4g61t.org

Well, after four weeks of waiting for a driver to pick the Mirage up in Santa Rosa it finally arrived in Tucson last night at 8:00PM!

She fired right up!

The shifter is clunky although the gearbox seems to be in good shape. It smells like cat piss inside, although the interior will clean up nice. And the brakes are shot. The clutch is almost completely done too it's slipping pretty bad. I wish more was wrong but unfortunately that's it. I drove it about 20 miles from Tucson down to her new home in Sahuarita last night and she ran like a top didn't overheat at all! The brake fluid is the color of Molasses and was topped off clear to the top of the resovoir. It's probably got a leak somewhere and the guy I bought it from wanted to make sure there was fluid in it by the time it got here ha ha ha.

Plan is to build the 4g61t once the basics are sorted.

I took the initiative and began ordering parts a couple of weeks ago,

Kyb GR2's all around
B&G lowering springs
New KYB top hats
New Rotors
Akenobi Ceramic Brake pads
Full set of Superpro Bushings (They arrived in 10 days from Australia from Jay Racing)

I'll try and put some links up. These were taken today as a baseline (just how she arrived)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0on69k4tpz87fg0/jC7DtwFrPh

I won't be able to dig in until early next week. Will post pics to the album in the link above. I also added a picture of the vin number to the registry.

Will have more news soon.

Nic and clean. Like the wheels too.

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Thom
1991 GVR4 1025/2000 (PTE 1200's, 16g, DSMLink v3, gm-maf, eagle/ross, .020 over, 272's, EVO VIII Wheels)
1992 GVR4 866/1000 (getting everything from above)

Looking good!
Was silver the only colour offered? lol. Every time a new one shows up here...it's silver! Makes it easy to get color matched parts though!

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Early 2000's: 1992 Summit sedan - 14.1 @ 100.9mph w/ 155/80 13s
2012: 1989 Dodge Colt GT Turbo - 14.9 @ 100mph, 10psi/s16G

Black
Red
Silver

Hmmmm, B R S .

Don't forget white! And good to hear about the bushings. I was planning on putting my order in around the middle of this month.

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'89 Colt GT - All the rare goodies
'98 TSi AWD - Clean street car

Ah, yes White too. Haha.

I'm gonna plug Jay Racing again because he was real cool on the phone, they were cheaper than everywhere else, and came fast!

I need shifter bushings too. I don't want to spend eighty bucks on Cusco though. Any cheaper alternatives?

I used the symborski (sp) ones back in 04..and loved them.. they looked exactly like these but were 28 bucks..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DSM-BRASS-SHIFT ... d5&vxp=mtr




Steve

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Steve 89 colt 2.3 stroker stock top end. evo3@20 psi 13.489@99.30mph 3/10 2012
On drag radials.auto trans.launching @ 5 psi and no traction thru 2nd.

Nearly every DSM vendor has bushings available for the shifter base to floor pan application.

I have the Energy Suspension two piece units, and they fit like a glove.

Also, you can use washers stacked up to the correct height, just be sure to measure them and keep the center tubes to maintain washer alignment.
Underdog/Tom shows that in his GVR4 restoration/spruce up videos on YT.

Biggest maintenance item would be to replace all the bushings in the pivots of the shifter arms, base, arms on the transaxle, and the little white nolothane puck for the up/down actuation of the trans gear selector rod at the top of the transaxle.

I had tons of play in the shifter pivot joints in the cabin, so I installed new bushings there; shifter never moved so smooth into gear.
Next I moved onto the transaxle side and swapped in good cable bracket spacer/bushings, nolothane puck, and lubed the arm that contains the copper bushings that actuated the white bushing; essentially your left and right movement on the shifter lever in cabin.

Without proper shifter timings, I had a biotch of a time shifting. Firstly my 4G shifter arm aligned my cable end hitting the base plate, but once clearanced, the only issues was all the slop in the remainder of the system. Why did I wait so long to do this!

Thanks Steve, I think I'm going to get those ordered.

This is a lot of good information...The left right movement on the shifter is really crazy. Can't wait to defeat the slop!

One of my kids has a big Soccer tournament this weekend (the same weekend the car arrives of course). Getting antsy to tear this car down!

I have talked to Jay a few times and visited his shop. He is absolutely a good guy.

I had the time to start dis-assembly today...pictures have been added, link at the end of this post. (if anybody knows how many posts I need before I can post attachments directly to this thread it would be greatly appreciated.

Started by removing the battery and putting it on the charger...At first I thought the previous owner had already done the fuel pump wiring modification because of all the rouge wiring running to the battery...no such luck, it turned out to be wiring for the "tow package" that had been installed. I followed the wiring on back to the rear snipping the zip ties as I went and got a nice clean uninstall. The hitch and ball assembly was also "deleted" and quickly hucked to the growing junk box.

I started in the right rear of the car because the rotor on that corner was so rusty. I figured the caliper wasn't clamping hence the buildup. I'm pretty sure that caliper is seized. Will know more tomorrow upon further inspection. It has been removed.

The stock rear springs had been cut, I posted a picture of the right rear spring next to the new B&G lowering springs, the cut springs are a good 4 inches shorter than the lowering springs. The new B&G's should improve the ride quality a lot! The shocks appear to be the original KYB GR2's, I think I recognize the old logo on them. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. This would put just about 153,000 miles on them ha ha ha. Although the miles are high they seem to be holding up pretty well on that corner. The rebound rate and resistance seems to be about the same as the new GR2 replacement. The strut bellow was shot and so was the bump stop which had been trimmed down to a nub anyway to accommodate the cut springs. New bellows and bump stops will be ordered from rockauto for all corners for under 50 bucks! I checked the local O'reilly's prices, they wanted 100 bucks, needless to say I passed.

Now, on to what everybody can get into, the "panhard rod"! I got the superpro panhard rod bushing "kit". I wouldn't really call it a kit though because I do think it requires two bushings. It connects to the rear axle and travels on up at a diagonal to the chassis with a bush on each end. The superpro "kit" comes with one bush to connect to the chassis and nothing to connect to the axle. If anybody wants to swap their stock bushings out on the panhard rod I would order two kits of the same part number so you can swap both out. My stock rubbers (on the panhard rod) were in good shape no cracks or anything so after a good cleaning and maybe a coat of paint my panhard rod will go back on as is.

My panhard rod bushing kit is unopened and will be going up for sale!

pics -

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0on69k4tpz87fg0/jC7DtwFrPh

More to come...

first.. any unusual parts like the tophats..or rubber pieces for it.. or calipers.. try looking at rock auto dot com. fast shipping and good prices..better than autozone or o'riellies... next..u need to upload to photobucket..its free then u can link the pic to here.

glad to see u got some stuff done to it today.. will be messing with mine this week and hope to have it running good to take out next weekend. or the following weekend...

Steve

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Steve 89 colt 2.3 stroker stock top end. evo3@20 psi 13.489@99.30mph 3/10 2012
On drag radials.auto trans.launching @ 5 psi and no traction thru 2nd.