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Had another one follow me home, now fun cruiser project!
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Author:  fastvtgsx [ Sun Nov 01, 2015 9:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Had another one follow me home, now fun cruiser project!

I browse craiglist about once a week, looking for anything interesting and the usual DSM/CSM stuff. It's pretty rare to find anything 3g CSM related but last week I stumbled onto a listing for a 1990 Dodge Colt with 191000 on the clock for $800. Take a look at the pictures and looks to be in decent shape, so I shoot the owner an email about it.

Owner replied saying it was available and to give him a call to setup a time to come look at it. I catch the flu and the weather sucks so about 4 days go by before I'm able to give him a ring about the car. I really only see myself paying 500 for it so I make the hour drive to go look at it.

Owner is an older gentleman who bought it new 25 years ago! No rust to be found on the body, a good size dent in the door but overall in decent condition. Interior is filthy but mostly there and the dash is in great shape. Long story short, I drove it home for $490. He gave me $10 to fill it up, haha. He even said he refused to sell it to some other guy before me for $150 more cause he didn't like him.

Not sure what I plan on doing with it, I really just wanted to save it from a junkyard or some crack head destroying it. It is exactly like my first Colt I swapped. It's a base model, manual steering, no a/c ( :cry: ), 4 speed cable transmission and one mirror. For now I'll just clean it up real well, polish and wax it to see what it will do to the paint and fix the couple issues it has.

I'll add pictures when it's not dark out.

Author:  Flying Eagle [ Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

Is it silver ???

and good on ya for saving it!

Author:  89Mirageman [ Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

The story sounds so similar :lol: . I go through this about 3 times a year I think.

Congrats on the great deal, can't wait to see some pics.

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

Dang daylight savings time... Got home too late to get you pictures so you'll have to wait another day. But I'll here's a little more about the car.

Original owner had a bunch of receipts in the car and kept up with the oil change and maintenance records in the owner's manual. Had some new tires and a battery put in recently, so that's good.

It is a red hatchback with light grey-ish vinyl interior. It ran great on the way home, as much pep as you would expect from the 1.5, but no misses or stutters. The brakes are warped pretty bad and it rides somewhat Cady-like so I'm guessing the struts have never been changed. I forgot how great these cars were on gas, drove it 70 miles home and it is barely under the full line.

Spent some time formulating a plan of attack today. First thing will be giving it a deep cleaning, inside and out. The brakes will be replaced with the sedan brakes on as they seem to be a decent upgrade, solid to vented and it looks like the pads are bigger as well. I'll probably end up replacing the wheel bearing while I'm in there as well. I'm going to check the tierods and balljoints and see what kind of shape they are in. Struts will be swapped out. The thermostat is stuck open so that will be changed.

I think I'll be able to pop most of the dent out of the door from the inside and then I'll just need to throw a door handle on.

I'll need to figure something out for tunes, as there is no radio and I'm sure it could use some speakers.

That should make it a good driver for the time being. But before I did in too much, I gotta get the sedan up and running again.

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

Finally have some pictures! As you will see, it hadn't been cleaned years, possibly decades. :(

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I wiped down the interior and cleaned the jams. There was dirty from leafs and stuff decomposed after being in there so long. Interior is not the worst, but the carpet is probably not savable. The plastic panels are pretty severely sunfaded as well.

After a good wash, I took out the buffer and attacked the paint on this thing. The shine came back pretty nice, but now you see all the hale damage and scratches. O well, I'll polish the turd the best I can. I only got the hood done today, just wanted to see how well it would come back.
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Compared to the way the rest of the paint looks.

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The wheel wells don't have a spot of rust, amazing!
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Ordered a bunch of parts from RockAuto last night so those should be here fairly soon. I'll keep tinkering on it and the sedan when I can. I'm considering trying to grab a door and hood from another hatch shell that is stripped and for sale on CL. The door is pretty well messed up on this one.

I spared you the under hood pictures, it is looking horrible under there.

Another thing I notice on this Colt, it is as base a model as you could get I'd imagine. No 12v outlet inside, no rear wiper, no door speakers and no rear speakers or even a rear decklid. I'm wondering if it still has the wiring for door and rear speakers and such or if they use a different harness depending on the model.

Author:  acrazyjohnny [ Tue Nov 03, 2015 9:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

rear speakers you will have the wiring. door speakers i dont think so. i put amps in my car so i just ran new wire anyway

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

Awesome, good to hear, I'm going to have to track down some rear speaker brackets then!

