i've been so busy with my Regal GS that i haven't had time to do anything with the R/T yet.  on top of that i'm moving back down to Laramie this month so it might be a little while yet before i can start in on it.  my brother and i are going down to Laramie tomarrow to find an apartment.  hopefully we can find one with a garage!

Tim, like you i sold my last car and bought another one because i just really wanted something different.  my TGP powered 5-speed Cutlass was a TON of fun! but i had owned the car for 7+ years and i guess i just got kind of bored with it.  i used to own a rare T2/A555 '89 Lebaron GTS and i really liked that car.  it was only a matter of time before i owned another TD :laugh:  there was no way i was going to pass on this R/T, rust free, fairly low miles, and already sitting in front of my apartment :icon_biggrin:  i'm surprised my brother didn't snag it before i did, but then again he already has a Shelby Lancer, Omni GLH Turbo and of course the red Spirit R/T.  he is currently collecting everything needed for a 2.5L TIII swap into his Shelby.

it looks like i could probably get this R/T going after i replace the turbo and lines, but i'd rather just pull the engine/trans and go through it this winter.

Quote from: TurboSedan on October 07, 2007, 08:44:07 AM
i've been so busy with my Regal GS that i haven't had time to do anything with the R/T yet.  on top of that i'm moving back down to Laramie this month so it might be a little while yet before i can start in on it.  my brother and i are going down to Laramie tomarrow to find an apartment.  hopefully we can find one with a garage!

Tim, like you i sold my last car and bought another one because i just really wanted something different.  my TGP powered 5-speed Cutlass was a TON of fun! but i had owned the car for 7+ years and i guess i just got kind of bored with it.  i used to own a rare T2/A555 '89 Lebaron GTS and i really liked that car.  it was only a matter of time before i owned another TD :laugh:  there was no way i was going to pass on this R/T, rust free, fairly low miles, and already sitting in front of my apartment :icon_biggrin:  i'm surprised my brother didn't snag it before i did, but then again he already has a Shelby Lancer, Omni GLH Turbo and of course the red Spirit R/T.  he is currently collecting everything needed for a 2.5L TIII swap into his Shelby.

it looks like i could probably get this R/T going after i replace the turbo and lines, but i'd rather just pull the engine/trans and go through it this winter.

Thats awesome. My buddy down here has a GLHS that is in pretty good shape. It's getting a T3/T4 this winter. He says that I'm going to regret selling my CSX, but also told me that I will love the way this Gran Prix drives and handles. like I said in my other post, hopefully I'm not digging a deeper hole.

finally some progress!

well for the first time since i bought my Spirit R/T over two months ago, i finally did something to it!  up until now the only things i have done is remove those riced out graphic stickers that were on it and put it on a trailer to haul it down to my new place.

the turbo was completely trashed; i've never felt so much shaft play.  it was just flopping around inside.  REALLY easy to remove compared to a SOHC Turbo Dodge, probably even easier than a TGP.  after i removed it i found oil all over inside.  there is no way this thing can be rebuilt since it looks like the compressor wheel had obviously come into contact with the housing.  i also removed a few other things in preparation for removing the cylinder head.  the bottom of the intercooler is filled with oil, along with oil all over the throttle body and intercooler hoses.  even the downpipe has oil all over in it.  i pulled the cam covers off and it appears to be extremely clean inside.  from what i can tell so far all of the cam lobes look perfectly smooth.  only one lifter was missing the plastic retainer piece, other than that minor detail the valvetrain looked absolutely great.  i haven't cleaned the valley area yet, but i looked very closely with a bright flashlight and i cannot see any signs of cracks.  it still has the original steel core plugs (factory steel plugs in an aluminum head, wtf), but so far it looks fine.  the spark plug threads looked really bad - looked like they had milkshake oil on the threads but fwiw i found them to be VERY loose....like just barely more than handtight so maybe that had something to do with it?  the previous owner told me he thought the head gasket was blown because it was smoking so bad but i think it was obviously the turbo.  the coolant in the radiator is bright green and does not appear to be contaminated, and the motor oil is clean and full as well.  i do plan on having the head pressure checked, valve job with new guides, resurfaced (?) along with new FWDP lifters and titanium retainers and cometic HG.  i'm probably just going to locate a stock turbo for now although i would love to get a T3/T04E .63 stg-II 50-trim later.  i just need to get this thing running first and fix all of the issues leftover from the previous owner.

