Sean's 99 Spyder GS build. (very long...)

Sean485 said:

No, it isn't the same. Its similar, but I did a wire tuck so I just re-did all the wiring anyway on mine.

Click to expand...

based on your answer you must have gotten a turbo 2g harness and rewire every thing or rewire your gs harness to work with the turbo ecu.

Please remember rule 7 when posting...

I re-worked my NT harness, but its basically a custom harness now.

Cant believe I just noticed this. Very nice, makes me want one thats for sure. I kinda like the idea of that car top down and no spoiler. Holes left behind would be more work that worth though Im sure.

fanaticdsm-er said:

I know this is bringing a thread back from the dead, but. Im playing with this idea serioulsy on my gst. Either this or a starion. I think Id like this. Before anyone tells me "buy a gsx" save it. I dont wanna hear that bullshit.

So from my understanding, I will need, an awd tranny, a driveshaft, a new exhaust, an awd rear end, and an awd gas tank. I would also like to know, what exactly requires welding, and drlling? Your helo would be awesome Sean.!

Click to expand...

http://www.vfaq.com/mods/2G_FWD_to_AWD_Conversion.htm

Yep, thats basically what I used as my guide. It would definitly be easier to do on a coupe although personally I'd just buy a GSX...

The spyder is again hibernating for the winter, it served me very well over the summer. Put ~4k miles on it and it never missed a beat other than severe boost creep so I could never really go full throttle with it or I would be over 30psi by 4500rpms.

Got some big plans for the winter though, going to swap out the 16g for the 4088r, the 1g intake manni for some JMF sheet metal w/ 75mm TB, mount the a-1000 fuel pump into the tank, get some hks cams, upgraded valve springs, new rear wheel bearings, fiberglass over the foglight holes of my new bumper and paint/install it.

If I find some extra money I'd like to get a taller 5th gear for it, I have more torque than a stock DSM so it would be nice to be able to cruise at a little lower RPM with the stroker.

Hopefully when it re-emerges from the garage in the spring it will be just as reliable but significantly faster!

Damn...I can't wait for this to be making clean passes, good luck and am I wrong in thinking that this will be the fastest spyder dsm?

Spyder = mega sleeper lol. If you aren't gonna be the faster spyder, then I sure as hell would as hell like to see what it runs.

Long overdue for an update but hasn't been much to update. Been busy with life in general and the car has been sitting quietly in the garage for a few months.

Got ambitious today though and started working on it again, mocked up the turbo and intake manni. I have to make some modifications to the cruise control cable box as it interferes with the throttle linkage on the accufab TB and I think I am going to have to get a new radiator for it as the manifold sits 1/8" away from the radiator. I had an aluminum one I got in a trade for a 1g fluidyne but when i went to fill it it leaked from 4 places

Still got alot of things to do and some money to spend (soon as i come up with some) as I am going to upgrade to link v3 (ditch stupid gm maf) and I want to get some cams to compliment the added airflow of the 2.4 w/ 40r. I'll keep the thread updated as I work on it

Well finally another update; been having allot of family issues so being able to do anything with the car hasnt been a priority but I finally got some time to get dirty on it.

The car had a slow oil leak from the front case so I decided to go ahead and re-do the gaskets and check my bearings while I was installing the next set of mods. Since I'm fairly tall, the car is fairly low, and my back has been bothering me I just decided to pull the engine so I could work on it at eye level. Only took about an hour to have it up in the air.

What it looked like when I started.


Car moved outside so I could clean up my work area before I begin.


On its way back out...


I didn't take a whole lot of "in-process" pictures, most of you know how this stuff comes apart anyway .

HKS 272 cams and gaskets installed, lubed, and belt tensioned. Excuse the photo quality, greasy hands

Amplifier board and cheapie 12" sub with 1 Farad cap and remote jumpstart/charging posts since the battery is inaccessible once the board and back seat are put in place.


Hard to get a good picture of them installed. I was trying to save as much of the trunk space as I could. I also need to pick up more carpet to transition from the trunk floor to the sub board to contain any small trunk items and cover the excess wires behind the sub board.


