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Finally got a clear day to start going over my valve adjustments......
I didnt worry about measuring below .002 thou as it is just too tight anyway. (0.051mm)
I got the passenger side alot more even than it was by swapping a few of the shims around.
Now in saying that the intake cams should be 0.20 Intake and 0.25 Exhaust.
I feel the tighter tolerances are due to lapping the valves into the heads which lifts the bucket to the cams. As the seats were rusty and the valves had a little on them aswell its moved them a bit more than I can adjust out at this time.
Drivers side...
This is were the rattle I have been able to hear has been coming from....
No3 valve on the Intake first measure I only shoved a .032" Feeler in the gap and it rattled around. After alot of measuring an swapping buckets and shims around. I got it down to a gap that was .035 + .032 + .028 + .026 Giving me a clearance of .121" Or about 3mm.
So I guess I had a bent valve in the donor engine. Also to note when all cams are at rest and I rotate the crank I can hear the air bypassing the valve... Dont even think I'm going to do a compression test to confirm....
You can see the 2nd bucket from the top left is visible lower than the rest. (Hard to show in the pic)
Sitting here wondering if I pull the head off now or just reassemble to keep it all clean till I have a replacement valve/head.
It wont be driven either way... as its enough space to slip the shim out of the bucket with depressing the valve or releasing the cam.
And found the offending item was not a valve at all but a
Darn broken valve spring.
Having trouble finding replacement phase 1 springs.
I have a full set of Springs from a EJ208 from what I can tell other than larger diameter And considerably less miles....
Going to open a thread in the technical about the fitment off these.
Last edited by Lorolla; 10 November 2020 at 05:59 AM.
So I know it has been almost a year since the last update.
Have used this as a weekend car for Car cruises and just weekend road fun didn't track it or daliy it. Did take it on a 1000k road trip.
Has been nice an reliable, finished all the interior touches. Replaced anything in the engine bay that required it as little touches to make it better. All in all was getting to point where it was a very good car.
Only beat it seemed to miss was when not warmed up fully, when it had been parked nose up on the drive and it had been raining heavily. It would hesitate after hitting boost but when all was warm 10mins driving it would be back to normal.
Sold the wifes 4x4 Suv and got her a 04 Legacy wagon with a 3.0... Future project....
Now the sad part of this story is this is the last time I have photos of this Project as I have sold it on to a very happy buyer.
To make way for a New project.
A genuine 96 GF8 WRX that has been hooned and crashed and requires much love.
The plan for this 1 is going to be bring it back to some of its former glory. It has had many owners 18 on the title and that is since it was imported to NZ. It has had several different sounds systems and appears to have had a Aftermarket Ecu at some point, alarm system. All have left over parts through out the car, I have started to remove everything that was no longer attached to some parts or seemed redundant. I have a feeling it is well overdue for a complete service.
It has had a RWD gearbox mod done to it but still has the front cv's all intact but dont have any drive so the front diff is still in the box, Im assuming the center diff was just welded up and they just gave it the full send. I have a AWD box with a matching diff so that is high on the list to be swapped.
It is missing alot of the little bits that make it a car.
A list of the good parts is shorter than the bad
Geniune GF8
3inch Stainless system
Stainless UEL headers
External wastegate
Front mount IC piping
Non Abs/Airbag
Tomei fuel pressure guage
Hks Blow off
STI Alloy strut brace
Omp Deep dish steering wheel
Problems start with the crash
LCA have collapsed and broken sway bar links. (I have replaced them with alloy arms and wrx links) seems the limit of the damage to the car, other than it ran over its own bumper.
Front mount intercooler (with FTP spraypainted on it) might just give it away as it is twisted but dosen't seem to leak
Clutch is fried, Can move the car but wont stall the engine. New clutch has been ordered with a flywheel.
Engine has a miss fire, Current CEL, Havent code checked it yet.
Lots of badly routed engine stuffs, wiring pulled under hoses so they are tight, throttle cable almost kinked, IC piping rubbing in lots of places.
Water leaking around the rear hatch
Water possible from heater core leaking into front floor well under ECU, looks green but the AC pipe rubber boot wasn't mounted into the firewall, I water blasted the engine bay so hopefully came from there.
Has a terrible smell inside.....
Spray paint on the dash, windows and engine bay. Looks like someone thought it would be funny to just pusle a spray over everything. So it has silver specks on things.
Destroyed front wheel bearing. Axle nut wasnt done up.
Warped rotor
Oil leaks, So much I dont even know where to even start, Lots of cleaning to try find the actual leaks.
Loom has touched the headers an melted the fan wiring away.
Headlight H4 plugs are cooked and have burnt out the globes aswell
Door cards are cooked, cracked and peeling
Bonnet and roof have been wrapped in black, It has expired and is very brittle and very hard to peel off
Bonnet pass side bolt snapped and 1 loose casuing the hinge to get bent and bend the frame of the bonnet where the hinge bolts to.
No support on the air filter, has allowed the Maf to contact the IC piping clamps and punched a hole in the Maf Housing
Power steering cooler has been badly mounted in front of the Rad and has eaten a bunch of fins and almost punched a hole in the rad.
Face lift front grill so instead of cutting some of the grill away they have bent the secondary catch so it doesn't catch......
