After selling my '91 wagon which I had for many years, I began going through legacy withdrawl. I began plotting my return. I knew that it would have to be in a turbo car; an NA motor just did not do it for me even if it was a high compression 2.5L. I had kind of resigned myself to getting an SS or building an ej22e+t as TW's are not only rare as hens teeth, they command a high price in this area where there are lots of people who both know what they are and actually want one. One day while browsing the parts shed a few pages back, I noticed a TW for a very low price. However, it was down in California. I guess they are not as popular down there, because the seller had no luck getting rid of the car even at the very low price of $500. After speaking with him about the car, I decided to take the risk of going to buy it sight unseen. I rented a dolly, loaded up my F250 PSD work truck, and with the help of my buddy Matt(superrallysoob) we drove to Richmond, CA which was about 700 miles away down in the east bay. We pulled into Richmond which turned out to be in the ghetto. While waiting at the seller's storage lot for his associate to arrive, we witnessed crackheads running by carrying TV's, and a hooker yelling about someone not giving her her money and that she was going to see Joe.
The storage yard was something else. The seller used it as a facility to do EJ swaps on vanagons and was somewhat of a vanagon collector. There was even a vanagon based RV there which is ridiculously rare. There was definitely some interesting stuff in the yard; sharing the 3 sided shed with my soon to be TW was a small electric powered van that looked like a subaru sambar. When I layed eyes on the TW for the first time I was excited and a little bit disappointed at the same time. the paint had scratches all over it and the car had so much dog hair inside that you couldnt even see the carpet in places. It turns out that the junkyard dog there had a habit of opening car doors and sleeping inside the cars. the car smelled like old dog and gear oil. Some elbow grease was definitely in order. As we were preparing to get back on the road I was checking out some of the stuff in the shed where the car was, and happened to spot a VLSD sitting on the shelf. After some brief discussion it was mine for a very reasonable price. luckily the drive back was uneventful although it was definitely taxing. the F250 has a 5" straight pipe and a bench seat that kills your back plus no cruise control.
Once I had the TW back home, I began to assess the issues. It ran, but barely. the turbo to throttle body hose was completely broken and the pcv system was a mess. It was filthy throughout. There was something seriously wrong with the shifter and transmission. I'll apologize for the lack of pics in the outset of the project because a) I was not planning to do a build thread and b) I was too busy working to stop and take pictures. from now on I will not only write about the improvements I make to the car, I will take the all important pictures as well. I'll try to go in chronological order with the project.
I began the project by removing the seats and spending literally 5 hours with the shop vac going over the interior from top to bottom. I was relatively relieved that I did not find anything majorly disgusting with the worst being a bit of mold on the driver's scuff panel by the gas pedal. Uh oh. looks like we've got a leaky sunroof. I found some funny stuff as well; a box of remington 30-30 shells and a baby monitor. Also I found a folder with receipts, the original window sticker, an old for sale sign, and some other various odds and ends.
Next I wanted to make it run. BSOD2600 who is right up the road from me was kind enough to sell me the intake piece I needed, and I cobbled together a new F pipe from part of the old one as well as some hardware store items. I may take pictures of that but it is kind of embarrassing. I officially HATE THE FUCKING F PIPE. Reworking the PCV system is one of the things I plan to do very soon. Now the car would run for more than 10 seconds at a time. Like an idiot I did not bother to get the old gas out or change the fuel filter before attempting to fire the motor. Things could have been much worse for me as I really had not idea what the condition of the fuel system really was.
On to the transmission. the shifter and the transmission appeared to be off from each other by 1 notch. It would not go into park, so the car had to be started in neutral. reverse and drive worked, but it would not shift out of 1st. I wanted to get the car operational as soon as possible so I decided I'd try and get the 4eat going first and foremost. I spent some time trying to redo the shift linkage install that had been done by either the previous owner or someone else, and it was ahh, interesting. the linkage rod had a Z shape bent into it, the center bracket was attached completely wrong and completely loose, and was attached to the transmission with baling wire. custom. I remounted the cable and spent some time getting the shifter and tranny to synch up correctly. Upon giving it a test drive, it would still not shift out of 1st. At that point I said screw this 4eat nonsense and parked the car while I gathered the 5mt swap parts.
Thats a lot of words and I bet you people are sick of reading about this hoopty, so Here's some pitchers from today.
somewhere along the way I picked up these mint RS 6 spokes
i neglected to add a starter interlock relay or wire the cruise control. The reason for not adding starter interlock relays was that they were problematic on my blue car, and I ended up removing them. I liked being able to start the car without having my foot on the clutch. I like to live dangerously lol. As for the cruise, I did not have the energy to figure it out during the swap. it is definitely on the list as cruise makes life so much better when any length of interstate is involved. I'll experiment with using a 4eat Cruise computer with 5mt. Superrallysoob hooked it up with a trans adaptor pigtail pre made.
