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Chiral

I think I'm a closet...

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Grease monkey...

For the last few years I have been really wanting to get a motorbike, pull it apart and put back together again, or restore my old shitbox station wagon, put some nice tyres and fat rims on, twin exhaust, fully recondition and soup up the motor, give it a new paint job with racing stripes etc...I've even researched it and gathered a lot of the costings and places to get it done.

This is strange because I've always loathed Rev Heads, always thought they were a bunch of dead beats, I'm more of a beach bum hippy kind person...times change and interests do to, plus I really wanna do this....

I started this thread elsewhere and it generated some very interesting info for me, so I thought I would bounce it over here so I can get some local knowledge.

basically I want to completely restore/modify the whole vehicle.

My plan is to start with the motor...recondition it, find out to make it more powerful whilst keeping economy a priority, perhaps bang a twin exhaust onto it, attack and improve the cooling system, new timing chain and oil pump and fully check out the auto transmission.

Next stage would be to replace and update the suspension and any other structural work underneath. Repair the brakes and check all brake lines. Once the fundamentals are done and the car is driving nicely, then I'll look at new wheels and tyres, replace the rear bumper and rear passenger door.

Next would be to have the interior fixed, replace steering wheel, install sound system wiring and sound system. Check all the electrics and replace old headlight and tail light bulbs with new halogen ones.

The final part of the project will be to give the car a nice new respray in a completely different colour.

Now before you all go blurting..why would you wanna do all that...well it's just something I have always wanted to do ever since I was a kid and the last couple of years the urge has gotten stronger. I plan to do each stage as I can afford it that way I won't be burdened by any loan repayments etc. I own the car and even though it's a bit of boring car to some, I actually love the space in it, it's awesome for sleeping in on camping trips and I love the way it drives and handles.

This project could take a couple of years but It will get done... does anyone here have any experience with tear downs and reconditioning cars, performance enhancing, any tips or tricks for engine reconditioning, or can even suggest a local OZ Car forum for people like me who have never really done anything like this but want to get into it.

1994%20Mitsubishi%20Magna%20wagon.jpg

Yes this is the car...and yes seriously I want to fix it up and make it like new but better again.

any help appreciated chaps and chapettes.

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^ that's a weird closet. It's got taps like the bottom ov it was a bath? But then you'd have clothes hanging in your face as you bathed, & they'd get all damp from the steam...Is it supposed to be a disguised hydro closet? Weird.

Can't help the OP i know FA about mechanics.

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My advice... if you can't do the work yourself, i hope you have a wishing well of endless money.

Car respray, 5k+ atleast.

Twin Exhaust 1k and car will go slower

Big wheels + rubber 2k + car will go slower

Engine reco 1k +

Suspension 1k+

Nice seats $500

I know it feels good to do it yourself, but my advice... Buy one someone else has done all the work, and spent all the money.

I can see 20k bucks falling into a 3k buck car, and after that its only worth 5k to sell...

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Some of the stuff you are talking about is really easy and you can obviously do yourself and it won't cost the earth. i.e. changing the steering wheel, changing light globes, installing a sound system etc is really pretty basic. If you can mess around with computers or anything electronic then it should be a breeze for you.

Not sure what having a twin exhaust would achieve other than looks? Wouldn't having better extractors give your engine a bit more power? These are also not too expensive and I'm sure you could ask around wreckers in your area rather than getting new ones.

Rather than checking out the transmission - if it has problems, maybe it would be cheaper just to get a reconditioned one and put it in yourself. This shouldn't be too hard.. although I'm no expert, I've only done it once and that was on a manual Kingswood transmission lol we had the thing sat up on log rounds, (as in firewood log rounds before they are split) and slid the transmission on and off the clutch with further logs and pailings. A little frustrating but looking back on it funny as hell.

Maybe just get a mechanic that you like and trust, (kinda like finding a decent GP!) to have a look over the car for you and give you some advice for a start. Is the one you've got worth keeping and fixing up or would you be better selling it and starting with something that is going better from the start - would likely save you money in the long run and you still get to do lots of fun bits yourself. Rather than getting super frustrated when you can't get a nut off and you scrape the skin off your knuckles for the thousandth time which then leads to you kicking the shit out of the side of the car which you then have to fix later ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I hate working on cars sometimes ;)

Just some thoughts.

