Valve Cover

Cyclone

Cam Gears & Pulleys

“Thunder, light rain, BB King, & an old engine. Saturday nights don’t get much better than this. “

My goal is to get 195/2000 moving under its own power by Christmas. I’m not entirely sure that’s going to happen, but I decided to make some progress this weekend.

Here’s what I started with. The valve cover is raised because I have all the cam retainer bolts only started (to keep me from losing them or mixing anything up). I’m hoping to score a set of Evo VIII cams for this engine before all is said and done. The $700 it would cost me to pick up a set of high-lift/short-duration Kelford or Piper rally grinds (or even a $500 set of Forced Performance FP1X grinds) is best spent elsewhere at this point, methinks.

The “God Bolt” (only one of its kind on the entire vehicle) is one tough mother. I had to drop the oil pan, wedge a piece of wood between the crankshaft couterweights and block before going Breaker Bar Inception on this bad boy. You’re looking at a breaker bar within a breaker bar within a breaker bar - I had a 3ft crow bar slipped inside a 2ft length of pipe over an 18-inch Craftsman 1/2″ drive breaker.

The bolt cracking loose was so loud, I thought I’d damaged the crankshaft. (Hey. We’re talking physics, here.)

GREAT SUCCESS.

My dog, Mia, wasn’t much help, but she kept me company.

Here’s the front case/oil pump with the crank and oil pump sprockets removed. The small sprocket top left is for the front balance shaft. The rear balance shaft is bolted in behind the castle nut above the spindle lower right. (Balance shafts are also known as “silent shafts,” as they spin opposite the crankshaft at double speed to neutralize second-order vibrations for passengers.)

Because A) I’ve spent time trying to help friends figure out which bolts go where on these things in the past and B) it might be a couple weeks before I go to install the new oil pump on this engine, I cleaned the bolts up nice, put them in the box with the new pump, and whipped up this picture, which shows the location of each bolt overlaid on the picture above.

I arranged all the bolts on the floor next to each other. They are all at the same scale, relative each other. Hope this helps someone.

click for larger image

With the balance shafts removed, I took a quick picture of them side-by-side. The front can be completely removed, but I’m debating milling the rear down to use instead of the stub shaft included in my balance shaft elimination kit (BSEK).

For those who aren’t already familiar, the front shaft is spun by a small belt that runs behind the timing belt. If it fails, it can take out the t-belt, potentially destroying the engine (piston-to-valve interference). Since the rear shaft is spun by the timing belt, running a stub shaft to replace it can result in uneven wear on the pump internals, resulting in metal debris in the oil supply. Never a good thing. Turning the counterweight down on a mill reduces the weight considerably while providing for a truer rotation in the bore.

Speaking of bores, here’s a look into the block where the front balance shaft was located. Note the oil supply hole in the bearing between 3-4 o’clock in the foreground. This bearing will either be replaced or popped out and rotated to prevent a loss of oil pressure – this balance shaft will not be re-installed at all.

And here’s a look into the block where the rear balance shaft is located.

One of the hardest parts of this job was removing the front case gasket. This is one of the hottest locations on the engine, as hot oil and coolant (you can make out the round outline of the water pump at the top of the picture) are pumped through the entire lump from this area. These gaskets just get baked on.

After nearly an hour and two brand new razor blades ground down to dangerously dull edges, it looks like this. Still not clean enough for my liking, so I’ll probably take another blade and some acetone or something to everything before the new case and pumps are installed.

And here we have “after;” my stopping point for the evening. The oil filter housing is draining the filter into my catch pan (will be replaced with a 90 DSM housing and remote oil cooler), and the oil pan is full of all the odds and ends removed this evening.

Tomorrow, after a quick Skype with my Gearbox Magazine partner in the Netherlands, Dennis, I’ll be heading to the shop to do the following:

+ Bead blast and/or chemical bath
— oil pan
— cam gears
— coolant hard lines
— exhaust heat shield
— spare valve cover (might paint it red)
+ Clamp camshafts in a vice to remove cam gears
+ Cut out a couple custom gaskets for the Cyclone intake manifold

Should be a good day. I pretty much have everything I need to get this engine back together save the desired cams. Once it’s assembled, I’ll bring the wire harness over with an eye on refurbishing it. A neat project I’ve got in mind for the wiring is building a sub-harness just for the engine and transmission so I can simply undo two electrical connections before pulling the engine/trans in the future.

