He was a little rough on the trails, though. Ironic how something that feels so soft and pliable on tarmac would feel like it had no suspension at all on dirt. There were times when even the roof skin was oscillating, making a banging noise. It was rough, but it was supposed to be rough. It’s a work in progress.

The above picture was my location, looking back behind the truck. Here’s a couple more.

Speaks to the rugged fragility of the desert, methinks.

The VIN might say Dodge, but I know what I drive. (You can also see why I sometimes call it “9=Alpha.”)

I walked back down the road behind the truck and snapped a picture. Kinda gives an idea how remote I was. Awesome.

And here’s a shot as I was driving out at the end of the day to give you an idea what the world looks like there.

After spending three separate nights lying in the street underneath a filthy SUV (part 1), I caught a case of food poisoning which put me on the injured list for a solid three days. As soon as I was feeling better, I made the trek to Harbor Freight to collect the bits needed to build the magical “3ft of extensions” required to get the starter out of a Gen I 2.6L Montero.

In the end, even the impact couldn’t loose that last starter bolt. It took a 1/2″ breaker bar with a piece of pipe over it, braced against the drive shaft back behind the transfer case, to finally crack that bastard loose.

And there was much rejoicing. Unfortunately, it was short-lived, as replacing the starter brought no joy. Turned out, when I took my meter to the starter lead, I didn’t compare resistance between the starter and battery post through the lead. There might have been 0.1ohm between the cable ends, but there was 3.6Kohm between the battery post and cable. #FACEPALM

A $10, 15 minute fix ended up being a $300, 4-day fiasco because I got frustrated and didn’t walk away, pour a drink, and really think about the problem.  On the plus side, I got a couple fun mods installed. First up, I replaced the Raider grille with a proper Mitsubishi counterpart. (I’m thinking about getting a Mitsu triple diamond emblem and installing it on the Raider grille, but I don’t know yet.)

I also popped for the vanity plate. $130 for two years’ registration, including $50 for both the Arizona Centennial plate and customization. I want to one day look back and say, “I was in Arizona when it turned 100.”

For some reason, I got cap, rotor, and plugs, but no plug wires. First thing I did was replace the spark plugs. The old, finger-tight Champions came out and a fresh set of NGK V-Powers went in. Pretty sure the Monty runs the same plugs as the GVR4s, which is nice.

The big hole in the heat shield above used to have a pipe connecting it to the bottom of the air inlet (just above it). Since it seldom gets very cold here in Phoenix, I’m not the least bit concerned that it’s missing.

And here’s a picture of the new distributor cap installed. For the non-gearheads who might be visiting this site (for some bizarre reason), inside the cap is a rotor which spins, indexed to the rotation of the crankshaft and cams. As it rotates, it routes electricity from the coil pack (connected to the center) out to the individual plug wires. Old school, for sure.

Raider ran like a champ that night. All the way to work the next day, too. But on the way home, it started bucking and misfiring. I didn’t even bother troubleshooting. The plug wires were old and crusty, I messed with them, they did not like it. I picked up a new set on my way to JohnnyB’s place Saturday morning for some AZ Crawler Montero mentoring.

First thing we did was drive to a DIY carwash and spray the engine bay down with Gunk heavy duty gel degreaser.

When the can of gel was spent, we emptied a can of regular strength Gunk foam degreaser.

We let it soak for a couple minutes, then blasted it with high pressure water from the carwash. It turned out great and started right up!

Back at JohnnyB’s fort, where there were two more Gen I Montys, a Gen II, and a new Camaro, we bled the brakes, replacing the bulk of the old, dirty fluid, bled the clutch, also replacing most of the dirty fluid, and lubed the front end of the chassis. I learned a LOT that afternoon, including the locations of all the zerk fittings up front needing greased.

Got the new plug wires installed, too.

But the big improvement seemed to come from getting the front right shock fully installed. I was so surprised to see an inch-plus between the retaining nut and washer that I didn’t even snap a picture. With the wheel and tire off, I could just grab the shock and move it around by hand. No wonder the truck would feel unsettled over random bumps in the road!

After a couple celebratory Busch beers, I hit the highway for home. Managed to do 80mph according to the speedometer, which was really nice, considering the truck had a damn hard time even getting to 70mph previously.

So these are the last pictures of 464 when it was mine, the day I washed it for the last time. Be good to Mike, 464. Be good to Mike.

For all the problems I had with this car, in the end, it turned into one hell of a bad ass daily driver with a couple weekends’ elbow grease and parts laying around the fort. If I didn’t still have 195/2000, I would be really sad to see it go.

Moving forward, I’ll be running a lot of pictures of Raider/Monty/9-Alpha work. There’s plenty to do…

I tried re-positioning and re-tightening a couple heater core hose clamps. No dice.

