Lots of pics to tell the story to date. I'll break it up a little bit with the pictures. Anyhow, I'd started a build thread on another forum, then didn't keep up with it once things got out of control.

A-HA! Someone else w/ a Bronze valve cover!
(I just changed my v/c gasket this past Sunday when it was 55 degrees outside on January 1st in N. Delaware).

 

Nifty!

 

Had some heavy port work done to the hot side. The wastegate flapper was swapped out too. You can see, there isn't much material left in the o2 dump.

Ordered a fresh head and received this. Luckily I was able to work directly with the reman company to get it worked out. That's kitty litter in the shipping crate. Metal shavings all over the place, including in the valve seats where they'd been cut. The head was never decked and a nice chunck was missing.

In the end I got what I was looking for and then some. They admitted fault and recouped me as a customer by making things right, then dropping in all new revised lifters at no additional cost.

Cleaned up the valve cover while I was waiting for the head mess to get straightened out. Sorry 97GreenSpyder.

Head came in and looked good. Off with the old.

 

Cleaned up the valve cover while I was waiting for the head mess to get straightened out. Sorry 97GreenSpyder.

Mifft, another Red VC. That's so... common. Pffft!

:tat:

 

Cleaned the deck and studded the block. I polished the deck surface with 2000 girt wet paper. So far, no problems to 25 psi on my Commetic MLS

Had some concerns over the timing marks after we were certain they were dead on the day prior. Had to roll everything back into place, but it was on.

Random pictures of the car going back together.

Oh, I eliminated the balance shafts while in there. Had a bit of a disagreement over some catalog listings. I shattered 2 inner bearings and was sent a third that was obviously incorrect. Of course I was wrong until I sent this picture showing which bearing they expected me to use for the BS journal.

Oil sending unit all T'd up.

To be continued....

 

Nice work so far.

I'd look into remote mount your oil pressure stuff though. Senders have been known to break off from the vibrations.

 

Nice to see another Spyder getting prettied up. Question why didn't you put the head on with the intake mani on already?

 

Left overs...

Up and running. Took it in to the shop to fit the exhaust. 2.5" DP to an electric cutout. Stock catback.

I don't like obvious switches, especially for controlling a cutout. A little bit of wiring, some massage work to the stock heater vent and countless hours result in the cutout activation being controlled by what appear to be two filler panels in the dash.

And a little in-dash upgrade sneak peak...

To be continued...

 

My files got out of order, so here's a slew of stuff from different parts of the build. As it sits, the intercooler is blacked out.

Drove to King Performance in Orlando and had Jestr work his magic using an open port 2.0 cable, evoscan and ecuflash. The car made 325/320 @ 25psi. It got 30 mpg on the return drive to Virginia.

Started in on a 2gb talon conversion. I knew of a car sitting in a yard in Ohio, so when time freed up, I pulled the seat in the Honda and took off. Found an albino toad under the headlight.

Quickly polished one tail light.

http://www.scottabele.com/Spyder/137.jpg[/img

The parts car didn't have everything I needed. I had to find a set of 2ga side skirts. Luckily, the seller also had an Eagle steering wheel cover. Details, details...

[img]http://www.scottabele.com/Spyder/139.jpg

Conversion all laid out in the garage. Everything put onto the Spyder were new-to-me parts. I also have a 2ga talon TSI in rough shape. The previous owner started a 2gb conversion on it, so I had a bunch of spares there also. The 2ga talon was stripped of the previous owners butchered conversion and converted properly to a 2gb with the spyders spares.

Onto the build...

 

We worked on the brakes of both cars while doing the body conversions. Long story short, both still have stock brakes. These rotors will be bolted on once I machine the caliper brackets that came with them. The guide pin holes are too small. In the mean while, the spyder isn't being driven in the winter months, so the chrome rims and better tires went on the Talon TSI. The Spyder can sit on the crap wheels and tires, making room for the big brakes. If this week works out well, I'll be getting the wheels and tires I've been after.

