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06.24.2004
Lots of miles have been added to the setup. I've been
from Richmond, VA to Englishtown, NJ. The transmission
has finally died, but for $25, that's to be expected.
I already have a backup tranny ready to have the tail
housing transferred to put it in the car. The car has
been extremely reliable besides the transmission.
Great motor. There are some things that have been
asking to be fixed though so I'll be doing them this weekend
too. Among them is porting the turbo wastegate as the
3" downpipe has led to some boost creep approaching redline.
I'm also going to try to fix the brakes and steering.
I have a parts car now that I bought for $100 from StarQuest
Rims.
I can't promise too many updates. This swap is done.
Works great. Now its just a matter of tuning till its
so fast it breaks stuff. Then there will be more focus
on the transmission. Hopefully I will be able to put
down lots of power for a long time before I find the limits
of the transmission.
05.05.2004
What can I say. The car has been driven well over
1000 miles by now and its being pretty damn nice.
Still haven't raised the boost. Still haven't fixed
the brakes. Still haven't gotten the whole interior
back in. Only one big problem so far about an hour and
a half from home when the insane pedal pressure broke the
bushing behind the clutch pedal. Matt drove it back
from Lancaster with no clutch. We changed some
geometry and fixed the bushing and now we have very normal
pedal pressure! We have a car show next weekend.
Might as well have some fun with it.
04.28.2004
I got 2 runs in at Cloverleaf. It was at the end
so I doubt too many people saw it. Probably better
that way if something had gone wrong. Luckily nothing
did go wrong. Lots of oil blew out of the breather
after the first run which I drove. Not so much the
second run, which Matt drove. I think there are some
videos out there. Lots of tire spinning. The
tires were corded 3 turns into my first run. The car
doesn't understeer at all anymore. I have no clue what
changed. The damn thing has lift off oversteer and
everything. I rode with Matt on his run and ordered
him to drive till the tires blew.. which they did.
Good old Michelin run flats. Next time we're bringing
more tires. The car itself seems pretty solid.
I'm up to about 700 or more miles by now. The heat
wrapped together exhaust has pulled apart and now I'm
basically running an open 3" downpipe. I got to do
Falls Road for the first time last night and this thing
screams! I shot a fireball that I could see out of all
3 mirrors. It was very fun. Still need to fix
those brakes though.
04.22.2004
I've driven the car about 100 miles now. It's
becoming pretty apparent that I have a bad bearing in the
$25 transmission. Guess I'll track down a spare here
soon. The first night out there was some electrical
issues. The next day I replaced the fusible links with
some fuse blocks out of the DSM. I also put in a
battery out of the 4-Runner. No electrical issues now.
I have a few things to work on today. Basically
putting back together the interior and doing a quick
alignment. I plan on drifting a little down in
Richmond this weekend. Probably won't get more than 3
runs out of the Michelins. They're already beyond
legal and Clover Leaf is a cheese grater.
04.20.2004
Wow! What a difference a few days makes. Today
was the first "big" trip the car had taken. I drove it 70
miles to and from school. This thing is wicked cool.
The power band is so different from the 2.6. With that
motor you had tons of torque that you could feel instantly.
With this motor you wait a second and realize that all the
cars that were behind you are suddenly out of sight.
This is with only 8psi of boost too! I plan on hitting
15 in the next few weeks. The whine of the turbo is
great too.
Too bad you can only hear it in 4th gear. The tranny
and/or TOB is making an ungodly noise. I really think
that it is about to explode. I'll buy a spare and run
this one into the ground. What should I expect for a
$25 transmission?
I wired up the tach and to my surprise it was accurate.
I was so sure it was going to show half or double. But
no. Its right on. It is pretty insane to look
down and see the needle BURIED at 7300RPM on the stock
6000RPM redline tach and knowing you still have 200RPM to
go!
The ECU worked BTW. Thanks Justin at
www.up-speed.com.
Shipped it on Tuesday and I had it on Thursday. Looks
ALOT better than the other one. "Those resistors are
supposed to be blue not brown!" It does look like one
of the capacitors has begun to leak. I'll get some
practice before I tackle this one. I should have a few
months till its dead. Plus, Matt's gotten me thinking
about going with a TEC2.