Pressing on regardless…

Background
There are a pair of coolant lines feeding the throttle body on the first generation DSM and 6th generation Galant Vr4 (4G63T). Basically, once the engine is up to temp and the thermostat opens, the hot coolant melts a wax pellet or something inside the fast idle air valve (FIAV), blocking airflow past the throttle plate to deliver a reasonable idle (approximately 75orpm). Until then, FIAV allows the engine to idle at a higher speed for easier cold starting. When this piece of kit shits the bed, you get a 2500rpm (or higher!) idle until the engine warms up. That’s pretty annoying.

The idle speed control (ISC) is a stepper motor in the throttle body (TB) which the computer uses to adjust idle speed within a set range. It’s probably most active when you activate the power steering at low speeds or turn on the AC/defroster. If the ISC doesn’t burn out on you, odds are good you will do something which will turn it into a complete retard, giving you the infamous idle surge. Always nice to pull up to a stop light and be “that guy” with the engine revving up and down by 500-1000rpm.

I got tired of it.
It’s not uncommon for people to block off these bits and wash their hands of them. Nice thing about OBDI cars; this doesn’t trip a CEL.

So I took a spare TB to Keith’s shop, opened it up with an impact driver (the machine screws holding it all together have threadlocker on them and are made of butter), then cleaned it up in the parts washer. I made a block-off gasket by cutting my own blank from bulk gasket material I had in the garage. No need to get medieval with metal plates, given the low temps seen by the TB. I also removed the little metal springy-thingy inside the FIAV/ISC ports within.

With the TB ready to be installed, I got the old TB out.

1. pull the vacuum lines on top of the TB
2. disconnect the ISC and throttle stop switch
3. disconnect TPS
4. remove small Philips bracket screw atop TB
5. disconnect intake hose at TB elbow, shove downward
6. disconnect/plug TB coolant lines (drain some coolant or expect a leak)
7. unbolt throttle cable from intake manifold (10mm)
8. pull slack in throttle cable toward passenger side, slip cable from TB arm
9. undo 12mm nut on CAS
10. undo 12mm bolts on front of TB, remove TB/CAS bracket
11. undo 12mm nuts on rear of TB, set aside
12. remove TB elbow (try to save the gasket or replace)
13. slide TB away from intake manifold, lift fuel line OVER base of TB
14. drop TB down, rotate toward firewall, lift up and out

Here’s another picture:

Re-assembly is the reverse, but you will want to bypass those coolant lines. I found the hose that ran from the thermostat housing to the TB was plenty long enough to simply attach to the water pipe below the TB (the other line removed in the process above). You an see the coolant hose I re-used just below the CAS in the picture above.

TPS adjustment
I got it all back together only to find I got a check engine light (CEL) when I let the car idle. I swapped the TPS but forgot to adjust it! This wasn’t a hard process at all (but it would have made more sense to do this before putting everything back together). Simply connect the TPS, set the TB on the intake manifold, turn the key to the ACC position, load your favorite datalogging program (I use the old TechnoMotive), pull up the DRB2 info and adjust. In the picture above, I was holding the throttle wide open while gently adjusting the TPS to read 100%. Closed, it reads 10%. Problem solved.

Life without FIAV/ISC
The car won’t just start with a turn of the key when it’s cold now. I have to crack the throttle a bit with my right foot prior to bumping the starter and hold the revs around 1500-2000rpm for 30-60 seconds before it will stay running on its own. Small price to pay for a rock steady idle. RPMs are consistent and predictable between gears, and once warmed up, the tach sits exactly where I set it now. Very happy with this m0d.

It’s almost ready to get back on the road. Just a little more TLC and Keith will be G2G!

Resurrecting a car that’s been apart for so many years brings with it special circumstances. Mainly, where did all the nuts and bolts and parts go? They have a habit of disappearing. Fortunately, Keith has a slight variation of this problem. You see, since this car went airborne on the lift, he’s inherited all the spares from not one, but TWO Mitsubishi rally teams. We’ve filled a small trailer with spare parts at least twice in the last couple years and now there’s an entire storage unit full of spares. Thing is, it’s not always easy to find what you need when you need it.

