12/03: Purchased from another SDAC Chicago member, Ron. I had been after Ron about this van for a few years. This is one of only a handful of factory 2.5L turbocharged 5spd Minivans produced by Chrysler. A real oddball vehicle and I knew I just had to have it. The van had been sitting for a while and the odometer was sitting at 185k miles on the orignal engine and trans.
Yes, that's the shifter you see between the seats, ever seen a soccer mom dump the clutch at 5k rpms and lay rubber from a stoplight? Ignore all those lights, a few small repairs will make all the nasty codes go away.
Here's the original window sticker for the van
Here's how it looked in Dec of 2003 when I brought it home. Needs some TLC, but 5spd turbo vans aren't easy to find.
9/04: The van sat at my place until May of 04 when I sold my Eagle Vision. The Van was put into use as a parts runner and occasional driver. 16" wheels from a Lebaron GTC with 215/55/16 tires fit nicely and improved the handling over the stock 14" wheels and tires. The crappy repaint that was on the van started falling off the hood in chunks so I started sanding it in preparation for new paint. The van proved handy for moving car trailer and Daytona parts car around my parents' property.
After a few months of driving the van off and on, I became well aware that something wasn't right under the hood. The engine idled rough and seemed a little down on power. A compression test showed that Cyl #1 had only 30psi vs a solid 150psi in the other 3. The typical signs of a blown headgasket weren't there, the van ran for thousands of miles without using coolant or oil, no smoke, no overheating, none of the typical signs of horrible damage. A little oil poured in the bad cylinder brought the compression back up so my hypothesis was that the #1 piston was cracked or had a broken ring land.
11/04: After limping around a few more months in the 3cyl van I figured it was time to fix the problem. Without the time or budget to rebuild the original engine I located a good used replacement in the form of a 155k mile 89 2.2 TII engine from a Shelby Daytona that was recently parted out. The TII features a heavy duty forged crank and a Garrett turbo that should be better suited to increased boost than the little Mitsubishi turbo that was originally on the van.
The van engine was out in an afternoon and the process of prepping the 89 TII began.
The 89 2.2 TII and the 90 2.5 TI are very similar engines so very little work was needed to prep the 2.2 for installation. Since the 2.2 was a nice clean motor I sprayed a fresh coat of black paint onto the block, then the A/C bracket from the van was installed as was the wiring harness and front engine mount.
I retained the Nippondenso alternator that came with the 2.2 since it is a higher output one than the Bosch alternator that was on the 2.5, good security should I choose to add more electrical items to the van down the road.
The fuel injector harness from the 2.5 was swapped over since the 90 engine uses sequential injection firing each injector by iteslf vs the batch fire setup on the 89 2.2 which fired two injectors at a time.
The grimy 2.5 was put on cart and pushed into a corner of the garage until I can find time to pull it apart and determine for sure why Cyl #1 was down on compression.
12/04: The van was apart for about a month while the engine was swapped. Of course once I got into the project a few other items needed attention as well.
I knew from the beginning that the van needed shocks and struts. I replaced the rear shocks with a set of KYB Gas-A-Just shocks during the summer. I also bought a set of KYB GR2 front struts for the van at the same time. With the van apart it became obvious that 185k miles had taken it's toll on some of the original equipment. The sway bar bushings, ball joints and CV joints all needed replacement. The brakes had seen better days. Not one to half-ass a job I call the parts store and a few hundred dollars later had everything I needed to put the front suspension and brakes back to like new condition.
Here is the new strut installed along with the new brakes and CV shaft. Not visible are the new upper strut mounts, spring seats and lower ball joints.
With everything back together the van drove like a dream. The cam timing on the engine was off a tooth at first, but once that was changed it ran perfect. The front suspension is as quiet as a new car's and the brakes work great. The van is a real pleasure to drive now.
01/05: With the van running good it was time to put a little attention into the interior. The headliner was falling down so that was the first project I tackled. About $30 in new headliner fabric and $8 worth of adhesive solved the problem. An afternoon was needed to pull the headliner board out, clean it, and install the new fabric. The end result was well worth the effort.
With the headliner fixed, I moved on to the instrument cluster. The van came with a very basic cluster having an 85MPH speedo, jumbo gas guage, voltage gauge and a few idiot lights, not even a trip odometer...
I snagged a nicer cluster from a more upscale van at the U-pull-it. I also grabbed a cluster from a 91 Daytona Turbo. The new van cluster had a tach, but no boost gauge. Since the whole idea of having a turbo minivan is to be stealthy I didn't want a big boost gauge glued to my A-pillar, so I decided to modify the van cluster to allow use of the Daytona tach/boost gauge. The end result came out much nicer than I had imagined and the gauge looks like it was put there from the factory. Even the illumination is almost perfect. To top it all off I added a Dawes Devices air/fuel guage and mounted it in the cluster where the PRNDL sticker used to reside. In the 5spd vans this area is home for a "Front Drive" sticker, nothing important. The only sacrifice with this mod was my "brake" lamp, and I have managed to forget the parking brake was on afterwards a few times.
