Austarion

Got my intake manifold all dismantled, looks like its in good nick, just needs a good clean. Stupid water in petrol though, my injectors look pretty nasty on the outside. The important parts look good though :)

I wrote this:

http://prozac.orconhosting.net.nz/eciguide/rebuild.html

ages ago, (like 8ish years...) Turns out it's still online! Score! Hopefully I wasn't completely full of crap and the o-ring sizes are accurate ;P

Have to give this a go:



To get my spoiler off for JAS, and get the 3 piece on. Will certainly be interesting.

Big thankyou to JAS this evening, We picked the absolute worth time to turn up to grab some parts, and we all got totally soaked by the storm rolling through... Sorry bro ;)

Noooo! Today was the day to fit my new alloy radiator, but its pissing down outside. Will have to wait till next weekend now :(

On the upside, I paid for some wheels and ordered my tyres yesterday. You'all on here are going to hate my choice, and its incredibly impractical for our buggered roads here in Christchurch, but i reckon it's going to look oh-so-cool.

Just finished a nerve wracking task. I bought some Conquest tails from MotoCam360. Have just succesfully taken them apart without breaking anything... PHEW!

Mods ensue...

ProZac wrote:Noooo! Today was the day to fit my new alloy radiator, but its pissing down outside. Will have to wait till next weekend now :(

On the upside, I paid for some wheels and ordered my tyres yesterday. You'all on here are going to hate my choice, and its incredibly impractical for our buggered roads here in Christchurch, but i reckon it's going to look oh-so-cool.

They aren't 20 inch rims with 20 series tyres are they lol rofl

Damn, sprung!

Nah man, its going to be quite low though I think.. ;)

I thought this Starion already had the conquest tails on it??

Yes indeedy, but the condition of them left alot to be desired, they were cracked and had holes in the outer lenses.

Well I'm a bit of an ass... When I welded the threaded sleeves to the hubs, I had the brake hose brackets pointing the wrong way, hah. Cut them off and welded them on the correct side.

I got the rear struts in today, and then started on the front. I knew the ball joints under there were a bit average... But closer inspection revealed them to all be due for replacement.

Will get a new pair of bottom joints tomorrow, along with new inner and outer tie rod ends.

A mate of mine works next to HBI here in ChCh, he popped over and they'll rebuild my drag link for a pretty good price, so will pop that in to them tomorrow. Should hopefully tighten up the steering a bit.

Will get the front rotors skimmed while they're off aswell, brakes had a bit of a pulse going on, should sort that.

Need to get all this stuff done as its going its first road trip, to Taupo, mid april, so has to be safe and reliable for me and the missus :).

A few pics of how the D2 front coil overs are installed.

Start with a bare Starion stut (Cheers JAS :) ).


The instructions say to cur the strut off 25-30mm above the hub.
I marked:


I cut:


It was at this stage I have the certifier here in Christchurch a ring to ask about the legalities of these coil-overs. He said they would be fine for certification, provided the weld on threaded sleeves were welded to the old strut tube, not the actual hub itself... The D2 instructions specifically say to weld to the hub itself... Hmmmm. I decided to go with the certifiers instructions, as the struts are kind of useless if they can't be certified.

My other concern now was that I'd only left 25mm of strut tube, and I was concerned that this wouldn't be enough... However I pressed on, literally. After blasting the hubs and the bottom of the sleeves, I bunged the sleeves in the oven as hot as I could get them, and knocked them on with a BFH and a block of wood. I left 10mm of strut tube below the sleeves, before the hub.

I had the fabricator at work weld them up for me, as I'm really lazy and couldn't be bothered setting my tig up.


Notice the brake brackets on the wrong side, oops. I fixed that up, gave them a lick of paint, and they look pretty awesome :).

Hey man.
Any chance i can steal the threaded top sections that you cut off those front struts? Trade for those stereos we spoke about?
Cheers

Hey man.
Any chance i can steal the threaded top sections that you cut off those front struts? Trade for those stereos we spoke about?
Cheers

When I bought the new conquest tail's off motocam 360, he did me a very good deal on a hood strut kit also. Fitting was super easy. I needed to drill the mounting holes slightly further towards the front of the vehicle (a couple of mm), to avoid them binding when I closed the hood.







First job I had to do in the engine bay after installing them was scrape off the old intake manifold gasket. Not having the hood stay in the way was bloody teriffic. As i had the radiator out I could completely climb in, made things way easier.

Got the intake manifold all back together and back on.

I blanked off the EGR and air conditioning idle up valve to simplify the vacum lines.

While i had all the front suspension out i gave the under arch's a wasterblast. This side was pretty mucky from years of a leaky power steering box. Really hope to be rid of that system by the end of the year.


Should be a fun day tomorrow.

Hey man. I'm going to end up using those to make a set of rear coil overs, to sell along with my fronts when I change to s13 stuff sorry. I'll have a hunt around for something though, someone is bound to have some sigma or 1.6l ex lancer ones knocking around.

awsome progress dude

Gets me motivated to do more on my ex

I want some of those bonnet struts,think ill have to have a go at making up some