So mine ran, what is the hold up?

prodigy wrote:So mine ran, what is the hold up?

you've been working on DS for... 2 years now...let's be extremely liberal and say i've been "working" on "repairing" mine since the accident - i still haven't touched the one year mark here, buddy. in all reality the silvert has only been in my possession for about 5 weeks.



i accomplished nothing on the silvert project this past weekend. firday i helped zach (prodigy) with his car for a few hours and that was the extent of what happened that night (auto-related anyway). saturday my wife and i had work to do around the house and shopping and stuff like that, then my dad came into town and spent the evening with us... yada yada yada... sunday was fathers' day... AHAHAHFGAGHALDFHO I WANT TO WORK ON THE CAR!!!!

i got a little bit accomplished yesterday. got a late start and called it quits early. my friend mark was in town for the weekend, and i haven't seen him in a few months. so i went to his place around 10ish.

i got the longblock pretty much stripped down completely. pulled off the intake and exhaust manifolds and cleaned the block a little more. the block and head need to be hit with the wire brush to remove oxidation and corrosion, then i'll clean it again and paint it up.

off with the exhaust...

off with the intake...

observe the ridiculous amount of lines and hoses they've got crammed in there! i'm going to switch over to an intake manifold that doesn't have secondary valves. the valves are vaccum controlled, so that's one set of hoses and a solenoid i can get rid of. i'm also going to ditch the egr, so that takes care of another set of lines and actuator. while i'm at it, i might as well remove all the emissions crap.

so here's the bare longblock:exhaust:

intake:

front:

i just dropped almost two benjamins on some new exhaust and intake components from ebay. i've got a header and cold air intake on the way. hopefully they'll get here quickly. while i wait, i can finish cleaning and painting the engine, prep the interior, swap the suspension, and stuff like that. i'll stay busy.

I have only owned DS for a year and a half thank you! Now go do the cam swap!

way to ruin the surprise...

been slow going the last few days. i should have a good update tomorrow.

don't worry, i haven't been slacking. just haven't had time to post because i've been busy.

tuesday we got the engine cleaned up some more, and started painting the block. bill thought it would be a good idea to use a hose...

it probably would have been a good idea if we would have done a better job sealing it up. eh, no big deal. i sprayed some brake parts cleaner in it when we were done and then dumped some oil in it and cranked it over a few times.

here's a picture after getting it cleaned up...

taped and prepped...

primered...

and painted...

so that's all that got accomplised. we spent the rest of the evening hanging out and chatting. during this time, zach convinced me to do the "hot cam" swap. i have two engines laying around... why not? we weren't exactly sure what cams to use where so i needed to find out. i was hesitant to commit without knowing the extent of work involved, but said i would look into it. i also found out that the engine we pulled from the silvert was an s14 ka. there are some slight differences and i plan to take advantage of some of the parts.

so yesterday at work, i looked into the "hot cam" swap and did some research. the task itself seemed easy enough, so i thought i'd give it a shot. ,before i got started, i needed to do a little touch-up work on the block from the night before.

after my research, i decided that i would use the 248/232 (intake/exhaust) comgination. the s14 has 232/232 and the s13 has 240/248. so i started by removing the 232e from the s14. i didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the timing marks as this engine is getting tore down this winter anyway.

then i pulled the valve cover on the s13 ka and marked the timing positions:

oh, and here's a picture of the finished engine - painted and clean:

i proceeded to remove the 248 cam and set it aside, then install the 232 cam and align it. with that in place, i removed the 240 cam and installed the 248 cam. now in order to use an exhaust cam on the intake side, you need to rotate the cam and sprocket 4 teeth counter-clockwise. this will ensure that you'll have the correct vavle timing and lap to not destroy your engine.

here's a picture of me buttoning up the job:bill took this picture and i think it's pretty cool.

all done!

the cam swap was very easy. it makes doing a cam swap on a 4g63 seem like a nightmare in comparison. hopefully this will have been worth the effort. if not, it won't be hard to put back.

i also spent some time removing the s14 intake manifold and stripping it down. the s14 does not have secondary valves like the s13 does. also, the s14 one allready has the egr blocked off and a lot of the emissions crap removed. so i'm going to use the s14 manifold instead of the s13 version. i didn't take any pictures of this, so i'll post some comparison pictures in the next update.

lastly, i'm going to share the color that was selected for the valve cover - wild flower blue. now before you get all bent out of shape, this is my wifes car and she picked out the color. i don't mind it having a feminine touch to it.

tonight, the plan is to strip the sound deadener from the car. i'm going to pick up some dry ice after work and get started on that when i get home. i need to remove the panels and carpet from the trunk and then it's all elbow grease from there.

