I’ve got more to post about the level III inspection process (as there isn’t much information about it on the web), but for now, let’s just say that the level III inspection is intended to make sure the car is safe, roadworthy, and not repaired with stolen parts from a chop shop.

They check the VINs, make sure all the glass is intact, the safety equipment is all in place and functional, all the lights work, and the doors all open and close okay from the inside and out. Not that, in an accident, any of this would be guaranteed to remain intact, but the law is the law.

Thanks to the numbskull who didn’t even hit the brakes before rear-ending me back in April, the rear quarter panel on the driver’s side was pushed into the rear door. Opening and closing this door a number of times resulted in self clearancing – the door was being forced foward, which meant that it was interfering with the opening and closing of the driver’s door. This would have meant failure and a lack of transportation for me.

It should be pretty obvious, from the title and the pictures, what happened…

It’s important to mention that properly repairing the car would be possible, but likely run in the neighborhood of $3000. Because 464/1000 was considered a ‘salvage’ vehicle, no amount of repairs would make it worth that much money to anyone but myself. Even after passing the level III inspection (which it did), the title still reads ‘restored/salvage.’ On paper, this is a parts car, junk, scrap, worthless. Hooray for mindless American consumerism and inattentive vehicle operators. I spent the insurance money on a roll cage for 195 and two weeks vacation in Europe.

I took the wee hammer and a block of wood and I smashed the quarter back out of the way. It was somewhat cathartic, but I felt so sick to my stomach setting up for this “job,” and even hesitated before taking that first swing. This is the most half-assed of half-assed “repairs” I’ve ever done, irrevocably ruining the car even further than it’s already been damaged.

There was a time when I wanted to buy a nice Galant to slowly restore to near mint condition; when I wanted the comfort of knowing I had another, super nice, GVR4 back at the fort when I was out racing 195; when I took my time and thoroughly cleaned every part that came off prior to reinstalling it. 464/1000 would eventually become a stunner, a well-preserved and beautiful specimen worthy of representing the Galant VR4 community in North America.

Today, 464/1000 is just a backup rally car. When 195/2000 gets bent, I’ll just swap everything over to 464/1000.

1992 Mitsubishi Galant VR4 464/1000 has been totaled out.
464 is one of less than 300 Kensington Grey GVR4s imported to North America back in 1992. It passed emissions testing with flying colors on Friday. Then the title was branded salvaged because the cost of repairs would be more than the cost of the car (only after a $1000 salvage bid was taken off the top). Monday, the fax went to the insurance carrier. Wednesday, I got a check for $2600 and change. We’ve been down this road before.

So now I am the proud owner of TWO Galant VR4s, BOTH of which are salvage cars.
Yay me, right? Right. There is a silver lining to this situation, just as there was last time. Funds from the Kia Incident, where 195/2000 was totaled, were used towards the purchase of 464/1000. And so it is today. No, I am not buying a third Galant VR4, but I am putting the funds towards the roll cage in 195/2000. Maybe the title of this post should have had more to do with the Lion King and “circle of life” than Romeo and Juliet, but whatever.

The mad blood stirring.
I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire;
The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
And, if we meet, we shall not escape a brawl;
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

Behold! My new radiator! It seems like radiators wait just until summer arrives to spring leaks and make life a living hell. Last week Friday, prior to emissions testing and salvage branding, I stopped at Performance Radiator here in Phoenix to pick up a replacement radiator. I had been doing a little shopping, but the night before, I saw a Performance Radiator unit in a local DSM. It had metal end tanks and looked very well put together. Combined with the immediacy of getting the part I needed locally on-the-spot, I didn’t mind paying almost double the Rock Auto price online.

Oh that’s just lovely.
I was happy to pay $180 for an immediately available, all-metal-construction, direct-fit, locally manufactured radiator. What I actually got was the same, made-in-Indonesia, plastic-end-tank-having, off-by-half-an-inch radiator I could have bought for $80 any number of places online. Thou art a villain.

What am I supposed to do at 10pm on a Saturday night, once I’ve already got the fan bolted up and have greasy finger prints all over the thing? Pack it back up and try to return it after work on Monday? Fuck it. I made it work. Pulled it back out and took the Dremel to the lower mounting tabs. I opened up the holes in them to increase the lateral slop in the assembly and then torqued the entire unit over towards the passenger side to be bolted in. Meh.

