What??

Well, I'll start from the beginning on how I ended up with 820/1000. I had a Craigslist ad up for a DSM shell/roller. I didn't really want a shell, but I was striking out pretty hard trying to find a complete rear DSM subframe to swap into 1837. I get a text from Brad Brooks (I didn't know it was him at first), who is a fairly well known tuner here on the East Coast. He apparently saw my ad, and hit me up asking if I wanted to buy another Galant VR4. At this point, Brad introduced me to a gentleman named Doug. Doug was the PO of 820/1000, and an awesome guy. He cut me a great deal on the car and a pile of parts to go with it.

The car was sitting for 6 years prior to me dragging it home an hour and a half from Virginia. I was told this car was owned by Marty Grand as some point. Overall, it's in decent condition, but needs A LOT of love. It has some rust issues, which have migrated their way into the body. Mechanically, it seems sound. I changed the oil and threw some fresh gas into the car and it fired right up. It purrs like a kitten. I'll need to do some work on the brakes and rear suspension, along with general maintenance items.

It's lightly modded:
-some kind of homebrew turbo back exhaust
-FMIC and hard piping
-hacked air can and K&N filter
-KYB adjustables and lowering springs
-front strut bar
-adjustable camber arms and welded trailing arms w/ energy susp bushings
-BSA Top 17 x 7 wheels wrapped in Bridgestone Potenza S-03's

So far, I welded up one of the trailing arms and installed new rear bearings, seals and a hub/spindle. The other arm was already welded up when I got the car. I rebuilt the rear calipers (thanks for the parts Doug) and slapped on some new rotors. Tomorrow, I need to bleed the brakes and hopefully take it out for a drive for the first time in nearly a decade.

As far as plans for the car go, it will stay mostly stock. The rust is rough in some places, and I'm not really up for doing all the body work it would take to completely correct all the problem areas. I'm going to neutralize the rust, and patch it up the best I can without getting too involved. I always wanted to do ridiculous shit to a VR-4, like throw on a set of fender flares, or delete the rear spoiler. Maybe this will be the car I can try out all the extravagant stuff I've always been too scared to do to 1837.

What a turd.

Meh, it's got potential.

So the head unit in the car is missing the faceplate. I pulled the deck out to see what model it was and got a pleasant surprise. It's an old Alpine CDA-7939, which is a great deck. Now, I just need to find a faceplate for it. Checked on Ebay, and came up bone dry. I'll have to keep an eye out.




Next, I had to figure out how to get the front wheels off. They had locking lugs on them, which were proving impossible to remove...Until I found this sweet socket at AutoZone. You basically just run in onto the exterior of the lug with an impact and it zips right off. I was astounded how awesome it worked. It took longer to remove the lug nut from the socket than it did getting the locking lug off the car. I ended up having to thread a bolt into the lug and clamp it in a vise. The moral of the story is, don't lose your lug key.



The last thing I did was delete the ABS. I've only ever done this in the past when the motor was out of the car. This is the first time I did it with the motor in, and it fucking sucked. Aside from the new non-ABS prop valve, I didn't take any pics of the process.


After that, I bleed the brakes and took it for a quick spin around the block. The car runs and shifts great. It fires right up and even idles flawlessly. So far, I'm super happy with it. It looks like a turd, but runs like a champ!

Lol.

Touché.

Where you gonna be?

Quoting GSTwithPSI:

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Where you gonna be?

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northern va and Virginia Beach area

After a good wash, the car cleaned up decent. I was most impressed with the wheels; they look like new after a good scrub. The paint has seen better days, but I think I can patch up some areas to give the car a decent look overall. The hood and driver side rear quarter will obviously need some work/paint. I don't really dig the zebra color scheme, but the black paint kept things from rusting, which I'm grateful for.

I fixed some more little stuff on the car. I swapped in a fresh MAF and K&N air filter. I also corrected the vacuum routing, which was all messed up. This car is pretty much bone stock under the hood. Even the EGR, BCS and FPS solenoids are still in place and hooked up. After I routed the vacuum lines back to everything like factory, I saw an improvement in drivability and idle quality. That's saying a lot, since the car was already running great. I put about 20 miles on it under all sorts of driving conditions. It performed flawlessly. Hell, the cruise control even works. For being nearly stock, it rips pretty good too. I can't wait to get all the maintenance done and start DD'n it.

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the car so far. It needs some work, but, what VR-4 doesn't?

Up next:
-180* T-stat
-All new belts/hoses
-Alignment
-Plug wires
-2g exhaust manifold
-Fuel filter
-Fuel pump rewire
-New muffler
-Install passenger dogleg
-Deep clean the interior
-Exterior paint touch up/detail
-Underhood scrub

......Drive it...ALOT

Why the 180° tstat? When I had 503 as a daily I just ran the stock temp tstat. Works great like it's supposed to. I can understand the need on a car like mine or something like your other car, but for a stockish daily driver you'll probably see better fuel mileage with the stock temp tstat.

...are not always necessary or beneficial.

yeah but summer is humid and horrible. maybe its his summer stat and during winter he will use a 190

The PO swapped a slim fan in place of the stock puller. I'm going off the stock gauge (which is known to be inaccurate), but at idle, the needle sits just past the middle on the hot side, which I thought was a bit warm. With summer coming up, I though a 180* T-stat might be a decent idea until I can get a logger or ECMlink on the car and figure out how hot it's running exactly. It's not really a performance oriented modification so much as it is a precautionary measure. For all I know, it could already have a 180* T-stat in it.

I crossed my fingers today as I switched on the A/C. I heard the compressor and fan kick on as the car's idle bumped up, but sadly the car only blew warm air. Looks like the system will need to be leak checked and charged.