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.

Curtis offered to ship me this set for free, as I was looking to trade a set of the USDM clear lenses with another GVR4 owner in Norway. I shipped my clear lenses to Norway on my dime, Curtis hooked me up with the reds on his, and our new friend in Norway is excited to pay it forward at his end.

And here’s a crappy picture with only the reds lit.

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!

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…

Here’s some pictures of the final repairs.  I didn’t cut the replacement core support off as accurately as I would have liked, and some of these areas are pretty thin (with that gooey adhesive between stamped layers), but all in all, I’m really happy with how these repairs turned out.    As I was telling my friend Kris the other day, Hooray!  I’m back to Square One of my rally car build!

The outer sides of the “rails” are fairly thin, and the adhesive between the stamped layers can make for some really frustrating welding.  Despite grinding things down thoroughly before the work, the welds still got contaminated, or the torch wanted to burn right through.  This was pretty tricky stuff.  Even so, I don’t care what it looks like so long as the front end wont be ripped off by heavy sweep one day.

Perhaps you noticed my new crossmember location bits.  Since this core support is from a FWD Galant LS, it doesn’t have the provisions to locate the AWD VR4 front crossmember.  Mike trimmed up some CrMo tubing he had lying around and set it in place for a perfect solution.  These are merely tacked into place for now, as the clearances are too tight for him to get the torch in there to finish them up with the Tig.  He’s going to get a Mig from a friend and lay down the last four beads in the near future.

What else is new?  Well, I went to move a blanket in my trunk the other day and found a JDM Cylcone intake manifold back there!  I totally forgot that was even there!  These things are pretty slick.  They have a slightly smaller plenum than the USDM 4G63T and 8 runners.  At low engine speeds, prior to and shortly after the turbo begins to build boost, only one runner is feeding each cylinder.  This results in greater intake charge velocity, meaning a noticeable improvement in low end torque.  Once the engine is really cooking, the ECU opens the butterflies, effectively doubling the volume of the runners, for full power.  I’m told there is a little loss of top end with these, but I’ll have a restrictor on the turbo eventually and torque down low trumps HP up top in my book.

Now I’ve got to decide – do I want to bolt up the Cyclone, convert to DSMap, and drive the car a bit or do I want to pull the roof skin and front glass so I can get the cage started.  Hmmm…

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.

Of course it’s a Galant VR4.  What other rally cars are there? (Don’t answer that.)

Moose is letting Tony Chavez drive the car this year and he will be acting co-driver, so we had to swap the seats around.  This involved a little drilling, a little welding, and a lot of sweating, since it’s still well over 100* here in Phoenix during the day.

We went over the car so that I could re-familiarize myself with it, as I will be running service for the guys, along with good friends (and fellow Galant VR4 owners) Michael Rodarte and Mike Foster.  Monday and Tuesday of this week, Moose and I will be getting together to sort the two sets of spare wheels and tires we want for the race, as well as cleaning out and reloading the service van.

As I did last year, I will try to tweet as many pictures from the rally as possible next weekend.  Reception is spotty out in the wilderness, but I’ll do my best.  Good things happen at Prescott.  I’m looking forward to going.  Hopefully, in 2010, I can enter the rally with my own rally car to celebrate my fifth consecutive year attending.

The Mitsubishi A6M Zeke, or Zero, was a formidable fighter plane which reigned terror upon the allied forces in the Pacific theater during WWII.  Many kamikaze, suicide pilots flew Zeros.  Considering my Galant 195/2000 is being built to one day face death in a ditch during a rally, I thought a Zero paint scheme might be fitting.  But what would it look like?

This was my first – serious – attempt at drawing something in Photoshop as a vector file.  It’s pretty rough around the edges, but I think it turned out pretty damn cool.  The original idea was to draw the car up and then remove the photo beneath it, but I figure there will be plenty of time to practice in the future.

I plan on doing up a couple more versions of this theme to go with the multiple paint schemes I found during my A6M research this afternoon.  Let me know what you think!

EDIT: I’m going to keep adding the images to this post as I do them.

None of these are as nice as I would like them, but they help me to visualize the ideas in my head.  The next challenge is already underway…

Another idea I’m considering is the one at the bottom of this very grainy, hard to read picture I found.  Considering the car is currently flat black, this might be a piece of cake to pull off in a weekend with some red spray paint.

Finally, anyone out there think I ought to throw any kind of historic accuracy out the window and stylize one of the schemes a la this pretty awesome image I found from some video game out there?  What do you think?  Thanks!