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!

It’s also a great opportunity to clean up the fort a bit and get things ready for re-assembly. I’m excited to finally be moving toward actually racing the car again.

Now, I’ll begin by saying I don’t really care about the gauge. I seldom check it, and the light isn’t even hooked up, so it’s all but invisible at night. I’ve set the boost at 12psi, it gets up there when I need it, but otherwise, it’s a nice thing to have. Thing is, without anything holding it in place, every time I’d make a right turn, it would roll over toward the door. Fine. Whatever.

Of course, if I wasn’t paying attention, I’d open the door, the gauge would drop between the door and dash, and the closing door would bounce back into me as it squeezed the gauge. Believe me, you only need to experience this once or twice before you decide this needs dealt with immediately.

I do not want to install a pillar or gauge pod in the car. In fact, if I weren’t so lazy about removing the vacuum line and t-fittings, I’d just remove the gauge altogether, but it’s there, so what the hell. I needed to find a way to secure it. Enter spare speaker grille, two zip ties, and a rubber cap.

I set another gauge on a spare speaker grille I had from the other car and ran some larger zip ties through the mesh from below, over the top, and back down through the mesh. I don’t mind seeing zip ties, but I wanted to keep the locking mechanisms out of sight.

I used a razor blade to roughly trim a rubber cap I had left over from a swimming pool filter package to fit underneath the gauge. This would have a bit more grip between the fabric on the grille and the plastic gauge body, but also angle the gauge upward a bit for better visibility.

This is the final result. The unconnected wires for the light are simply tucked into the defrost vent, while the vac line remains routed as it’s been since I bought the car. You can see the residue from the velcro tape, which melted in the heat, dried, melted, dried, and just about ruined the dash. I’ll be trying to clean it up once and for all in the not too distant future.

This was a free mod, as I already had everything I needed. It took about 15 minutes to trim the grommet to my liking. Piece of cake.
(Speaker still works, too.)

Here’s another shot from the side.

And here’s a shot from eye level in the driver’s seat.

I’d also like to mention, since the car is filthy in the pictures above, I spent a few hours cleaning the inside of the car this weekend. Looks a lot better. Just  need to treat the leather seats and it will be all done.

Prescott
Tomorrow morning, Mike Foster and I will be taking the grey car up the mountain to Prescott for the rally. Last year, we were met with fail, fail, and more fail. A roached tcase, a dysfunctional flatbed towtruck, and an electrically compromised rally car. Last weekend, I spent a few hours under 464, replacing all the driveline fluids with fresh, top-of-the-line, Redline products. Heavy Shockproof in the rear diff and tcase (it’s always hot here in Phoenix), and a blend of MTL/MT-90 in the transmission.

Of course, the transmission seems to be leaking from somewhere mysterious. It’s not leaking from the fill or drain plugs, or even from the passenger side axle seal. Probably driver side axle seal, but it will have to wait until the black car is back together. I refuse to have two Galants with no engines in them and spend a weekend out in the sun racing to get a transmission swap done before work on Monday.

MLR
If I haven’t mentioned it yet, I’m now a member of the Mitsubishi Lancer Register (MLR). Disclosure: I was given a membership by the founder so I might explore the community deeper after interviewing him for Gearbox Magazine. Considering I’m doing a Mitsubishi magazine (online), I am very impressed with the MLR’s Wastegate Chatter product. Hope I might one day be able to do something similar. If you’ve got an Evo, MLR is a great place to spend time.

The Autobahn
Vanessa and I spent the first two weeks of the month in Germany. I’ve spent the last two weeks back home wondering when we’ll get to go back. Ironic that I am vehemently against cell phone usage behind the wheel, yet felt compelled to compose a shot of the speedo as I was doing about 105mph in the slow lane outside of Würzburg. If you’ve never been, the appeal of the Autobahn is not the unlimited speeds (most of the Autobahn now has a 130kmh limit), but the fact that German drivers still know how to drive, unlike the self-absorbed moron operators we have in the States. Everyone uses their turn signal – everyone. And nobody – nobody – passes on the right. You might be thinking, “What do they do when someone is cruising in the left lane and won’t get over?”

On the Autobahn, nobody does that shit.

Vanessa and I emptied out most of the garage, and shoved everything else to the opposite side the night before installation was to begin.  Here’s what things looked like Saturday morning before we started.  I’m still using the hanging shelves back there, but they’ve been moved.  If you’re interested, they seem to retail for about $65 at Home Depot (although I got the grey one on Craigslist for $40).

The shelves I ended up getting can probably be found in the closet organization aisle of any Home Depot in the country.  I picked up 36 square feet of storage space for under $70 out the door.  This was (4) 8ft X 1ft shelves, (1) bag of support brackets (the diagonals under the shelves – a pack of 12), and a bag of anchors (something like 48 in there) to secure the rear of the shelves to the walls.  All the hardware was included – drill bit (though we used a different one, since going into cinder blocks), nails, screws, anchors, clips, etc..  I was fairly impressed.

All in all, I’m really happy with these.  We set them high enough up that I can park my “rollie” tool chest, “crash cart” and even an engine on a stand underneath them, while retaining the ability to park my kitty litter totes (which are mostly full of car parts, of course) on the top row without interfering with the garage door.

This project was a long time coming and I love how it turned out.  It’s so easy to get to stuff now.

Over the next couple weeks, Mike will be plating over the seams where the FWD radiator core support was grafted onto the existing AWD unibody.  I’ll post up pictures once the car is back together.  For now, there is a lot more room back at the fort, so I think it’s time to address some shelving issues.

When I finished straightening up the garage Saturday night, this is what the engine bay in 195/2000 looked like.  Dirty, but complete (for the most part).  Saturday morning, Michael Rodarte and Mike Foster came by to help me pull the engine and transmission out so I can get the front end repairs completed after the Kia incident that occurred almost two years ago.  Can you believe that?  February 4th 2010 will be the 2 year anniversary of the Kia Incident and 4 years that I’ve owned this car.  It’s spent half it’s time with me unregistered in my garage.

Michael and Mike were blazing fast helping out.  It’s been a while since I’ve had to pull an engine and I was expecting to be in the garage all day.  Granted, I’d already removed the transfer case and driveshaft, but they showed up just after 0900hrs, and by 1230hrs, the engine was out, on the stand, and we’d been bullshitting for an hour.  Impressive.

After Michael and Mike left, I tinkered a bit.  Pulled the jacked CV that I was on my way to replace when the Kia Incident occurred back in 2008, then started clearing wire harness and whatnot from the areas where more welding will be needed to fully repair the front end of 195.  Hope to have some more progress within a couple weeks’ time.

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.