sagging but haven't fully detached...

Bead blasted, primed/painted, with new black prothane mounts installed. Young me would have used the red prothane mounts but old me wants the engine bay to be nice and clean so I went with the black motor mount kit.

Freshened up rear mount installed. I'm in the middle of rehabbing and replacing the front motor mount now. I'll then do the 2 sides one at a time as well. Eventually I'll have the engine out and will scour every bit of uck/ick out of this engine bay and give it a fresh coat of paint. Spraying degreaser and wiping down will suffice for now!

Popup bezzles were removed, cleaned up, and painted. You can vaguely see where someone did some plastic welding to fix one of the upper bezzles in the past. I've ordered a plastic welding kit as there will be plenty of that for me to do in the near future :/

Wiper "Tray" was removed, cleaned up, and freshly painted. I also heavily cleaned up, masked off, and freshly painted the wiper tray body area between the hood seal and the front window. No pics of that... Also pay no attention to those boxes!

I designed and 3d Printed some "solid" shifter base mounts, blasted the entire shifter, and rebuilt it with new bits. It's nice and clean now, feels significantly more crisp!
Here's a link to a 3d printing thread where I share the .stl file and a pic of the shifter during the bench rebuild:
3d Printing (shifter base bushings)

The car has Eibach Pro springs on it, lowering it a tad already. I never liked the squatted rear causing negative camber on the rear only so I went ahead and got and installed Volk adjustable uppers for the rear. You can also see the fresh stoppers and new braided brake lines installed. I don't like the toe-in that this car seems to have in the rear so I also went ahead and ordered the Volk adjustable lowers (with swaybar mount points) as well as the Active Toe Eliminator kit. I'll have to get back into the rear end of the car and will have to go significantly through, but that's for a later date!!!

Speaking of those boxes in the wiper-tray picture, Here they are installed on the car. I got Enkei RPF1s in 17x8 (-45)s with some 235-40-ZR17s. I was very weary about fitment but these seem to be perfect. Not too much poke, etc. I also bought a fender roller but I'll wait and see if that needs to happen or not!!!

In that picture, you can see the mirror removed, I'm going to convert this back to the original panda paint so those are getting bench rebuilt, cleaned up, and painted black. I'll probably prep and paint the A/B pillars and roof soon; I'm planning on doing some black rustoleum, maybe turbo can, gloss black then spraying it with SprayMAX 2k Clear, followed by all the wet-sanding goodness. I'll likely do the minor body work on the car then do the white that way as well in the near future.

I ordered a dash mat from DashCare by Seatz. I'll end up using some double sided tape to get this really strapped down but it looks way better than the crazy desert cracked dash vinyl!

The pile of parts for the car is still growing. For now, I think I'm over the major buying hump. I've got an FP Cast manifold on the way, STM O2 housing, Catback, and parts to make a downpipe on the way. STM did not have the downpipe available at order time so I'll get the TIG machine out and see if I can not embarrass myself making a downpipe .

I also ordered 2.5 and 3 inch universal intercooler piping kits and a bead roller. I'll be rebuilding probably 2/3rds of the intercooler piping from scratch. As I was removing the AC condenser, the section of IC piping from the J-Pipe to the inlet of the front-mount included this surprise! This was jammed and pinched in the hole on the drivers side front engine bay wall where the AC compressor line normally runs through. It was VERY pinched off and I'm surprised it didn't pop/bust. I used my sawzall and carefully opened up that area of the engine bay wall, I'll likely do some reinforcement with the welder but it happily accepts a 2.5 inch pipe now.

The work continues! I'm expecting my JMF intake and the FP>STM exhaust bits in the next week or so, so I'll start generally putting the car back together soon.

Cheers!

 

[1cleangsx]

Wow lookin good! Congrats on the progress

 

[zcopp]

Wow lookin good! Congrats on the progress

Thanks! I forgot how painful it is to work on one of these out of a plain garage! So painful getting under this for anything that needs to be done. Thankfully I've got most of the tools and things to gett'er done. It's going to be super rewarding to get it back together cleanly and have it run well. I'm not going for high HP but I'm expecting it to ride and run like a dream!

