A Starion Story (4G64/3 Starion build)

attack vector · **Posted:** Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:10 pm

Nothing too crazy, but I'm trying hard to update this on a more regular basis

So commence non-spectacular update!

After looking back on the entire build thread it occurred to me that I never posted any good photos of the what the final engine swap ended up looking like. Pretty embarrassing omission given the nature of the thread. So I snapped some with my cell. (I know, I know... cell photos are mad fail, I'm hoping to buy a decent camera this summer... so until then, my apologies)

Also doesn't help much that the car is filthy. Oh well...

Also Started taking a few pics of the suspension work that's been done on the car. I was crawling about over the weekend and I reset the spring preload on all 4 coils in preparation for my height adjustment.

Front camber plates dialed in:

A nice view of the forward Suspension Techniques Swaybar:

23 year old original paint

My little "chill-out" chairs crack me up. I just had to take a picture of them :lol:

GARAGING LIFE OF MAXIMUM HAPPINESS CREATE! :tu:

Next photos will be of the final ride height, and some of the new solid urethane bushings.

tj75gc · **Posted:** Tue Apr 19, 2011 2:59 am

Good god I love widebody Starions! and I think that colour looks perfect on it.
We never got the widey's out here in Aus but there's a few imports kicking around.
I love the '63 swap. I think it's the motor these cars should have had. In fact i think it's a motor a lot of mitsu's should have had... for example: :twisted:

Short version
or;
Long version in greasy, oily detail

Keep the updates coming!

Also, what did you use for a water pump? I used a Starion pump on a Narrow 6-bolt block but i'm having issues with the water pump pulley not lining up with the crank pulley and alternator. I'm wondering if the starion crank pulley is different.
In the meantime I'm having a spacer made and the pulley re-drilled to match the starion water pump's PCD.
I hope it holds

attack vector · **Posted:** Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:54 am

Thanks man! I just clicked through your swap and wow... so clean. Looks way cleaner than mine. Well done!

The engine is actually a 4G64 wideblock. The bottom end is from a Mitsu Mightymax truck and everything in the timing case, water pump included is all 6 bolt 4G63 hardware. So there is no Starion hardware in the engine build. The head is 2nd Gen DSM and the cam & timing setup is Galant VR4, with the addition of the crank trigger timing kit.

RaptorReed · **Posted:** Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:37 pm

In case you don't know know what a DSM is TJ, he's using a 7 bolt head. We fortunately had a few cars stateside that came with a 4g63T either in FWD or AWD flavors back in the 90s (Not including the few Galant VR4s we received).

attack vector · **Posted:** Tue May 31, 2011 9:10 am

Updates!
Nothing big, but some fun stuff

Finally got around to debadging the old ratty Conquest vinyls and putting on some proper Starion badging.

Also got a new exhaust put in by a local shop out here. Sound is fantastic!

Found an older picture of the car and decided to do a side-by-side comparison of the new ride height with the D2 coilovers. In total about a 2.5 inch drop.

Decided to snap a pic of the interior. Not bad for 23 years old:

And finally... this is how I spent my memorial day weekend... GARAGE LIFE!

jwebb2876 · **Posted:** Tue May 31, 2011 9:52 am

Are you running SHP wheels or just the standard ones? Needs bolt-on spacers, fill out those massive guards more

Looks bloody fantastic mate, I love it :tu:

attack vector · **Posted:** Tue May 31, 2011 11:56 am

jwebb2876 wrote:

Are you running SHP wheels or just the standard ones? Needs bolt-on spacers, fill out those massive guards more

Looks bloody fantastic mate, I love it :tu:

I'm running the standard wheels. I agree it has the 'sunken battle-ship' look pretty bad right now. I'm holding out for a set of custom 3-piece wheels. Just haven't found the right ones yet to re-barrel.

Thanks for the thumbs-up! :mrgreen:

Komeuppance · **Posted:** Tue May 31, 2011 6:50 pm

Sweet deal. Haven't heard from you in a long time, haha. I'm liking the swap.

We may have a Portland meet sometime soon, not sure if you'd want to haul that far though.

BTW, you Starion sticker is on the wrong side of the car, or is that because it's USDM?? LOL...

-Robert

attack vector · **Posted:** Wed Jun 01, 2011 6:23 pm

Komeuppance wrote:

Sweet deal. Haven't heard from you in a long time, haha. I'm liking the swap.

We may have a Portland meet sometime soon, not sure if you'd want to haul that far though.

BTW, you Starion sticker is on the wrong side of the car, or is that because it's USDM?? LOL...

-Robert

Thanks man!
I'd love to come down to Portland, though I'm not sure how much I trust the car just yet :lol:

regarding the stickers, yeah I just sat there with beer in hand and said, this is the way the badging looks best. I'm sure it was inspired by the USDM badging on the 83 technica... But in all honesty, there was little rhyme or reason to the placement other than it just felt right.

drive-by · **Posted:** Wed Jun 08, 2011 6:21 pm

WoW this ones really gatthering pace :tu:

cid_casterwick · **Posted:** Wed Jun 15, 2011 1:04 am

attack vector wrote:

And finally... this is how I spent my memorial day weekend... GARAGE LIFE!

