Last night I finally liberated Sunshine’s wiring harness. In order to get it out, I had to take out a lot of the dash and pretty much all of the heating system. It was definitely more work than I had anticipated, but at least now I can properly clean and repair it. While I’m doing that, I will also clean out the engine compartment, make a few minor repairs in there, get rid of some small areas of surface rust and finally repaint it before the new motor gets put in.

*Gratuitous picture of yourself in an engine compartment

The old motor is out of Sushine! With my dad’s help, last night we got it out. It was a bit tricky with the crank pulley and the water pump still on (I knew I should have pulled those), but we managed.

The easy part of the project is over. The priorities now are to get the wiring harness out of the car, clean, repair it and reinstall it, clean, repair and paint the engine compartment, and get the car ready to receive the new motor.

I’m still working on clearing out Sunshine’s engine compartment, and it’s coming along pretty well. I’m removing the wiring harness so I can make repairs to it and clean it. It really needs it, since some of the connectors are messed up or broken and previous owners did some pretty awful repairs to it. I’m surprised the car ran as well as it did…or even at all, to be honest.

The harness is all freed up from the engine compartment except for where it goes through the firewall on the passenger side. I wasn’t sure what I should do there until I asked the guys on the turbo-mopar forum. Apparently the connector is inside the car, so all I have to do is get in there, remove the kick panel and disconnect it. Too bad I didn’t know that before I stopped for the day. Oh well. I got a lot done anyway.

Sorry, no progress photos this time. I don’t really have anything exciting to show right now.

Last night I pulled the fan, radiator and intercooler, alternator and power steering pump, then stopped for the night because my back was killing me from being hunched over for so long. Anyway, there’s not much left that I need to do in order to get the motor out:

It looks like more of a mess than it really is, trust me. Although, speaking of messes, I did drench myself in antifreeze after accidentally bumping into the bin full of it with my creeper. That was fun.

Also, out of curiosity I checked the S/N on the block. Unsurprisingly, it’s not even close to the car’s VIN:

It’s also been painted heavily with brush, like some other things on this car.

That’s a remanufactured Turbo II 2.2 longblock, complete with a ported head. I’ll post the rest of my motor buildup once I have it 100% sorted out. I’m almost there.

Last night I cleaned the carbon from the tops of the pistons, using aerosol Sea Foam, a scotchbrite pad and a rag, so I could examine the pistons. They came out pretty clean, but piston #1 has a small ding on it (hard to see in this photo…sorry I forgot to take a picture of it after I cleaned it):

…and piston #3 is damaged as well:

Piston #3 also had the heaviest coating of carbon on it. I wouldn’t have seen the damage (except for the obvious part by the “C”) if I hadn’t removed the carbon. So, what started out as a simple turbo rebuild has turned into something much bigger (and much more expensive). =(

I finally had time to disassemble the head-intake-exhaust manifold-turbo assembly last night after having it on the bench for a few days. Everything came apart without much fuss, though I couldn’t imagine doing any of it with the whole assembly still on the car. It was definitely easier to pull the head with everything still attached.

The good: The turbo assembly seems to be in good shape. There is a fairly large amount of radial play in the compressor-turbine shaft, but no noticeable axial play, and no oil in the compressor housing. I also didn’t see any cracks or damage of any sort on the whole assembly. So, it should be fine with a rebuild.

The bad: There’s more cracks in the head. There’s cracks in the small water passages and more alarmingly, cracks leading from one of the valves to the outside of the combustion chamber, on all cylinders. See below:

Also, the intake manifold has been sloppily ported between the mating halves. Luckily, the rest of the intake manifold has not been ported, nor has anything else. Also note the lovely homemade gasket. I should be able to smooth these out:

So, the long and short of it is that I’m looking at replacing the head now as well as having the turbo rebuilt. I kind of had a feeling this was going to happen. Stay tuned, things should start to get interesting from here on out!

I received Forza 4 for Christmas and have started playing it a couple of days ago. One of the cars you can buy is the 1986 Dodge Omni-based Shelby GLHS. It is the same car as my Charger-based 1987 Shelby GLHS, but with the 4-door body style instead of the Charger’s coupe body style. Naturally, I made a tuning that matches the mods that have already been done to Sunshine (so far), so now I have a virtual clone of Sunshine in Forza 4. I’m a dork, I know.

The car has actually been very successful for me in C-class so far.

EDIT: If you are a Forza fan, you should definitely pick up the Microsoft wireless wheel controller. It’s awesome and works much better than I expected it to.

Quick GLHS road test on the SPEED channel. I love the cold air intake on his car.