Wow lookin good! Congrats on the progress

I was just reading your build thread and saw your clutch pedal woes in 2022. I also saw the same exact problem with a few other builds I've read up on here. It always kills me to see folks go crazy with shimming the pivot ball (totally worth it!!!), replacing slaves and masters, etc... and it's always that damn pedal!

Back in ~2003 when I had my 93 TSi AWD, I did an auto>manual swap and struggled with clutch issues, ended up figuring out, probably via reading on the forums, about the clutch lift. I ended up welding mine up just like yours and it was 100% fixed immediately. I wish we had some kind of "HEY, WELD UP YOUR CLUTCH PEDAL" warning! Seems like that gets so many folks!

Anyhoo, guess what's going to happen to the clutch pedal on mine soon?

 

[1cleangsx]

Dude you never see these on the road anymore , I can relate to the enjoyment of simply cruising it around town.

I actually DIDN’T weld mine..but i should’ve , i had crazy slop in the z bar from the plastic being obliterated and the hole was oblong so i drilled it out and replaced it with a brass bushing, i also installed the brass bushing at the end of the assembly where you would normally weld it but I didn’t weld it thinking it would be fine, but on my south bend 2700# clutch I couldn’t fully cure the drag, finally hit my wits end and went auto , I still have my pedal assembly if you’d be interested, it’d be a great rust free candidate for welding

 

[DreamChaser7]

I’d take it…

 

[zcopp]

Dude you never see these on the road anymore , I can relate to the enjoyment of simply cruising it around town.

Yeah, I was *really* into these cars around 2002-2005, like was the lead mechanic at an AWD dyno shop kinda stuff. I had a few roomies that also had DSMs. I think in those few years, I either owned or built about 20 of the cars! I remember driving into the Walmart parking lot and easily seeing 5-6 usually non turbo random DSMs. I went into the military around early 2005 and by the time I got out, the DMSs were basically all gone! Now, I'm in a valley in northern Arizona now and I don't think I've seen a single running 1G (maybe 2-3 random waaaay run down 2Gs) in the 5 years I've been here. I'm guessing most people will struggle to even comprehend mine when I start driving it around.

I actually DIDN’T weld mine..but i should’ve , i had crazy slop in the z bar from the plastic being obliterated and the hole was oblong so i drilled it out and replaced it with a brass bushing, i also installed the brass bushing at the end of the assembly where you would normally weld it but I didn’t weld it thinking it would be fine, but on my south bend 2700# clutch I couldn’t fully cure the drag, finally hit my wits end and went auto , I still have my pedal assembly if you’d be interested, it’d be a great rust free candidate for welding

IIRC I actually was so pissed off when I figured out the "clutch lift" thing after shimming my pivot ball AND knowing how bad changing the pedals was from the AWD > Manual swap that I just threw some protective matting up in there and went to town on it with the MIG in place. But it sure as heck fixed the clutch engagement issues. When I saw both you and @Anfurnyy with bad engagement problems from years ago, I was basically screaming at the computer screen .

I would take you up on it but I don't think I'll need it. Keep it though! I'm not throwing away a single damn part (besides the charcoal canister! ) that I'm taking off of this car. Also, don't tell my girlfriend but I'mma probably start a damn DSM junkyard on my land in the near future at this rate!

 

[zcopp]

Time for another update!

The prothane mounts were great... until the front roll stop. This one is not pleasant to do! I have a reasonably good Vice that make this doable... I ended up basically having to use a philips screwdriver to help guide the mount in then pull the lip out of the other side. Thankfully I didnt damage the mounts.

Not fun! But done!

And we have all the mounts in ! This was a bit more of a chore than I remember! I think an engine hoist would have made this a bit easier but it wasnt TOO bad if I didnt tighten everything up before stabbing the large bolts through the mounts.


Time to get rid of the active toes! Volk upper control arms, sway bar lower, and the ATE kit are all going in on the rear so this will be about as adjustable as possible for "bolt on".