Wow.. really nice work Dex.. keep it up!lol.. I don't think you like the feminine touch... Rather, I think you just like to touch the feminine

update:

valve cover is painted and the old exhaust has been removed.

that's it.

seriously.

friday, we were up super late working on fady's tibburon. saturday, curt blew up his dsm. sunday, we pulled the blown 4g63.

here's the pics:

before paint:

after paint:

on the long block:

yeah, i painted the dipstick too. i'm debating whether or not i want to paint the distributor cap...

i did also get the intake manifold from the s14 ka pulled and stripped down. bill cleaned it up a bit as well:

tiburon:

dsm:

not as much progress as there was when we were kicking this thing off, but progress nonetheless.

ok, last monday (6-25) we finally got some dry ice. the pellets don't last very long, especially when your wife calls after you have them dumped out and says, "why didn't you wait for me?" so i had to load them all back up in the cooler... :roll: the dry ice works great though, but since i lost so much waiting for michelle to get back, i need to get some more to finish the job.

smokin' cold.

big curt and i scraping away:

michelle supervising again...

here's a picture of the progress:

later on i pulled the trunk and lights. the trunk is beant and not in really good shape, so i'm going to use the one from my old coupe. the plan was to use the coupe doors, trunk and steering column so i would only need one key for the car. however, the key doesn't work for the doors for some reason. go figure. so now i'm going to be stuck finding a matching set of cylinders and steering column... best bet is going to be the old vert.

the lights are coming out because 1) they're broken on the edges, and 2) i'm getting some nicer, newer ones.

here's me removing the trunk scissors:

a shot of the rear now:

then i put the final touches on the valve cover. i just use an orbital sander to remove the paint from the top of the letters. it works great and the effect is just what i like.

to finish the evening, we pulled the remainder of the exhaust. it's all one piece from the manifold back, and it was all cobbled together.

tuesday (6-26), bill and i went on a parts run. we picked up a vlsd and a new carpet from wolfe (member of some other boards - aspec, xceed, etc.). he gave me a great deal and i'll be picking up some more parts from him in the future.

then we had to run over to visit rich (the guy doing the vk56de swap into an s14) to pick up an s14 radiator for zach. we spent some time checking out his project car and shooting the breeze before we headed home. wow, that vk is huge!

so here's my vlsd and new carpet:



saturday (6-30), michelle and i did a few other things. michelle started putting brackets back onto the engine and swapping a few small parts from the old engine bay into the new one. i spent the majority of my time removing the rear diff.

finally getting her hands dirty:

parts are supposed to start coming in this week, but we're going to be really busy getting zach's car ready for the upcoming drift battle 5. we probably won't get much done on the vert until after the event.

You have Tim Horton's in Saginaw??? I'm moving.

http://www.timhortons.com/en/a....html

Keep up the good Work!

well, of course we have tim hortons in saginaw! we're "canada". remember?

FINALLY!! page 2!

anyways, i've been really busy the last couple weeks and haven't had much time to update the project log or actually work on the sil40 vert. i've been really busy at work doing inspections in the field for a windfarm that john deere is putting in the thumb (that's what we call the part of michigan that looks like the thumb of the mitten). i had a lot of 10-14 hour days on that. now i'm back in the office though and have some time to update.

outside of work, i spent a lot of time helping my teamates get zach's car ready for driftbattle that was last weekend. i've got some pictures of the event here. zach's car is the primered widebody s13 hatch. so yeah... i've been really busy.

i did get some time last week to work on the car though. last tuesday i got out of work early (because i went in at 4am), so i picked up my new intake manifold gaskets from napa. then i went to get some more dy ice and finished removing the sound deadener in the floor pan. i'd like to get some type of thermal insulation to put on the driver side of the tunnel because it gets hot there, but i might get some header wrap for that area instead... i'm undecided. any thoughts?

