The Adventures of Meintii, The "NO CUT" M20 Swap

[Meintii]

I painted all the wells with rustoleom undercoating and it turned out pretty well! Much better than before!

I will take some better pictures when the sun is not so bright

[craaaazzy]

hey zac, sorry to hear about ur misfortunes. Please let me know if I can help in some way. I can try to find so time on the weekend for u.

[Meintii]

[jgerock]

Looking good Zac! Don't forget your cotter pin before the dust cover is popped back on. ;-)

Jim

[Meintii]

Looking good Zac! Don't forget your cotter pin before the dust cover is popped back on. ;-)

Jim

Lol. Yea that's why I haven't put the dust covers on yet!

[Meintii]

Let me give you some of the details of WHY it took me almost a month to put my front suspension.

Got all my parts no problem, and I figured out how to get it all back together!

BUT the strut I bought to replace the bent on the passenger side had two bolts broken off in the bottom of it ( the ones that hold the backing plate on).. and for three weeks I have been trying to meet up with the guy I bought it from to swap it out with another one he had. Well I got fed up with waiting the other day and said screw it.

I dont have a picture of what I ended up with, but needless to say I had to drill out the bolts, and I replaced them with some slim headed M8x1.25 bolts, stainless of coarse, and lock nuts on the back. Luckily everything cleared the tight tolerances.

AND THEN, on the drivers side, I had to cut the brake lines to the original caliper, which meant I had to make new ones. And.. I needed 16" long lines, but autoparts stores only carry 12" or 20".. 4 inches to short or 4 inches too long. I made one of each work... but I may see if I can find some originals to replace them eventually.

Just finished both sides today, and I also removed driveshaft ( finally ) and the clutch and pressure plate to investigate.

Yall think this clutch is ok?

Pics!

New ball joints!

Hopefully these clips are on right

The rears looking good!

An insiders view!

Aww yea .. finally!

on the ground.. first time in 2 months

damn I missed that negative camber!

Re-sealing the tranny this week hopefully so that I can test fit, and make sure everything is straight.

[jgerock]

Great pics Zac! Everything looks good.

How old is that clutch disc and pressure plate? The disc looks thick enough to me, but maybe you should check the thickness and compare it to the new specs.

Are you going to safety-wire the (3) strut bolts - or did you use Loc-Tite?

Does your car have rear lowering springs or stock? If lowered, then you might want to remove those rubber bump stops.

[Meintii]

Great pics Zac! Everything looks good.

How old is that clutch disc and pressure plate? The disc looks thick enough to me, but maybe you should check the thickness and compare it to the new specs.

Are you going to safety-wire the (3) strut bolts - or did you use Loc-Tite?

Does your car have rear lowering springs or stock? If lowered, then you might want to remove those rubber bump stops.

How old is that clutch disc and pressure plate?

They are about 2 years old.. Probably 10k miles at the most.

Are you going to safety-wire the (3) strut bolts - or did you use Loc-Tite?

I may re safety wire them, but if I can get away with loc-tite I may just use that. Which type would you recommend?

Does your car have rear lowering springs or stock?

It has stage 1 ie springs on the back. I thought about doing that, but what doe taking them off do? And you are talking about the rubber spacers on top and below the spring right?

[89e30]

Removing the bumpstops will give you more travel, and because it's lowered, you need as much travel as possible.

[jgerock]

Here is the stock rubber bump stop which prevents the rear suspension from bottoming out (stock shocks). Bilstein shocks have a built-in bump stop.

[cj]

Just an FYI, those are the wrong lug nuts on your wheels. They should have the bulge seat with the 60* taper. Your lugs are just a cone seat and will damage the seat on the wheel. Not to mention may loosen up.

[Meintii]

Update!

The 5 speed was installed this past weekend, and everything is back together! now if only the car would start. The last time I started it was about a month ago, before I started all this. Im worried that some water may have gotten down in my new distributor sunday night during some major thunderstorms, I had taken the dist cap off when putting the tranny in and forgot to put it back on before I let it sit (outside) over night.

The weird thing is that I didnt do anything to the engine, and it started up up last time I ran it :/.

Changed the spark plugs and checked the fuel flow and all seems good. Im going to get a new fuel filter today at work and see what that does. Im sure jacking the car up 4 million times must have loosened some crud in there. Im going to let the dist air dry today in the sun and see if that helps aswell.

But back to the 5-speed, It shifts smooth through all the gears with a crisp shift now, hopefully it still will when the cars running!

More to come

[Meintii]

Well.. I have been slacking off in my update to this blog, and Im going to try and get this this up to date again (from 3/2011 to 12/11). So much has happened (not all good). Ill go through and update as I have been in the past, by posting each major event/project with its own post.

[Meintii]

Headed up to V@V in Old Winston Salem this year and could not have had a better time! Car drove great all the way up there, and for the extra long mountain drive back home. Had a really fun time seeing Jason (eurotrash), Bj, Todd, Jim (JGerock), and Marshall, as well as Bill Williams, Bill Wagner, Grice, Al (seat belt dude) and everyone else!

Pics/Video from the event!

Had a chance to Navigate for the TSD Rally with John from GA in his 2002ti, we ended up getting 8th overall, and the ONLY car to get a perfect time in between two check points!

The friday night shenanigans

Jasons idea to stop his beer from being stolen while at dinner...

At Club "mod"

Kari and babs dancing it up

and the spectators

Pics from the actual show

Me with the spaten girls after finishing off their keg

FREE SchtUFF!! (not shown are 5 more spaten glasses and another hat!)

Virtual Tour

[Meintii]

A few pics from the trip back home, and a few taken in DT salem after the show

Ghetto Speedometer