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Thread: Slightly tweaked 3000GT TT

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    Forum User Feedback Score 3 (100%) Unlogic's Avatar
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    Slightly tweaked 3000GT TT

    Here is a project thread for my slightly tweaked 3000GT TT (they are not called VR4 here in Europe since the SL/base models where never sold here).

    In contrast to many of the really extreme builds this thread may look a bit wimpy however it may be interesting to follow for those members who have not reached the full "because race car" stage yet.

    I started this thread over at the Swedish 3000GT forum (forum.3000gt.se) this summer but I thought I'd translate it to and post it here too. It may take a while before I have to time translate all posts but anyway lets get started.



    Bought my 1996 3000GT (a German import) in 2007 and apart from some small fixes and quite a bit of gearbox troubles I haven't really done too many changes to the car yet.

    I have always had some plans for the car however just after I bought it we got our first kid, then a house and then I started my own company.

    However things are starting to settle down and I now have a proper garage to work so it's time to get started. I have quite a bit of experience working with old Volvo turbo cars from when I was younger. I've done a bit of tuning and mapping in the past however the priority with this project is to have as many driving hours per garage hour during the short summer season we here, therefore the "wimpy" approach.

    The first thing I did when I bought this car was to fix all the small issues like the a switches in the rear wing and a proper wheel alignment etc.

    A bigger issue however was that the reverse gear was completely hopeless. It grinded badly going and didn't want to engage properly. When you finally got it to engage it often popped right out again when you released the cluth.

    After a year or so when the bearings in the gearbox started making noises too. I handed my car over to a member of the Swedish 3000GT club (first time I've ever let someone work on any of my cars) to replace all the bearings and the reverse gear in the gearbox. After replacing the reverse gear the grinding stopped but the reverse gear would still pop put from time to time. We replaced the shift fork and the axle that the shift fork attaches too but it still wouldn't stay in reverse properly... when the then gearbox started leaking oil onto my clutch thru the input shaft bearing for the second time my patience ran out... more on this later on.



    First thing on the agenda apart from the gearbox and now oil drenched clutch was a lowering and removal of the horrible stereo that was installed in my car.

    When I say that it was a horrible car stereo I'm not exaggerating, it is an odd Blaupunkt system from the 90's with extra everything which means cables, boxes, sensors and antennas all over the damn car.



    This is how the head unit and separate display unit looked like.

    Decided that whole system had to go which turned into a two day project...


    If you looked behind the rear seats this is what you found. A amplifier that used fiber optic cables (which meant I couldn't reuse them...), a CD changer and whole forest of various mysterious small boxes.


    If you looked closer you could see an alarming amount of cables


    Under the floor in the rear compartment there was some sort of navigation computets with it's own optical disc reader.


    Should it really be coming cables out through the back of the rear seats? ...I don't think so!

    The poor people that installed this stereo system really did a thorough job. Inside of the back of the rear seats there was a whole carpet of cables...


    All the stuff removed so far is piling up the garage bench.

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    Forum User Feedback Score 3 (100%) Unlogic's Avatar
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    The cables I found inside and beneath the back of the rear sets...


    Even more cables in the trunk...


    By now I realized that I was going to have to remove quite a bit more of the interior than I first thought.


    The removal of cables is starting to show results


    The cables that went under the roof and through the drivers side door sill.


    No we are getting to the core of this spiderweb. I wounder how the cable that connects to the head unit is going to look? ...not good. Cut cables, odd connections and splices...


    Repairing the cables...


    Look an octopus!


    The octopus is mated with an ISO-connector


    The back of the rear sets was so modified that I had to rebuild parts of it and manufacture new hooks in order to be able to fasten everything in a stock like fashion.

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    Forum User Feedback Score 3 (100%) Unlogic's Avatar
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    This is how empty the car became when all the stereo junk was removed.


    ...and this is the ammount of stuff that had collected on the garage bench!! (check the ammount of cable!)

