Steering box, pitman, and idler arm have been installed. Reinstalled the old steering shaft for now since the Cherokee one I ordered was 4" too long. Tonight's goal is to get the lower heat exchanger and pump back in.
Fender and rocker cladding have been purchased. Ordered some touch up paint to spray bomb them gray for now till I get the whole truck repainted.
In reply to PseudoSport :
Looks like a good cut, I think that you can be proud of that sawzall work
This thing is coming right along. 
It's not fast by today's standards since it might edge out a V6 Camry but it's exciting in a "i could see myself dying in this" kinda of way.
That is my preferred type of fun. Not crazy fast but fast enough to be scary for what it is. Sounds like my turbo Caravan.
Slowly making progress. Ordered the pins and fixed the wiring going to the DRAC module. Next I noticed the check engine light plus a couple others were not lighting up. I checked the pin coming out of the computer and the light should be getting power. Prior owner had the cluster out at one point since they upgraded the bulbs to LEDs. Maybe a LED fell out or was installed backwards? Guess the only way to know is to remove the cluster again. Its not hard to take out but you need to remove the HVAC controls which is a little tricky and annoying.
Once I got that all apart I found 4 missing bulbs and sockets.
I remembered seeing some bulbs in a bag but I figured they were left over from the LED swap. Looking closer it appears that the PO broke some of the sockets and instead of replacing them and just reinstalled the cluster. I ordered a 10 pack of LED bulbs and sockets for $6 which should arrive this weekend.
Made some progress on the front bumper support too. I roughly hammered it back into shape then talked my friend Dave into TIG welding it before I could do any more work to it. It's still far from prefect but should be usable.
With the bumper coming along I decided to fix the fog lights. In MA if the vehicle came fog lights they need to function for state inspection. I could care less if they worked so I opted to fix them as cheap as possible. While searching online for options I found that other guys were running Harbor Freight lights. Figured for $11 after coupon they were worth a shot. All I need is the glass lens and reflector to swap into my housings.
As you can see mine are pretty bad. I've never seen a fog light rust out.
New lens fits ok. I had to splice the wires to the bulb and the glass sits a little higher than the original one. It's also maybe 1/8" narrower so I had to pay attention to centering the lens so the side brackets clamp it down ok. For the price I can't complain.
That's wild that the fog lights have to work for state inspection.
Keep up the good work!
edizzle89 said:or buy it and de-clad it then sell all the cladding, you'd probably make a good chunk of money back and still end up with a typhoon that's sleeper-ish.
I'd make a buck of the cladding then have a little side hobby of laying the pieces up on demand (who gives a berkeley if it takes 6 to 8 weeks to make them if they're unobtainum otherwise?) That way you don't need to maintain inventory or raw material. SyTy guys seem to go through cladding at an awful fast rate and there's people that would want it for a clone probably.
Sell the parts used to make the mold to recoup the initial cost.
Ooooo! Typhoon! I wanted one of these back in the day. Ended up getting a Grand National as they were easier to find.
Love these things. If it were me, I would have stripped all of the bod cladding and went with a sleeper look, I love boxy GM stuff. IIRC, that motor can make basically unlimited HP, so have fun.
pinchvalve said:Love these things. If it were me, I would have stripped all of the bod cladding and went with a sleeper look, I love boxy GM stuff. IIRC, that motor can make basically unlimited HP, so have fun.
Pretty sure the motor in these does not take to extra power quite as well as the 3.8 in the Grand National, but my information is from around the year 2000 as that is when I owned a GN. It was either the motor didn’t like the power or the AWD setup didn’t like it.
Well, one of the problems with throwing boost at early American turbo stuff is that pretty much all of them are engines designed to make a crapload of midrange torque. Well, torque correlates to cylinder pressure correlates to heat correlates to chances for detonation, so when you try to crank up a stock setup on an old American turbo car you end up with like 550lbft of parts-breaking torque at an rpm point that you don't even use while WOT, and then the thing still makes a whopping peak 279.4whp at 4900rpm if it doesn't blow up before you get there. In general you have to modify the engine to make more torque at higher rpm and less torque in the middle to end up with something that's not always on the verge of blowing up in the midrange. On my turbo caravan that has the stock turbo setup that I cranked to its limit i retarded the cam 6 degrees and limited boost to 12psi until after 4000 rpm so that i could run the maximum boost the turbo would put out without just shattering my pistons at 2900rpm.
Installed the ebay LED mini dash bulbs. First problem I had was the clip on the socket was wider then the original and would not fit into the dash. I made them work by trimming it with a razor blade.
Next problem was 4 of 10 were DOA. Glad I ordered more then I needed incase this happened. Another thing I learned was if you put a led in the check engine light it will always be dimly lit unless you install a resistor. I decided to swap that one out with a normal bulb. With the bulbs swapped all the dash lights now work. I was excited for maybe 30 seconds till I realized that the ABS and brake lights don't turn off.
Pulled the ABS codes and got 14, 35, 61, and 62. Something about a bad rear wheel speed sensor a I'm not sure on the rest. I'll worry about that later.
Started some body work on the front bumper. I used some bumper epoxy and mesh to fix the cracks. Still need to add a second layer of the epoxy to fill the low spots and reinforce the back.
