New GVR4 Owner - Colorado

[Dark_Horse]

Have owned 2 DSM's prior, so I knew what I was getting myself into.

Picked up 455/1000 in the beginning of August from TX and drove it 1,000 miles back to Colorado. Car lived it's whole life in New Mexico and Texas. The car is BONE stock, never been modified. From what history I've gathered, the engine was rebuilt at some point in the last couple of years, but I don't know much more than that. The car is in great shape! I've tried to find rust, but it's practically non-existant.

On the way back from TX, she made it almost all the way to my house. About 40 miles from my house, the exhaust broke right in front of the catalytic converter and started dragging on the ground. Pulled off to the side of the road and had to get a tow truck to get it the rest of the way home.

Besides fixing the exhaust, it does need a bit of work. When I picked it up, it was missing the passenger sun visor clip, drivers side fog light and battery tie-down and the A/C needs to be converted to R133. The drivers rear door also was dented from where it appears that it was hit at very low speeds...Just enough to dent the rear door a little bit. I'm also trying to figure out why the accelerator is so hard to press down. It's either the throttle body, or the throttle cable. I've got a spare TB, so hopefully that'll fix the problem. It's also my hope that fixing the accelerator issue will fix the erratic idle. The shocks/springs could also stand to be replaced.

So far, I have replaced the sun visor clip, fog light and I bought a rear door that just needs to be repainted to match the Summit White.

Plans are to fix the exhaust, radio, accelerator pedal problem, convert A/C to R133, replace the broken antenna, replace the shocks/springs and repaint the new rear door I picked up. That should have her back to damn near perfect.

 

[464/2K]

If you need anything, my brother has a shop in Northglenn. Let us know.

 

For your hard pedal check this out I had the same issue. There is a small piece of plastic that
gets caught up on the small wheel at the end of the throttle cable on the back of the intake manifold
just move it back or remove it, its getting stuck on the throttle cable wheel more than likely you are not
getting full throttle either. If that helps let me know and if you need pics let me know also.

 

[Dark_Horse]

I will take a look tonight when I get home to see if that's what is happening. Thanks for the advice. Would be great if that's all it was.

 

[iceman69510]

I'd go ahead and convert all the way to R134 as long as you are doing it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

By the way, please pm me the VIN of the car. Thanks and welcome.

 

[iceman69510]

Also, that may not be the original engine as it has a DSM valve cover.

 

[SouthCaliVR4]

^^ easy to crack the valve cover too, may have just been replaced for that reason.

 

Quoting Dark_Horse:
I will take a look tonight when I get home to see if that's what is happening. Thanks for the advice. Would be great if that's all it was.


Ok let me know how it works out

 

[Diego]

I will see you shortly. I was up in morrison, awesome place, and even better RedRocks. Moving to Greeley and wouldn't mind the drive to hang out

 

[gmp]

yet another whitey running around town welcome!!!

 

[trexn8]

^^^^yes, Squidbillies rule! Actually watching right now, lol.

 

[Dark_Horse]

Quoting iceman69510:
Also, that may not be the original engine as it has a DSM valve cover.



The engine was replaced at some point in the last couple of years. No clue how many miles are on the rebuild.

 

[89Mirageman]

Great find! White 92's looked the best in my opinion.

 

Welcome home my son! Just kidding. Send a PM if you want any help or want to meet up.

 

[Dark_Horse]

Well, I installed the new 3" exhaust (I know, I said I was going to keep it stock but having a non-modded toy is boring). Strange thing is that it still sounds insanely loud and buzzy above 3500RPM just like it did with the stock exhaust. So loud and buzzy in fact, that it seems like the engine is going to explode if it's driven above 3500rpm. I'm not sure what's going on with that, but it's annoying.

I pulled the heat shield and the stock exhaust manifold was cracked in multiple places, so that may explain the loud noise above 3500rpm. Also, it's missing an exhaust manifold stud, so it could have a massive leak from where the manifold attaches to the head. My other ideas are that the turbo is shot and needs to be replaced, or that the O2 housing is messed up somehow. My last guess is that the engine is badly out of balance (which would be odd since it supposedly has a balance belt from what the last owner said) and it's shaking it's self to death above 3500rpm.