Monitor installed with remote access usb for a memory stick, usb keyboard, etc. Works out well as I can turn my phones mobile hotspot on and have internet for internet radio, web surfing, or whatever no matter where I am.


This thing is epicly cool for a little remote. I can control the mouse with the little joystick, run the volume and track back/forward/play/pause regardless of if I just have media player in full screen doing standby graphics or working in dsmlink or whatever. The monitor is touch screen as well but obviously thats not practical to control volume or media controls while driving down the highway plus this way I can keep the media player in visualizer mode.


I always have such a hard time making the wiring look decent. I guess it doesn't really matter since you dont see it but makes it easier to troubleshoot with easier to trace wiring. 2 way paging alarm system on the left, factory keyless module middle, convertable top/window control module next and you can just see the computer in the far right in the black box with its 1tb external HDD for holding media. Directly behind the alarm module is the marine battery box that holds the battery out of sight out of mind.


Slowly working my way forward. Next up is getting the gauge cluster and steering column back together while I wait on the synchros to arrive from JNZ so I can put the transmission back together and drop the driveline back in. I picked up a set of sportbike coils to use for COP, they are a little longer than I anticipated but I got the shortest ones they make supposedly so I am going to have to make a custom spark plug cover plate since i've never seen one manufactured for anything but Chrysler type coils.

More updates, slowly but surely.

Gauges dirty but in place.


Short video showing gauges better and the computer display.
Link

Next project is a fuel tank. The dual saddle design of the stock 2g tank along with my a1000 fuel pump just wasn't going to work.

This is what I was using previously just to be able to drive the car.


But of course that isn't fit for racing of any kind, it cavitated badly and had no baffling of any kind to keep the fuel at the suction points. The pump was also still slightly higher than the lowest point of the tank.

The only pre-made fuel cell for a 2g awd I could find ran over 600 dollars without a sending unit, a bit much for my taste. As the car is still going to be a DD I was not very apt to install a universal fuel cell in the trunk for a few reasons. 1) limited capacity 2) I like to have at least SOME storage space 3) I don't like the idea of dragging a fuel filler hose to the interior of my car, especially so close to a large capacitor, amplifiers, computer, and battery so I wanted to keep the OEM fill location.

So alas I am having to manufacture my own. I knew I was going to have less capacity than stock as I wasn't going to divide the tank as they had stock and I needed to use a gm sending unit to match my autometer fuel level gauge. During the process of making this I have also decided I am probably the worlds worst welder of sheet metal ever.


Fuel level sender installed.




I still have to do the baffeling, feed the sender wire up through the stock-ish location to meet up with the factory wiring, drill/tap the mounting screws for the pump mounting bracket, allot of wire brushing/grinding/cleaning and make the brackets to mount the whole works...

I should receive my 5th gear and reverse brake synchros this week which is all that is holding me from dropping the engine/trans back in. Then its just a matter of a few small odds and ends, a good wash/wax/detail, and lots and lots of tuning...

Nice work! This car was my original motivation to first KEEP my spyder gs, then turbo swap and now AWD swap. I'm not sure if I like how much more agressive the sideskirts are on the 97-99, but your car looks great. Keep it coming.

Lookin' good, Sean.

Time for another update I suppose. I finally got the car legally inspected and registered (long story, it was a salvage title). I had to make a 2nd fuel cell as the first one I made with too thin of material and together with my awful welding skills caused some leaks as well as a fuel gauge that didn't work.

I also had a howling noise while driving at highway speeds so I rebuilt the driveshaft and replaced both rear wheel bearings (not fun AT ALL) but the noise is now gone and it drives quietly. The cruise control is still a little wonky, seems to want to "set" speed about 3-5mph under where I actually set it and slows down/turns off when i try to bump it up with resume, haven't had time to figure that out yet. I also need to purchase an ignition amp as it is blowing spark out above 15psi/4.5k rpm and then I can start real tuning.

Inside of the fuel tank/cell. I don't pretend to know what i'm doing but i've never had any cavitation issues or pump starvation even with under 1 gallon in the tank so meh


Outside of tank with the pump. The rear diff fits snugly between the pump and the cell with enough room for the fuel line to circle around the rear diff back into the pump without interfering with the subframe or axles.


