My 1983 Starion Build Thread
I figured to get the ball rolling, I'd post my own build thread, which I never have done because of the disappointment associated with this car growing up. I bought this car for $550 a month before I graduated high school. I would see the car every day from about 10th grade and would be like man that thing is nice (stupid me, huh?) It was always just parked in a spot in my neighborhood growing up. One day I see the owner (Rich was his name, if anyone knows/knew him) I think he said it was his dad's car, but any how I was very excited about it and asked if he was interested in selling it since it was always sitting. Coincidence is that he was actually getting rid of it like the same weekend. I believe he was junking it. I bought it with the quickness and sadly it turned into an obsession/money pit for a while. Lots of great memories in it, however. I created G54B.com and it was a starion/conquest community that kind of fed off of a bigger/better one called starquestclub.com (great resource for starionheads, btw). I hosted group purchases on pistons, etc all around good group, but i axed the site because it was dividing the already small starquest community. I'm still thinking of what to do with the domain, but I'm not really a fan of the G54B motor any more. It is cool because it's different, but in retrospect if I could tell 17 year old me to save up and drop in a 4g63/64 or a 1J I would have saved so much headache. I might just make the domain something informative about the motor itself, we'll see.
The car started out on 2 injector TBI setup, I moved over to an "upgraded" 2 injector setup from fuelinjectionpro.com, had it tuned on that and an upgraded "stockish" turbo from 12A --> 16g and added an intercooler from the intercooled years and had it tuned on the Dyno by Scotty @ MSP. It ran good, it was fun... Then all of sudden it stopped working - I blew the injector driver on the standalone megasquirt-based ECU... I took that into DIYautotune (next door to AutoFab in suwanee) and they sold me one of their units- awesome unit. I figured it'd be a good idea to move to 4 injectors and crank up the boost my bigger turbonetics turbo so TurboDave made me a sick manifold. I towed the car home because it wouldn't start on the dyno and killed the starter in the process... talk about the feeling of defeat.
I finally got the car idling but then found that my ghetto rigged exhaust manifold had lots of cracks and TDF manifold was also leaking- not his fault we would have known if the car started at the shop. My exhaust manifold was a KA24DE(240sx) t3 manifold with a ghetto rigged adapter piece which I'll try to find a pic of. Basically, we took 2 flanges a G54B exhaust flange and a KA24 exhaust flange and welded "runners" in between. This saved me from getting a super expensive manifold and it worked for a while on my old injection setup. I replaced the bootleg manifold with a cast iron t3-g54b manifold to avoid future issues, but my plumbing wasn't even close any more, so I kind of just left the car in the state it was in for years. Paying for school/ hard times- it just wasn't feasible to continue at the time. And the feeling that no matter what I put in, stuff will always go wrong (starquest owners know this feeling). Ended up messing with many other cars over the years, never being able to sell this one- I was pot comitted and I'd never get even a fraction of what I put in so I might as well keep it, I thought. Good decision, I still have my first project car.
My 78 Corolla in the background ( no longer have it - that car was awesome, I didn't even have a camera back then and I can't find the few pics I had)
if you look closely, you can see the bootleg exhaust manifold in this pic:
Here is the list of what has accumulated into the build over the years:
Head
85 Dodge Caravan Head (non jet valve)
Schneider 272 Cam
Scheider HD valve Springs
Block
Balance Shaft Elimination Kit
.031 Over Wiseco 7.8:1CR Forged Pistons
Stock Connecting rods- Magnafluxed, polished beams, shot peened
Unground stock nitride coated crank
New OEM Oil Pump
New OEM Water Pump
Hot-Tanked/Machined/Balanced/Blueprinted by Ball Engine
Intake/Exhaust
Cast Iron G54B/ T3 Manifold
TurboDave Fab'd Multiport Intake manifold 3" Plenum
3 inch turboback - no cats or muffler, all pipe
Turbonetics t3/t4 ~60mm inducer, .63a/r stage 1 turbine.
Tial 38mm Wastegate
2.25" hot pipe 3" cold pipe IC piping (fabbed by TurboDave)
Fuel/Spark
RC 550cc saturated injectorsMisc
Walbro 255 Fuel Pump
Generic Fuel Pressure Regulator
MSD 6AL, MSD Boost Timing Master
Megasquirt 1 PCB 3.0
Dodge caravan ignition module in dizzy for megasquirt (soon to be replaced with EDIS-4 setup)
GM 3Bar MAP
Upgraded/Rebuilt stock Tranny and LSD rear
6puck clutch disk and HD pressure plate
KYB GR-2 Shocks all around
Some more recent pics:
Entertained the idea of running E85 on a starion: I'm thinking of going the e85 route
The last time I drove my car and it stopped, I went home and made this thread: http://www.importatlanta.com/forums/...g-fuel%5D.html
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