    If anyone encounters a car with a damaged wiring harness for the head unit on a eurospec car I found this diagram on the internet and it worked for my 1996 eurospec model atleast:

    Radio Constant 12V+ Wire: Red/Black
    Radio Switched 12V+ Wire: Blue
    Radio Ground Wire: Chassis
    Radio Illumination Wire: Green/White
    Radio Dimmer Wire: Black/Yellow
    Radio Antenna Trigger Wire: Pink/Silver
    Front Speaker Size and Location: 6 1/2? Doors
    Left Front Speaker Wire (+): White/Blue
    Left Front Speaker Wire (-): Black/Blue
    Right Front Speaker Wire (+): White/Red
    Right Front Speaker Wire (-): Black/Red
    Rear Speaker Size and Location: 6? x 9? Side Panels
    Left Rear Speaker Wire (+): Yellow/Blue
    Left Rear Speaker Wire (-): Gray/Blue
    Right Rear Speaker Wire (+): Yellow/Red
    Right Rear Speaker Wire (-): Gray/Red
    ...and here is a diagram of the ISO-connector


    To be continued...

    /Robert

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    The first renovation of my old W6MG1 gearbox was done during summer 2010 but due to scaricity of parts (particulary a new reverse gear) I barely drove that car that year.

    The summer of 2011 started with the gearbox puking out all of it's oil on the clutch... drove the car back to the fella that had renovated the gearbox and thought the problem was fixed.

    However when the same thing happend again just a few weeks into the summer 2012 I had a complete f****** meltdown! ...this was most likely the first and last time I had someone work on my cars.

    There where only 57 3000GT's sold here in Sweden (7 in 1993 and 50 in 1999) so spare parts are REALLY hard to come by. Shops that know how to work these cars is even more rare especially when it comes to the gearboxes. You yankees are really spoiled with 3SX, Kormex, Jacks, Chris Hill etc.

    The few gearboxes available from the junkyards cost 4200$ (!) over here and then they barely come with a "round the corner" warranty so I didn't even consider that an option. However to my rescue TAZmaniac the most extreme 3S guy here in Scandinavia (drives a blue single turbo 3000GT rated at ~1000hp) put up a reinforced and renovated W6MG1 for sale. I quickly decided to put my old gearbox on the shelf as a spare for later renovation and drove my car all the way to Norway where Taz lives to replace my gearbox over a weekend. I had to drive grandma style due to my "well oiled clutch"


    Taz captured on camera while we where preparing to remove the old gearbox.


    Here you can see very clearly how much oil the input shaft seal was leaking on my old gearbox.


    The clutch that was on the car was "well oiled"...

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    Forum User Feedback Score 3 (100%) Unlogic's Avatar
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    When it was time to put on the new gearbox we noticed that the numbers on the gearboxes didn't match


    My old gearbox (GNCR)


    The new gearbox (FNBR)

    None of us knew what this meant so we called a lifeline but that didn't yield any answers so we turned to Google on our smartphones in a frantic search for gearbox ratios.

    After a few minutes of surfing we came to the conclusion that the old gearbox was a JDM spec and we presumed that the new one was a euro spec gearbox which we thought had the taller gearing like the US cars.

    We couldn't believe what we what seeing. How could my German sold eurospec 3000GT have a gearbox with JDM gearing that was only supposed to be found on GTO's!? We presumed some previous owner replaced the gearbox and changed the front diff in order to use it on a eurospec car.

    To make sure we compared the gearing ratio of the rear diffs on our cars. If my car really had a gearbox with JDM gearing it should have a different gearbox compared to Taz car.


    My rear axle with a 3.545 gear ratio


    Taz rear axle with a 3.307 gear ratio

    Now we where even more confused! We even resorted to rotate the wheels and count the revolutions of the driveshaft to be sure that the labels where correct.

    It was now clear to us that my car really had JDM gearing or a very toasted center diff.

    This meant that the new gearbox wouldn't fit on my car unless we swapped the center diff or replaced my rear axle. After some thinkering we decided to crack open both gearboxes and swap the center diff. It meant that we would have to check the shims and clearances of the new gearbox again.


