1990 Daytona ES 2.5 Turbo 1 5-speed project

This is a project car for my 19 year old son. He was a big push for getting my Omni going again and wanted his own project car. He kept sending my some real marketplace jems wanting to buy something. i saw the listing for this Daytona and to be honest wanted to get it for myself, but I sent it to him. He arraigned with the seller to buy it and got a friends truck to go pick it up. Once we saw it in person we knew we got a smoking deal for $1000. Car was missing the gas tank and was supposed to have a bad turbo. Story on the car it was a one owner car and was parked when the turbo went out. They rebuilt the turbo but it was worse than before. We put a new tank in it and after cleaning the injectors we got it fired up. And boy is the turbo bad. It was leaking coolant and oil out of every place it could. And I can say for sure we will not have any mosquitos for a few years with the cloud of smoke it put out. So today we pulled the head to get it read for a new turbo. It looks like whoever did the turbo "rebuild' did it in the car with the head on. Many things were loose or not connected. So we power washed it up and are now set to tear the whole head down and replace stuff while we have it apart. So stay tuned!

Congrats on a nice score for a father and adult son project!!

Thanks
Randy

Quick update on this project. New (used) turbo has been acquired and most of the parts to put it back on. Last minute ordered a braided line kit for the turbo after seeing the condition of the lines on the car. Could have made them work, but for the cost I didn't want to bother. Those should be here Thursday and maybe we go for a Christmas drive in this one.

We got everything back together over Christmas break and it fired right up. Well not right up, had to adjust the dizzy a bit to get it to run. Was a great time to find out my timing light doesn't work! So for now we are just waiting for a little warmer weather to do some more work on it.

Since the weather has been nicer we finally got some more work done on the Daytona. Once I got the timing set it was running better. It sat for a few weeks and would start right up, but missing on cyl 3. After some head scratching we decided to pull the injectors to test them. They were stuck when we put it together but they opened up after cleaning them out. I guess after sitting for a few month they decided to stick again. So we threw a set of TII injectors I had in it and it is running great now! Started on the soft breaks next. Passenger rear bleed good, driver rear we are not getting any fluid out. Started taking lines apart and stopped when I ran into one that was not going to come out in one piece, that's for another day. Switched to the front and drivers front has no pads, that's an issue. So we are stuck on the breaks right now but will get some more parts soon. We also got the front seat unstuck so we can actually sit in the car now! All that took was some cleaning and lube and working it back forth. Most likley not going to make it to the OVC springfling but hope to get it on the road soon.

Started working on the brakes yesterday. New master cyl, front brake hoses, calipers, rotors & pads. Had to use a generous amount of heat to get the hard lines to turn off the hoses, but they eventually broke free. With everything together the fronts actually started to bleed! Had a hard pedal and was getting excited to drive it finally. Then I noticed a big leak coming from under the proportioning valve. Had a pin hole in one of the rear brake lines. So we did the right thing and clipped it and pinched it shut. Drove it one block up to the gas station to put some good fuel in it. That is when we saw the big gas leak. Rubber line going to the filter was leaking so we drove it the two blocks back home. New fuel filter and hose is ordered and should be here on Monday. Like I told my son, you got to fix one thing to find out what else is broken. A few small steps at a time we will get it going again.

Bummer about all of the leaks. I forget the name of the place without doing a search, but I’ve had very good luck with getting SS replacement brake hoses made up and shipped to me. of course, it is often easier to bend up some copper nickel, and splice it in for the rears, or just make an entire new section. Some of the bends determine what I can make though, as near the MC, they can become so tight radius with the fitting on them that I don’t have the capability to bend them.

Quick update! Fixed the brake line leak. Decided to put a patch in rather that replace the whole line. Found a real nice straight spot about in the middle of the car and put a flared union and some new pipe up to the prop valve. Also reduced some dead weight in the exhaust right after the down pipe :eyebrows:. We got some KYB struts/shocks off Rock auto and got them on. Definitely not the best, but they were cheap and way better than the completely blown out ones that were on it. Finally got a vacuum block and some new vacuum lines put on it. Looks better than the cobbled up pieces I had on it to just get it running. Since then we have put about 100 road miles on it and it seems to be running fine. Was concerned about the oil pressure, but we double checked with a manual gage and it was fine. My son is starting to get the hang of a manual car, he has even drove it the 15 miles to work a few times.

Get a passenger side motor mount for a 1990+ convertible. They stop so the engine rocking but don't transmit any vibration to the car. Best thing about 1990+mounts.

do the 90+ convertible mounts still have the little shock absorber/dampers on them like the 87-9 mounts did?
both the passenger side and transmission mounts had'em those earlier years

on ebay there is an outfit called Modern Day Muffler..
they have brake lines for most everything but I think our cars are overlooked

perhaps a discussion thread and a collection of old o-e lines of the types we need and a nice request letter would help if we all made something of a group effort to demonstrate a need for them to help us out with tubing

they offer both stainless and steel lines ..pricing for my truck shows about a 25 dollar difference

No they ditched the shocks on 90+

Thanks !

The garage just down the street from our house was having a little car show so we decided to take the cars out. The Daytona is running good but still a few things to work on. I think by this point in the summer he must have put a few hundred miles on it. He has a big list of stuff he wants to do but I just tell him to just drive and enjoy it for now. I did have the boost at absolute minimum, but put a manual boost controller on it to give it a few more psi (8-10). Car is not fast but it makes all the right turbo noises!

Looking good, James. I agree that if it's making the right noises, just Drive it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cordes

Looking good, James. I agree that if it's making the right noises, just Drive it.

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Hard for a 20yr old with his first car to want to leave it alone. But I think he is figuring it out. He tells me all the time that every time he drives it anywhere people stop and ask him about it.