Keith had the engine hung on the lateral motor mounts, but when we went to bolt it in all the way, we discovered he might have cleaned up a DSM front motor mount horn instead of a GVR4 piece. These two cars might have a lot in common, but there are still a number of odd little differences between them. Remember, the DSM was made exclusively in Normal, Illinois, while the Galant came from Japan. The picture above shows the two mounts side-by-side.

Seen side-by-side, again, the GVR4-specific piece is stamped ’344.’ The DSM piece is stamped ’347.’ Pay no mind to the piece of slag welded to the back of the 344 bracket above. That was likely for a rally-specific reinforcement at some point in the past. We cut it off before installing it in this street car.

We also ran into issues when we went to bolt up the AC compressor. The GVR4 has a different series of brackets for the AC compressor and belt tensioner. Pictured, above, the DSM unit is on the left and the Galant version is on the right. The tensioner bracket mounts to the compressor girdle, so if you get these mixed up (it happened to me a couple years back, actually), you’re pretty much SOL. Just a head’s up.

These two “prototypes” will be used to hold sections of OEM wire harness and switchgear I’ve currently got in two other buckets.

This is what they looked like prior to the hastily-applied stencils.

And here’s a more sinister prototype, done all in black. I’m not sure how I’ll do the rest, but this sure looks better than bright yellow with information on clumping and odor control!

Pretty cool, considering it’s about six years old. Only thing missing is the CD with the software and instructions. (Which I suspect I could find if I asked around a bit.) It looks so simple, I might just give it a try in the daily driver. Hmmm…

This post is more so I can reference these pictures when it’s time to put it all back together. (Click on any image for the blurry, full-sized Blackberry picture.)

This one looks like a main power feed for the interior fuse panel. Same side as the fuses.

The back of the interior fuse panel.

Not quite sure what this is (yet). Yellow connector reminds me of the SRS (airbag) harness on newer vehicles, but GVR4s did not have airbags, so…

This guy (relay) had its own mounting block. Not sure what it does (yet).

This group of relays is tucked up under the dash above the fuse panel. Not sure what it does yet.

The mess I was working with. [195] is JSB, so it was easy to sit sort of under the car at times, but the roll cage support (left) made it kind of difficult to get to some of the hardware without contorting around it. (Kent was right. I should have fully stripped the shell prior to the cage install.) You’re looking at the driver’s side foot well, notice the shifter cable top right.

Great success! This is the harness which runs through the A-pillar and DF wheel well and snakes under the radiator core support (note the fat section with the orange zip ties) to just in front of the PF strut turret. You can see the engine bay fuse/relay block. If you look above the fuse box, in that tangled mess right there, the white bits are the strain relief where it goes through the A-pillar, and you can see the positive battery terminal.

I am considering relocating this fuse/relay block into the cabin on the co-driver side, as well as re-routing the section that usually goes under the radiator across the back of the engine bay.

AC condenser unit (black box) and HVAC fan (white box). In the foreground is the Techflex CleanCut I will be using to re-wrap the harness.

Removing the AC condenser core and HVAC fan unit opened up a HUGE amount of space, providing access to the bolted strain relief on the second engine bay harness (not pictured), which passes through the hole just left of center in this picture.

Since this car no longer has AC or ABS, I’m toying with the idea of re-using the fuse/relay locations in this block for the pencil, driving, and fog rally lights going on the car one day.

A look under the cover of the engine bay fuse/relay block. Note the six round relays at left. I might replace the top three.

I’ve got to do a little research, but this size relay will also plug into the locations currently filled with the round, silver jobbers. P/N MB183865

Round relay detail #1.

Round relay detail #2.

Round relay detail #3.

This wiring project is just getting underway. I’d really like to build a harness board to lay everything out during the process. We’ll see if I can make that happen. My cordless drill walked off long ago, and I’m not very handy with lumber.

Originally, the plan was to have a nice Galant to daily drive so I wouldn’t feel so bad about stuffing [195], but after the Jetta incident, what’s the point? It would cost me two grand to fix that rear end and it would still have a salvage restored title. Here’s to pressing on regardless.

Thanks to a closeout special, I got both rotors shipped to my door for $10 less than one would have run me at Autozone before sales tax.