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…

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.

Why did I paint the engine bay of my black Galant white? The same reason I painted the engine silver, to make it easier to spot leaks.

Here’s a couple shots of the final results.

Next on the agenda: Wire harness cleanup.

Here we have 195/2000 sitting out on the curb while I worked on 464/1000 in the garage.

I put a sheet of cardboard and an old fitted bed sheet over the windshield opening to keep water off the exposed roll cage members.

One good thing about the Phoenix heat: the engine bay was dry within ten minutes! This was a good chance to use up the last of three cans of flat black I had lying around.

And finally, my beast back in its spot in the garage. Soon I’ll be painting the engine bay white for easy leak detection.

Here’s what the harness looked like when the car came back from cage builder:

Here’s what it looks like today:

And I’ve been waiting to install this mod for years…

As you can see, I still need to remove (and replace) the timing cover and whatnot from the end of the mill, but that’s an easy job. I just ran out of time Saturday afternoon and called it good. Looking forward to having a shiny “new” engine and trans ready to drop into the race car in the coming weeks.

The Cyclone is a bi-modal, dual runner intake manifold, and was original equipment on a number of turbocharged Mitsubishi models outside the USDM. I am really excited to use this manifold on the rally car. Why? Because it provides torque increases in the low- to mid-range while only marginally reducing top end (which my turbo inlet restrictor will handle just fine).

Here you can see the dual runners from the throttle body (cylinder 1) end of the manifold.

Above, you can see the little wastegate-looking solenoid which activates the internal butterflies on the Cyclone manifold.

During low (engine) speed operation, prior to positive manifold pressure from the turbo, the Cyclone routes the intake charge through one set of runners (presumably the longer set, I haven’t tested this yet). The reduced intake charge volume is accelerated toward the intake valve due to the reduced runner diameter and extended length.

Once the Cyclone is activated, butterflies similar to the throttle plate open to allow both sets of runners to flow, better accommodating the increased charge volumes under boost.

After disassembling the Cyclone intake manifold, I cleaned it up a bit in the chemical bath at the shop. There’s still plenty of carbon/gnar in the runners, but it’s significantly cleaner than these pictures show. Once I’ve got my new gaskets made (I’m not spending $60 importing a set), I’ll reassemble the unit, give it a nice coat of paint, and share the results here. I also intend to document how I manage to control this unit in the rally car with existing solenoids and Jackal.

Go fast with class. Press on regardless.

So I strapped the roof skin to 464 and headed toward Gilbert yesterday.

Unfortunately, while the roof skin fits fairly nicely on the roof, it doesn’t stay there. Here’s to shoving it in the trunk on the side of the highway after less than a mile. Once I got to the shop, we rolled 195 out of the trailer, douched it up really good with non-diluted Simple Green, and I basically washed it a couple times.3

Dirty (before)

Soaking in Simple Green

Drip dry

All windows down or removed, roof missing. This was pretty nasty.

After: chilling at Precision Chassis Works

Michael (L) and Kent (R) discuss projects between an M3 and Boxster S (195 chillin’ in background).

No estimate on when 195 will be done and I’m cool with that. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy back at the fort. I’ll post updates as I get them. Could be done in two weeks, could be done in two months. Whatever’s clever. I’m pretty excited. This has been a loooooooong time coming.