I would gladly do that for free. Ms Bendover, the long-haired one, was out talking to Kevin today about a stray dog that's been wandering around our street for a week. He's hooked on that obsession now, too. I'll take either one (both females appear to be early 20's), myself, if only they'd play for the other team.

John B.

Oh, and thanks, DR1665, for the phone call to clarify a couple of things on the alternator swap. I took the old one off and have another issue, I think. There were several wires bundled together and I thought it would match up to the Galant plug's wiring, but it doesn't. The plug part is four wire, but the truck's is two and there aren't any wires being combined on the truck end of things...so, I am not sure what to do here. The physical attachment part should be O.K. with regard to mounting it and getting the pulley to line up.

John B.

Johnny, there are pin out pictures online that tell you which wires do what based on the shape of the plug and brand of alternator. I had a similar deal wen i was doing the alternator swap on the dismal.

Further fun with the alternator. The pulleys don't swap, as the new alternator's center hole is larger than the old one and the old v-groove pulley won't fit. I may head over to NAPA and see if there's something they can order up for me. If not, I may be SOL on this one.

Got everything that I painted inside before the rain hit and got the valve cover back on with a new Fel-Pro gasket. Just waiting on the timing component set to get here so I can read through the directions. Funny how this particular series of 2.4 lacks the hydraulic tensioner that later years have and the belt is tensioned by spring. I can find nothing relevant on You Tube, despite Toasty's directions to search 6G72 as well.

John B.

The 2.4 spring tensioner is much nicer then the hyd tensioner... Lots of died Mitsu's over the hyd tensioner.. The hyd tensioner is a "Blader tensioner" and there junk .. The blader either gets stretched out..From people not knowing what there doing.. Or the rubber goes bad ..Either way is not good..

John whats your miss-givings on the spring tensioner...?

I don't have a problem with it at all, just haven't ever done one, so I am first-timing it (ha ha). The front of the engine is really dirty, too, so I can't see all the marks to line things up yet (Scrubbing Bubbles, coming up). The main and camshaft seals need to be replaced, too. Still hard to believe everything comes in the kit for under $40.

John B.

I used a V6 alternator on my 2.4 swap.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this alt. We'll see.

John B.

I splurged $20 for a really cool digital caliper from Harbor Freight. The thing measures inside and outside diameters/distances, etc, and displays metric, decimal standard or fractional standard. So, I'm able to speak actual numbers when I go to look for my pulley. Should help.

Finally got enough oil off the front of the 2.4 to see all the timing marks. A few rotations and I have everything lined up. I was finally able to get schematics and a step-by-step, so I'll do a write up on the procedure when I'm done. Sure it's easy, but there are a couple of tricks, like with the lower right balance shaft and the seal removal/replacement I hope to be able to elaborate on.

Hey, the sun came out! Nice. We got almost 2" of rain here. Good thing I got that bag of weed-n-feed for the lawn; the weeds are trying to invade.

John B.

Removing the seals: Not too bad, actually. I followed part of the factory advice and used a flat screwdriver with an old heavy fabric napkin over the tip and stuck it in next to both the crank and the cam to open up some access (this keeps you from scratching the cam/crank). Then I employed another nearly-forgotten thing from my old friends at Harbor Freight, a set of little picks with curved ends. I just snaked them in carefully, avoiding the inner surfaces, and pulled the seals out. Went to Walgreens and got some Q-Tips, then cleaned up the areas where the new seals will go in with the tips coated with a spritz of brake cleaner (lots of 'tips), then used dry ones to do a final clean and check for scratches (none; no shredding of tips).

After a fruitless session of trying to use various sockets and household implements to drive in the new seals, I used my fancy caliper to determine that a 1-1/2" and a 2" section of schedule 40 PVC fit the seals just right, so I went to Home (away from home) Depot and bought a short section of each, plus end caps to use as hammer points. I'll shorten those down in the morning, smooth out the business ends and should make short work of seating them.

I also picked up a section of perforated flat steel stock to fasten to the bellcrank so I can attach the transmission kick-down cable. Of course in the process of removing the throttle body, I saw the need to replace the cooling lines that run to/from that piece as well.

Reassembly will commence tomorrow. It better, anyway.

John B.