At long last- 1983 DMC-12 (DeLorean) Repair/Restore/Mod

You really never know what you'll find when on accident on the internet... so earlier I was considering putting a picture up in the luggage compartment writeup of what the gas flap 'hoods' looked like, so did an image search on it- and one of the ones that came up was from a site called 'TesLorean.com'... so of course, I clicked on the picture to see what the site was about.

And lo and behold- it's about a guy working to adapt a Tesla S drivetrain into his DeLorean: TesLorean

It's definitely interesting- it has a lot more info on the Tesla systems and issues than the DMC (at least regarding what I've read). He's taking a slightly different approach than I would have and is using the motor & transaxle from the Tesla as a complete unit vs. using just the motor. Honestly, I don't think I'd want to lose the manual transmission.

As cool as having a Tesla-powered-DMC would be, I can really see it being a massive pain to try and get working well. He started almost exactly 5 years ago and the last update was last August and was still a good ways from being done. I expect the work on mine is going to take a while for certain- but I really hope it's not five years....

Having driven a tesla, trans isn't needed or missed. Amazing surge from low speed, fell of a bit once you were good and moving, then again, it was the most vanilla model s I drove.  Go try one!

My friend just converted his 1980 Mercedes 300CD to Tesla power and it took him a year. He bought a motor and controller from a company and then used Volt battery packs and built his own battery management/controls. 
 

Needless to say, it rips. He removed the rear diff, cut out the spare tire well, and made a new rear subframe to hang the Tesla motor from. 
 

In reply to orthoxstice :

I'm guessing it was someplace like EV West? Some neat stuff... but the price is still going to be a problem even if there are more turnkey ways to do Tesla power... with what everything else is likely to cost, spending $10k+ on the motor alone isn't likely to fly...

Im not a rotary fan, poor fuel economy, no torque unless boosted, adn then apex seals out...a car i wanna drive there are too many other good engine choices out there.  Im a fan of the L67.  Im putting one in an MGB GT right now.  Easy to get, 240hp out of the box, bullitproof in stock form.  seriously, 250k miles easy.  you can still pull em out of the junk yard.  OBD2 GM ecu, though the L67 used a bastardized version of the 411 ecu you can still tune em easily.  An LFX would be an interesting choice too, thats the late gm 3.6 in the camaro.  exhaust would be easy as there is just one port for the exhaust in each head.  300hp out of the box.  for that car i feel like 240-300 is just right for a really fun controllable car.  Also with the 3800 you can still touch 30mpg if geared right ;)

Sucks you have to do do much work to it, but who cares.  Bucket list car for me.  BEFORE you decide to rewire it, stage 0 that electrical system.  Remove all the added stuff, and see what kinda shape its really in.  It might make sense if its still in good shape, connectors and the fuse box just to make it stock and add things back in the right way.  Youd be surprised at how it might be ok that way.  Rewiring it isnt a huge deal, but thats waaaay more involved than just a simple remove all the extra crap and splice back together whats been damaged.  WIring is what I do for a living.  If most of the connectors and what not are stull in decent shape, and things work still, then unless you really have a reason to, dont yank it all out.  For me Id do a full standalone harness for what ever EFI you end up with.  That can tie into a simple ignition source, even the one for the original coil.  That can turn on a main relay for a standalone EFI fuse box, simple and clean.

Oh, and if you go EV, its a minium of 25-30k, and thats on the cheep side, unless you buy a wrecked EV and transfer EVERYTHING, or find someone who has hacked controllers and what not.

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Yeah exactly, I think that's who he got it from . Yes the price of entry is steep! I look forward to 5-10 years from now as the prices come down. Can't imagine what an LS swap must have cost back in the early 2000's. 

In reply to autocomman :

My main concern with the L67 is continuing to get parts for it and the unknown as to how difficult it will be to get the throttle body to work in the engine bay (it may not be a concern at all since the PRV itself sits so far back, but I won't know for a bit yet). It certainly wouldn't be the worst engine to end up using by a long stretch- but I have a soft spot for Wankels despite their shortcomings, so we'll see what happens. I love the idea of an EV conversion- but the cost is almost certain to be just too much for this project.

I'm not in the least bit worried about how much work it's going to be- I absolutely love the car and am looking forward to getting it to a point where I can hopefully enjoy it for decades to come without needing to do major work on it again (unless of course ICEs are flatly outlawed, in which case I'd need to convert it to EV- but at that point I'd expect that to be a LOT easier & cheaper to do).

The wiring is something I'm going to have to figure out as I go along. I definitely need to clean up the add-on wiring, and since I'll be pulling the engine completely will be figuring out what wiring can go completely. If I do half of what I plan to (swap engine, full digital dash, HID/LED headlights...) pretty much everything on the car is going to need different wiring anyway so it may just make more sense to completely rewire it so I don't have tons of unused wiring. We'll see... if it ends up just being the engine, I'll have to determine whether I want to pull out all of the wiring for the original engine to clean things up or just leave it and run a new harness (or harnesses) for the new engine and engine management.

Dude, I'd glad I was able to help ever so slightly.  And I'm happy to have laid hands on such an interesting car.

But more than anything I'm glad I'm not the one blessed to be restoring it.

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) (Forum Supporter) :

Don't worry- I'm certain there will be many more opportunities for you to help.

Cool project.