i also removed the front bumper and cover.  the previous owner said he hit a pole while drunk.  thankfully no damage at all besides the bumper cover and the bumper itself needs to be replaced.  i have already located a replacement Spirit ES (w/foglights & gfx) bumper cover in a local salvage yard.

it was dark out, snowing and 21*F, all inside of a tiny garage that has no electricity.  i made due with my maglight :D  i also don't have a jack so it was kind of a bitch cramming myself under the car to unbolt the downpipe hah.  feels good finally making some progress though!  anyway, here are some progress pics:

yeah, the previous owner decided to paint the cam covers orange.  yuk.


oil in the downpipe:






alot of oil came out of the compressor inlet when i flipped it on its side:


bunch of oil sitting in there....you should see the intercooler!




the lower lip appears to be good, so i guess i'll keep that:




evenutally i would like to get a FWDP 3-bar cal, Accufab AFPR, +40 injectors, Walbro 255, ported exhuast manifold and lightly ported head, Spearco FMIC (top-down, inlet/outlet on same side), T3/T4 hybrid (wish i could afford a GT30R), 3" mandrel bent exhaust, adjustable cam sprockets and have the A568 rebuilt with OBX LSD....and of course get it repainted the original white.  fastest Spirit R/T that i know of with stock turbocharger (small Garrett T3) and no weight reduction has gone 12.44 @ 110 so it has alot of potential.

that turbo reminds me of the turbo that was on my TIII when I bought it. Mine smoked like a pig and oil was dripping out the tail pipe. The guy I bought it off of put a trash can lid under the tail pipe to catch the oil while we ran the engine to use the cig light to plug a compressor in to top off a rear tire on it. When I jacked it up to take the turbo off I ended up with a puddle under the tail pipe about 18 inches round. It also smoked for days after the new turbo was on.

Your starting to look good now build it to beat your brothers. Have you thought about alcohol injection for cooling instead of the FMIC. I was reading on TD.com some are just shooting alcohol to cool. maybe +20 with a +40 cal and alcohol (don't know if that has been done but I thought it would work). Or drop fuel pressure and top it off with alcohol. Larry (4sfed) he thought with the alcohol he was shooting the FMIC wasn't needed the stock IC would have worked just fine.
Tim

That turbocharger reminds me of my old Volvo when I got it. The T3 in it had a bad cold side seal and the intercooler had damn near a 1/2 quart of oil inside of it. All the ic plumbing was coated in oil and the old exhaust I cut off the car was full of burnt oil as well.  Driving it w/ that turbocharger would equal giant blue smoke clouds. :laugh:

for some reason my brother's R/T is a dog to tell you the truth.  could be fast but it has some issues that have us stumped.  it is a complete DOG down below 2800 RPM but then it really wakes up and screams to redline.  it also bucks in the lower RPM kinda like my Turbo Cutlass did (though not nearly as bad).  he has stage-1 LWP reground cams in there and i really think that might be the culprit.  Wallace has told him that he may have gotten stage-II cams by mistake.  he has a good set of spare TIII cams (stock) and we're going to try putting those in to rule them out.  it revs real slow and i think he only has 10" vacuum at idle despite good compression (though we are at high elevation).  i'm sure part of it is the 3.50 FDR hybrid trans he has in it, but damn, that thing has no low end torque at all.  i can get a real good launch out of it but i have to rev it up pretty good.  with that FDR you can really wind 1st gear out.  we've messed with the cam timing several times, swapped out the SBEC, etc.  he is pretty frustrated with it.  anything above 10psi and it pings so he's just left it at 7psi for now.  he does have +20s in there but strangely enough he gets awesome gas mileage and the plugs look good.  he did get some high octane fuel from the airport once and raised the boost; no KR and holy crap it hauled ass!  i don't think he is going to do much with it anytime soon.  he just blew the engine in his GLH so we're swapping a 2.5L TIII into that along with an A555/A525 hybrid.  i like my brother's R/T, but i'll be keeping stock gearing and cams in mine for sure.  hell if i were to buy a turbo today i'd be kind of tempted to just get a stage-I .63 housing instead of stage-II.  7200ft elevation = SLOWWWW spoolup.  just going down to 4500ft makes a world of difference.  after owning my Turbo Cutlass, i just can't stand lag.