    A minute later when we cracked both gearbox open we couldn't believe our eyes, the front diffs where identical!

    We now felt more confused than ever since we where unable to tell if the gearboxes had US or JDM gearing since they where both identical inside.

    To set things straight we drove to another garage and picked up the front diff from a US spec gearbox that Taz had killed a few years prior and when we came back to the garage we quickly determine that both gearboxes had the shorter JDM gearing.

    Lucky for us we thought and put the new gearbox together and mounted it on my car.

    However we couldn't stop thinking about what was going on here... until Taz noticed that stamped on the small identification plate inside the of hood of my car it clearly said W6MG1 3.545. That meant my car had come like this from factory.

    Months later at the annual Swedish 3000GT meet we checked the stamped plate inside the hood of a all cars at the meet and noticed that all eurospec cars with 6-speed W6MG1 gearboxes have the shorter 3.545/JDM gearing. Nobody in the scandinavian 3000GT community was aware of this however. Everyone lived under the illusion that our eurospec cars had the same gearing as the US spec cars.

    So why didn't my rear axle match up with Taz car then? ...turns out that his 3000GT which was originally sold in Germany (just like mine) is actually a US version imported by Mitsubishi themselves since the buyer promptly wanted a sunroof which wasn't available on the eurospec gen 2 cars (remember we never got the gen 2.5 or gen 3 look here).

    Anyway enough about the gearbox ratios. Here is some trivia:


    When we started removing all the hoses around the intake on my car Taz jumped and said what the hell is that! He thought the bleeders for my clutch lines looked really funky. I had never had anything to compare them too so I had never noticed. But now when he mentioned it why on earth is it designed like that!?

    On Taz US spec car there was only a single bleeder instead of dual ones on my car. Yet another difference between US and eurospec cars I guess. Does anyone have any light to shed on why Mitsubisi designed it like this? (we never figured it out)


    The next thing we encountered was when first taking of the wheels where these sensors. I'd always thought they where related to ABS but Taz quickly pointed out where the ABS sensors are located on our cars and said that this must be a sensor for something else.

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    Pad wear sensor?

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    Forum User Feedback Score 3 (100%) Unlogic's Avatar
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    We weren't able to solve it in the garage so we looked up the numbers on the sensors when we got back to Taz place. Looking back I should probably have been able to guess what the sensors belonged to... a few minutes of searching on google revealed "Blaupunkt Navigation Wegsensor". In other words they where a part of the old stereo-phone-gps-navigator system I had removed days before and which spread throughout my car like a cancer with all it's damn cables antennas and sensors...

    Seems like no matter how much stuff I remove I'm never going to get rid of that old stereo

    A big thanks to Taz for letting my crash at his place during the weekend and helping me finally get a properly a working gearbox.

    Who said that the 3000GT can't haul cargo?


    Rear seats folded down and the car stuffed with the old gearbox. The new clutch and gearbox worked like a charm so the driving during my trip home to Sweden on sunday night was really sweet with plenty of "inspired" driving
    .

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    When I finally had gearbox that worked properly it was time for a much needed lowering.


    Before


    After


    Just as Jeff Lucius warn about at stealth316.com the rear shocks really didn't wanna come loose without a fight...


    I took quite a bit of heating and beating before this one finally came off and it doesn't look to pretty on the inside.


    Adjustable rear control arm and Tein S-tech spring installed.


    Since the original front feathers have so few coils I had to improvise a bit in order to compress them enough. My ordinary tools only fitted on one side of the springs...


    Front struts in place.

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    After the lowering the handled a bit funky so it was time for a proper wheel alignment. However most shops turned me down when I mentioned that it was a 3000GT.

    Apparently the four wheel steering scares most of the of for some reason. Not even the local Mitsubishi dealer would do it...

    Finally found a shop with an experienced guy who helped me out.





    The alignment computer didn't contain a profile for the 3000GT so he called up the manufacturer of it and got on over the phone.

    However on the first try the alignment wasn't perfect so I had to go back for another adjustment a week or so later.

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