It's been a long time since I've done a build thread and I want to say that I'm glad there are still some forums around to create one. As much as FB as ruined/improved the car scene it has certainly killed the interaction of guys building and discussing cars for anything other than quick moments of time. The page system and its money generating algorithm for viewership is lame af.
Several might know this car or owned it in the exact state I purchased it in. I picked it up off CJ in southern Indiana a few months back. Body is in good shape and it had a fwd m/t 4g63 already in the car. It was located a few hours south and Aaron with the black awd was nice enough to take his van and trailer down to pick it up while I slept.
Home at last!
A few weeks later I found an 2g auto/tcase in Michigan and a 1g auto donor car. Last minute notice Aaron and Matt (lookout for his blue fwd!) headed up with me. The trip was exhausting. Ended up being about 1k miles or something in a day across three states. We even stopped at the old Normal IL Mitsubishi plant on the way back.
It turns out the donor car was a giant pos even after I asked the guy to inspect the subframe as the was the primary reason I was driving up. The floors were rusted all the way through and the sub frame wasn't able to be used. On plus side the differential and other drive train components will be used on my build and a few locals.
I've been collecting parts over the last couple of months in hopes of having plenty to do this winter.
Before there were Magnus cast intakes for 1g heads this was created at Magnus for Marcos 2g. I ended up with it for enough of a deal that I couldn't pass up.
The original turbo I had chosen for this build was a 6466, I'd had great luck running a 6262 into the 9s@150 in my evo eliminator classed evo that I wanted to stay close to that size for my goals for the colt. Again, a deal popped up and now I own a 6870. Compared to the fp manifold/16g combo that was on the colt when I bought it.
I've always used stock ecu or really out dated standalones that I picked up cheap. They have always worked but for this car I wanted to plan my goals out ahead of time and try and knock the electronics out with something that could not only do everything I need but could offer simple expansion. This solved the wiring issues with the car, the ecu/data logging and my gauges all bundled together. It also allows me to do some things that not many people are utilizing in the dsm world at this time which I will touch on one in a bit.
A super nice local guy fell on hard times and had to part his car unfortunately. He had a rear end posted for sale and I noticed the guy who sold me the 1g donor car was commenting to buy the rear end. Long story short I ended up with a great condition complete sub frame and 4 bolt rear delivered to the house.
The oe colt bumper was in bad shape and I wanted something that would fit everything behind it better than the colt bumper anyways. Not wanting to spend the money on a jdm bumper at this time I picked up a Suby bumper new off ebay. It should do nicely with some minor trimming and the holes plugged.
The Halltech has DBW control and I have the stock ls7 throttle body off my Corvette. It's 90mm and with some minor work it should bolt to the Magnus intake. The dbw pedals are pretty affordable and it should allow some fun tuning features not available with a cable throttle body.
The original plan was to ditch the DNP the turbo came with and go to a top mount or custom manifold. A local guy was moving some parts so along with some spare drive train parts I was able to pick up a slightly used Shearer top mount. One of the last big pieces to start on fab work now that I have all of the components that will be hanging off the front of the car.
Sneak peak of the fuel system
For the last few years I've wanted to start making my own composite parts and the Colt finally gave me an outlet to start experimenting. I started with infusion first and all three pieces have come out a success.
Here is one of the rear floor cover panels untrimmed and just setting in the rear of the car.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I'll update this every couple of months and hope to have much smaller updates with more information as I start doing the awd/auto swap.