90 Voyage(r) to SDAC!

[jonnyb]

OK - hopefully I don't accidentally close my browser while previewing my post after an hour of typing and uploading images!!!

A few years ago I flew out from Connecticut and purchased a nice, fairly original 1990 Plymouth Voyager turbo from Jonathan Khoe in California, and took it on a meandering road trip back to Connecticut. Details of that cross county journey are here: http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/showthread.php?58455-Cross-Country-Voyage%28r%29-LOL!

Anyway, fast forward a little over two years and the van has treated me great! I have put 30,000 nearly trouble free miles on it! However, the sun burnt paint and anemic transmission have finally worn on me, and the Top Van announcement for SDAC a few weeks ago was the nudge I needed to spruce this van up and make me proud to daily drive it (not to mention have more fun during that daily drive!).

Here's the progress over the last 2 weeks...

The first thing I needed to do was get some shiny paint! The body was pretty straight and only had some minor dings, but the hood and roof were California sun baked and rusted. So I rough sanded the body to find and smooth out all the dings, and then I sanded down all the rust. Here are a few photos of the work in progress.

First find all the dings and try to pop them out and fill/prime them:



Then sand down the rest of the oxidized/rust areas and seal them with rust preventative:


Then a final sanding at the paint shop before paint:


And here it is all painted!


Preview on the new 17's!


- - - Updated - - -

OK, so in parallel with doing the body and paint work, I figured I would put aside the original engine and trans and build a replacement motor. Since this is still going to be my daily driver, I figured I would keep it economical and not go too crazy with the build.

I had a spare 1990 2.5 T1/Auto drivetrain from a 90 shadow es that I thought was in OK condition. Well, I found out today that it's not in OK condition...



I broke it mostly down and then drained the oil. As the oil was draining, I thought I saw a few clump of thicker oil come out. Not good.


Sure enough, once I got the pan drained I saw sludge and metallic material everywhere.


It turns out that whoever built this motor really messed up! It had .25MM oversized crank and rod bearings, but it looks like the crank was only turned .25 on the rod journals - the mains look like they were never turned and the main bearings were completely burnt up!!! The crank has big grooves worn in it from the oversized bearings and is definitely not usable without being turned.

On top of that, this motor has LW rods with pressed pins and 1MM oversized pistons. So now I have to drop these off at the machine shop to get them pressed off so that I can swap them over one of my spare sets of heavy duty rods.


I also had to steal a good std size crank from a spare tbi motor that I had.


I dropped the trans from this same tbi motor off at Cliffs along with a 90 turbo trans to have a nice strong turbo lockup trans built. I'm hoping to improve my mpg along with increasing performance. I'm having a heck of a time finding a torque converter though - every place that I've called or emailed has either not gotten back to me or has told me that they don't make anything for this application. I know others have done what I'm doing, so I'm not sure why I'm having such a hard time!

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'll post updates every few days to keep you all updated on the progress.

Jon

[Pat]

Wow!!!

[jonnyb]

Well, good news, but also more bad news.

For kicks, I pulled that tbi motor apart and the crank and bearings are in great shape and are all std size. I also have a full set of new std size rod and main bearings, so no need to wait for the other crank to get machined and no need to spend money on new oversized bearings!

The bad news is that the engine builder also bored it 1MM over and it looks like they went really loose for the pistons. The piston to wall clearance is .003-.004, which is more than I'd like for cast pistons. Also, the ring gaps are huge!!! Top ring gaps ranged from .029-.038 and second ring gaps were in the same range! Oil rings were all right around .074! I thought maybe they bored too large and that's why there was so much gap on the rings, but I measured the bores and they all fall within .001 of a .040 over measurement.

I'm thinking about measuring up that tbi block that I stole the crank from. I noticed it has 1MM oversized pistons as well, so maybe the bore is a little tighter in that block. I'm not sure how I feel about having to drill the turbo oil drain back hole though. Seems like it might be a ----- of a job.

I'm heading outside to play around with it, but I'm hoping to have a cleaned up/painted block with a crank installed in it by this afternoon!

