Galant VR-4 Restoration #129/1458

[techboy]

For this weeks "Motor Monday" we learning how to rebuild a throttle body. I've covered this before in my 2G build thread in a bit of detail, but I'll post it here again.

First thing up we did was separate the FIAV from the TB.

Next thing is to remove the butterfly screws. If you've never done this you can't just back them out b/c they are peened over on the backside.

You need to take a dremel with a small grinding bit on it and remove the peened "mushroom".

Next, you need to get yourself a good JIS screwdriver. If you don't know what I'm talking about - Google it. Most of the Mitsu screws look like Phillips heads, but they're not - they're a Japan-spec JIS head. They come out without stripping the head much better with the correct driver. Once you back both out you can slide the butterfly valve out.

Next we put a line on the throttle spring so we now how many times to coil it when we put it back together.

Remove the 12mm and the springs will pop off.

Flip the TB over and you can carefully slide the whole shaft out.

And here we have arrived at the whole purpose of doing this. - replacing the shaft seals. You can see here this shaft seal is shot as it's deteriorated.

Also removed the BISS screw just to take a peek at the BISS o-ring. Looks toasted as well.

Last, gave my son the job of cleaning things up a bit and taping it off for tape.

Taped off.

Then we went inside and ordered everything we need for the rebuild from Extreme. Should be here in a few days.

 

[techboy]

Man ... this month has flown by. Our stuff from Extreme came in a couple days after order and we got right back to work on the TB.

Obviously, what we were most interested in were the shaft seals.

Take a look at these old ones:

My son did a nice job cleaning the TB up and hitting it with a fresh coat of paint.

Once the old shaft seals were out we were able to pop the new ones in by just tapping on them lightly with a 12mm socket.

Then we were able to put the butterfly value (Throttle plate) back in and bolt it down with some red thread locker.

 

[techboy]

With the throttle body just about back together, it was time to start thinking about the intake manifold again. Back in Post #71 we had soaked it in degreaser to get it all cleaned up and ready for reinstall.

Time to find the intake manifold gasket.

Got it!

Mitsu provides 3 studs for it to hang on, the rest are 14mm bolts.

Bolted down!

 

[techboy]

We've been doing a lot on the top of the engine lately, but we still needed to button up a few things on the underside. So, today we flipped it over.

First, the oil pan had been epoxy coated in a primer, but it still needed some paint. So we popped that off to paint.

Don't judge the oil pan too quickly, it looks bad b/c it's wet.

While the oil pan dries, we started working on the things yet to be done. We still needed to mount the pick-up tube.

I cleaned out really good with a can a brake clean and mounted it up.

And we still needed to mount the rear main seal. Cleaned up the housing a bit.

Put a nice thin coat of RTV around the housing.

Tapped in the seal w/ a large socket and plastic hammer.

Here's what it looks like from the front.

Don't forget the oil ring, hole down.

Torqued the rear main seal down to 96 inch-lbs. There are 5 10mm that hold this down.

With these two things done, we have all the bolt holes for the oil pan as soon as it is dry.

 

[techboy]

With everything wrapped up on the bottom side and the oil pan dry, we could finally bolt the oil pan on. Here is the pan all painted and dry in gloss black.

I ordered a SS oil pan bolt set from somewhere maybe about a year ago, but now that I opened the package I see that they do NOT include the shorties that are needed near the timing belt. They are the same length. So, I'm going to have to clean up and reuse a few of the old ones.

Got the gasket prepped.

Super thin coat of Blue RTV on the required seams.

Quick tighten down with a 10mm nutdriver.

Then torqued down to 60 inch-lbs.

Here it is all installed. I feel much better with the bottom on this engine sealed up properly now.

Stay tuned for next weeks update!

 

[techboy]

So we finally put the last touches on the TB. Got the new FIAV gasket installed.

We bought a new BISS Screw, but the one that showed up was plastic where the old one was brass, so we cleaned the old one up and put the new o-ring on that one.