04.14.2004
Wouldn't you know it. I go to start it up for the first time
outside and it won't even start. I can see my reflection in
the fuel that is sitting in my dished pistons. Grrrrr.
I clean the plugs and get it to start, and it runs so rich
raw fuel comes out of the exhaust. It can run for
about 3 minutes before it fouls out the plugs. As I
troubleshoot, I have to keep changing the oil every few
tries. The fuel actually raised the oil level by 2
quarts last time I changed it. Put a test light on one
of the injectors and it looks like they are open all the
time. Put in cleaned injectors, another FPR, swapped
out MAS, checked spark, checked timing. Starting to
think its the ECU. I opened up the ECU the other day
and there was a black spot on the PCB from resistors getting
WAY too hot at one point. It actually melted some
solder under them. There is also some capacitor
leakage and it looks to have damaged the PCB around it.
The real pain is that '90 cars can't use other 1G ECUs
without replacing the ignition system. Not sure on all
the details, but whatever. Since I'm putting together
my wiring How-To, I'm double checking all my wiring.
This will be the 5th in depth check of the wiring. The
how to is going to be great. I have it on paper.
I'll have it online by the weekend I think.
DSM guys were being asses a few weeks ago too. It made
me really upset. They call this swap "old hat".
They wouldn't know all the work that went into it because
they've never done it and that's that. The DSM sites
wanted a link to them so here we go:
http://www.mckeone.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=517
So you can make up your mind for yourselves.
If you couldn't tell.. the car didn't make it to the Drift
Riot. I got tags though, so I've been paying insurance
on this car for a month already. I did get to drive it
to the other side of the house under its own power. It
felt FANTASTIC! This thing builds boost almost at
idle. Sounds great too.
02.29.2004
I have actually been getting things done since January 30th.
I've finally gotten the car started. This implies the
other things I've gotten done such as fuel lines, oil lines,
IC (temporary pipe), wiring, etc. I'll work on posting
updates and how tos for all of this stuff. Bear with
me. School and work and a pretty bad depression are
all slowing me down. I need medicine damnit! But
anyways. Bear with me as things move along.
March 20th... Richmond drift day. Wondering if I'll be
ready for that. The real goal is to drive to (not
necessarily participate) in the Pittsburgh Drift Riot.
Its on the 27th of March.
01.30.2004
I've been wiring things up for a week now. Had to
trace every wire on the DSM harness as well as the Starion
harness and ever pin on B-38... OH..and I learned the name
of that plug. I have all the DSM harness plugs mapped
out as well. Trying to figure out the best way to do
this without hacking up the harnesses. I think I have
it down so that I dont hack up the DSM, Starion Chassis or
Starion Engine harness. I did however strip stuff out
of the DSM harness that I won't need. I'm also
thinking about buying some wiring loom. Mil-Spec
stuff. I have a lot of little things that I have been
putting off buying such as a heim joint for the slave
cylinder, Bends for the exhaust and wiring loom.
01.16.2004
its the weekend! I've been getting more done this week
than in a long time. Allot of it has to do with the
support I've been getting from people online. Thanks
everyone who has IMed, emailed or called. Can't wait
to get running. I stopped stressing out allot after I
bought a spare D50 tranny for $25. Best $25 I could
have spent. I also got my Sty (Tial Copy) wastegate,
my RRE gaskets and flanges and other exhaust parts.
Maybe I can figure something out by the end of the weekend.
I rebuilt my rear brake calipers... again. This time
they are together for good and for the first time since June
I have a parking brake! A new ABS elimination line and
some fluid and I'll have brakes! I'm so happy people
like Alex and Jason got in touch with me. They will
surely speed up the wiring and clutch issues. (Both
have made very nice RWD 4G63 setups (E30 and Starion)).
Hopefully I can get them both to submit photos and articles
to the site.