I ended up buying 3ft of hose and driving it to the shop. With the airbox removed, I got my first real look at the carburetor. It’s neat, but I’m looking forward to tossing it in favor of one of those clever 2.6 Magna intake manifolds from Australia and Megasquirt.

Here’s another shot of the carby. Kinda looks like the Predator with all those hoses.

The 3ft of hose I bought on my way to the shop turned out to be too small, so Keith let me borrow MEGAVAN (my nickname for it, not his – yet), his chipped, 7.3L Powerstroke Ford E350 Clubwagon, to run out and get more. Which turned out to be too big. Just as well, turns out the heater hoses weren’t the problem. It was this little guy.

That’s right. The easiest coolant line to reach out of maybe all of them. Ah well, it’s fixed now.

And I even got to enjoy driving the Raider in the rain soon after, which was a nice treat. (We don’t get much rain here in Phoenix.)

Before bleeding the clutch, I changed the fluid. Use a turkey baster (or vac pump like this one) to suck most of the old fluid from the reservoir (not all, try to avoid air bubbles), top off with fresh fluid, then use the Mighty Vac to pull the bad fluid down through the lines, making sure to keep the reservoir topped up as you go.

Another option, as mentioned to me by my friend and mentor, Toybreaker, is to rig up a way to keep a surplus of fluid feeding the reservoir, then crack the slave cylinder bleeder valve, and go to lunch. When you get back, the clean fluid will have pushed the dirty out. How dirty does clutch fluid get over time? See below.

Gearshifts are super nice with a decent clutch and fresh, clean fluid in the system.

WARNING: IF YOU PAINT YOUR CAM GEARS, DO NOT GET PAINT ON THE CAMSHAFT MATING SURFACES. If you do, you’ll have a hard time getting a proper torque reading (should be 72ft-lbs, if I recall). See that wear on the lower timing cover near the belt? That’s caused by a wobbly cam gear coming loose under operation. Scary shit. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I set the base timing with the timing light. You can just make out the white timing mark on the crank pulley. (I put a dab of white paint on the notch so I could see it easier.) This was honestly the first time I’ve ever set base timing on a 4G63T. I made several mistakes. CAS wasn’t installed properly, forcing me to crank it all the way one direction to get timing right, and I also had the inductive trigger for the timing light on the wrong plug wire. DOH!

464/1000 engine bay all cleaned up and ready to go.

Here’s why unitized (or “unibody”) construction is so popular in new cars. Notice the right rear wheel off the ground. Now notice there is no jack or stand over there. The rigidity of the unitized structure distributes the load evenly, allowing the car to remain pretty much level lifted from just three corners. Picture taken prior to replacing rear diff oil with Redline HD Shockproof.

Part of the extras I included in the sale were a set of Sony Xplod speakers I had lying around. I also left the Pioneer dash speakers in and installed the radio that came in the Raider. It’s a long drive back to Albuquerque and I wanted to make sure Mike stayed sane.

Sony Xplod speaker

As I publish this post, 464 has been with Mike two full weeks. Only a couple more pictures to post from my end. Watch this space.

This yellow-striped line wasn’t connected to anything. I’ve since connected it to a barb on the bottom of the far side of the air filter box.

I’m not entirely sure where this one is supposed to go yet, but I removed the screw and connected it to the solenoid on the “device box” on the driver’s side of the engine bay.

Here’s a picture of the device box. Note the open barb on the solenoid lower left corner.

I still don’t know where this shortie is supposed to go.

Three capped vacuum fittings on the carby. No idea. (I still need to consult the FSM.)

Turns out there’s supposed to be vacuum on that cap on the right. The leads on the little thermo-switch just under the upper radiator hose, however, are missing.

I was able to figure out where a couple of these go, so here’s a golf clap.

I thought wrong.

Nevermind the incompetent teenager who made a right turn from the inside of three lanes and drove directly into me has lied to his insurance carrier, getting my claim denied before filing a claim against my insurance that I’m going to have to fight and likely go to court over, but I hoped in the Raider this morning to go out exploring with a buddy.

Topped off the oil. Topped off the coolant. Jumped behind the wheel and bumped the starter. The engine fired right up, but as it was cold, stumbled and I was too lazy to give it any gas to help it along, so it died. When I hit the starter again, all I got was a click. You gotta be kidding me…

I cleaned the battery terminals. No dice.
I checked voltage at the battery. 12.2VDC. No dice.
I cleaned the terminals on the starter itself. No dice.
I crawled under the filthy, oil-soaked undercarriage to remove the starter. NO DICE.