Jon

[mcsvt]

Paint looks great Jon, if you need any help let me know.

[turbovanman²]

.003-.004 isn't bad.

Did I see some kind of lock nut on the rods?

Didn't we give you a bunch of shop names for converters? TU/Hugh's can have one built in 2 days.

[wheming]

You are really going to make me feel bad if you get all that complete in time to roll to Indy when my stuff has been apart since last August!
But, I am hoping you do!
Can't wait to see it in person.

[Turbo3Iroc]

Looking great Jon! Also nice choice on the wheels. I think they look great on a van. Hope the motor comes togerther in time for the voyage.

[2.216VTurbo]

Wow, great progress Johnny! You musta put in some 10hour days on that thing Not sure if it's the lighting or what but it looks like they painted it brown?? Do they have any window tint shops in your town?

[jonnyb]

Ugh...more problems! I ended up pulling out the TBI block and it looked good and was bored .040. I measured the pistons in the bores and the clearance was about the same on the pistons - .0025-.0035, so I think this block will work (I'll play around with them to get them in the best fit holes and hopefully get an even clearance across all 4). I drilled the turbo oil drain back in the block just fine and then went on my way cleaning and painting the block and chasing threads to clean it all up. That's when I noticed the the block isn't cross drilled.

So I pulled out the drill again and started to drill out the block to make some cross drilled holes. I got a nice pilot on all three, but then when I went for the finished 3/16 size, the drill bit snapped off in the hole just as it was penetrating through (got caught up on a final burr and the shock snapped it right off). It snapped off below the deck and there's no way to get to it from the other side. I tried using pics and small screw drivers to reverse spin it out, but it's lodged in there. I know the bits are brittle, so I also tried a punch and hammer to smash the bit, but that didn't work and I bent my punch!

So after spending a couple hours trying to remove it, I gave up. Not sure how I'm going to get it out

Good news on the converter - it looks like Hughe's is what I'm going to go with. They should have the converter here next week

- - - Updated - - -

Did I see some kind of lock nut on the rods?

No, they weren't lock nuts, but they were funky. Those are all getting tossed anyway as they're lightweight junk.

- - - Updated - - -

Looking great Jon! Also nice choice on the wheels. I think they look great on a van. Hope the motor comes togerther in time for the voyage.

Thanks Kelly! I think they look pretty good, but I gotta tell you, I saw them on a Caliber yesterday (that's what they came off of) and I don't think I would have bought them if I saw them on that car first - they looked horrible on that vehicle...LOL!

[wheming]

Thanks Kelly! I think they look pretty good, but I gotta tell you, I saw them on a Caliber yesterday (that's what they came off of) and I don't think I would have bought them if I saw them on that car first - they looked horrible on that vehicle...LOL!

How do you plan to run? They are 5 x 4.5 or 5 x 114 or something aren't they? Wheel spacers? Or you planning on tearing into knuckle replacement in your free time???

Oh, and what size tire is that?

And also that pain looks great! Are you going to do decals and pinstripe? If you want to do the same, I'm sure David from Positive Impressions has what he did for me saved. I really like the decal Pentastar instead of the plastic one.
In fact, i think I have some spares, but they would be the wrong colors for you. Charcoal and silver. Your pinstripe was gold or beige? I think gold might actually look pretty slick with that paint.

[Rrider]

Damn make me feel like a bum with all that nice work. Paint looks great, beautiful color!

A couple years of the Audi TT wheels that look like that are 5x100.. before they went 5x112. I think some VW's had fat five spokes like that too.

[jonnyb]

How do you plan to run? They are 5 x 4.5 or 5 x 114 or something aren't they? Wheel spacers? Or you planning on tearing into knuckle replacement in your free time???

Oh, and what size tire is that?

And also that pain looks great! Are you going to do decals and pinstripe? If you want to do the same, I'm sure David from Positive Impressions has what he did for me saved. I really like the decal Pentastar instead of the plastic one.
In fact, i think I have some spares, but they would be the wrong colors for you. Charcoal and silver. Your pinstripe was gold or beige? I think gold might actually look pretty slick with that paint.