alky injection might be the way to go.  i want to keep AC in this car.  my brother is coming down on Monday and we're going to test fit a large NPR intercooler while the front bumper cover is off.  i don't think it is going to fit very well unless it is mounted on the engine bay side of the radiator (like it is in his GLH), and i doubt there is room for it in there.  maybe if it were SOHC lol.  i think we're going to pull the cylinder head off on Monday as well.  i know this engine has been rebuilt at least twice.  if i find Turbo-II pistons in there i will be pissed.

Quote from: mfewtrail on December 07, 2007, 10:25:37 PM
That turbocharger reminds me of my old Volvo when I got it. The T3 in it had a bad cold side seal and the intercooler had damn near a 1/2 quart of oil inside of it. All the ic plumbing was coated in oil and the old exhaust I cut off the car was full of burnt oil as well.  Driving it w/ that turbocharger would equal giant blue smoke clouds. :laugh:

not sure how much oil i have in my intercooler yet, but there is so much that i don't even know how any air got through it!

I haven't come up on any threads over there by your brother I remember well his problems. I have wondered if some of his problems are related to too much compression. I would be interested to see what compression your car would do before removing the head and compare that to his. The cams and cam timing would effect it but I would still be interested to see the numbers. I am pretty sure I remember he has adjustable cam gears. How much did he have to advance the cams to get them on. Decking the head will retard cam timing a thicker head gasket or shim may be what he needs. His 3.50 final drive would be a bigger issue if he drops compression because it would be a bigger dog before boost.

I have been thinking of doing the alcohol injection on mine instead of the bigger IC because here in Florida we get 90 plus degree weather from april until october and the car just doesn't like the heat. This year is messed up to. Its december and we should be seeing cooler temps but its still hitting mid 80's. When we do get cooler days the car loves it. Looking at the price of the kits it looks like you can put one in for less then the big FMIC (less work to small tubing is easier to run then 2.5 inch pipes) and from reading Larrys posts would give me more cooling. He was data logging intake temps cooler then outside air temp with alcohol and he was in Tampa. (I just turned on The A/C in the house because it was getting hot. Its winter where is my cooler weather) Hows this sound? When Jimmy gets his TGP back from the body shop he wants to move on making it run better. I want to do some checking on what things are doing first add an aftermarket boost gauge and have him drive around with my scanner hooked up. I think with the T25 I'm going to find with all the heat down here its maxed on a hot day. Go with a T3 and a wideband O2 then raise boost and cool it with alcohol. If we get it to 15 psi and want to go higher we can do it old school TD style (no 3 bar support here) and use alcohol to fuel it. He already has the 5 speed.
Tim

neither of us really post on td.com anymore, mostly just turbo-mopar.com now.

we'll definately have to do a compression check and compare the two R/Ts.  yeah he has the adjustable cam gears.  he initially set it where Wallace reccomended but we have since messed with various settings and to be honest it doesn't really have too much affect on the problem.  right now he is using a Mopar head gasket but is planning on a Cometic.  i  know Walace resurfaced the head but who knows; it may have already been resurfaced once or twice before Jeremy ever got it.  i am trying to convince him he should get a 3-bar cal.  right now he just uses and adjustable zener diode, AFPR and +20 injectors on all of his cars and scanning is done with an OTC 4000E.