then i spent some time cleaning the intake manifold and removing the transmission and driveline parts from the s14 ka. the clutch wass pretty worn out, so i picked up a new disc from advance auto for $24. i dropped the flywheel off at the machine shop and picked it up yesterday. i also picked up a new pilot bushing/bearing (whatever) to replace the auto one that we ground out from the s13 ka.

last night we got some more work done. michelle, curt, and i put a few hours in. michelle started by removing the rest of the sound deadener from the tunnel. then she went back to the white vert to remove the carpet. she pulled all the interior panels, and then the seats. with all of that out of the way she pulled out the old carpet. we're going to use it to try to trim the hatch carpet a little better before we toss it in the silvert.

here's michelle, hard at work getting the carpet out of the old vert:

michelle and i also bolted up the header:

curt and i spent most of our time on the engine. we finished installing the intake manifold by running necessary vaccum and coolant lines. i bypassed the coolant lines that go through the intake manifold and the throttle body. it seems to me that it would actually heat the intake and throttle body rather than cool it... :roll: i deleted all of the other vaccum lines and just ran one from the throttle body to the fuel pressure regulator. it really cleans up the intake side of things.

then we installed the pilot bearing, flywheel, clutch, and pressure plate. with those on, we torqued all the bolts to spec. before we were officially "finished" curt cleaned up the oil pan and painted it to match the valve cover. afterwards, we sat around listening to talk radio and looking at car stuff on the laptop.

ready to bolt up the tranny:

curt painting the oil pan:

oh yeah, yesterday my grill came in the mail. it ended up being the wrong one! they sent me an s14 kouki grill instead of the gtr grill. so they sent me a message back saying if i sent them $30, they'll ship me the right grill and i can just keep or sell the other one. i think it seems like an ok deal. i'm not thrilled with it, but they're in japan/china so i don't have a lot of good options other than to hope they come through.

also, i spent some more money recently. i ordered the "origin" tail lights a while ago but paid for them yesterday. i've also got an aftermarket antenna that i just ordered. both of those should be coming within a week or so. now all i need is paint.
Modified by DeXteR at 10:38 AM 7/18/2007

last night went really, really slow. my wife and i got a late start due to some technical difficulties with our grill... fady came out later on to lend a hand as well.

michelle spent almost all of her time cutting and installing the new carpet. she did lend a hand when we bolted a few more parts to the block too. started off with the freshly painted oil pan, then the transmission brackets, and then attempted to put the two intake brackets on. the bolts from the s13 intake didn't fit because they were too small. i don't know if this is a manufacturer thing or if at some point in time the holes were re-tapped because someone was retarded. :?

michelle gave up on the carpet after a few hours and fady and i wrestled with the transmission for most of the night. the thing just wouldn't slide into the crank. once we got it on far enough to stick some bolts in it we forced it in with the other bolts. a lot of time was also spend tracking bolts down. i dont' know how or why, but it seems as though i misplaced a bunch of nuts and bolts... i think the shop is just getting too crowded. i might have to spend an evening tidying up again soon. i finished the evening by bolting the motor mounts onto the brackets.

so here's the half-installed carpet:

in this picture you can see the oil pan and motor mounts installed:

transmission FINALLY in place:

i have a few pictures of some of the goodies that need to be installed at some point in time.

silvia wheel that zach hooked me up with:

the trunk lip spoiler:

the wrong grill:anyone need an s14 kouki grill?

oh, i tested my electric fans the other day too. i was thinking about fabricating a shroud for these. for now, though, i think i'll just mount them through the radiator.

Nice manifold!!



Wish I lived closer.. i'd love to help you wrench. I love car projects!!! Really nice job so far.

eh... header is just a cheapy ebay thing. weld quality is sufficient, not as clean as i like to see. also, the bungs did not come with plugs, so i might have to fab some up. i also bought a "high flow cat" (ie. test pipe) and cold air intake from the same place on ebay. all cheap stuff. it's all good enough to make car show judges take note and maybe give me a few extra ponies and a lot of extra noise. overall, i'm satisfied with the parts.

the intake and exhaust is all coming off next winter anyway, so i didn't see any reason to spend a bunch of money. it's kind of hard to route a turbo from the downpipe.

finally made the progress i wanted to see!

last night curt, bill, michelle, and i were working on the vert. michelle worked on the carpet and interior some more. the carpet hasn't bee secured, but it fits good enough. she got the rear panels and rear seat in. it's starting to look like a car again! after that, she was done.

interior:

curt and bill spent some time working on curt's 4g63. they were cleaning and painting and whatever while i worked on the ka24de. i had bill drop the cat-back from the white vert while i fought with coolant lines for a while. then decided i needed to just hit up autozone to get some new hose. got that all done and was ready to drop it in.

here we go...

come on, bill!

almost...

