My first go at a 3D printed boost leak checker worked for the most part, but I noticed it start to slip around 10psi... I didn't print a big enough lip for the MAF's band clamp to grab onto.
I changed up the design and have a new one printing, should be good to go by morning.
My rear turbo IC pipe seal arrived from 3SX, so I'll get that installed and see how I'm doing on leaks after that.
The car is showing up on jack stands in Street View… I think that means I’m taking too long. It’s about time for another update (almost a year later).
I printed a more robust leak checker and replaced my rear turbo IC pipe seal. Seems like the remaining leaks after that were from the throttle body shaft seals and fuel injector seals.
Fixing those leaks alone wouldn’t have knocked the car out for the past 11 months, but troubleshooting the fuel pump got me sufficiently side-tracked with engine bay wiring issues. I hooked up a direct reading gauge to the fuel rail so that I could watch pressure while driving to see if the 0/1 bit switching I was seeing in my logs was messing with my line pressure. What I found right away that tripped me up was a pressure response I was seeing in conjunction with some erroneous electrical loads. The biggest being the turn signals and brake lights: with the car idling I would have rock solid fuel pressure at 43-44 psi. Put the turn signal on and I’d get a 3-4 psi drop in sequence with the blinking of the signal (or a solid drop with the application of the brake pedal). This is also consistent with a dimming of all the interior lights when these loads are activated, which I think I’ve mentioned before in this thread.
To keep chugging along, I could have hotwired the pump directly to isolate it from the rest of the car. But with the poor condition of a lot of the weatherproof connectors in the engine bay, I thought it best to try and get them all sorted out. Hopefully this will get to the root of the problem -or problems likely- instead of just putting a band aid over the fuel pump system alone.
The injectors and throttle body got their service too. Here’s the report back from the injector cleaner. They weren’t too bad I don’t think, considering their age and mileage (212K).
I disassembled and cleaned the throttle body, and replaced the shaft seals and the coolant gasket. There was lots of good advice here that made this pretty painless, such as remembering to strike a line across your springs so you can wind them back the correct amount, and to grind down the peened-over throttle plate screws to help with removal.
On to the re-wiring:
First off, a huge thanks to Brad at Sheridan Engineering for kitting together all of the OEM style connectors. He was great to deal with, offered me tons of advice and help, and is very reasonable on the cost for everything. Apart from the connector kit, I scrounged up 18 and 16 AWG stranded TEFZEL wire, open barrel splices, heat shrink tubing, loom, high temp electrical tape, and slowly started plugging away one connector at a time.
I pulled out the solenoid rack and started working on that first. It was nice beginning with this small harness as I was able to get familiar with the crimp connectors and re-pinning each terminal while being able to work comfortably at the bench. I was also able to eliminate the solenoid and wiring for the EGR system at the same time (Brad’s kit included pin plugs for empty terminals in the OEM connectors).
Next I moved on to the MAF connector. Once I started de-pinning this one, I was surprised to find that the wire and terminals were still in real good shape. The crimped ends of the wires had nice shiny copper with no signs of corrosion, and the insulation was still colorful and flexible under the loom. The only real bad part was the connector itself, which had a broken lock tab and wire boot retainer. So I decided to replace the connector only on this one and just moved the original wires over.
After that I replaced the old knock sensor with an OEM unit that I got from 3SX.
Then on to the real fun stuff: making pigtails out of my new connectors and splicing them into the engine harness. I started with the end of the line that runs across the forward cylinder bank. This part contains the cam and crank sensors, the front three injectors, and an O2 sensor connector. Most of them are straight forward, I clip off the old connector, and progressively cut back along the wire until I find supple insulation and clean copper. I’m crimping all my junctions with open barrel splices, so I strip away about an 1/8th of an inch from each wire, dab it in dielectric grease, then crimp it and heat shrink it.