Time to reinstall the mounting studs on the intake.

For now we're tossing this old 1G TB elbow on here, but we're not going to use it. We have a spare 2G elbow that has a larger overall diameter, but the flange on a 2G TB elbow is narrower than a 1G, so we need to port it out a bit and gasket match it.

 

[techboy]

As mentioned before, we did a little bit of porting out on this 2G TB elbow we had laying around.

This is the difference in size between a 1G and 2G TB.

Single flute bits work the best on aluminum.

We use a Dremel at the end with a flapper sanding wheel to really smooth things out - I think it was a 100 grit.

 

[techboy]

So it's time for a major update .... we've spent most of the restoration work on this car so far working on the motor - as you can see by reading through the build thread. In the background we've been buying stuff for the car as things have popped up in the classifieds and elsewhere. Back track to the end of the summer in 2022 and my son was searching parts up on FB Marketplace and found a Galant shell for sale. At that same time, I had been messaging punk3rz about some VR4 parts he had for sale on here. It took my son a few days, but we soon realized punk3rz was the one who also had the Galant shell for sale on FB. Long story short, we made a deal and bought our 2nd Galant VR4 - #1458.

I didn't post about it at the time b/c I didn't want to disrupt the flow of the build thread, The car spent a good chunk of it's life in FL and we quickly realized upon arrival that the undercarriage was in better condition than the one we had, and that the car was overall more complete. So, we've altered our plan a bit and we are instead going to build this car and supplement the build with whatever parts we need form the #129. The time has come to bring the car home and finally get to work on it. It's been in storage since we got it and we're going to go fetch it and bring is back home tomorrow. Till tomorrow, here are some pictures of when the car was delivered from TN almost a year and 1/2 ago.

The engine bay is very very complete - which is a HUGE plus for us.

My wife was not thrilled when it first arrived that we had an incomplete looking car sitting in the driveway, so the only thing we've done to it since it arrived at home and put it in storage was reinstall the front end.

I never put a front end back on a Galant before, so we were just kinda making it up as we went.

 

[techboy]

Here's what know about the history of the car from digging around the interwebs:

2010 - FL For Sale ad
2012 - FL For Sale ad when tree fell across front end
2015 - New owner swaps white front clip from #539
2015 - FS Thread after being front clip swapped
2021 - punk3rz acquires 1458

 

[saturn345]

Man I might have to come check this other car out. I need some stuff for my galant. If you’re willing to part with some stuff from them.
Awesome find by the way. I been looking for another shell my self for parts

 

[techboy]

So we went over and picked the car up to bring it home. My father-in-law owns a rollback, so it's really nice any time I need to move a car around, it's pretty easy.

And then here we are back at the house getting ready to unload. My son got to learn how to run the controls from his grandfather.

And we are pushed into the garage and ready to commence work.

 

[GST with PSI]

Great build! I can appreciate how much time it takes to post detailed documentation.

I love seeing Galant builds come together. Keep up the great work!

 

[techboy]

Great build! I can appreciate how much time it takes to post detailed documentation.

I love seeing Galant builds come together. Keep up the great work!

Really appreciate the compliment. I don't get too-too crazy documenting things here on DSMTuners since DSM's are so well documented already at this point. But, over on Starquestclub where I also serve as a moderator I've done some pretty detailed restoration threads. Much smaller community over there, and a very unsupported platform.

Looking at your signature it looks like you are more than well versed in Galant's. This is my first Galant, so I'll have to keep your username in mind in case we run into anything.

 

[techboy]

We got right to work on Monday night. Started by removing the hood. I immediately wanted to inspect the wiper cowl area. I've seen way too many cars that are completely rotted out in the area and unsavable. So, before we got too deep into the car I wanted to see what the condition of things were in that area.
This is what we found:

A little bit of tree debris sitting in here, but everything is completely solid. Couldn't be happier.