Under the hood. Still need to install the catch can but it doesn't leak any oil out or smoke at all so meh i'll get to it eventually



Front bumper is rattle-canned, I think I am going to have the entire car repainted next spring or something once I am completely "done" with modifications.





Overall I am mostly just driving and enjoying the car right now, have probably put more miles on it the past 2 months than I have the entire rest of the time I have owned the car. Even without being able to go WOT due to the spark blowout it is incredibly fun to drive and I haven't had any issues with reliability at all.

Time for another update I guess. I still haven't been doing much tuning on the car but I was having some ignition breakup issues at higher rpm and knowing that most people wind up using an ignition box with any type of CoP ignition I just went ahead and ordered an AEM Twinfire 4 channel box. I know a lot of dsm'ers run the arc-2 but the more recent reviews of them stated that the design had changed from someone leaving the company and they had since had lots of issues. Installation of it was pretty straightforward, I went ahead and removed the power transistor unit just to help remove engine bay clutter and hopefully have less things to possibly fail. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the setup but I have it mounted inside the car, away from heat on the backside of the metal plate that supports the ecu. I had completely removed the engine harness AGAIN while installing the ignition so that I could run the wires inside the stock harness and also so I could remove a few more wires I am not using (stock O2 was still there as was the wiring for the IAC motor that I don't use with the 75mm TB) When I reinstalled the harness though the car refused to start and, when I was checking one of the coils I unplugged the wire while cranking and it bit me. That 400 volt warning sticker they gave wasn't for looks! That shit hurt! After collecting my pride and recovering feeling in my arm I discovered that I am a retard and had not plugged in the injector resistor box... Fix that and the car fired right up I rechecked base ignition timing and all was well.

That mod took care of the misfire and again i was driving the car just back and forth to doctors appointments (have some health issues so no work at the moment) and although the convertible was great going down the highway with the cool wind in my hair I had to make a trip to a downtown pharmacy in stop and go traffic for what wound up being nearly an hour each way catching every, single, effing, red, god, damn, light.... also, it was REALLY freaking hot out that day, hovering in the area of 90* and 90% humidity or better and the car was not super happy about it. It was constantly just bouncing between 220-230* and I didn't like it being that hot. Add in the fact that I wanted to run the ac but obviously if the car was running hot without it ac would just push it over the edge... it was time for an upgrade from the stock NT rad.

Being the guy I am I like to get "the biggest" when I can regardless of if I actually NEED "the biggest" so when i went to order my radiator from extremepsi (awesome guys btw, highly recommend) I ordered the 3 core mishimoto radiator cause I didn't want ANY problems like this in the future... well, that would turn out to be a mistake.

Here you can see my first attempt to install the rad, I had placed cardboard over the fins to protect them during install... It failed horribly when the rad got caught on the upper core support and wouldn't come out.

Literally took me 20 mins to get the radiator back out by carefully rocking the engine back, and pulling on the fan mounts of the radiator and by the time I got it out the damage was done regardless




The DNP manifold although divided uses a single wastegate so the crossover tube from the 1/4 tubes was interfering with the radiator clearance. It was a tight fit with the stock rad, and with the 3 core radiator it was just too much. I should have known, but hindsight is always 20/20

I straightened out the fins as best i could with a tweezers and patience but I was/am so upset at myself that I managed to mess up such a beautiful rad in less than an hour. Trudging on I knew I was going to have to make some adjustments to make it fit so I sent the radiator off with a friend of my brothers to have the outlet moved over similar to 1g positioning as i don't have a tig welder while I set out to start cutting up my car again.

Some of the radiator support wasn't perfect to begin with as the car had been in an accident before I bought it and although I had pulled the core support up to it's proper place it wasn't as strong as it should have been. Regardless I knew the radiator had to come forward ~2" at the top but yet the hood latch/bumper cover supports had to stay in the same place, how to do that :dunno:

Here you can see basically how I started, being so pissed off about the radiator I just hacked out the upper core support and started on it just blindly fabricating. Sorry for some of the photos being blurry, I have some nerve issues that sometimes make it hard to keep my hands steady.




Here you can see some of the remaining sheet metal near where the bumper crash support shock would mount.