FINALLY!!!

notice the gear selector... 5-speed swapped vert ftw! i'm really excited to row through the gears with the top down.

it's really coming along now.

Nice work DeXteR!!! i like the look of the engine bay so far!

Are you gonna go with the Valve cover color for the body color as well?!?!That would be pretty interesting!

Damn this project is pretty cool

Projects looking good and the wild flower blue actually looks nice.

ok, so right now the plan is to do stage 0.5 - i'll explain. you can go back and see what stages 1-3 include. i should probably re-post those and update them as a few things have changed.

anyways, stage 0.5 is just to get it running and driveable. no paint (sort of), no aero, no power doors. it will have the HUD dash, cluster, and projector, but not the windshield. we need to either sand off or paint over the black stripe running the length of the car. for a while, the vert and zach's widebody are going to be primer grey siblings.

stage 1 will be completed once it's time to paint. so the aero (trunk lip spoiler, zenki lip, gtr grill) will be added during paint and the HUD windshield will be installed after paint. hopefully zach and i will be ready for paint before the end of august so michelle and i can enjoy stage 1 for a month or so before we put the sil40 vert into storeage.

one of the members on TCEvolution.com photoshopped what i want the silvert to look like after stage 1 paint - black top, gunmetal/dark grey metallic bottom, wildflower blue pinstripe:

now, time for some updates:

FRIDAYwe didn't get started until later on in the evening. i worked on reconnecting the engine harness and michelle worked on reinstalling the trunk. with those done, we installed some non-broken tail lights and the rear garnish.

michelle, messing with the trunk:

the engine with some wiring done:

SATURDAYwe got started in the afternoon. i had michelle swap the rear suspensions between verts. the springs on the silvert had been "modified" (that is, heated and deformed) to achieve a lower ride height. this is not a good idea as it causes the springs to deform into weird shapes and weakens the coil in these spots. i'll take my stock ride height over weak suspension components any day.

here's michelle bolting up the rear struts from the white vert to the silvert:

here's the rear struts from the silvert:notice how disfigured those springs are! you can see where they applied the heat to the coil where it's rusty.

with the rear suspension swapped out, we bolted up the 255-wrapped 17x9's!

while michelle was busy in the car, i was busy under the car. i installed the vlsd, driveshaft, and the rest of the exhaust. everything went pretty smooth until i started tightening the bolts on the cat delete pipe. with the bolts tightened, the downpipe hits the floor pan... great. i don't feel like messing with this, so i'm just going to put some header wrap on the downpipe so it won't super-heat the floor pan and also keep it from rattling. maybe over the winter i'll adjust this so it's not bumping the floor pan.

here you can see the exhaust and drivetrain fully assembled:

curt, fady, and bill came over later in the evening. bill only stayed for a little while because he had to spend some time with his ball and chain... er... uh... his girlfriend :lol: [just teasing, buddy]. i gave fady the responsibility of figuring out the wiring for the HUD subharness. he made quick work of it, but then found out it wasn't going to work anyway as the connectors were missing. i called zach and he schooled me in the ways of the cluster subharness. it's not going to work without more rewiring, so i'm just going to use his for a while.

michelle and i spent some time swapping the hood and fuel door release cable. yeah, michelle made a boo-boo. when she was bolting up the struts, she somehow pinched the cable. when i pulled the release, to install the fender side markers, the cable snapped. no more access to the trunk and fuel tank... so we just swapped the one from the white vert.

later on in the evening, fady, curt, and i swapped the front suspension. it went really fast with the three of us working at it. again, with the suspension swapped, we could put the front 962's on!