That's it for now. There is a lot of work to be done and a lot of parts and time required to continue this build. By no means have I given up. This thread was just a quick re-cap which I'll use to continue documenting. I'm sitting on a ton of parts for the stereo install that I need to get moving. I have a lot of irons in the fire, but an evening in the garage could knock out a lot and clean out 60% of the parts I have waiting to be installed.

Next up should be the PC install and some more interior work. Brakes soon after, but there's no rush. Paint will get laid down with my tax return. Wheels and tires could be any day. After that, I have to question where I throw the next chunck of money away- roll bar/light bar and a stock style burgandy cf hood, or do I pick up cams and get one of my oil leaks taken care of followed by gutting the 95 for it's AWD....

Once step at a time.

 

Talon Convertible FTW!!!

I say do the AWD swap next.

 

Oh WTF. How dare you do the spyder talon swap! I wanted one first. Damn kids.

 

AWD swap is something that is on the plate. The parts are all here, but the conversion won't happen until spring. The doaner car is on loan to a friend short term.

 

This thread is worthy of a small update.

Nothing much has happened with my 2GB Talon Spyder. It sat all winter for the most part, getting a few ideas thrown at it here and there, but nothing worthy of posting since most of the things were failed projects. While sitting, things got a little messy, but that will soon change. I'd noted oil on the new timing belt, so I intentionally put the car to pasture until I could have the space to address the leak.

2 weeks ago I took my AWD TSI back from the #$@%^ I'd lent it to. She'd not been treating the car right and there was an argument, so I yanked it out from under her. Fast forward and my living situations were up for revision. Along with a new apartment I decided to also rent a garage space to begin addressing the painful need to start working on my cars again.

I spent all day moving 5 truck loads of tools, spare parts, equipment, and more tools into the garage. I am baffled how I never once left so much as a wrench out in my place, but managed to have 5 well-packed truck loads of car stuff in a 1 bedroom apartment.

The 2GB spyder is parked and prepped for surgery. The AWD TSI goes in after I address a failing CV axle in my DD Civic and organize a bit. Now that I've got room to spread out and don't have parts falling out my ears, I'll be able to clear out a bunch of spares, so pay attention to the FS threads in the near future for some really good deals.

The goal is to have an AWD 2GB Spyder by September 1st. I was initially hoping to have it done before the shootout, but life and stupid people have a tendency of getting in my way.

 

I did attack the big brake kit. The AeroSpeed (old school!) setup can finally be bolted up after having the caliper pins machined. One side has been done and test fitted, but I'll need to run 18's or some wheel spacers in order to clear the calipers, then get another pair of guide pins lathed down to fit the brackets. There are other matters more pressing and impressive, so I'm putting a stop on the big brake kit until I can locate and afford some bling-bling chrome ASA AR1s.

 

Rear ended my parts car. I'd set the parking brake in my DD but failed to leave it in gear. During the night, it crept forward. Thank goodness the TSI is a running parts car, otherwise I'd be upset had I done more damage to the Honda. Instead, she was a big, squishy marshmallow. If it doesn't pop back out, I've got a 2ga talon rear or another 2gb eclipse rear bumper and some walmart rattle can white.

Doh!

 

Well, I'm not terribly sure how I missed posting my dyno sheet, but I've been talking with my turbo builder Ian over at Turbo Lab of America (http://turbolabofamerica.com/) and decided to scan in the sheet. The tune was done by Jestr (http://www.jestrtuning.com/) on Central Florida Turbo's Mustang Dyno (http://centralfloridaturbo.com/). You can look back in the build and see some of the work Ian and Cole did in building the turbo as well as the port work. Everyone was real easy to work with. Now, before I get kicked for advertising, let's get on with the dyno and graph:

And some videos:

Exhaust cutout operation:

On the dyno:

Cut-out open on the dyno for it's final, most powerful pass:

 

Got my DD Civic all buttoned up on the 4th of July. Today I pulled the insurance back to comprehensive on both the 1998 2gb Talon Spyder and the 95 TSI Panda. I'm only a few days away from starting the AWD swap.