The O2 sensor was a pain in the ass because two of the four wires are a shielded pair. It wasn’t hard finding the replacement wire, but pulling back the shielding braid, crimping, shrinking, re-meshing the braids, and shrinking again made for a lot of layers. It all managed to remain nice and flexible though, so hopefully it won’t give me any problems down the road.
Which is where I stand today. The front portion of the harness is complete with tape and loom, ready to go back in the harness holder –after I 3D print a new one.
I still have to do the rest of the connectors hanging on the bracket near the thermostat housing, along with the TPS connector, and the rear fuel injector connector and sub-harness. After that, I’ll have a boost gauge and fuel pressure gauge that I need to run to the cabin so I can monitor those once I finally get the car off the stands and start driving again. Fingers-crossed that’ll happen before the Street View car comes through my neighborhood again.
Great inspiration and perseverance on the vehicle. It's great to still see people heavily involved in these cars and its even better for newer guys like me who is starting to jump into to see stuff like this. Can't wait for the day you finish!
Well done, nice to see!
I noticed that you labeled the white wires with the color they replaced. Just a heads up to make sure that label does not fade with time/heat/oil
Great inspiration and perseverance on the vehicle. It's great to still see people heavily involved in these cars and its even better for newer guys like me who is starting to jump into to see stuff like this. Can't wait for the day you finish!
Thanks man. I can't wait either. There's a lot of competing priorities going on, but there's also a lot of laziness on my part. I shouldn't be going to bed before 10pm on a Saturday while there's still work to be done
Well done, nice to see!
I noticed that you labeled the white wires with the color they replaced. Just a heads up to make sure that label does not fade with time/heat/oil
Yeah I was sure to make all my labels on a laser printer, that should keep it from fading over time. I actually have a big sheet of them I made in Excel, I use an exacto knife to cut them out one at a time as needed. We'll see if the clear tubing I picked stands the test of time. I was sure to buy Raychem for the black stuff that is actually supporting the wire spices, but the clear that I found was just the Chinese Special on Amazon.
I kept clipping back a bunch of the oil pressure switch wire to find un-corroded copper. Which means I had to tear into the intake and coolant lines so I could access more of the main harness. Removed pre-turbo pipes, rear turbo intercooler pipe/hose, radiator lines, coils, front bank plug wires, and the PTU.
After that I was able to get all three wires for connector B-06, which has the oil pressure switch wire, oil pressure gauge unit wire, and power steering pressure switch wire.
Lots of cleaning followed as well. It looks like all of the camshaft endcap seals are bad, so it’ll only be a matter of time before it gets all dirty again. I’ll live with those until it’s time to do the timing belt next.
While I have all these parts out, I’ll rerun all the vacuum lines as well since a bunch of them are still the originals.
Messing around with the vacuum lines and I came across an open port on the gearbox. Does anyone know if I'm missing a plug here? Is this just an inspection port for the clutch?
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I dismissed it because I saw that I had that breather installed in the forward port. I didn't realize there was more than one.
Well since photos and videos don't last on social media, might as well post them here too. Didn't turn out as clean as I like to but it'll do for now. CNC is a must to get it right or someone who's really good at fabrication.
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Ok, before I state my problem, I have read other threads, and while I see similar problems none exactly like mine. So. Here we go. I recently purchased a 1993 3000GT base non-turbo automatic. I can already hear gearheads rumbling butt I got a great deal on a car so not being manual turbo didn't...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1991-Mitsubishi-3000GT/123877087556?hash=item1cd7a65944:g:0U4AAOSwFpNdKy9I
Whos is this? We need to have a talk about why its worth $12000.
So I got my grandpas car after he passed and I replaced little things on the car and it started running but was having problems so I tried to read the codes but it has a obd2 port even though it’s 1995 what should I do?
I have the model completed and most of the tools already procured. I will be setting my machine up to make these and they will hit the market around 950-1150, still working out some details. This is happening. I should be done Q1 2019. I have to much invested into this for it not to happen...
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