I picked up a 2G exhaust manifold to replace the cracked one and will throw on another e-manifold stud to see if that helps.

 

[Whoodoo]

Quote:
My last guess is that the engine is badly out of balance (which would be odd since it supposedly has a balance belt from what the last owner said) and it's shaking it's self to death above 3500rpm.



:facepalm:

Ok, so here's my suggestion. I don't think noise is your problem. If the car is shaking a butt ton then you probably have a balance shaft issue. In the 4g63 engine, there are 2 shafts with eccentric weights that spin at two times the engine speed in order to counteract vibrations that inherently occur within an inline 4 engine. One shaft is at the rear of the engine (closest to the the firewall) and is driven by the main timing belt. The second is at the front of the engine and is driven by its own toothed belt. This is called the balance shaft belt, or as the factory service manual calls it, timing belt B. If this belt breaks, you get two things. A) the rear balance shaft still spins, but instead of the 2 shafts working in conjunction with each other to reduce vibration, it makes vibrations worse. B) pieces of the balance shaft belt can potentially get into the main timing belt and cause some pretty catastrophic damage.

Perhaps you misinterpreted the previous owner who meant to convey that it does not have a balance shaft belt. If this is the case, then your solution is fairly straight forward. Simply do a balance shaft elimination. This consists of replacing the rear balance shaft with a stubby shaft and either just leaving the front one in, or taking it out and turning it's bearings upside down in order to retain oil pressure. You can read about it at vfaq.com

As for the noise issue, perhaps you had a stock exhaust with an aftermarket muffler? I know for a fact my entire exhaust came on the car when it left the factory and it keeps things very quiet. I even had some massive cracks in my exhaust manifold and replacing it with an uncracked 2g made no difference. Try putting another muffler on the exhaust somewhere. I know some people have replaced their cat with a glasspack, and that might help you out quite a lot.

 

[Dark_Horse]

I meant that it would be odd if the engine was vibrating like crazy because it still has the balance belt (as far as the old owner said). However, that was a good explanation of how the balance shaft/belt worked. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif From what I know of this car, the engine was rebuilt at some point in the last few years. It was a stock rebuild, so perhaps the old owner just assumed it did not have a BSEK installed.

The old exhaust I took off was bone stock. Even with the bone stock exhaust, it still did exactly the same thing. Above 3500RPM, it sounds like all hell is going to break loose. I drove it again last night and the sound is more like the engine is absolutely screaming at really high RPM...Not so much the exhaust being loud. Since swapping the exhaust out did not change the sound I heard 1 bit, I have eliminated the possibility that it's anything from the O2 housing back to the muffler.

Quite a number of the exhaust manifold studs/bolts were very loose, so it's possible that is what's causing the noise. Best to eliminate the really easy stuff 1st before I go pulling the timing covers off. Since I have to pull the turbo anyway to swap exhaust manifolds, I'm going to eliminate things one by one.

 

[Whoodoo]

If you know it has balance shafts and the balance shaft belt is in there and working, then the only other explanation for massive vibration (especially around that RPM range) is that something is not timed correctly. If you keep the balance shafts and do a timing belt job, there are 5 things that need to be timed correctly. On the main timing belt, the exhaust and intake cams, oil pump sprocket, and crankshaft all need to be at their correct position when the engine is at TDC. In addition, the front balance shaft sprocket needs to be at it's timing mark. If any of these are off, things won't be right. Even if the oil pump sprocket (which drives the rear balance shaft) or front balance shaft sprocket are off by a few teeth, you'll get a noticeable vibration.

As for being loud, maybe a video with good sound quality will help us understand better whats going on. Maybe its not related to the exhaust at all. Perhaps all the sound deadening material in the interior was taken out and it just seems louder than it should be. I had a buddy with a 1g turbo that had the interior pretty gutted and a 3 inch turbo back. It was loud, but not like 'oh sh*t my car is going to explode' loud.

 

[mitsuturbo]

It is ENTIRELY possible that the oil pump gear was timed 360° out of whack, thus putting the rear balance shaft 180° out. I have seen "experienced" dsm owners do this many times, and fight tooth and nail against the notion that it's possible to be 360° out on something.

 

[SouthCaliVR4]

The rear shaft spins three to one, it could be 720 deg out