 

Keeping my eyes on this, I love the idea of an AWD Spyder.
Love the cutout too.

 

This isn't really a good update, but I got to working on the Spyder a bit tonight. While I would have wished I could have put it up in the air, I opted to take care of a few other projects before ripping into the underside. The most important being the tail lights and wiring them up properly. I used the following article as a guide, then quickly realized the Talon conversion is a bit different:

http://pwp.att.net/p/s/community.dll?ep=87&subpageid=57631&ck=

While the euro conversion reads pretty straight forward, it's not 100% same to the Talon. First off, I didn't want to ruin my Eclipse tail lights by removing their wiring, so I opted to chop up the Talon set I had on hand. Aside from the setup that screws into the tail lights, there is an additional socket that needs to come from the Talon and be spliced in to the wiring. While it wasn't very difficult to figure out, I wasn't very happy to have to re-socket some of the bulbs since I was too dumb to check they fit before saudering and heat shrinking everything. The right bulbs are in the right location and working properly, but tomorrow I need to pick up some 10-ohm resistors and wire up the reverse lights and the back end will be complete.

I threw in the Talon air bag while I was at it. The door spires are on hand, but they'll be left to the body shop to attach. Otherwise the 2gb Talon conversion is completed.

The seats and center consul and head unit had to come out tonight, so I may attempt to wire up the PC tomorrow.

 

Could one just swap a Talon chassis harness to have the tails work correctly? Just curious.

 

I guess you could do that if you have one. My 2GA TSI's was butchered all to hell by the PO when he converted it to a 2GB Eclipse. :chair: When I pulled the 2GB Talon body, it never occurred to me that I'd need to also grab all of the wiring. Live and learn...

Up in the air she went.

Before.

I started today without much of a plan. Once I had it up in the air, I decided to look into an oil leak before I got started pulling the rear subframe. And it's a good thing I did! Had I finished up the AWD swap, I know I'd of wanted to take it out for a drive, oil leak or not.

I pulled the timing covers suspecting the crank seal or something with the balance shaft delete was allowing for the leak under pressure. What I found was the oil pump sprocket bolt had completely backed off. I have no idea if this was the cause of the leak, but it definitely needed fixed. I could have lost the engine the next time out of the garage, either from oil starving or bouncing the nut around into the timing components.

I'm waiting for some feedback in tech to figure out if I should go ahead with bolting everything back together, or if I should pull the timing belt and sprocket, which means I'll delay the AWD swap a bit longer to throw a set of cams in while the belt is off.

Since I'm in there, I now want to remote mount my oil sending unit since it's also got a leak and bouncing off the splash shield. I've got a few catch cans to mount and route along with some new outer tie-rod ends. I should be back at it tomorrow. I'm just trying to take this one thing at a time so I don't get overwhelmed.

 

It seems like all of the leaks from the timing cover have been solved. I also remote mounted the oil sending unit which took care of my second biggest leak. I threw about a week worth of trouble shooting various things at the car to get it to a point I was comfortable starting to AWD swap. As it sits, it runs perfect and leaks nothing, so she's ready...

Today, the TSi went airborne and is being disassembled. WOOT for AWD 2gb Talon Spyder progress!

 

Got the TSi's (pictured, converted 2gb) rear subframe removed. Of course the exhaust and driveshaft are also down. Tomorrow I'll go after the subframe bolts and possibly start to disassemble the Spyder. I never thought I'd say this, but unfortunately, the TSi's tank is full so I have to find a way to make use of the fuel before I can drop the tank.

 

Loving the work done here. Thanks for keeping us updated.

 

I forgot to mention these jems on the rear...

I tore up a few bushings last night, so I'll be installing poly bushings while doing all of this.

 

I loved the panda ...

Nice work so far man !