Progress on 195/2000!
Prior to installing the radiator in 464/1000, I spent a little more time emptying out the interior of 195/2000 in preparation for the roll cage getting installed within a month’s time. Still a bit left to do – pull the carpet, remove the rear door cards, remove the front and rear windshields, and take the roof off – but it’s all manageable. I’m looking forward to this…  a lot.

Oops!
So the radiator in 464 was replaced on Saturday night. Car ran beautifully all day Sunday, well, almost all day. A stop at home to pick up some car parts late in the afternoon revealed coolant weeping from behind the timing belt cover and the sound of boiling coolant in the water pump and thermostat housing. The water pump shit the bed.

Tomorrow begins water pump replacement. What better time to also replace the timing belt, pullies, tensioners, valve cover gasket, cam seals, and oil pan gasket? A solid bunch of maintenance and repairs in one fell swoop. Hope I can get drag my ass out of bed early enough to get it done before it gets too hot outside!

The original figures
Allstate originally got a couple random, used car dealing schlubs to guesstimate that 464 was worth barely $1000. They got a $150 salvage bid on the car and offered me a whopping $889 if I wanted to keep it.

My rather reasonable figures
I scoured the cars for sale section on GalantVR4.org – the best source for GVR4s on the market – and found 60 examples listed in the US since the first of the year. They had a national average listing price of $4300. I told Allstate this would be an acceptable figure if the car was to be totaled out.  (I was prepared to drop as low as $3800, which was the average regional listing price minus outliers.)

The gearhead appraiser’s figures
Even though I had already waited over 7 weeks and spoken to as many as six different adjusters with Allstate, they finally moved with authority and lived up to their “good hands” mantra. I was advised that a proper “gearhead who races cars at PIR” would be contacting me about the matter.

Mike Sheehan showed up Thursday and we talked shop for half an hour in a covered parking place. Two business days later, I get a call from Allstate advising the final figures on 464. Mike’s estimate came in at just under $3600. Of course, a more valuable car is more valuable to the salvage yards too, so the salvage bid went from $150 to $950.

I’m going to get the title branded salvage and trade it for a check in the amount of $2600 or so.

And that’s that.
No. I’m not parting it out.
Yes. I plan on continuing to drive it.

And yes, 195 will be making some solid progress towards being a real rally car this summer.

[464] is pretty steamed about all this.
I’ve been down this road before, back in February of 2008, some kid in a Kia tried to make a left turn on a yellow and failed – miserably. This is what I called “The Kia Incident.” Plenty to read between here and DR1665.com on all that happened as a result of that evening’s events.

What followed was a 2 month nightmare of back and forth with the kid’s questionable-at-best insurance carrier. The law provides for the lesser of replacement value or repairs to your vehicle when someone else hits you. The Kia owner’s insurance carrier totaled [195] and offered $800. Gee, too bad I couldn’t repair or replace the car for that. So we spent the better part of two months going back and forth. It wasn’t until I got the state insurance commissioner’s office involved that they finally played ball and I got $4700 to cover the damages.

Allstate, who insures both [464] and the Jetta has offered $800.
Regular visitors to this site (or people who know me on GalantVR4.org or 2GNT.com) know that [464] is far nicer than [195] was prior to the accident. The paint is better, the interior is better, everything works, and so on. [464] is better than average. My recent research into listing prices for comparable GVR4s reveals the average price, excluding outliers, to be $4300. So, if [464] is going to be totaled, then it will cost me $4000+ to replace her.

You can see how this will likely take a while. They want to trash my car for $800. I want to repair or replace for $4000+. The burden of proving the value is on me, as their “impartial” 3rd party valuation services are incapable of adequately establishing the value of such limited edition vehicles.

Arizona Revised Statute (ARS) 20-461.9 states…

“Attempting to settle a claim for less than the amount to which a reasonable person would have believed he was entitled by reference to written or printed advertising material accompanying or made part of an application” is an unfair claims practice and against the law.

ARS 20-461.8 goes a step further…

“Compelling insureds to institute litigation to recover amounts due under an insurance policy by offering substantially less than the amounts ultimately recovered in actions brought by the insureds” is unfair as well.