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Wed Nov 04, 2015 7:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

I love how fast RockAuto gets parts out. Got all my brake stuff and struts in, just waiting on one more small box.

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I got the rest of the exterior knocked out today. It's look pretty good aside from the numerous scratches and dings. I will need to get to the roof soon, as it is starting the usual bubbling from the hood supports. I think I'll just rattle can it black after it's taken care of.

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Author:  Mechacode [ Fri Nov 06, 2015 11:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

Wow did that buff out nice!

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Sun Nov 08, 2015 8:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

Ya, it did come back to life pretty well! Finding parts are turning out to be more difficult than expected and I'm sort of kicking myself now for not keeping the misc small stuff off my old mirage and colt.

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Tue Nov 24, 2015 12:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

I got some tunes installed recently. Bought a JVC unit that will charge your phone through the usb port so I don't really need to mess with adding a 12v source. Found out after installing it, this thing came with no audio at all from the factory. The stock front dash speaker locations were bare! So I stole the 4" speakers I had in my mirage and we have sound. I'll add some speakers to the back eventually.

Also managed to retrofit a 2g shift boot onto the stock colt shifter. While I was in there, I pulled the shifter assembly apart and replaced (wasn't even there anymore) one of the bushings so it feels a good amount better now.

I need to find time to hit some salvage yards but really doubt I'll find anything with as old as these things are now. All the parts are still waiting to go on, I've found myself busier than usual and the mirage is taking longer to get finished (nothing new).

Still not sure what the plan is for this thing, I'd love to be able to find an a/c setup to put in it and throw the 4g63 I have sitting around in it for my wife to drive. She's always saying she misses her old hatch, who knows how she'd really feel about driving one again. lol

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Thu Nov 26, 2015 7:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

I was able to get the brakes swapped over the other day. I did it the slide hammer way and it worked well. Bearings looked to be in good shape so I put new grease on them and slapped it back together. The sedan rotors are the same diameter, but vented and thicker obviously. The pads are a generous amount larger. I compared the calipers to single piston DSM calipers and they are dementionally the same so good cheap upgrade.

I also found the reason why the front end shakes while braking. The right inner tie rod is shot, nice clunk back and forth. The ball joints looked and felt good though. I ordered new inner and outer tie rods from Rock Auto and will just replace all of them at once and be done with it for good.

Slowly but surely she will make it back to her golden age and better hopefully!

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

I got the passenger side tie rod ends swapped out and back together. Still getting a clunk so I will swap the driver side ends out next and then swap the struts and get it re-aligned.

The door handle has been installed, but unfortunately the lock cylinder is messed up. I might look into swapping the passenger and driver cylinders that way at least I won't have to go to the passenger side, unlock on the outside, reach across, unlock and then walk around.

As soon as I can find the a/c stuff for this car, I'll look into stuffing a 4g63 inside. But I want to do it all at once if I do it.

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Thu Jan 21, 2016 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

All the tie rod ends have been replaced now. Driver's side wasn't horrible but I'm hoping that will be the end of the front end clunking. Alignment can finally be done now and I'll be able to take it out and about.

Author:  fastvtgsx [ Thu Feb 18, 2016 10:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Had another one follow me home...

Alignment was done and I got some wheels for it from Discount Tire. Very impressed by their customer service, they called me to verified the offset was ok. It showed to be 40 but was really 38 and they called to make sure it was alright before they shipped it out. And I ordered them on Monday afternoon and got them on Wednesday!

I've established a plan for this car. It is going to get a stock 4g63/km210 with a/c. I'd like it to be around 250hp, nothing super fast, but an awesome, fun car to cruise around in when I don't want full race car in the sedan. A while back I picked up a complete spare motor that was pulled from a Galant VR4 (which has turned into an awesome, lucky pickup). It has the a/c bracket and pulley I need to run a/c. I have a perfect condition 14b and 2g manifold. I also have a KM210 transmission and could clutch setups to choose from. I'm ordering the few parts I need and they are starting to pile up. Don't have a real timeline, when I get the parts car fully stripped and out is most likely when it will start.

I'm going to prep the motor and trans and have that fully ready to drop in as well as the wiring stuff. I'd like it to be simple plug and play when I do the swap. I'm not sure if I want to swap in a power rack over the manual. I want this to be a car my wife will enjoy driving as well.

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