Mine's nothing too impressive yet. But here it is:
1990 Tracker LSi Black with red accent trim from the factory and the lovely factory orange/yellow/red seat center sections. (nasty lookin color scheme all in all on the inside when the rest of the interior is gray)
Under the hood:
Engine: 1993 Sidekick 1.6 8v. *(scroll down)
When putting the new engine in, I did the following to it.
.030 over pistons. Just the boring kind. Nothing fancy.
.020 milled off the head
Head and intake manifold matched to port openings on the gaskets courtesy of our friends at Dremel and way too much of my time spent in the garage.
Hawk Suzuki "Torquer" regrind cam. (heard it's actually an Isky cam but dunno for sure, not a bad improvement though really)
Calmini header and 2" mandrel bent exhaust, 2.5" catco catalyst off a toyota supra. It was almost new and my friend was just gonna pitch it anyway since it wouldn't really work too good with his 3" exhaust.
Magnaflow 2" straight through oval muffler.
Transmission: New pan seal and filter! on the good old 3 speed automatic. Good for at least 30 or 40 horsepwer there I'm sure. If I could find some stickers to advertise the filter and gasket that's probably good for another 10 HP too.
Power Steering box: Leaky, I didn't mod that one, it seems to have modded itself.
Factory A/C with a nifty turnbuckle type tensioner made from a couple of spherical rod end bearings and some stainless steel tubing. 12 very well spent dollars to make that part, plan to do the same for the alternator too eventually. If you have access to a welder make yourself one they're friggin magical. I hate the cheap-assed factory style tension bolts, they're a broken piece of AC compressor casting just waiting to happen.
I run isobutane based stuff as a refrigerant instead of R134a. Yeah it's flamable, so's the gas in my fuel tank. Doesn't worry me if it leaks in a soft top tracker anyway. The stuff works better than R12 (colder by a good 5 degrees or so at the vent which is a good thing here in Phoenix). It's good stuff, look for EnviroCool on the web if you need to redo your refrigerant.
Duct taped intake tube from the airbox to the crossover tube to the TBI. Mine tore and I had the duct tape, ugly but it does the job at least. Eventually will be replacing it with silicone hose and a piece of metal tubing or something like that.
Need to get a K&N panel filter one of these days too.
That's it under the hood.
Got the 3" calmini body lift and subsequently no back bumper and just the core of the front one. Doesn't look too bad but I'll eventually put real bumpers on it again.
Running 31x10.50 Dunlop Mud Rovers on 15x7 Black steel rims.
Inside I have a Pioneer Premier CD player and 2 pairs of MB Quart 6 1/2" Separates. Yeah I know it's probably dumb running em in a soft top but it's not like a window's tough to break if they really wanted in anyway, it just seems less secure. I got em on ebay pretty cheep from some overstock/liquidation place for like 120 per set instead of the 450 a set they would have been new retail. If I ever get an amp besides the so-so one built into the deck they'll actually be loud enough to sound good over the road noise with a soft top. They're just barely adequate as it is. Probably could put a sub in there too but since they've got a flat frequency response down to 40 Hz they're actually not too bad by themselves and the 2 door tracker doesn't leave much room for a sub box anyway. Also doesn't attract as much attention as having a sub box could.
That'd be it.
* The original engine has a big hole in the block courtesy of a thrown #1 piston rod. I've still got it in the garage for the occasional parts cannibalization and to pull the mangled con-rod out of one of these days to put on display. Every now and then I still find a chunk of the original block somewhere in a corner under the hood. Really wasn't a bad deal though for me, this is why I got the tracker for free in the first place. It used to be my wife's uncle's when the Rod went and he didn't want to pay 5 grand for someone to replace his engine. He was just going to sell it for scrap or give it away to charity so I talked him into giving it to me instead. I got a used engine to rebuild for 400 bucks and maybe put another 5 or 600 into it between parts and machining.
I also Cleaned the inside of the block casting up a bit and rounded sharp corners to get rid of potential stress raising points. Necessary for a pretty mild 1.6? I doubt it. but the smoothed inside surface of the block looks nice. Not that I hope to have to look at it again anytime soon.
Lastly, if you're going to do the port matching and cleanup yourself without air tools and some good abrasive rolls like the ones in the do it yourself head porting kit, do yourself a favor and either wait till you get the right tools for it or just pay someone like Asian auto parts of AZ to do it since they flow bench it anyway. Lets put it in the nicest of terms. The Dremel just isn't the right tool for the job here. It's like trying to put in underground pipe using a spoon instead of a backhoe. Yeah you could probably do it but it takes forever and really sucks. If you're just going to clean up the less than stellar castings and get rid of the casting flash, then a dremel's good enough to handle it.