I am fully prepared to fight this.
I bought [464] because it was a fully functional, complete and un-molested specimen that I could restore to better-than-new condition once [195] was prepared on the rally stages. Now I’m going to be forced to get a salvage title issued, which will severely impair my ability to one day sell the car for a profit if I should choose to do so. I’m not taking $800. I’m not taking $1500. I’m not taking $3000. If I have to kill the car on paper with a salvage title, I’m getting $4000 to do so. And if Allstate is unwilling to fairly compensate me for my actual loss, then I am prepared to take this matter to court, even if I have to represent myself in small claims.

As for why [464] is steamed, above…
Beyond its driver side doors all being goodly mangled, sticking and jamming against each other every time one is opened, it’s summer time. What better time for the radiator to go out, right? I’d swap in the radiator out of [195] (let’s face it, the beast won’t be needing it for a while), but it’s a DSM radiator, which is different.

More updates as I get them.

[464] didn’t actually go racing at El Mirage.
The speed limits through the paddocks were set at 25mph and I was told that the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) had no issues with telling people unable to play by the rules to pack their shit, leave, and never come back. Just as well, there was an epic amount of dust out there.

I went to follow up on a story for Mitsubishi Gearbox Magazine.
The Smith Auto Galant VR4 is the fastest GVR4 in the world as far I’m concerned. Their record at Bonneville is 224mph and their record at El Mirage is 216mph. I was out on the lakebed, multiple cameras in hand, to meet the team and do a proper follow up (it’s still in the works).

Gearbox spoiler alert
With Ron Cochran at the wheel, the Galant VR4 went 201mph on Saturday and 206mph on Sunday. They were shooting for 218mph in order to beat their previous record at El Mirage, but it wasn’t in the cards. Flat fuel trims, the wrong 5th gear, and poor track conditions joined forces to hold them back. All the same, it was a great experience and the whole team – Ron, Troy, Vernon, Patricia, and the rest (sorry, we weren’t introduced) – run a professional outfit without losing sight of all that makes racing cars fun.

I’m currently converting video and learning how to edit same in order to put something together. There’s in-car, out-of-car, and interview footage on the hard drive right now and I hope to get it wrapped up soon.

In typical, Phoenix rush hour fashion, I’m completely stopped – in the fast lane – on Interstate 17 on my way home from work today.  The car ahead of me begins to pull away.  I ease off the clutch and start to give it some gas when BAM!  I’m flat on my back and staring at the headliner.

The AC is still pumping out cool air, the engine is still idling, I’m listening to All Things Considered.   I notice the shade cover for the moonroof is now opened about 3 inches as I turn around to see what happened.  Guy behind me in a black Jetta is looking dumbfounded; like he doesn’t know what happened either.  I figure someone rear-ended him, slamming him into me.

Nope.  He just wasn’t paying attention and straight smacked me at something like 40mph or so.

When I clipped that Kia two years ago, I remember thinking, “Wow.  That impact didn’t feel so bad.  How can there be all that damage?” This one hurt pretty good.  3 hours later and my neck isn’t as sore as my back, going down my left side.  Earlier, I could feel where my neck muscles attach to the sides of my head.  Ugh.  I’m okay though.  I guess.

Dude and I pull off the highway, slowly, and roll into a parking lot.  When we get out, we’re both amazed at how little damage there is.  I ask if he wants to call the police or should I, he says we probably should, because he’s got chest pains and think he might have broke a rib.  Starts dialing.

I stand back and wait for him to get off the phone with the police.  Start snapping pictures of the cars.  At first, just his car, him on the phone, his license plate, and so on.  He gets off the phone and asks me if I called the police.  I told him I thought he said he was doing that and he dials again.

Next thing you know, the fire department is on the scene, checking him out to make sure he doesn’t need an ambulance.  I tell them I’ll take some Tylenol, get some sleep, and check with my doctor if things get worse, but don’t suspect any life threatening injury; just a very sore neck and whatnot.

Arizona DPS (Department of Public Safety – kinda like the Highway Patrol or State Troopers in other states) shows up and collects documentation from us both.  License, insurance, registration – the usual.  When the officer asks what happened, this guy says I just stopped all of the sudden and he hit me maybe doing 5mph or so.

Um, I disagree.

Officer asks me what happened.  I advise.  Say that it had to be more than 5mph because I have a crooked trunk, jacked bumper, and obvious “frame” damage.  (Galants are unibody cars and do not have actual frames.)  Officer comes around to my side of the car, where I point out the damage, then hands me a report and says to call my insurance company and have a better evening.

