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!

One thing that always cheers me up about rolling [464] into the garage is that “The Beast”  (aka: [195]) has to get out of the way.  I pull the hood pins, re-connect the battery, and it fires right up.  Of course I have to sneak the currently naturally aspirated (intercooler and plumbing are out at the moment) VR4 around the block to throw a little juice back into the battery!  It’s nice to start my maintenance on one Galant with a reminder that the other one still works.

I’ve let the to-do list on [464] get longer than it should be.  Moonroof replacement, AC installation, emissions and registration; all these have been started, but not completed yet.  (It’s just too damn hot.)  On top of all that, I was sitting about 400 miles overdue for a 6,000 mile oil change.  That nonsense ended today.

[464] got a Seafoam treatment through the intake manifold which I like to think told the rest of the neighborhood how I feel about cash for clunkers being spun as a way to reduce emissions.  If you’ve never heard of the Seafoam treatment, take your pick of videos on YouTube.

With the Seafoam treatment done, I disconnected the battery and double checked the vac lines going to my EGR valve.  It had come loose back in May, causing a check engine light, which means the car won’t pass emissions.  I re-connected the hose, but didn’t disconnect the battery.  This time, the CEL is gone, meaning [464] is ready for emissions testing so I can stop driving around on expired tags like some kind of irresponsible jackass.

[464] is now sporting fresh Rotella-T 5W-40 and a new Fram TG6607 filter.  While I was draining the oil, I noticed I’ve got a small leak down there somewhere.  At first, I thought it was the oil pan gasket, but then I saw this ratty-looking hose next to the oil filter, so I removed the clamps and took a razor to the hose.  Surprise! I will never forget that the little section of hose right there next to the oil filter is a coolant line for the pathetic little oil cooler.  190° coolant all over me, my tools, and the garage floor.

After all that, I was tempted to call it a day, but I kept tripping over this cold air intake I have lying around from a DSM that won’t fit on the Galant.  (Battery locations are different.)  It had a hacked DSM airbox on the end of it.  I looked around the garage and saw that I had a spare, GVR4 airbox, so I took the Dremel to it and swapped it in.

I dusted the airbox off and installed it to try it out.  I know it works, but I still wanted to make sure before I spend any time really cleaning and painting it.  Also, note the location of the battery in the GVR4.  In a DSM, it’s where the air filter is in this picture.  I’m going to get the battery installed up by the fuse box in [195] so I can use that intake on it.  [464], however, is staying mostly stock.

As five o’clock approaches, I feel like I’ve accomplished much and taken those baby steps towards re-lighting my fire.  [464] enjoys the good stuff circulating through it’s veins, the check engine light is out, making emissions testing and tags a 30 minute ordeal in the middle of the week, and there is a noticable improvement with this intake mod.  You can almost make out the sound of the 14b spooling up and you can definitely hear the blow off valve recirculating (if he’s venting to atmosphere, kill him in the face).

Maybe I’ll venture back out with a bucket and hose later this evening…

The logical side of my brain tells me that, while Daisy represented who I was, my goals had changed and she no longer represented those goals.  After all, I have long dreamt of rally racing and a front wheel drive, second generation Eagle Talon isn’t exactly the ideal candidate for such a project.  Not that the platform was incapable of dominance, as Kris and Christine Marciniak have demonstrated over the years with their production stock Dodge Neon (which pretty much runs the same engine and transmission), but the interior space in the Talon was extremely tight and, well, I’d rather someone else have her than see her bent in a ditch someday.

I’d hate to see [195] stuffed in a ditch too!

There’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears invested into this particular Galant since I bought it in the winter of 2005.  I replaced the seized engine shortly after dragging it home from the far side of New Mexico.  I rebuilt that engine soon after, when the head gasket went out in the most spectacular fashion in July of 2007.  I chopped off the entire front end and matched up a replacement from a Galant in a junkyard up in Chino Valley after some retard in a Kia made a left in front of me on the two year anniversary of my taking delivery!  With all that work into the car, it would really, really suck to bend it beyond repair in a rally one day.

Unless I had another Galant VR4!

With money from the sale of Daisy (and my wonderful Volvo), I snatched up a steal of a bargain on 464/1000 from Roger up in Prescott.  Aside from the paint being a little less than perfect, not having any AC, and a janky moonroof, this VR4 is in excellent conditon and I thoroughly enjoying both owning and driving it.  I’ve got power windows and locks, a moonroof, leather seats, cruise control, a turbocharger and all wheel drive.  It’s faster than Daisy was and it’s a total sleeper.  On top of all that, it’s easier to pass emissions, as well as cheaper to register and insure!  The logical side of my brain is pleased.

What happened to the passion, though?

With Daisy, it seemed like I was always on fire for the project, for that next big mod.  I had goals and I was marching towards them.  Then one day, I just sort of gave up on them and went a different direction.  Today, I’ve got these two VR4s, but neither of them has a name – just their numbers.  I don’t even refer to either of them as “her” or “she,” because I don’t view them as having a personality or a soul like I did with Daisy.  Daisy had personality.  Daisy was my sidekick.  These are just two numbered sedans.  They are neither good nor evil.  They just are.

