Reviving the dead. It's been a while since I've been gone. I can't believe the Galant's been sitting lifeless in my driveway for 9 years/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/uhh.gif
So going back to where this left off, when I pulled the head and discovered the valve seat issues that started down a very bad road for the car. I was going to take it down to our local machine shop which is pretty well known to have the valve redone. When I did the tear down, I found that not only had whoever had rebuilt the head had not lapped the valves, they hadn't cleaned out the oiling holes either. The cams and cam journals were completely destroyed leaving the head totally trashed. It also called into question the the condition of the bottom end as I wasn't sure how much of that debris could have made it into the bottom end. I had a spare 6-bolt short block that needed a rebuild, but replacement heads weren't so cheap, especially without a core. Luckily this all happened before I thrown on my brand new turbo.
At this point I started totaling the cost and knowing how much more I had to put in to 'maybe' get it running caused me to put it on hold. The other big factor was how bad of shape the chassis was in. I never really addressed it on here before, but the chassis had pretty bad cancer on the floorboards/frame rails/body/everywhere. I was aware of this when I got it. I tried to keep most of the valuable goods to thing that could transfer over, but I was loosing interest for all the work which seemingly was going to have a short payout before I'd have to transfer it to a new chassis and potentially restart the troubleshooting again. I wasn't ready to part ways with it just yet, but was still somewhat optimistic that I'd get the itch to finish it eventually.
Fast forward 9 years and its become a reminder of my lack of follow through and a rather big eyesore. Every time I move it the rust outline it leaves gets bigger. This last time, I had to jack it up to break each of the wheels loose before I could move it. I had to re-raise it multiple time on each side since the 3 foot long 2x4 that I'd placed between the jack and frame rail kept sinking in further and further. It's time for it to go. Going to pull off some of the more valuable goodies to sell and then its off the the scrap yard. Another VR-4 gone. Hopefully I'll have some stuff posted for sale shortly so that another can live on a bit longer.
On the positive, it'll be making room for my wife's 55' Chevy which she'll hopefully be inheriting early. It needs a little work, but her brothers got it up and running, just needs a little sorting to make it what we want.