SUNDAY

not much got accomplished. i had to run to midland to get the powersteering/waterpump belt. it's a special order piece that no one in saginaw had. i ordered it from advance auto parts saturday afternoon expecting to pick it up sunday. no such luck. i have to call the manager and give him an earfull. i'm a regular customer there and they're not going to be happy that i wasn't happy.

anways, while i was out and about i made a trip to lowes to get some nylon washers for mounting the electric fans to the radiator. so when i got home, we installed the fans and remembered that i didn't have a crank pulley. we quit working and went to get some smoothies at tropical smoothie cafe.

we'll be back at it again tonight. hopefully we'll get this thing running!

michelle and i worked alone last night and got quite a bit done. we started off by installing the pullies, belts, radiator and cold air intake. we had to mess around with the cai for a while because it doesn't fit realy well with the radiator where it's at, so i think i'm going to cut some of the intake off where it attaches to the throttle body.

next michelle and i installed the dash - the HUD dash with the projector. i've been waiting a long time for that. it's been almost a year since i put the HUD windshield in the white vert... i just need bill to repair the cluster subharness that zach gave me and i can put the cluster in and hook up the projector. i hope everything works.

here's the wife and the dash:

after that, michelle put in the steering wheel and got started on the seats. i crawled under the car and hooked up a few more sensors and connectors and the bracket for the clutch line. it wasn't long before michelle got tired and fed up with the seats and called it a night. so i picked up the slack and finished installing the front seats.

interior is really coming together:

silvia wheel and HUD projector:

then i did some more wiring and routed some hoses and things like that. i got the radiator fans wired in as well as the mass air flow sensor. i need a new one though because the connector on the maf is broken so i just have it taped there for the time being. i routed a few vaccum lines for the intake and decided to call it a night. i need to get one vaccum cap and an inline filter with larger inlet/outlet nipples for the ventilator.

the engine bay right now:

the goal is still to get her fired up. i just want to hear her running.

yesterday after work, i tried to track down plugs for the header. i went to every part store and muffler shop on my way home. i even stopped at home depot... i ended up ordering a couple oil drain plugs from napa and it cost $10 for the pair! i also picked up the rest of the hardware i needed to finish installing the cold air intake including a vaccum T and a larger in-line filter.

i had some more parts laying in the kitchen when i got home. finally got my new tail lights and also got a new antenna - i have to get rid of that flagpole that comes from the factory. i need to have zach modify the stock antena mount to accept this new antena. it just doesn't bolt on like i was hoping it would. the antenna will go on right away, but the tail lights won't be installed until after it gets painted. there just too nice to rock on a primer car.





i haven't been getting a lot of sleep because i've been putting so much time into this thing. so when i finally got home, i ate dinner and fell asleep. i got about a 2-hour "nap" and finally made it out to the shop around 9pm. i say "nap" because compared to the amount of sleep i've been getting lately (3-4 hours a night) a 2-hour nap is a lot!

so i was working solo last night. i finished up the engine harness and completed the install of my cold air intake. i installed an in-line fuel filter to catch all the crap that comes out of the pcv valve. once that was done, i re-installed my upper strut tower bar to complete the engine bay. all i need to do now is drop in a fresh battery and fire it up.

oh, and here's a shot of the radiator fans installed:

i got the gear oil put in the tranny and diff and installed the gear selector completely. after that, i figured it was time to start getting the body put back together. so i re-installed the doors, fenders, and lights.



on my lunch break, i went and put insurance on the vert. on the way home, michelle and i are going to the secretary of state's office to get the vert registered and plated. when i get home, i'm going to put my exhaust plugs in, drop in a battery, and turn it over! if all is well i'm going to toss the rest of the fender bots in, install the hood, wrap the downpipe and take it for a spin!

Looks like it is going to turn out to be a really good looking car in the end!