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CT I think your over estimating those costs, plus this is a project, one that may take a couple of years and my costsings have come in at approx 5-6K, like meanies says a lot of what can be done i can do my self. the twin exhaust vs extractors well I'm hoping to get advice from you guys on this

I figure that its only going to gain in value the longer i keep it and more work is done, you know cars they go through a period where they are not popular and worthless then after another period they start to gain in value when they enter classic status, i know that's a way off but it's a better plan than borrowing 10k and buying something that is only going to depreciate it's arse off for the next 10yrs and then by the time it's paid off is worthless again and you have to buy another...besides keeping a car and recycling it is a much greener option as opposed to being a consumer and discarding it for another, over and over.

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further... I think that re-spraying a car, given time and patience is totally do-able. Sure it's not going to be as flash as a professional job, after all those guys are doing it day in and day out, so they know all the tricks, however it would be satisfying to know you've done it yourself. I sprayed an XF pano when I was in my early 20's with spray cans, (bad idea looking back) it was still fun though and the car looked better than when I started. Having a compressor and a pot gun, making sure all the rust is cut out, rust proofed/converted and bogged... not sure if you need to undercoat/prime the rest of the body, (wouldn't be too hard to google that though) then taping up and spray away :) I wonder if there are bio-paints for cars, that would be a nice touch :)

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my post was just preparing you for the worst.

I had a friend spend 17k on a respray. That was a bare metal grind back, cutting out all rust and replacing with new metal, then spray.

I mean if you want to keep the car forever, it costs money.

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i do like your project, the car you chose is a mitsubishi, you could change the engine for an evo engine... But you cannot bolt on a turbo.

A turbo car has many many more things in the engine that are make to a better standard, simply to survive, and different compression so they don't detonate. Different computer, the works.

Have owned a rare car before, both cabriolet and a factory turbo model... i just couldn't afford to restore them :(

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So I can't fit a turbo to the 2600 motor in it..? thanks for the info then, I'll look at headers, extractors then for power, can i change/upgrade the carburetor on this model for better fuel efficiency..?

I have read they have ordinary cooling systems and the timing chain needs to be changed, i have priced on for this car at $150, but am unsure of labour costs.

So far I've replaced electronic ignition cables, replaced tappet cover gasket and repaired the oil sump leak.

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Can't believe I didn't notice that closet has taps in it! SO weird.

I think I am a closet foreign exchange trader. Supposed to be a dirty hippy who hates money and money men and all that represents. Why do I spend the majority of my day trading the USD vs the Yen?

Oh yeah I remember now, because there is no sane possible way to buy land in this country without having a jillion dollars or sticking to a job which means you can't enjoy the land.

post-861-126014448862_thumb.png

Picture 1.png

Picture 1.png

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Can't believe I didn't notice that closet has taps in it! SO weird.

I think I am a closet foreign exchange trader. Supposed to be a dirty hippy who hates money and money men and all that represents. Why do I spend the majority of my day trading the USD vs the Yen?

Oh yeah I remember now, because there is no sane possible way to buy land in this country without having a jillion dollars or sticking to a job which means you can't enjoy the land.

 

LOL..apoth...originally this thread elsewhere was asking if anyone had a closet person inside them wanting to get out and mine was a grease monkey, I asked if others had add interests that seemed to conflict with ther hippy/planthead persona...some people came out and said they are closet war buffs, addicted to weightlifting etc...

and your one is money...bahahah..how against the grain is that...?

smirk.gif

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I spent years working on engines and cars, and to a lesser extent motorcycles. By far the easiest thing to work on is a naturally aspirated car engine 2 valves per head and 1 cam shaft. Anything before 1985 would be fine :) anything new will be twin overhead EFI electronic everything and a pain in the ass to work on. Probably the easiest way to attack car mods these days is to get a high spec low Km Jap import front cut, if you have a magna try looking into a VR4 front cut, it will have all the fruit attached and ready to transplant and shouldn't cost more than $2K.