This rear axle's boots are toast. the other side was doing the same but not as bad. The axles puked all their guts out all over so ill try to clean the guck out of the rear subframe as I go. Rear Axle boots are on the way!!! Unfortunately I cant seem to find these 3 bolt axles reman anywhere otherwise I would have just bought 'em new. I don't feel like I'll need a 4 bolt rear but I guess I could always swap to that in the future if needed.

In with a ST rear sway bar. I hear replacing the front sway bar isn't recommended generally... Which is great because I couldnt even find one! This one was bought of FB market from a GVR4 guy in a neighboring town.

Welding up the ATEs! I didn't do this on the bench so I didn't get to make the super purdy welds but it'll do!

I did sandblast the front end where I welded and generally roughed up and degreased the rest of the arms. I ended up spraying them heavily with some rust converting primer as there were plenty of little rusty dings. Nothing too crazy but enough for me to want to cover them! Wheel bearings and such seem good so I won't get into those now. Im planning on eventually dropping the entire rear subframe so I'll do a 100% rebuild of these at that point including strip, powdercoat, etc...

Hmmm... that's an interesting muffler!

VERY high-flow cat! Not my handwork. It's getting replaced with a 2.5 inch o2 housing, 2.5>3 inch downpipe and a 3 inch catback in the next few days as parts arrive and I can start making the downpipe!

If you're doing a rack, the "low pressure" clamp on fitting is towards the top/cab! The lower fitting is the high pressure fitting.

Why are we messing with the PS rack? It's DED of course! The pump and the rack were both toast on this car according to the last owner so... out with the old and in with the new!

I hadnt seen any of these available for a long time then suddenly there were 2-3 of them available so I pulled the trigger the moment I saw it:

The car didn't come with "together" power steering so I'm going to have to piece together the high pressure line (the mightymax pumps don't have the banjo bolt thingy so I'll need to come up with that bolt as the old one was trashed). I also don't have the return hoses with the "cooler" loop for the front. I'm thining about just YOLOing a tiny little plate/fin cooler into a custom low pressure return line... TBD!!!

These front axles are also Tuh-rashed!

Here's the hole where the old PS rack was... This ended up needing to remove the passenger side back-to-front subframe bar. That needed some clearancing to get the bolts out! Fun times... As you can see there's a nice new front axle on this side, waiting for the rack to go in, etc... The swaybar bushings were .... passable but I went ahead and got some 20mm energy front sway bar bushings. Everyone says these are the devil to install! We'll see. I ended up infact having to remove the transfercase which is just as heavy as I remember from back in the day, as well as I ended up pulling the lower control arm off the passenger side. If you're "in here", you might as well take the LCA off of this side at least then the rack can come out easily.

I've got these lower control arm bushings... so the LCAs needed to come off both sides. The passenger LCA ball joint was ok.

Drivers side LCA ball joint... not so much! Thankfully these LCAs are readily available from a few different manufacturers so I went ahead and ordered a pair. I'll just slap the bushings in the new ones. Hopefully I have the right "presser" to get the front bushings out of the LCAs! If not It'll be an adventure to harbor fright to get a pressing clamp that will work.

So that's all the "nasty" work. I got rather disgusting working on all of this stuff but I tried to clean my way through as I went. Tons of bolts and parts and brackets ended up in the sonic parts washer then bagged up and labeled for when I slap it all back together.

I'm hoping to not have to be "under" this car much more, it hasn't been as fun as it was when I was younger.

I'll get into the full exhaust build/install, rebuilding all the things wrapping the motor, IC pipes (still need to pick a BOV!!!) and coming up with an intake over the next few check-ins. I'll leave off with this beauty that just showed up. I probably shouldn't have gotten this guy with my goals but I also hate the stock manifold and this will be nice/easy to bolt and unbolt so... meh.

Until next time!

Cheers!

 

[zcopp]

For at least a 1990 AWD car, so probably all 1G AWD DSMs with at least 3 bolt rear axles...

The Mevotech DX252 is the OUTER Rear Axle boot.
The Mevotech DX264 is the INNER Rear Axle boot.