01.12.2004
I'm feeling really sick to my stomach tonight. All the
doubt about if switching the transmission guts is getting to
me. We have gotten both transmissions stripped to the
cases. Which leaves me with 2 useless transmissions
unless I figure out how to make 1 useful strong 2.0 RWD
transmission. I'm making lots of emails tonight which
I hope will lead to many phone calls and possibly some face
to face help from someone who has done this before. I
can't wait to get this thing figured out and explained so
that everyone can do it without having to feel like puking
all over the place from the stress.
01.10.2004
Today dad and I started to rip apart the transmissions.
It's really scary because neither of us really know what
we're doing. He's played with lots of his old drag
racing transmissions like 25 years ago, but hasn't had the
chance to work on anything like what I'm throwing at him.
We have the Starion FSM to work with so hopefully that will
help. If not I will have $325 of destroyed
transmissions laying around along with no chance of
finishing and no chance of using the pile of expensive parts
I have going into this beast.
01.09.2004
Another nice big day. I got my driveshaft tube.
Very neat stuff. $32.13 for 6 feet of 24-30-32-7400
tubing. I got a new center support bearing too.
$11.91. This is the same bearing as the stock Starion
flywheel, but mine was shot. Another biggie was the
Southbend Clutch DXD clutch. It looks so cool too.
It's supposed to be a pretty insane yet streetable full face
racing clutch. We'll see how that goes.
01.08.2004
I just talked with my dad and cleaned shop its allot like
Lexus really... lots of talking and hardly any working.
Dad turned the driveshaft so now one of the knuckles is off
so that I can measure it and take it to a shop to get it
extended and he machined the hole for the bearing in my
flywheel getting a new bearing tomorrow. I also got a
new break line. I'm going to take out the master
cylinder tomorrow and clean the holes and bend the lines.
I also have to put the hydraulic clutch line. Also
planning on mounting the fuel lines.
Its hard to imagine just how much easier things go when the
shop is all cleaned up. Tools no longer take 10
minutes to find and when you drop things you don't have to
spend 5 minutes cleaning the part.
01.07.2004
What a ... 2 month period. Sheesh. Its a new
year. Sorry for the lack of updates everybody.
During this time I've moved the car inside, gotten a job,
totaled a Taurus, bought hundreds of dollars worth of stuff
and even met a cool girl. Getting time to work on the
car is harder than ever, but easier than if it was outside.
It gets dark at 4 these days and its 15 degrees out.
I've had the motor in and out more than a pecker in an orgy.
Special thanks to Mark Browning for letting me borrow his
motor hoist. Thank you so much.
I've also purchased my transmissions and all that stuff.
Special thanks to Mark Ventmiller for helping me in the cold
to remove the very affordable Starion tranny.
Wow.... I can't believe how much things have moved along
from the last update. Hell. I don't think I even
had changed my mind from and SR to a 4G63 as of 11.07.
At this point I have the motor bolted to the tranny and in
the car bolted up to custom billet 6061 aluminum adapter
plates using 2 left? Starion motor mounts. I am
waiting on my dad to do some machining to some parts like
the flywheel and clutch. The little page here is
now officially called Project 0G... Zero G... Ohhh Geez!...
however you really want to say it.
Last week I got my uncle to weld some water pipes and my
intake manifold. Its amazing how much little shit
there is when doing this swap. I keep getting
sidetracked by little shit. The basement is a total
mess with little half done projects sitting everywhere.
11.07.2003
Big day! I got my steering rack. Things look
great. I also got my second coat of paint done.
Updates are up too. I also got 65 unique hits in the
last few days. Several of them are me; you can get the
breakdown by clicking on the number.
11.03.2003
I've been cleaning and sanding like a maniac the last few
days. We've gotten a surprise warm week in November so
I'm taking advantage of it. All the painting is talked
about in the new section over there on the left menu.
I had the pressure washer for 2 days so I cleaned up some
stuff. I can't wait to get it painted so I can put all
the lines and grommets back in. It will look awesome.
Thinking about lining the engine bay in aluminum tape.
It'll be so disco. Plus, no heat or spills will hurt
it... and if it does, I just peel it off and replace it.
Still just a thought. Still need to paint it.
Also noticed some hating in the guestbook. Fucker.
Just kidding. Thanks for stopping by. I know its
not about the car, its about the driver. Still, I
think anybody who drives this car once I'm done with it will
be amazed.