I wanted to graft a 1G (6cyl 2L engine) into my RA40 Celica for years but the car went the way of the dinosaurs and it never happened.

I did graft a set of fully adjustable front forks off a Hayabusa onto my Triumph, and had them set up with stiffer springs and gold valves by RaceTech.

I think I am a closet overclocker. I built my last computer I7 920 @2.66 and cranket that baby up to a conservative 3.8 I haven't decided if I want to go to water cooling yet. Slight overkill for solitair & net surfing.

Actually closet mad scientist would suit my profile better. Anything that can be tinkered with and modified is fair game, if its flammable, even better, where did I leave the thermite???

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I spent years working on engines and cars, and to a lesser extent motorcycles. By far the easiest thing to work on is a naturally aspirated car engine 2 valves per head and 1 cam shaft. Anything before 1985 would be fine :) anything new will be twin overhead EFI electronic everything and a pain in the ass to work on. Probably the easiest way to attack car mods these days is to get a high spec low Km Jap import front cut, if you have a magna try looking into a VR4 front cut, it will have all the fruit attached and ready to transplant and shouldn't cost more than $2K.

I wanted to graft a 1G (6cyl 2L engine) into my RA40 Celica for years but the car went the way of the dinosaurs and it never happened.

I did graft a set of fully adjustable front forks off a Hayabusa onto my Triumph, and had them set up with stiffer springs and gold valves by RaceTech.

I think I am a closet overclocker. I built my last computer I7 920 @2.66 and cranket that baby up to a conservative 3.8 I haven't decided if I want to go to water cooling yet. Slight overkill for solitair & net surfing.

Actually closet mad scientist would suit my profile better. Anything that can be tinkered with and modified is fair game, if its flammable, even better, where did I leave the thermite???

 

So are you saying Fenris that you can get half a car and actually weld it to rear of another..is that basically what you mean...?

I know I can drop a 6cyl in this thing but am not sure how much of a pain in the ass that will be, i want more power than I can use, soem say I can't fit a turbo and others say I can...what do I fit to gain heaps more power, headers/extractors or turbo or both..?I also want a sweet sounding exhaust and reliability.

LOL @ overclocking..when I was building PC's some years ago I got heavily sidetracked by that exact same thing...as it turned out I got a mac and forgot the whole business of PC building, even though the one I last built I still use and it works well, I can't be f'd anymore with burning silicon and liquid cooling.

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Cars are a great passion of mine (put away the pitchforks hippies :wink: ) and have been for as long as I can remember. I could tell you how just about anything in a car, under the bonnet etc does, but I'm not a mechanic so don't have much practical experience other than very minor modifications, so would not be comfortable rebuilding a car myself.

Chiral, ANY car can be turboed. It might not last very long though if you don't make other modifications (upgrade fuel pump and injectors, intercooler if going for more than say 6-7psi is a good idea etc etc the list is long).

No matter which way you look at it, having "more power than I can use" is expernsive. very expensive :) but small steps, as a long term project, makes the cash spent easier to justify.

I could talk about this with you all day Chiral but need to get back to work :(

So two things for now:

1) as it's a late model car you want to modify, get a copy of 21st Century Performance, a book written by Julian Edgar I think? He writes for Autospeed.com.au among others.

2) Talk to RTA Technical Enquiries 1300 137 302 if you're unsure if the mods will require and engineers cert or not, the big ones pretty much all do. Thats if you want to make the car road legal. Lots of rules about wheel offset, max size engine you can drop in with and without turbo, brake mods, how low you can go etc etc. They are very helpful, last time I spoke with them the dude even photocopied some pages out of there official docs and posted it to me so I could justify the mod to cops if pulled over, even though it was legal (barely ;). Also useful as the "rules" that you can download from the rta site are not exactly correct, ie the allow a margin of error in some things, ie says that you can't mount a tacho on top the dash legally, well you can if it's in exactly the right place to the right of the steering wheel and its max height isn't above the height of the steering wheel in its most upright position etc; another one was something like a max tint of 35% light through when its actually officially 30, they allow that margin of error because so cars have slight factory tint/UVblock, so they play it safe etc etc

Go for it dude. And while I don't like magnas, I think it's fantastic you're modding something different! And not just same old wrx, skyline etc (not that rex's and skylines aren't awesome cars, I've got friends and family with modified sti's and gtr and they fucking fly, truly incredible acceleration) it's just good to see something different.

