Welcome back to Wheeler Dealers USA where we pick up tired old classics and fix them up before turning them loose for a new lease on life. As a recap for you, the past episodes can be found here:
Episode 1: 1990 SAAB 900 Turbo
Episode 2: 2003 Toyota Celica GTS
Episode 4: 1973 Cadillac Coupe DeVille
We broke the news a little early about this one: I bought another car
The back story on this motor is a kid owned it as a stock Protege DX and dreamed of the JDM Familia GTR version, so he actually bought a real BPT from somewhere and installed it. Before he could get it running, his folks found out how much cash he blew and took the car. Somehow kid figures out he's never getting the car back let alone getting it to run, so he sold it to some distant relative who actually got it to drive. That guy figured out the head gasket was blown and sold it to his coworker, who actually had the head rebuilt at a proper shop and got the motor back together. This was about 2 years ago, when I come into the picture. I know the owner and have asked about the car many times thinking it would be a cool project/rallycross/chump car. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago and he booms the motor hard on his DD (a wicked turbocharged and built Scion tC), so now he's hard up for cash. I walk in and get her for $300 squids. I finally took delivery on Friday after buying and installing a battery, a clutch master cylinder, wiper blades, and an air filter.
Here is our starting point after getting the old girl back to the workshop:
The old girl had sat in a field for a few years, so this time I opted to wash her off and take care of some detailing first. The rusty wiper arms just needed a lick of semi-gloss paint.
The wheels were especially shabby, with flaking chrome, curbing, and scratches everywhere. Rather than try to polish them up, we decided some high-gloss black would do better.
Notice our custom-made wheel painting template to save on masking time and tape. That leaves more to do some of the more glaring trim pieces, this time in low-gloss to match the condition of the rest.
Then came the hard work, under the bonnet. This old girl may have the roaring heart of a proper rally special, but she was sick with a refusal to start without fluid, sputtering, backfires, and no boost. Try to stay with me on the number of faults fixed, ready? Disconnected the power booster vacuum from the blow-off valve and put to the intake, connected the wastegate vacuum properly, connected 3 other vacuum lines left loose, bolted the radiator to the mounts, tied the wiring loom off of the turbo, installed the coolant overflow bottle found in the trunk, removed 4 extraneous hoses and 3 extraneous wires to/from nowhere in the engine bay, tightened every hose clamp, tightened the engine ground, and, I E36 M3 you not, tighten the loose distributor hold-down bolt after resetting the timing. Yes, literally the exact same issue as the SAAB from Episode 1. No, the same mechanic did not touch both cars. Crazy, isn't it?
After a quick test-spin, we realized that although she ran much better, there was a massive James-Bond smoke screen behind us, indicative of oil being sucked through the turbocharger. See that L-shaped hose? That's the oil return line. It's kinked. Ergo, oil backs up, and seeps through the seals. I need to replace that, and the missing downpipe bolt and tighten the other 3, as well as the spark plugs because, again I E36 M3 you not, there are FOUR different spark plugs in this motor! Now, I've found 2 different plugs a number of times on finicky motors, such as the back 2 on an LT1 V8, or the back 3 on a SHO V6, but never have I ever found different plugs in a FWD Inline-4, let alone four of them. As a kicker, it's an Iridium, a Platinum, a V-Power, and a standard copper all in NGK so it's like having a straight flush in plug poker I guess. The leads are also knackered and will need to be replaced. Stay tuned!