I want to thank Partsgeek for sending me both in the same box with ZERO indication of which one was whichever that I actually ordered on their site... Sigh...

Turns out they're the exact same thing. So thats great

 

[zcopp]

A busy week in DSM land!

I didn't find accurate directions on "rebuilding" rear 3 bolt axle shafts. Studying the heck out of the repair manual however, I did finally spot that there is a little retaining clip (circlip?) on the inside of the outer cup that keeps it all together that needs to come out. If you look up videos for general boot repair, they'll just have you beating on things with a hammer. Remove the clip first and you wont need the hammer probably .

You Then you can pop the snap ring off of the end to remove the... thing?... which will allow you to put the new boots AND boot clamps on each side.

Slow way down and make sure you put all the boots and clamps in before reassembling!!! Also murder it with new grease. No pictures because you dont want me touching my phone with that much grease involved!!!

Rear all back together with adjustable uppers, lowers, and active toe delete/adjustable installed. Also put in a heavy Suspension Tech rear sway bar and fresh stopper bits.

So what else is going on? Surely you didn't just rebuild an axle in a week and that's it right? Well no.

Unpictured; the new steering rack was installed, front lower control arms were installed. I cleaned up the LCA retaining plates and all the bits that I stripped off the bottom of the car to do the arms and steering and painted them up nice and semi-shiny black.

So we're essentially buttoned up with the crawl-around touching greasy nasty stuff under the car jobs for now. Well there's still one more crawl around under the car but it involves raining hot metal fire instead of touching grease so lets get to it...

Installing (for fitment) the new and freshly painted FP turbo manifold with the 20g.

What's the shiny thing on the right? A lovely STM o2 housing! Here we can see it installed for fitment. I think this unit was one of the last dumpers made and it was made for, probably a FWD car so it'll need to be modified to miss the front lower engine horizontal brackety thingy (that the front roll stop goes on).

You can see some empty Jack Stands under there... Must be there for a reason!

Well STM had an o2 housing and a 3 inch catback but they didn't have one of their downpipes ready so I went ahead and clicked "buy it now" a bunch of times on Amazon for some 304 stainless pipes, bends, flanges, o2 bungs, and bendy thingies. I also got some er308l stainless wire for the Hobart and started doing the thing. Here's the result of "the thing".

Bonus, you can also see the lower control arm with its new poly bushings, new tierod ends, and new swaybar links installed in the background.

It goes from the 2.5 o2 housing outlet to the first bend, then it wiggles through pan/x-case straights and through a bendy bit that rests around the first drive shaft knuckle and directly into a 2.5>3 inch step-up. It finally terminates into a flange that bolts up to STM's catback. I need to slap on 1 hanger rod as well as an o2 housing bung but that will probably happen today.

I'm not a professional welder... But I'm not terrible. I hadn't MIG'd stainless but it was way more appealing than trying to tack and bench TIG which I can do but an super-not-good at. Seems OK and good enough; tacking the thin pipe sucked but once I started pushing some heat, it welded nicely. Doing the pipe to thick flanges were not great, that takes some work to get right as the flanges suck up heat. If I had a great environment to do this in, I would probably pre-heat the stainless with a torch. Also, you should make sure to tack the flanges then bolt them up to another flange to make sure they dont warp! I'll be bench-belt sanding the from-the-o2-housing downpipe flange as it warped one of the ears enough for me to want to fix it.

Here's the STM catback installed:

And finally an underside of that lovely new active toe eliminator installed:

A busy week of painful creeper action done! It's on to under-the-hood work now!

 

[1cleangsx]

Nice work! I like your Intake Manifold

 

[zcopp]

Nice work! I like your Intake Manifold

Thanks! I'm a little worried that it's like 300-500 HP over what I'm aiming for (~350 wheel target)! I assume it won't be funky to drive with a 20g pushing ~23 or so PSI. I don't think I'll get a big torque hit but we'll see!

 

[1cleangsx]

I think it’ll be just fine, the 20g’s no slouch