Maybe that fire is getting ready to spread.

Maybe it just might be that I’ve been subconsciously dealing with that sense of betrayal Dr. Phil mentioned to Eric Bana in the movie.  Maybe my putting those parts from Daisy into boxes and sending them off to other people (friends, mostly) has broken what little continuity my life had up until recently.  The fire inside has died down.  I don’t really want to modify [464] and the funding to complete [195]‘s evolution into a proper rally car is almost a dream at this point in time, so maybe the fire will just die out completely.

Maybe that fire will be replaced with a wave.

A wave of dirt and dust, that is. I like to think that things will turn around and [195] will become the Mr. Hyde to [464]‘s Dr. Jeckyll.  This picture above is one of my favorites of all that I have of the Galants because it’s really me in there, getting [195] sideways out in the middle of a dry lake bed.  I was on the cusp of achieving my dream of having a real rally car that day.  I’ve never been closer.  I think more seat time is in order.  That will probably better introduce me to any personality [195] might have.  I don’t expect to be referring to the car as a female, but I think I can live with calling it my Beast.

And I don’t have to drive it to know it’s there…  waiting.

I helped Mike pull the old transmission out a while back, so we were planning on my being there to put it back in once the guys at Shep Trans got things fixed, replaced, and shipped back to him.  So yesterday was our day to get the gears in gear, if you will.

We ran into a snag, however, when we realized that we didn’t have a new throwout bearing for the clutch.  The parts counters were all closed yesterday, so we decided not to press Mike’s luck, re-using the old TOB.  Rather than have my drive across the valley have been for nothing, Mike suggested we see what we could do about the obviously leaking fuel cell in the back.

Initially, Mike and I were concerned about the fuel residue running between these two “boxes” under the car.  Between them run serious wiring to power the massive fuel pump as well as his battery connections.  The fuel can’t be good for the insulation on those wires and this is probably the worst place to have catch fire on you. We decided to drop the fuel cell and check it out.

We started by pulling the trim in the trunk to get access to the floor panel, but that ended up being completely unnecessary.  Two 12-AN fittings on the rear of the cell (supply and drain), a pair of 6-AN fittings on the passenger side (return and vent), and four nuts were all that needed undone before the whole shebang lowered right down and out.  It was a piece of cake and we were impressed with the forethought that went into its design.

The leak turned out to be a simple fix too!  The previous owner made smart use of the OEM GVR4 fuel sending unit.  He simply removed the factory fuel pump bits from the assembly and installed things as usual in the corner of the cell.  Unfortunately, he didn’t – for whatever reason – fully tighten all six nuts holding it to the cell, and it was barely installed, resulting in fuel splashing out and then dribbling down the side.  We cleaned the area, reinstalled the sending unit, and made sure the nuts were tightened securely, noting that the studs they went on weren’t all the same length.  All’s well that ends well, though, so Mike decided to clean up the fuel cell prior to reinstallation.

It was 111 degrees yesterday while Mike and I were working on 3/1000 and there was a serious risk that I might sweat all over his stunningly clean fuel cell, but when he ran into the house for something, I had to get a picture of my reflection in that gas tank.  I mean, how often does one get to see his face reflected in something installed under the car?

Once the fuel cell was back in place, we turned our attention to the janky, leaking in almost as many places as the old transmission Moroso oil pan.  Mike got his new oil pan (same model) back from the welder, where a proper, -AN fitting had been installed for the turbo drain.  I was impressed at how the previous owner ditched those damn oil pan bolts for studs, although I soon became frustrated with the seal of the old pan to the block.  We took a lunch break.

After lunch, we made a run out to get a thin putty knife to slip between the pan and the block so we could get that damn oil pan off and I came across this, the latest issue of HondaTuning magazine.  Mike and I laughed.  They must have some skilled photogs at that magazine to get such a sharp exposure out of a rear view mirror like that.  Snarky comments followed along the lines of “IN YOUR FACE… but getting smaller and smaller each time you look at it.” Or, “IN YOUR FACE…  about five seconds after you’ve made your point.” Yeah, most cover cars are shown from the front, but you can’t escape the fact that, no matter how fast this Honda was going, something was going faster.  Guess you had to be there.

In the end, we managed to get the old pan off, but the heat was finally taking its toll on me and I had to hit the road.  Our dog was due to be picked up at the vet sometime after 4 and here it was 4:15.  I had to bounce.  Let me tell you, that 40 minute drive back across the valley in 464/1000 without AC was brutal. I went through two bottles of Gatorade and a bottle of Aquafina in that time.  This heat is really getting old.

Next Sunday, I’ll be going back over to Mikes.  He’s got that throwout bearing now, so we’re going to get the new transmission installed and hopefully move 3/1000 under it’s own power.  Of course, that just depends on how hot it is.  Maybe we just bolt it in place and concentrate on installing beers by the pool.