Here’s some pictures from under the Raider…

It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday evening. Vanessa and I get a craving for cereal. I go to the store. On the way home, I find myself at a red light behind a purple Honda Civic, both of us waiting to make a left turn, northbound. The light turns green, inch out into the intersection, and after what seemed like a longer-than-usual wait, got a nice gap to safely turn left.

We both turn into the correct, inside of three northbound lanes. No sooner had I crossed the crosswalk in my 100hp truck, I practically had to jump into the far right lane, as the Honda ahead of me had all but stopped accelerating. Not that he had applied the brakes or activated a turn signal; he just slowed way down. This happens from time to time, when someone sitting at the left turn light there decides he want to get Jack In The Box afterall, makes the turn, then has to immediately brake in the left lane to pull into the parking lot.

No big deal, I check my mirror and jump into the center lane, when I look back, everything is fine. Now, since I have to turn right into my neighborhood some 100 or so yards ahead, I glance at my right mirror again before moving into the outer lane. Just as my eyes return to the road in front of me, there’s a flash of light in my left periphery, as said 1993 Honda Civic driver slams right into my door.

Neither of us was going more than maybe 30mph at this point. The Honda driver apparently decided he wanted to go to the Circle K on the northeast corner of the intersection and – without braking or signalling – simply yanked his wheel to the right to make a quick dive for the driveway. Unfortunately, my truck was in the way.

Here’s the damages…

The poor kid, who – to his credit – appeared to be an enthusiast, jumped out of his car, apologizing profusely. “I’m so sorry, sir. Are you okay, sir? I am so sorry, sir.” We both got pretty lucky my truck is a bit higher than stock and his car is a bit lower than stock. The above pictures, while gnarly, are the full extent of the damage (the oil leak is pre-existing and first on my to-do list once the Galant is gone). The Honda, on the other hand, lost a corner light, bumper skin, and fender.

I’m hoping this ordeal will be resolved quicker than the previous incidents I’ve had to deal with in the Galants. Will keep this space updated.

First thing I did was break part of the dashboard in the Raider. Wait. No. First thing I did was remove the sketch alarm brain box stuffed under the dash that did all of nothing. Unnecessary electrical equipment spliced into the main harness with those damned vampire clamps is never a good idea.

Yes. That is DUCT TAPE holding wires together on the left, and SPEAKER wire connecting to small gauge lines to the alarm box (which was already tossed in the garage prior to this picture being taken. In the upper left, you can see the VALET switch for the alarm. Because nobody would ever find it there, right? The big silver button is a starter override, which is a good thing, as now the starter doesn’t work on the ignition key.

Note: The guy I bought the Raider from did NOT do this install. He had the starter bumper put in because it was less expensive than hiring someone to yank the dash and surgically remove some no-name, Dollar Store car alarm which randomly killed the starter.

THEN I broke the dashboard.

On every other Mitsubishi I’ve owned, the radio trim simply clips into place. As I began prying, it started creaking like it was going to break. I stopped, went inside, opened up the FSM (factory service manual), and printed the drawing. It didn’t show any screws coming from the rear. It didn’t suggest six simple screws and the knobs on the HVAC sliders were all that held the entire center console in place, which you’re supposed to remove to conveniently have the whole assembly sitting in your lap (or workbench) to do your work.

And you know what really gets me? Discovering the folks at the home of the $1 dash fire cut the factory harness down to a friggin’ NUB before butt-splicing their overpriced install harness to it, which then used wire nuts to connect to the actual radio pigtail. I mean, just look at this shit.

Oh yeah. Factory harness cut ridiculously short, butt-spliced into half and inch of SPEAKER WIRE, butt-spliced into overpriced retail harness, spliced into Sony radio pigtail. No idea what that purple wire goes to. Maybe the starter?

Next, I pulled the Pioneer out of 464, labelled all the wires, and twisted in the shorty harness. In went the Sony out of the Raider.

Like I said, I figure Mike will want to replace this deck with his own when he gets home, so I just labelled the factory harness leads in the Galant and twisted the wires together. No sense in seriously installing a temporary radio. Hopefully this makes installing the new radio just a little bit easier. Below is the final product in 464.

I took my Infinitys out of the rear deck in 464 and put them in the back of the Raider. I still need to yank the Kenwoods from the front doors on the Galant and replace them with the Sony Xplods from the Raider. Maybe tomorrow night after work. In the meantime, I needed to get the radio back in the Raider before I ran out of daylight.

BAM. One day, I’ll solder in an extension to the nub of a harness behind it, but for now, I have bigger fish to fry.

Oh yeah, and I also got the dome light fixed in the Raider while I was in the backseat installing speakers. Tomorrow, I finish swapping speakers in the Galant and begin the interior detail.