And consider the whole "sleeper" thing too. Had a 91 camry fly past me the other day, completely stock even down the the steelies, except for that turbo whine and shiny intercooler just visible behing the bar.... mmm.... now THAT is cool B)

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Hi There,

I have been a car enthusiast since before i got my licence. I was a car salesman for Honda for 3 years and have owned a stack of cars. My passion has always been VL turbos or anything with a six cylinder Turbo (skylines etc). I have owned 4 VL turbos and spend countless $$$ improving them but its a never ending ladder that you cant reach the top!

When working for Honda somebody traded a really nice 2001 Honda Integra Type R. The car is a naturally Aspirated 1.8L front wheel drive so at first it wasn't my cup of tea. I decided to take the car for a drive and was absolutely astounded by the performance. The car handled like it was on rails and took off more like a motorbike then a car. The engine was seriously angry it red lined at 9500RPM!!!! After driving this car i did some research. It turns out that that this particular series cost more to build then they sold it for. The reason being they needed to sell so many per year in order to be able to race them. Nothing had been spared in ensuring that this car drove like a race car. Consequently i got rid of my VL and moved onto the integra.

I am now on the opinion that Factory Builds are FAR SUPERIOR to modified jobs ,unless u have like 100k to spend leave the modifying to the muscle and hot rod boys. Usually the best modified cars are built by people working in the motor or racing industrys, its not what you know but who. If you are interested in fast good looking cars then keep your wagon as an everyday driver and look into finding something you can have some fun in.

- It will save you money

- It will hold its value alot more

- It will have far more balanced build

- It will most likely out perform your current drive even after extensive work

At the moment i drive a 2002 Holden Monaro CV8 Manual. I am so unhappy with this car compared to the integra of half it value!

Do some research and buy yourself a factory weapon. Look for cars that have racing history and you may be surprised at what speciel vehicles manufacturers have built over the past. Be carfull tho as the 2002 model integra was a peice of shit. Sometimes newer doesn't mean better.

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LOL..apoth...originally this thread elsewhere was asking if anyone had a closet person inside them wanting to get out and mine was a grease monkey, I asked if others had add interests that seemed to conflict with ther hippy/planthead persona...some people came out and said they are closet war buffs, addicted to weightlifting etc...

and your one is money...bahahah..how against the grain is that...?

smirk.gif

 

Not sure, but I spent the day trading as usual and managed to take about 50 ticks off the market. The dirty hippy in me feels dirty and suddenly wants a bath :P

Edited by apothecary

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Not sure, but I spent the day trading as usual and managed to take about 50 ticks off the market. The dirty hippy in me feels dirty and suddenly wants a bath :P

 

Buisness hippy :wink:

im fully a commie :uzi:

Edited by -YT-

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So are you saying Fenris that you can get half a car and actually weld it to rear of another..is that basically what you mean...?

 

No, you take the half cut and remove all the parts and graft them into your car. The beauty of the front cut is that you get the wiring harness and CPU and everything to make the engine run, plus engine cross members and suspension if it will fit.

When you have finished you have lots of spare parts to sell off.

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Buisness hippy :wink:

im fully a commie :uzi:

 

So what, I've gotta split my ticks equally with everyone on the forum now? :P

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Cars are a great passion of mine (put away the pitchforks hippies :wink: ) and have been for as long as I can remember. I could tell you how just about anything in a car, under the bonnet etc does, but I'm not a mechanic so don't have much practical experience other than very minor modifications, so would not be comfortable rebuilding a car myself.

Chiral, ANY car can be turboed. It might not last very long though if you don't make other modifications (upgrade fuel pump and injectors, intercooler if going for more than say 6-7psi is a good idea etc etc the list is long).