i have raced my brother's R/T with my old Cutlass (30mph roll-on).  with the R/T at 10psi, i would put 1-1.5 car lengths on him right away but then he would be passing me around 80mph and have 1-1.5 car lengths on me at 100mph.  for comparisons sake, when i raced his Shelby Lancer (grainger valved @ 12psi, full 3" mandrel bent exhaust + 3" swingvalve) it would be neck and neck.

i wish i lived in Florida right now!  my house is FREEZING :icon_evil:  trying to get used to having the heat set low to save on the gas bill.

looks a little better now!  my brother and i found the bumper cover and grille for $35 at a local salvage yard.  it still needs to be adjusted as it is hanging a bit too low right now.  the lower lip piece is a little tweaked so i'll probably use the old one instead.  the fog light brackets were also a little different between the two bumpers so i still need to swap the old ones in.

i pulled the intake manifold/fuel rail/injectors/TB etc and the intake ports and valve stems are all very clean inside:



i've decided to leave the cylinder head on as i just can't really find any reason to remove it.  for some reason i found an extra knock sensor.  the original KS in the head wasn't being used; someone threaded another one into the block and was using that.  my guess is someone didn't connect the KS before installing the intake manifold, and then couldn't reach it (it is practically impossible to get to with the intake in place).

wow haven't been here in a long time.  well i should have the car running this week.  COLD ass weather + unheated/no electricity in my garage put a big damper on things.

i did decide to pull the head and i'm glad i did!  the bolts felt like they were way too loose like 60ft/lbs.  found that coolant was seeping into the #1 and #4 cylinders and the head bolts were just covered in oil.  i think whoever did the head gasket last time didn't do the final 90* turn on the bolts or something.  anyway the good news is i found that this engine has a set of .020 forged Venolia pistons :icon_biggrin:  the Lotus cylinder head seems to be in damn near perfect condition.  i pulled the cams and they look brand new.  kinda makes me wonder if they were reground recently.  cam bores are nice and smooth.  hell yeah.  i just ordered the rest of the stuff i need from fwdperformance.com today.  already cleaned the hell out of everything so it's all ready to be put back together.  after an afternoon of wrenching it should be running again.  besides the Venolia pistons and test pipe it's going to be pretty much stock.

btw, my brother bought a white Spirit R/T off ebay last January, so now we have a set of red, white and blue '91 Spirit R/Ts sitting here :icon_mrgreen:  we went to Des Moines to get it...boy was that a trip to hell and back.

anyway, i hope to dyno my R/T this spring/early summer and hope to make around 215whp at stock boost level.  i'll post some pics up soon and a vid of the startup.

good luck with it. How does your brothers new one look and run?
Tim

the white one has typical bad paint and a little bit of rust at the top of the windshield but otherwise pretty solid.  it needs a new turbo but otherwise runs great.  we had to get creative and bypass the turbo to drive the car back here.  going up hills the car didn't want to go past 65mph sometimes haha.

i posted some pics at turbo-mopar.com of the tops of my pistons and it seems they might be JE forged pistons, either .5mm or 1mm over i'm not sure yet.  they are definately aftermarket and have a slightly deeper dish than stock forged TIII pistons.  and of course, as you probably know there is no such thing as a cast TIII piston.  it was a nice find that's for sure.

IT RUNS!!! screw the cold weather, i've owned this car 7 months now and i've waited long enough!









and of course, a short vid of the initial start-up:

http://www.turbosedan.com/spiritrt/MOV03822.MPG

runs great, sounds great, oil pressure shows 3/4 up on the gauge :thumb: voltmeter looks great.  WOOOOOT!!!!!!!!

i'll be installing the airbox and intercooler hoses tomarrow when it's a little warmer.  unfortunately i can't drive it because there is a mountain of snow in front of the garage.  it goes into 1st and reverse fine though.  and yes, it has an open downpipe so it's a bit loud right now :)

Nice! :icon_mrgreen:  And damn, you guys still have snow? It's been hitting 80*F here. I kinda hope it cools off again here, I'd like to have some good weather to run the red TGP in once I get everything straightened out on it...