Dex, I think I see more pics of your wifey working on your car than you working on it... lol.

vertbish wrote:Dex, I think I see more pics of your wifey working on your car than you working on it... lol.

first of all, it's her car, so i make her work on it as much as she can. if she's going to be taking credit for the build, she needs to be involved. second, i'm the one who takes most of the pictures, so it's hard to get pictures of myself working. don't worry, i've put more time into this car than everyone else combined.

friday, i got nothing done. i had to work until 8pm then after that my wife and i went grocery shopping. we pretty much went home and went to bed. my gtr grill did finally arive though. it's not as nice as i was hoping it would be, but for the price, it's just fine.

i didn't get a chance to get to the vert saturday until later in the evening because of michelle's family reunion. we spent a few hours reading through the wiring diagrams and trying to figure out what was wrong. michelle got tired and went to bed about the time fady and bandit came out to lend a hand.

fady was telling me about what he did thursday night after i went to bed. and it seemed to me that i would be a good idea to pull the fuel pump and test it out. ended up working well. but the more we messed with the wiring, the more things weren't making sense. i was getting really discouraged until i heard some sparking and fady exclaming "omg! i knew it was a loose ground!"

turns out, one of the engine grounds was not securely fastened. as soon as that got snugged up, all of the electrical systems were once again normal! fady electricuted himself with the coil though when he was checking the spark. LOL. it got him good. so we hooked the fuel pump back up and gave the key a turn. it fired just enough to let me know that it would start. i wanted to let michelle be the one to start it. so we packed up and called it a night... at 4am.

sunday afternoon, michelle started the car and it ran! FINALLY! after months of little sleep and countless hours of hard work, that car finally started. so we backed it out to do some finishing touches, get all the tools and stuff out of it and take it for a spin.



all the vitals looked good and it was running pretty good. i need to adjust the idle get a better hose for the iac (idle air control - right now it's kind of kinked). there's a little bit of shutter when i take off from a stop, but that's probably the fresh clutch disc. also, it's got some serious ride-height issues that need to be worked out.

once we were home, it was back to work to get it ready to drive later that day. we put the rest of the interior back in (except the glove box), vaccumed the carpet, and cleand the seats. we spent some time trying to figure out a way to make the rear seatbelts work for the front... the best we could do was disconnect the lower connection and put it under the rear seat bracket for the front seat. it was ok for michelle, but it wouldn't fit around me. so, the next purchase is going to have to be some harnesses. swe slapped the hood on, gave it a quick wash and it was ready.

so we took the sil40 vert out to our club's weekly gathering/hang-out at Tropical Smoothie Cafe and it seemed to be a big hit. on the way there, one of my egr plugs got spit out. so there went $5 down the drain... and now it sounds like i have the biggest exhaust leak in the world... which, it kind of does. despite the fact that it sounded like crap, all the body lines aren't squared up, the hideous paint job, and the missing grill, it was nice to finally get it out and have some people appreciate the hard work we've put into it.

it was well into the night by the time we headed home and i must say that i'm rather impressed with the projectors. they do a really nice job. it's a big improvement over the flip-up lights. i'd like to see how well the fog lights work, but i don't know when i'll get a chance to test them out.

here's a night shot of the hood on the car:

and a shot of the projectors:

tonight, i'd like to get the body lined up (hood, doors, trunk) the grill put on, and spray bomb a new coat of primer to get rid of that hideous black stripe. i may end up putting the power doors on right now and worry about getting the panels at a later time. or maybe i'll hack up the non-power panels to fit the power doors to make due for now. the reason for this is that the driver-side door lock is broken and the passenger side window crank is missing. but with the power doors i have, the cylinder locks don't work... :roll:

Nice man, lookin good! It has come a long way! Now it just needs a drop... but overall great work and keep us posted!

Nice work, Dex.

Just blank out the crank holes on the non-power door panels, and you'll be good to go after cutting the switch holes bigger.

we're going to get coilovers sometime between now and next spring. so that'll give me plenty of time to save up and find the right set.

here's some pics i took last night of the car with the hood on and test fitting the gtr grill:





i didn't get much done yesterday. the wife and i had to go to her aunt's surprise 50th birthday and i was just wiped out by the time i got home. tonight, i'm hoping to test the coupe doors and see if everything works and then if all is well, try swapping the manual door panels to the power coupe doors. then i might put the old coupe trunk on and re-align the hood. this is all stuff i wanted to do yesterday, but the lack of sleep over the last month or so is starting to catch up with me.

At least your grille looks like it lines up pretty well. Mine looks like its kinda slanted from one side to the other.

WOW that coming along very nicely. Liking the blue valve cover and oil pan.

car looks real good kinda sittin high i hope you plan on lowerin it just a lil!