So here’s the damage.
It might not look like much at first, but it’s enough.  $1500 in damage to his $15,000 Volkswagen is no big deal, but $1500 in damage to my Galant – which we all know the insurance company will say is only worth $800 – is another thing altogether.  I’ve been down this road before.  It’s going to be a fight.  I hope I’m ready.

Below: Bumper cover is damaged, very likely the bumper itself underneath is damaged as well.  Notice the cover sagging on the driver side.  Not good.  Means the bumper is pushed in and down.

Below: I don’t think the trunk’s mangled so much as the unibody beneath it.  Notice the gap.  It’s not that the trunk is shifted, but the unibody has been torqued towards the driver side.

Below:  Now check out the gap between the trunk and the fender/quarter panel.  See how it’s larger than the other side?  The actual body of the car has been pushed towards the driver side.

Below:  The back seat seems to be a bit unhappy too.

Below: Here’s where we get into the disturbing stuff.  The rear quarter panel has been pushed forward into the door.  It still opens and closes, but no amount of door adjustment is going to fix this.

Below: The picture that sealed the deal.  That’s a buckle in the pillar.  When the rear quarter panel was being pushed forward, the roof tried to hold it in place.  The pillar buckled at the leading edge because the metal began to bunch up there.

Now, I’ve cut the nose off Galants before.  I’ve matched up replacement sections of unibody pretty good, but to fix this, I suspect it would involve removing the trunk, most of the glass in the car, and trying to pull the entire unibody back over towards the passenger side.  No easy task, and not one I think I’m equipped to handle.

Tomorrow morning, I go to the adjusters to have 464 checked out.  I already know what they’re going to say.  If you get more than about $500 worth of damage done to your Galant VR4, you better expect a fight.  They’re going to total the car out and offer me something like $800.

Here goes nothing…

Today, while 464 sat covered in filth in the driveway, I took the drill to the joints between chassis and replacement core support on 195. Anywhere there will be welding needs to be clean and free of paint, rust, and grime.  This was four hours of hard core drill and wire wheel action.  I am beat.

It should be cool when it’s all back together though.  Here’s a little photoshop I whipped up this afternoon on a whim…

• AC – Replaced all the hardlines and the compressor with units from 195/2000 back in September.  FIXED
• Moonroof – Replaced with the functional unit from 195/2000 in December.  FIXED
• Cruise control – After much trouble shooting, turned out to be a missing plug on the clutch pedal which depresses the clutch safety switch (to prevent engine from over-rev when cruise control activated and clutch pedal depressed.  Clipped a rubber spacer button over the tang on the pedal and cruise works today.  FIXED
• ABS – Light is on.  Probably just needs the brake system bled.  TO DO
• HVAC can – Low speed doesn’t work.  Probably the switch.  TO DO

Very rapidly getting to the point where the only thing left to do on this Galant is get it repainted.  Love my Mitsubishis!

One nice thing about having TWO Galant VR4s is that I sort of have a spare of everything.  Since [195] can’t have any glass in the roof if it’s going to be a rally car, I had a spare moonroof to swap into [464].  I had previously removed the moonroof from the black Galant and today was a nice sunny day (that wasn’t a billion degrees) to complete the project.
I started with the easy stuff.  The visors came out, then the overhead light and mirror.  After that, I took down the courtesy handles over the non-driver’s doors.  Then things got a bit ridiculous.  As you can see in the picture above, you have to remove the back seat.  Why?  Because, in order to remove the plastic garnish above the doors that helps retain the headliner, you have to remove the trim at the very rear of the cabin on either side.  This is best done by removing the back rest of the back seat.  Of course, to get to the three bolts that hold that part of the seat in place, you have to remove the seat base as well.  Finally, you have to unbolt the lower anchor points for the rear, 3-point belts to get that rear trim out of the car.  Maybe you could do all this without taking out the back seat, but I don’t want to risk breaking 18 year old plastic that I’m not going to be able to easily replace.