The answer to how to go about fixing this mess was some angle iron, some small square tubing, and a lot of patience. I had to box in the outter edges of the core support for the prop rod, hood bumpers, and headlight mounting points to be solid but with the IC coming through on the passenger side and ac lines on the drivers side it took a bit of finesse to make it all fit and be solid.

I also wanted it to look "reasonably" good/stock when i was done. I am going to have the car painted likely spring of next year so it didn't have to be flawless but there was some surface rust started from the accident that I wanted to get taken care of while I was working in the area.


The stock upper support with what I believed to be enough material removed to have adequate clearance. It was a bit of a guessing game as I was fitting all this with the stock NT radiator again as my 3 core was off getting the outlet moved over.


Back side, I removed the captured nuts for the radiator itself as well as the mounting points for the condenser as they both need to come forward while this part of it stays in stock positioning. The "easy" way to do it would have been to simply remove all the stock stuff and use hood pins but as i said, i wanted to try and keep things as stock as possible for outward appearances as well as function.


This center beam had been pretty badly bent from the accident so i straightened it out properly since I had the front all taken apart anyway. I had to clearance the bumper cover support and welded angle iron to it with a hole drilled through that supports it to the same captured nut as the lower bolt that holds the hood latch.



Upper view with everything just kinda floating in place.

Clearance of bumper cover support against intercooler.


Clearance of radiator fans to intercooler.


Just picturing how I need to frame in everything and how little room there is to do it all.


Initial fitting of the drivers side supports. The upper brace used to be the same angle iron as the lower part, it just basically just became flatstock after I had removed enough material to clear the headlight housing.


Same deal, drivers side. This was later adjusted as it was about 1/2" too high and I had to clearance the upper support significantly more to clear the headlight in proper position.


The upper support tack welded in place to test fit the bumper cover.


Bumper cover about 1/2-3/4" too far forward ahead of the headlights... Had to make adjustments to the support bracket as it must have gotten tweaked when I welded on the angle brace to clear the intercooler.


Drivers side, how it all ties together.


Give you an idea of how far forward it has come the stock captured nuts are where they would be factory and the mount under it is the new location.


Passenger side, not cleaned up.


Center bar welded back in place.

While I had the cooling system drained I decided to finally go ahead and take care of the FIAV coolant feed line that had been blocked off by a bolt for as long as i've run this engine. Used a pair of pliers to pull out the steel insert, tapped it for an NPT, ran the plug in with some locktite and touched it up with a grinder to make it look decent.


Now comes part of the story that really upset me, this friend of my brothers had now had my radiator for 2 weeks and he had taken it upon himself to pressure test the radiator, which, would be fine, whatever. However he found it had a small leak and decided that he wasn't going to bother calling to ask what I wanted to do about it, much less answer any calls or do anything that I asked him to do. So, after 2 weeks my brother drove to his house and simply took the radiator back with no working having been done to it.

At this point I was pretty frustrated, I really wanted to drive the car again but the rad had a small leak and the outlet was still in stock position. I decided to say fuck it, I am only going to have a few more weeks of convertable weather anyway and put the rad in. In the spring I am going to buy my own tig welder, patch up the pinhole in the tube and just weld some -16 an fittings onto the rad and be done with it :tat:




This is what it looks like installed, everything fits/clears perfectly but I am going to cut down the stock radiator mounts to be only one bolt as the 2 bolts are overkill anyway and they look rather stupid sticking that far forward. A project for another day however :dunno:


All put back together. Welds not the greatest but it looks alright and works. I am sure I will spend more time touching it all up when I tear it all down for paint.


I also took the time while I was diddling with all of this to do a bi-xenon HiD retrofit. I had intended to install my flush-mount hood pins while doing all this as well but alas, they disappeared and I have NO idea where they went/who took them... It just wasn't my week.






I don't know that I will ever be able to trust driving at night in a vehicle without HiD's anymore

One last thing I did while doing all this mess was replace the CAS pigtail with a nice new one, also from extremepsi. Looks much better than my old pigtail which was missing the wire retainers so the crank signal wire kept creeping out as well as the pair of large black zipties that held the plug onto the CAS itself


Sorry for the huge pics, hopefully most ppl have a browser that auto resizes