With the cracks bonded back together I could then reshape the bumper with some heat. Once the plastic was warm I used a board and some weights to hold the shape.
Think it came out pretty good. Next step will be to use some flexible bumper filler.
Yesterday got up to 55 degrees which was probably the last day I'd be able to paint something. I wasn't exactly ready so I rushed to prep the fender cladding and sprayed it out in my shed.
I also did this in the dark with spray paint but so far it looks like it came out ok. I didn't add clear since the rest of the cladding has a matte finish and this is already shinier. Goal for now is to make the truck look complete and less of an eyesore.
Paint looks great for rattle can!
Looks good so far.
Thanks! Added one coat of filler and started sanding that down. So far so good. Tomorrow is suppose to be above 50 degrees so maybe I can get some primer on it.
I used an ebay coupon and bought some junkyard blazer spindles. Decided to sand blast them and paint them in my basement with rust bullet. I was hoping the smell wouldn't be too bad but I was dead wrong. Whole house ended up smelling like paint so I had to move them outside. Problem was it was mid 20's out and I needed somewhere warm for them to dry. Quick solution was to put them under a plastic bin in the back of my truck with a drop light on a cinder block to warm it up. Worked better then I though.
Bottom of the bin was 56 degrees after opening it a few times. Highest I saw was 67.
Nice! I’ll have to remember that.
Vigo said:This thing is coming right along.
It's not fast by today's standards since it might edge out a V6 Camry but it's exciting in a "i could see myself dying in this" kinda of way.
That is my preferred type of fun. Not crazy fast but fast enough to be scary for what it is. Sounds like my turbo Caravan.
That’s so true. Speed is a very subjective experience anyway. I mean, they’re all slow compared to a mundane old Airbus A320 like I commute to and from work on twice a month. And at the same time I’ll be surprised if I ever again have the same sensation of naked velocity and near death as I did when being allowed to ride down the steep hill at my grandmothers farm on my single speed bike at age 7.
The cold weather has really slowed thing down but I was finally able to finish a couple more things.
New spindles, brakes, tie rods, shocks, and upper control arms have been installed.
I did have one brake line nut at the rubber hose that didnt want to free up which damaged a line going to the ABS. I planned on deleting the ABS at some point but the broken line moved that to the top of the list.
I removed that line back to the ABS unit alone with all the other lines that were no longer needed. Since there was a factory coupler on the front line going to the passenger side, I added in a tee and short line.
I then took the front and rear lines that went into the ABS unit and cut, flared, and installed them into the propotioning valve. Still need to tweak the lines to make the install look cleaner but it was cold and dark out when I did it.
Before and after.
Last night I aligned it then took it out for a test drive. Front end feels way better and the brake feel has improved alot.
Nice work!
nice work so far!
Is that a factory remote mount oil filter?
Vigo said:Well, one of the problems with throwing boost at early American turbo stuff is that pretty much all of them are engines designed to make a crapload of midrange torque. Well, torque correlates to cylinder pressure correlates to heat correlates to chances for detonation, so when you try to crank up a stock setup on an old American turbo car you end up with like 550lbft of parts-breaking torque at an rpm point that you don't even use while WOT, and then the thing still makes a whopping peak 279.4whp at 4900rpm if it doesn't blow up before you get there. In general you have to modify the engine to make more torque at higher rpm and less torque in the middle to end up with something that's not always on the verge of blowing up in the midrange. On my turbo caravan that has the stock turbo setup that I cranked to its limit i retarded the cam 6 degrees and limited boost to 12psi until after 4000 rpm so that i could run the maximum boost the turbo would put out without just shattering my pistons at 2900rpm.
Your logic and reason are interrupting my teenage fantasies! A Typhoon will make 500hp easily with a few Pep Boys add ons, and Farah Fawcett will notice me!
Finally got the cable and software figured out so I started data logging the Typhoon.
Truck feels like it's running great but the log showed boost is briefly spiking above 15 psi which is the max the computer can read. With the boost spike I'm seeing knock and the computer is pulling 8 degrees of timing. Based on the smell of the exhaust I think the cat has been gutted which might explain the spike. I also found 2 burnt plug wires which can't be helping much so I ordered a new set. I'm also going to do fresh plugs and confirm base timing. I'm hoping that fixes it or else I'm going to look into tuning it sooner then I planned.
Snow on the ground, rusted fog lights, and a Dunkin Donuts cup. All you need is a Patriots bumper sticker to complete the full on Massachusetts look. 
How is your intercooler coolant lines and IC pump? I ran a Sy/Ty water to air setup on a 911 and it did a great job of keeping things super cool as long as the pump was on.
Pulling timing is never really good but do you know what the max timing retard the system is capable of is? If it's 16 and it stopped at 8 then it stopped because it was successful in addressing the problem, which is probably why it isn't already broken. I know on my old turbo dodges it can only pull 16 degrees. Anyway, i dont know much about Sy/ty specifically but it could be one of those setups that pretty much starts spiking as soon as you modify the exhaust system at all because the turbo is basically undersized for the displacement. Hopefully you find a workaround.
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