I was surprised at how straight-forward this job was once I got past all the tricky trim removal.  When I went to clean up, I found I’d only used 10mm, 12mm and 17mm sockets, a long phillips screwdriver, and a pair of channel lock pliers.  Most of the bolts are 10mm (no surprise there, this IS a Mitsubishi, afterall).  There’s a single 12mm for the back seat upright in the middle, and the seatbelt anchors are 17mm.  I used the pliers to loosen the hose clamps at the drain tubes at all four corners of the assembly.  From there, I disconnected the electrical devices at the front of the moonroof and took down the lateral supports with their 18 or so 10mm bolts.  After that, it’s just four 10mm nuts holding the whole thing in place.  I removed the front two and then began loosening the one on each side.  Then the 70lb+ assembly just sort of falls in your lap.  PRO TIP: Use your head to balance things while you remove the last nut.  Literally.  Use your head.

You can see above that the entire assembly is a fairly large piece of kit.  What makes it tricky is that it’s not evenly balanced.  Odds are good that, when they stop working, the glass and frame are going to be all the way to one end or the other, making it an awkward thing to handle when that last nut comes off.  The one on the left in the picture above is the one that came out of [464], while the one on the right came out of [195].  It might be possible to hulk the replacement unit into place solo, but I asked my wife Vanessa to start the two side nuts while I held it in place.

All said and done, this project took me less than four hours.  I warmed up by replacing the blown rear speakers and I know I started that after 1300hrs, but the car was 100% back together before 1800hrs, and I took many smoke breaks along the way (also checking Twitter because I’m something of a social media whore).

All’s well that ends well.  I still have a leak of some sort under the car that’s not the transmission, so I’m starting to wrap my head around new seals for the transfer case (don’t want a repeat of my Prescott adventures) and/or a new gasket for the oil pan.  Either way, there’s going to be some more maintenance in my future, I can tell.

I was worried I might have lost the viscous center differential in the Galant VR4, so I began removing bits to prepare for a transmission removal.  When the car was moving, particularly around corners, there was a whining, dry gear noise coming from the front end.  This is never a good sign.

One of the steps involved in pulling the transmission is to remove the transfer case.  A healthy transfer case looks like this one at the shop.

Notice that seal around the input shaft.  Compare that to the one on the transfer case out of [464]…

The tcase had been filled with Synchroshift, which was obviously what I was smelling when the car broke down on the way to Prescott Friday.  The tcase holds 0.6 quarts of fluid.  Here’s how much came out of this tcase when I drained it.

What’s more, after the fluid had a chance to sit in the drain pan for a few minutes, there was some sparkle motion going on in it.  Never a good sign to have metal bits floating in your gear oil.

At this point, I knew the transfer case was roached, but what about the transmission itself?  I had checked the fluid level on the side of the road while waiting for the flatbed to arrive and found it to be low, if not dry.  Would I have to pull the transmission as well?

The transmission holds 2.4 quarts of fluid.  I think I easily got 2 quarts out of it and it came out clean, if not a little tired.  This was a good sign.  I spent about $50 buying Hyundai 75W/85 GL-4 from the local Mitsubishi/Hyundai dealership and refilled the transmission.  Now it was time to source a replacement tcase for [464].

A while back, my friend Kris Marciniak and I were talking about my getting a cheap second car to drive while I prepped my other Galant VR4 [195] for rally.  His concern was that, if I got another VR4, I’d end up spending money on modifications and repairs to it instead of on my rally car.  He made a great point, but I’m feeling fortunate that I ended up with two VR4s, as I now have a spare everything.

I was horrified to discover that the tcase in [195] was bone dry too, but it had not been making any noise prior to being parked back in the spring of 07 and hadn’t seen more than a trip around the block since that time.  I filled it up with Royal Purple gear oil (couldn’t find Redline anywhere on a Monday afternoon, go figure) and installed it.

All’s well that ends well, although I noticed that [464] now has a transmission leak at the passenger side axle seal.  This won’t require pulling the transmission to repair, but I’m flat broke now and hope to keep it topped off with fluid until later this month, when I can pull the axles and install new seals.

I’ve been keeping regular tabs on the transmission and tcase since this repair.  The tcase is staying dry at all points and the transmission itself has not pushed any fluid out the breather vent on top of the bell housing.  I can live with a few drips here and there, as much as that irritates me.

It will be a few months before [195] needs a tcase, since I’m getting ready to pull the engine and all that to prepare for the roll cage.  In the meantime, I just hope that getting [464] back up to 100% doesn’t take too much time or money.  Transmission is shifting like butter this week and I’m enjoying an improvement in performance after what was a lengthy, draining repair job.