a little history for people who don't know is i started with a plain jane 86 4kq, bone stock, needing a wheel bearing real bad like and a turbo motor even worse. at the time of the purchase i had aquired an 85 KH motor and was contemplating putting it in, but i was so excited about how clean the car was and thought "pfftt, i don't need a turbo motor, i'll just spruce up the suspension and make a header for it, cold air intake, throw some high compression VW pistons in and put a cam in it" weeeeeell the only thing i ever did to the stock engine was stick a 272 blau cam in which gave the car a noticeable bump in mid range torque, but it was still no screamer. i came across a steal of an 89' 200 fwd which was begging to have the engine plucked since it was useless wheel drive anyhow, and my car was lacking in power. i should note now that i traded the 272 cam out for an MC2 cam that has been proven to be a better selection for the turbo engine due to less overlap.
this was at a time when i spent a little time on the internet because it was painfully slow having dial up and i still had more interest in riding my bike and doing things outdoors like riding my quad every chance i got.
about six months before i acquired my current white 86'(oct. of 2002), i had bought this car...
it was a good starter 4kq. i'd previously never really had any super clean cars so this was nothing new, i looked at it as a project car like i did everything else. but i learned i don't really like doing body work, and the blue one needed a lot, so i put it up for sale and started looking for another one. i didn't need another car, but i wanted one, and we all know what happens when we want another car..... not a single paper or ad goes unread
i lucked out and found a 1986 4000 quattro in the paper in sacramento and called the lady up and lucky me, she lived only a few minutes away and was willing to drive it over to the shop. i checked it out and within 10 minutes i knew it was exactly the car i wanted. it was a oxidized pretty good and had a singing wheel bearing, but was otherwise very clean and really straight. a deal was struck and the car was mine! (i'll find a pic at home and put it up here for reference sake of what it looked like stock, but most of you have a pretty good idea :wink: ) Update 12-28-2009
YES! i found my ORIGINAL Alpine 4kq pics WOOOTT!!
not long after i got it on my birthday, i had ordered my H&R springs and new KYB struts. then i found a set of konig imagine rims and was like "wow, those are haawt" so it looked like this about two months after i bought the car..
Intercooler
Intake
rally lights!
i still have a few pictures lost(found and just posted!) from when i first got the car and it was 100% original. maybe they will pop up one day :(
:Update concluded:
so about a month after i got my car i was scouring the internet for things for my car and ran across Javads original 80tq website and his ecu's and the cool stuff he was doing with his little quattro....who knew it would be the monster it is today. i was really interested in it and was thinking of down the line when i wanted more power and i wanted to avoid the whole mess associated with CIS in the install, so when i sold the blue 4kq, it catapulted me into a several month long turbo conversion. lemme tell ya, there were some bleak times, so you guys who are in the middle of swaps, keep at it. it's VERY rewarding when you finally get your car together and dialed in.
i finally got my engine in and all the bugs worked out to make the car run decent. it had no intercooler and a tired k26. i thought it ran good, and i guess compared to the cars i had previously in life, it was. as time progressed i got an intercooler installed and dialed the fueling in better. it was always a little sketchy with the narrow band 02. it ran rich for sure, but that wasn't terrible and didn't seem to foul plugs, so it was ok. i was more afraid of running lean and burning it up
Update: 12-27-2009
I found out that pretty much every picture i had taken of my alpine car during the 20vt swap, was still in a folder on our old external HD and i hadn't known where it went since, back then we had one shared computer and when it crashed, someone had just emptied the old HD and i never found my pics... so! that was exciting 8) I learned that i didn't take enough pics of the original swap, but meh... take what i can get, right? so, here's a few... i can't believe i can still see the original 20v JT in my alpine car... that was so long ago.
these are all the best
CIS
battery tray removed
my OG frame rail mod
Core support mod
Port work
the last thing i changed on my car was wheels. i needed room for bigger brakes and this was the first thing in line to be able to do that. i went with ronal R-38's that i got from our now broken in MG member audilard, darin, (see darin, this place is great isn't it!) so it looks like this..
since i've now come across a few v8's, i've decided on putting an NA 3.6 v8 in it like nate has done while i work out some details with the turbo set up and i'm looking into getting the SQ replica body pieces to give more room up front for the radiator and intercooler package. i kind of want to avoid putting it in the trunk because of where i'd have to run the cooling lines.
my next project on hand before i get to the v8 swap (and finish my suburban) is brakes and ext. adj. konis at all four corners. i think it's pretty retarded how koni has their internally adj. struts and don't want to drop the strut to adjust it every time
. i'm also switching to ground control adjustable coilovers and some of dem fancy mance mounts. i managed to still have a small load of cuda parts to sell off, so i'm trading 8) . i'm also installing my prototype poly subframe bushings and prototype delrin rear tie rod inner bushings, along with my long overdue brake upgrade....billzcat1 style :-) this was just a test fit so you don't have to ask why the rotor is on backward....
i had to grind the strut caps down to fit the GC sleeves over them, i hear that the bilstein caps are thinner and don't require this...
since the sleeve is a tight fit and i can't grab the outside of it very easily, i'm making a tool to get the caps unthreaded
two axle nuts,to be welded together, both ground out to fit over the strut shaft, and one ground down a little to fit the inner hex of the strut cap.
finished product is this..
some info i've found about putting front struts in the rear is that the front strut body is a little shorter than the rears, so a spacer is needed to bring it up to the top and be able to tighten the cap. the other thing is that with the GC coilovers, the upper spring perch is designed for a 25mm strut shaft which is the normal rear strut....the fronts are 22mm, so if you order a kit from GC, make sure to specify that you need all the upper spring caps to have the 22mm hole :wink:
well, that's all i got for now, i figure this is a good start.
my ultimate goal is to have a the SQ wide body kit on it and a twin turbo v8. i want to make it look like a factory widebody, kind of like the E30 M3's. i'm shooting for 500hp on pump gas, whether that's at the wheels or not is yet to be determined, but based off of what 4v combustion chambered 5cyl engines can do on pump gas, i think it's certainly possible. i will also put a roll cage in to stiffen the body up, add a little safety and hopefully it will warrant 10 second quartermile times...that's my goal. my dad had a 10 second car when he was my age, and i'd love to do the same thing.