No matter which way you look at it, having "more power than I can use" is expernsive. very expensive :) but small steps, as a long term project, makes the cash spent easier to justify.

I could talk about this with you all day Chiral but need to get back to work :(

So two things for now:

1) as it's a late model car you want to modify, get a copy of 21st Century Performance, a book written by Julian Edgar I think? He writes for Autospeed.com.au among others.

2) Talk to RTA Technical Enquiries 1300 137 302 if you're unsure if the mods will require and engineers cert or not, the big ones pretty much all do. Thats if you want to make the car road legal. Lots of rules about wheel offset, max size engine you can drop in with and without turbo, brake mods, how low you can go etc etc. They are very helpful, last time I spoke with them the dude even photocopied some pages out of there official docs and posted it to me so I could justify the mod to cops if pulled over, even though it was legal (barely ;). Also useful as the "rules" that you can download from the rta site are not exactly correct, ie the allow a margin of error in some things, ie says that you can't mount a tacho on top the dash legally, well you can if it's in exactly the right place to the right of the steering wheel and its max height isn't above the height of the steering wheel in its most upright position etc; another one was something like a max tint of 35% light through when its actually officially 30, they allow that margin of error because so cars have slight factory tint/UVblock, so they play it safe etc etc

Go for it dude. And while I don't like magnas, I think it's fantastic you're modding something different! And not just same old wrx, skyline etc (not that rex's and skylines aren't awesome cars, I've got friends and family with modified sti's and gtr and they fucking fly, truly incredible acceleration) it's just good to see something different.

And consider the whole "sleeper" thing too. Had a 91 camry fly past me the other day, completely stock even down the the steelies, except for that turbo whine and shiny intercooler just visible behing the bar.... mmm.... now THAT is cool B)

 

Now that's what I'm TALKIN BOUT...!!

Excellent info and suggestions there...small steps, long term and saved up cash from bits and bobs is exactly the way I intend to do it..perfect, that way you really don't ever see or miss the money, and has negative effect on your fundamental financial priorities.

A friend of mine had a Honda civic sleeper...I didn't know until I got in with him, fucking hell I thought we where in a helicopter after 300yds, seriously this thing sounded like a small missile about to lift off the ground, but to look at it on the street it just looked like any other civic...total madness, got me higher than an oz of meth I tell ya. :)

Thanks for clarifying that Fenris I get it now.

I am sooo looking forward to this project... :)

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of course you can turbo any car, but it won't survive.

You are way better off BUYING an engine that was built with a turbo from the factory, and putting that in there...

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Hmmmm my mum has an integra sitting in my sisters garage, unregistered but in seriously good nick, red with nice wheels, my mum is the only one to ever drive it from new, forget what year it is though, I'll have a look at it at xmas when I go up there, mum doesn't drive it anymore and it's run out of rego but I know it's spotless.

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Hmmmm my mum has an integra sitting in my sisters garage, unregistered but in seriously good nick, red with nice wheels, my mum is the only one to ever drive it from new, forget what year it is though, I'll have a look at it at xmas when I go up there, mum doesn't drive it anymore and it's run out of rego but I know it's spotless.

 

That would be a far more fun build then a Magna!!!

See if its a 93 to 2001 - This model is called a DC2 and runs a B18 engine. I dont think your mum would have the TYPE R version but the VTi-L also had a VTEC engine just not as hard tuned. The VTEC in the TYPE R version is litterally like hitting powerband on a 2 stroke motor bike. If you you tube Type R integra you can find it on an early topgear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Integra

http://www.vtec.net/forums/forum?forum_id=3537 (Forum for all things VTEC!)

http://www.clubitr.com.au/forums/ (Australian Integra Club Forum)

Let me know what model it is , sounds interesting....

~BOOM~

Edited by Slybacon

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Well I know she bought it in the mid 80's, it kinda looks like the first red one in wiki, but mums is really low to the ground with low profiles on it and shit..I'll soon know when I go for turkey and fist fights at xmas.

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