Excellent choice of beverage sir! Great Divide is just about in my back yard, If you can get it try they're Hades!

ligo12 · **Posted:** Wed Jun 15, 2011 10:15 pm

attack vector wrote:

Thanks man! I just clicked through your swap and wow... so clean. Looks way cleaner than mine. Well done!

The engine is actually a 4G64 wideblock. The bottom end is from a Mitsu Mightymax truck and everything in the timing case, water pump included is all 6 bolt 4G63 hardware. So there is no Starion hardware in the engine build. The head is 2nd Gen DSM and the cam & timing setup is Galant VR4, with the addition of the crank trigger timing kit.

With a 94 twin cam 2.4 galant timing belt and cam gears.

Looks great Eric.

attack vector · **Posted:** Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:56 am

ligo12 wrote:

With a 94 twin cam 2.4 galant timing belt and cam gears.

Looks great Eric.

Great to see you on the board!
FYI gents, Ligo is the talented mechanic that performed the engine build and swap on my car.

attack vector · **Posted:** Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:59 am

cid_casterwick wrote:

Excellent choice of beverage sir! Great Divide is just about in my back yard, If you can get it try they're Hades!

It is seriously one of THE best beers I've ever tasted.
There's a Japanese market by my house and everytime they get some in stock I buy them out. It's irregular so I get it all when I can find it, Heheh

I'll have to keep an eye out for 'Hades' Sounds serious! :tu:

attack vector · **Posted:** Sun Apr 08, 2012 10:05 am

Back from the dead!

So the car has been down all winter long. I got a few good months of driving in during last summer and then right at the end of the season a freeze plug in the bottom end blew out and the car went back to the shop.

But before the freeze plug went, there were some good times

So first, here are a few pics that I'm reposting from board member, "Lincoln Stax". He took these last summer at the 'Old School Reunion'. I hope he doesn't mind that I've reposted them. Be sure to check out his full Flickr gallery of the event as he took many amazing photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/populuxecowboy/sets/72157626947302240/

So on to the freeze plug issue. After looking over the bottom end it was determined that the bore integrity of many of the freeze plug holes was very corroded and compromised. I won't get in to details, but a lot of corners were cut on the fist build and this was a result of one of them. Lessons learned, I decided it was time to go back and do it right. So we pulled the motor broke it down, and threw out the bottom end. I was able to source a much cleaner bottom end locally that I sent to the machine shop to get inspected & prepped properly. The head is still at the machine shop, but the bottom end has been prepped, balanced and the assembly is done. Here are the pics so far:

I'm also making a few other major corrections and fixes while the engine is out. We're re-doing the water-pipes around the engine, fixing a bunch of issues with the intercooler pipes and tracking down a major power-steering leak. These are all things that plagued the old build constantly. The last big thing that's happening is I'm dumping the shitty re-flashed DSM ECU that's been driving the engine and migrating over to AEM full stand-alone so we can finally dyno tune the car.

Figure about another month of work and then it should be back on the road. I'll try and post more pics as these things happen. But I should be making the meets this summer, so stay tuned. :tu:

RaptorReed · **Posted:** Mon Apr 09, 2012 6:35 am

Looking good! I'm hoping to have my car running soon too!

attack vector · **Posted:** Mon Apr 09, 2012 7:31 am

RaptorReed wrote:

Looking good! I'm hoping to have my car running soon too!

Thanks man! Hope to see you guys at the meets this summer. Best of luck getting your car up and running :tu:

Boxtype · **Posted:** Sun Apr 22, 2012 8:19 pm

How is your car doing?

attack vector · **Posted:** Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:05 am

Boxtype wrote:

How is your car doing?

Hello Boxtype. The car is going along well... but slowly. Making me crazy because the weather is turning nice here and I'm starting to miss out on the first meetups of the season.

The current state of affairs is that the entire bottom end is fully assembled and ready to go. We were putting the head together (reusing the old head) when we discovered that the bore for the waterneck at the front of the head had a huge gash in it and we decided that it would be too risky to try and seal it with RTV, so we threw the head out and got a new one and sent it to the machine shop.

There were many other things that were wrong with the car so we are currently fixing those as well. The car has a massive power steering leak that we are fixing, Also I cracked my intercooler pipes at the end of last summer when I ripped my intercooler off on a curb exiting my neighborhood :lol:

That's what I get for slamming the car I guess :mrgreen:

Then once everything is fixed and back in the car I am converting over to full AEM stand-alone... so I figure about another 3-4 weeks. (the head discovery set us back about a week)

So by the end of May it should be done. Thanks for asking my friend! :tu:

RaptorReed · **Posted:** Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:27 pm

Ooo AEM, I have Megasquirt :wink:

. I just noticed this, but you still have the alternator in stock location, what's the clearance like with the turbo? Obviously having powersteering (I don't need that stuff) creates issues for turbo intake piping :lol:

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A Starion Story (4G64/3 Starion build)

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