I'm still selling stuff. I might be getting more than
I expected which is nice now that I've given up on
Battle-Lab.
10.17.2003
Found some more things to rip out. Got a little nuts and
pulled the gas tank off the car. I also pretty much committed
myself to running new fuel lines. I cut them when removing
them as to avoid some pains they would have caused involving
the rear sub-frame and brake lines. I filled up a 5 gallon
bucket with gas that was in there and there is still more to
come. I probably had a half tank of gas when I had to shut her
down. I also eyed up where I'm going to run my 3" exhaust. I
think I'll be able to snake ABOVE the rear cross member! I
think I'll be able to do this 3" exhaust and not have the
exhaust be any lower than the stock one. I also removed the
headlights, and the main harness up to the wheel well hole.
Removed some rubber grommets. Car is ready to paint. I also
measured the front steering rack. Updates in the steering
section.
Then it started to rain. Didn't get too many photos.
10.??.2003
Somewhere in here I removed the headlights and some
stray stuff that was still in the engine bay. I also
moved the car up closer to the house so that I can wash it
off better. I also started taking off the front
cross-member, brake lines,... basically anything that's left
and not frame. I also sold a transmission, alternator,
and distributor. Project Sillion needs $$.
10.13.2003
I removed the ABS today after I realized that it wont work
without the Pulse Generator, which is located on the
transmission. I also removed the brake booster and clutch
master cylinders. Engine bay is really sparse right now. Plan
on moving it closer to house for a nice scrubbing and paint
job. I'm really excited. It is such an abyss right now. I NEED
A MOTOR!
note: below posts are done from memory :-D.
10.10.2003
More removal today. Took out the AC evaporator. Now I have a
big hole for fuel lines in my firewall on the passenger side.
Confused as to what the "Light Controller" is among other
mystery electronics. I might just keep all the relays and such
hooked up somehow till I get it all running. Also removed the
blower to get to the engine harness. Its all removed now and
in the garage for sale. I think TurboTed wants it. Everything
still looks doable.
Somewhere in here I started removing the wiring harness and
some other stuff... :-D. I also had school stuff to do that
slowed me down.
9.20.2003
Stripped the block down and cleaned the transmission up.
Conclusion: Spun rod bearings on cylinder #1. Probably due to
running 10W30 oil on a hot day running it hard.
9.7.2003
Helped Matt fix Kelly's car all Saturday. with some help from
dad, I pulled my motor. Everythings pretty easy to understand.
Used the bulldozer to lift the motor with tranny right out.
Very easy and fun job. Disassembled the motor for the most
part. Still have to strip the block down. Lots of metal in the
head. Wonder what is good enough to sell?
From Live Journal Entries:
8.24.2003
11:52 pm
I've made it home. Matt and Kelly are great. I'm so thankful
for them bringing me all the way up and even an extra hour
north of them to get me home. I'm really starting to feel that
I've got some great friendships starting.
The car is still in NC.. I don't know what I'm gunna do to get
it home. I also need to get a new car so that I can get to
school and run errands to get into all the classes I need.
Once I get it home and get mobile with another car I need to
get school stuff out of the way. THEN I can start thinking
about how I'm gunna fix the car. I'm thinking SR20DET. but I'm
gunna see all my options first.. I don't think the car will be
back on the road till at least spring. I'm gunna take it off
and transfer the tags to (hopefully) a Festiva so I only have
to pay 1 car's insurance.
3:32 am
I already drove down here.. that's $60 in gas and then I pay
fucking $45 to drive and only get half the runs because my
fucking motor dies.. which will cost me hundreds to get home
so that I can spend hundreds fixing it.
3:21 am
I have tons of back posts to catch up on. but tonight is HELL!
My motor has died in NC. This is the only way to get in touch
till morning with my family and friends. I have no clue what I
can do. I'm totally fucked. I can either try to Uhaul it from
NC to MD or I can leave it in NC for a few days and find
someone with a truck that will drive down with me to get it.
I'm so sad. I don't have the money to get a new motor.. school
starts in a week. I need a car to commute.
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