This van is a weird one. One of the oddball things is that it came stock with 15" inch wheels, which on a minivan (at least in 1990) meant you got the 5 x 4.5 bolt pattern. So the caliber (and many other newer mopars) wheels bolt right on. They are 17 x 6.5 with 38 mm offset. The tires are 215/55/17, which is just a hair shorter than stock, but with way more wheel and way less sidewall. These wheels and tires are actually pretty light for 17's! I think they weigh less than the 15's with snows that are on the van right now.

Martin Kolner over at Arizona Parts has original stripes for the vans in his stash of parts. So I bought the correct gold set from him. Hopefully it should be here any day. I've got a local guy who took an impression of the turbo decal before I stripped it off the van, and has it all set up to make those decals once we get the original stripe and match the gold color up.

[2.216VTurbo]

Damn make me feel like a bum with all that nice work. Paint looks great, beautiful color!

A couple years of the Audi TT wheels that look like that are 5x100.. before they went 5x112. I think some VW's had fat five spokes like that too.

Your words but I'm inclined to agree, how come you don't even come to the local meets anymore bum?

[Rrider]

I layed a can of paint on with a roller, don't want catch flak for it..

Which brown is that? It doesn't look as golden as the van in the grand canyon desktop pics.

[jonnyb]

Not sure what the "Grand Canyon Desktop pics" are, but everytime I mention the Chrysler color name of my van, I think "queue the porn music"....LOL! It's "Medium Suede"...oh yeah baby, chica, chica, ba, ba (LOL....it's pretty hard to type out that fat porn bass riff )

[Rrider]

IIRC it was your van in some scenic canyons. Probably was just the sun hitting on it making the color look light.

[2.216VTurbo]

I layed a can of paint on with a roller, don't want catch flak for it..

Which brown is that? It doesn't look as golden as the van in the grand canyon desktop pics.

Ride the Gixer out then, I'll prolly take the Ducati to the next meet, the GLHS is trapped in the garage by a non mobile Driveway Porsche

[jonnyb]

Well progress has been slow! I'm having to do everything twice...LOL!

I finally got the block prepped and got everything pretty much buttoned up today. The TBI block ended up being in pretty good shape and hopefully works out. I got the turbo pistons swapped off the lightweight rods and popped them onto the heavy duty rods and the bottom end seemed to go together with everything in tolerance. The second rings were a little looser than I would have liked, but nothing out of factory tolerance.

So the goal was to use parts I had laying around to build the drivetrain, and boy has this thing turned into a frankenstein of parts! Since the most of the turbo motor I had was junk, I basically only used the pistons from it. Here's the cracks in the block I noticed after I did a bunch of prep!



So I used the tbi block, crank, aux shaft and oil pump. I pulled the 2.2 pistons off of a set of spare T2 rods and used those. I started to use the tbi oil pan too, but after getting it all cleaned up, I realized the entire bottom was smashed up and it was junk! So I pulled an oil pan pile out of my spare parts stash and cleaned all the sludge out of it and it cleaned up fairly well. Here's some pics of the block being drilled for the turbo oil drain back.


For the top end, I stole my setup from my old blue GLHT. It's basically a stockish swirl head with some port matching on the exhaust side and an 89 T2 roller cam. The intake is off an 88 T1 and was tapped for a charge temp sensor. The turbo is an stock 89 garret T2 with a .63 housing and a TU 3" swing valve. The exhaust manifold is tapped and has an EGT probe in it. I put the best condition valve cover on it, but I might spring a few bucks and have one of my spare's freshly powder coated. Here's the motor as it stands right now. It's basically all together - just a few things to clean up and put back on the front.


The torque converter and trans should be here this week, so the plan is to pop those on and do the engine swap next weekend. Until then, I plan to pop on the rear sway bar that's on it's way from Johnny and clean up and paint all the trim and accessories I took off the van and get them ready for reinstall. I also got my front mount intercooler the other day, so I'm going to get that fitted in this week as well.

Less than 3 weeks to go!

Jon

[BadAssPerformance]

[wheming]

With all that free time, you should have popped in one of those 16v motors!!