A few weeks ago my 4 speed tranny in the colt finally let go. This was good and bad. Bad because it was my daily driver and good because I needed some motivation to swap it. Not drivable = Motivation.
In order to do this right and take my time I picked up a new daily driver. The red 97 LS sedan that I posted up a while back.
So far I have the engine and tranny pulled. Next I need to degrease and pressure wash the bay before the 4G63 goes in.
My engine hoist is at my mom's house in the shop but I wanted to swap my car here since all of my tools are here and she lives about 20 miles away. Plus I'm working on dirt and using a hoist on dirt sucks. So a quick trip to Harbor Freight I picked up this for $45.
There is a thick tree limb on our Pecan tree right behind my little shop. I wrapped a 2' piece of 3/8" chain around it and hooked it together with a large grade 8 bolt. Hooked it to the little 4G15 and it lifted it right out like it was nothing. Once it was up high enough I pushed the car back and let it back down.
As for the engine, so far the block has been honed and baked to get rid of the original paint and years of rust and grime. I painted it with some Duplicolor cast engine paint and knocked in some new oem freeze plugs. The balance shaft bearings have been rotated to block the oil passages and the crank has been plasti-gauged and torqued after the machine shop polished it.
Tore it back down to clean off the plastigauge and lubed the crank and torqued it down again. I got some brand new oem Mitsubishi pistons pressed onto the original rods. The guy that I bought my talon from bought them so I decided to use them. The original pistons had tiny knicks in them where the valves made contact so he purchased new ones. He also purchased some oem standard Mitsubishi rings.
I still need to get the head to the machine shop for a valve job and have it resurfaced. In the meantime I will finish the bottom end and hopefully it will be ready to drop in, in a few weeks or so. I will be sure to take plenty of pics and update my progress.
If this car is nearly as clean as your old black one, then I'm sure the final product will be awesome. Looking forward to more progress!