No way we're dropping the fresh motor build in this dirty old engine bay, so our goal is to strip everything out, repaint the bay and then put everything back so we can drop the motor in - possibly later this summer. Whenever I do a project like this I like to get 3 boxes and label them "passenger - firewall - driver" and strip everything off and store it in the boxes. Keeping it organized helps knowing where everything goes back.

With that in mind, we started by gutting the passenger side engine bay. Here's what we started with:

And maybe and hour or 2 later:

It was a good first night.

 

[punk3rz]

I’m soo excited to see this car be brought back to life! I ran into more financial difficulties and had to let my 2g gsx go. I no longer own a DSM after owning one consecutively for over 15 years with a total of at least 40 dsms owned. Good luck to you and your son! Keep the dsm dream alive!

 

[techboy]

I’m soo excited to see this car be brought back to life! I ran into more financial difficulties and had to let my 2g gsx go. I no longer own a DSM after owning one consecutively for over 15 years with a total of at least 40 dsms owned. Good luck to you and your son! Keep the dsm dream alive!

Glad to see you check in!! I expect to be making a TON of progress from now through the summer months. And for anyone that ever needs to deal with this guy ^^^ totally honest and easy to work with. I think everyone gets a tad bit nervous buying a car site unseen, but this transaction was drama free.

Hope you can back into the DSM world soon enough punk3rz.

 

[techboy]

Worked on the car a couple of nights ago as well. This time we were focused on removing things on the firewall. If you've never noticed before, Mitsu had an obsession with brackets in the 80's & 90s. They would bolt brackets to brackets and then another bracket to that to hold it on the car.

Here's the firewall with started with.

And here's where we got.

Next work session we'll get the clutch master and brake master removed along with whatever we can on the drivers side inner fender.

 

[techboy]

Picking up where we left off this weekend we started by removing the clutch and brake master cylinders and booster.

Pulling the cotter pins on these inside the car wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.

Takes a little bit of patience to get the booster out. It's pretty tight against the strut tower.

The drivers side inner fender is bit more involved - more involved than any car I've ever worked on before. B/c it's for wheel steering and abs there's lines ... everywhere! So there's only so much we can really remove feasibly.

Here's a little video of where we're at.

 

[saturn345]

Yous are making some good progress on that car already. Keep up the work!!

 

[techboy]

Yous are making some good progress on that car already. Keep up the work!!

It's coming along, that's for sure.

 

[techboy]

More updates from this week. Grabbed some rolls of tape and started taping off all the lines in the engine bay.

It took some work, but we were also able to remove the sound deadening on the firewall so can get a nice coat of paint behind it. I think we only cut it in 3 places.

 

[techboy]

Pushed the car outside. Now, that everything is taped off we wanted to give the engine bay a good power washing just to get any grime off before we start the painting process. To be honest, this engine bay is one of the least grimy ones I've ever seen so this step is really just precautionary.

Here it is in the daylight!!

We sprayed the whole bay down with Simple Green ahead of time, then got to work blasting.

Here she is after a soaking.

After several hours of dry time, I went back out later in the afternoon and used an abrasive wire wheel and just gave the entire bay a light scuff just to help the paint adhere better and knock off any surface rust. I was NOT trying to strip anything down to bare metal.

Here's a close up of what I was going for....

 

[techboy]

Next day ... time to get some priming done.

Covered the windshield before we got going.

Firewall -

Passenger side -

More firewall -

Drivers Side -

Done ... including wiper cowl area and cross members.

Really really pleased with how this step came out. It's so nice to be going the other way on this thing already.

 

[techboy]

Now that we got the car pushed back inside, it's time to get to work on the actual painting.

This is a brush-on gloss enamel Rustoleum paint. It takes time, but the results are worth it.

Got some more drivers side, firewall and crossmembers to go, but this is as far as we got tonight. Should be able to finish the rest next time we work on it.

Threw some on the wiper cowl area too.

 

[Justin DuBois]

Great pictures and work - This thread is going to come in handy - I've got a 6-Bolt on the stand - head just came back from the machine shop - but all the block work needs to be done to get that ready.

Love the progress -