Onto what I have noticed as missing.
Interior mirror
Shifter **** / shifter boot
Wing mirror bolt covers
Lower rear wing
Ac Condenser
Horn, Wiring seems to be modified and needs to be redone.
Battery and hold down
Spare wheel, jack, brace, carpet.
Bonnet stay
I feel I must be a sucker for punishment. But works have already started. Stripped the interior and blasted the seats and carpet
Crash damage had pushed the Wheels back so they were rubbing on the fire wall The bent LCAs, Replaced with Alloy arms back into original holes. Poor Maf. Seems to be still working as car wouldnt run when disconnected so I have made a patch to cover over it. Existing Brakes with trashed bearing and warped disc Cleaning up some spare 4pots from a B4 blitzen New 294 slotted and crossdrilled rotors with new Ceramic pads under the 4 pots, Have ordered a 1 1/16 master, unsure if it can be fitted to the car lines but I will try. Fitted some spare Legacy 17s Found some genuine Yen under the carpet Bonnet bolts snapped rear and loose front bolt. Drilled and tapped rear had to hammer the front mount area to get the bolt area flat again.
The list of things missing are quite common parts found on most classic models with a few exceptions. So you could get parts from a non turbo model even.
Will you replace the engine loom with a cleaner version.
Would love to get a clean Loom but just not feeling the budget to get such a thing at this stage, I have already removed as much of the excess wiring as I have without removing any Original bits.
Have managed to source a few little bits to suit but it seems the people parting out their subbies here in NZ are quite hard to actually get a deal done with. But with that said I now have a center mirror... and shifter surround.
Havent seen a maf quite like the 1 I have, so I have patched it up as it is sealed in a silicone goo inside and looked clean inside.
I have pulled the box out. Stripped out the clutch and flywheel, and replaced the rear mainseal while it was apart, no signs of weepage from it but the whole engine and box were filthy, so everything got a de-grease and a scrub as I go.
And going to swap in the gearbox from the Rat Home donor GF8.
I feel when I pulled this gearbox off the donor car that was the rat home I could have been alittle nicer to it but the clutch was rusted together and it took alot of levering to get it apart. So It may have had some slight damage to the areas around the dowels and was very tight when getting it to slide on them.
As Im not sure of the state of this gearbox, I didnt clean up the box very much but did replace the shifter linkage on the top with a new oem unit. With the state of the Clutch and flywheel I felt going full New setup was the best option. So ended up with a Billet Lightened flywheel and Oem rated clutch. Cleaned up the crossmembers, Linkages and driveshafts, Nice fresh coat of black.
The Clutch on close inspection has melted the inner area of the friction materiel. So has been slipping for a bit and been hammered while it was happening. When under the dash pulling the pedal back off the floor, I noticed the Stopper bolt had been swapped for just a normal bolt with a nut, wound all the way down. Possibly causing the clutch to not actually fully release as the pedal wont come all the way back......
Got it all reassembled and start it up... and things went bad. As soon as the clutch was depressed it started to have a metallic sound, But I put it in gear anyway and tryed to load the gearbox. I could feel the car want to move but the main sound was a metal jumping crunching sound coming from the gearbox..... I resigned to the fact that it was a shot box and was ready to pull it apart, again.
So slid under the car and grabbed the cvs just to make sure I had them on the splines, And noticed the drivers side inner cv was quite loose and clunking. Some how I had installed a completely destroyed inner CV. The Bearing Race was completely shattered. So I grabbed another CV axel this time not all nice an cleaned and slapped it in to make sure that was the only issue.
And All was well. Apart from it seems to only want to run on 3 cylinders, dislikes idling, and is very loud. Took it for a quick drive to see if it was just oiled plugged, Not so lucky but it did build boost and the clutch felt great, gearbox feels smooth.
So a win so far.
New Table new project. The cluster had cracks up the lens and the back pcb? had some copper separation on it so I dug out the Rat Home donor dash and it had a clean lens and a good pcb, So swapped the Sti 240kmh speedo over and cleaned as I went to make a nice clean cluster. The Vent surround had a portion missing from the top left, and the top right had been reglued back on and had a sticker covering the repair. So rebuilt the missing section with Epoxy glue over a molding of coke bottle and tape to get the shape. Sanded and painted, not finished but shows the reshape isnt to bad. Still going to try find a replacement part but will do for now.
Decided to have a look under the dash..... Im not sure if they have ever been told that this is not the way to do wiring... I started to clean away the Brown Packaging tape then the Blue Painters Masking tape to find some very average wiring. the Key main wires were just twisted together under this mess. So they are now tunnel lug crimped and heat shrunk for most of the length. But the loom for the indicator/headlight stalk had a wire broken right at the plastic housing in the column. So instead of trying o repair this I dug again to the Rat Home parts and dug out a complete assembly that hadnt been cut at all. Still have to get deeper and clean up more... in due time.
While I had the rad out I noticed the lower passages have expanded. Never seen this happen before, Defiantly not a nice previous owner situation. But it is getting there, slowly but surely.
I have new plugs, Just need to get them out I may do a compression test but kinda scared of the the possible result.
Last edited by Lorolla; 22 November 2021 at 08:58 AM.
01 November 2020, 08:27 AM