I used to work with a guy who had 3 Deloreans.  He swapped a Nissan VQ35 and a Porsche transaxle into one (google tells me he later added a supercharger).  Another one had a twin-turbo system that was under development when the SHTF.  I think the final one was stock.

I had a K-Jet Lotus Esprit for a while.  What a lash up!  Turn the key and it sprays fuel in for a period of time dictated by a bimetal strip thingy.  If all the stars align, the flapper door in the intake moves, triggering the rest of the fueling system.  IIRC there were two different warm up components.  A high idle solenoid and something to richen the mixture.  There were 5 or 6 relays in the back.  There was a 3 position throttle position sensor.  Two relays controlled different fuel pumps.  Under trailing throttle, above some rpm, it was supposed to cut fuel and light a little 'econ' light on the dash. 

As others noted, it actually worked reasonably well if you used it regularly. 

So, unfortunately I didn't get a whole lot of pictures from the process of de-torqueing the torsion bars and pulling the doors themselves as KYAllroad and I were moving pretty fast through all of it, but here's what I do have from the process...

Before Jeremy go there, I pulled a few more things from the roof are- namely the upper windshield trim and the front heater retainer, leaving nothing covering the front section of the roof box- here's the car after pulling the trim panel but before the retainer (the metal strip along the top of the windshield)

In that picture you can also see the ridiculous cluster of connectors that what connects the wiring in the doors to the rest of the car- here's a better shot of all of it sticking out of the center of the roof box:

There are four sets of connectors, 2 for each door- one large and one slightly smaller. I obviously labeled them with a sharpie to try and keep them straight down the line when I either put it all back together and need to connect them back up. One pin did pull out from one connector when we were pulling the doors themselves off, but it should just push back in. In this picture I've already ground the heads off of the little sheet metal 'harness clamp' that fold down over the side of the box- all of the screws were rusted solid, so I had to grind the heads off the screws on the top. I was fortunate on one side that the screws into the side weren't tight and that side's 'harness clamp' just slid off- the other side I had to take an oscillating tool with a metal cutter on it to cut through it above the screws so we could get the doors off. Below is a picture before I started grinding (with the door protected using a rubber floormat).

\

With all of that out of the way, we got started on pulling the torsion bars and the doors. The torsion bars were less of a hassle than expected- but it was a LOT easier having two people (in theory you can do it with one, but I don't see exactly HOW...). Once the torsion bar was removed, we pulled the bolts that held the doors to the hinges and could pull the doors- THAT pretty much required two people, unless one of you is a pretty hefty bodybuilder. Here's the car with the driver's door pulled:

And with the passenger door off:

And the doors themselves, temporarily sitting on the floor while I figure out where the heck they're going to live during the rest of this process...

I'm probably going to have to build some sort of stand for them so they will take up less floor space (unless I have enough room to build some way to store them over the body once I separate the body and frame). The doors and the seats are all going to be fun to figure out where I can put them while working on things...

L67 parts will be easy to get for years.  Only things really different were the intake manifold for obvious reasons, and the cylinder heads due to injector placement.  But either way you can boost an NA engine all day long, heads are easily swappable, and the series 2 engine was used for ever, the series 3 had a redesigned intake manifold to deal with the failing issues at the EGR port on the N/A engines, and that was about it.  The M90 blower was used on a ton of cars and they are easy to deal with too.

And with the FWD engine in a RWD car, i understand the woes, as im going through this now.  GM did put the L67 in a RWD holden.  The M90 case was angled at a 45 deg, and there was an adaptor tube for the throttle body, this turned it maybe 140 and angled it for the RWD application.  (google holden L67 and hit images)  With the one in my MGB, I did just that.  There isnt much clearance in the back there and I was able to make it work. with some 3" tubing and making a couple of flanges from some 3/16" plate.  Headers too, making those.  Flanges are easy to get, good ones too, 3/8 plate laser cut.  Huge L67 support with the fiero guys.  I also made custom alternator and A/C brackets, and had ot make a new idler stand for the idler pulleys.

K-jet, hehe.  They honestly were great systems, and the last iterations used by benz when the EHA valve on the side of the fuel distributor was used were really reliable.  But, if you dont know the system or understand how the fuel pressure work, as the whole system is dependent on the furl pressure at every point, then yeah it can be a mess.  And if they are not driven, thats bad too.  Things gum up, injectors get unhappy.  This is half the reason an Italian tune up works so well on these when they have been sitting.  But, when they get old, and have been sitting for years and years, and if any amount of water, i mean any at all gets into the fuel system, your replacing everything.  Injectors, warm up regulators, fuel distributors, presure regulators, accumulators, all of it.  They do not like water.  Biggest common issues were a failed intank pump, or if it had 2 main pumps, one being bad was an issue.  Bad accumulators cause starting issues.  O2 sensors throwing things off as well.  Fuel distributors adjusted well out of where they needed to be.  In the eariler systems vacuum leaks from injector orings or injector holder orings, air distribution tubes.  Fuel dizzy failure wasnt too common.  EHA valves were though, that replaced the frequency valve in the later systems (lamba feedback)  Coolant temp sensors on later systems too could cause dead nuts rich mixtures too.  Enough of that old stuff now haha....

I applaud you for doing all of this work to keep this gem on the road, especially since all you had to do was get it running and up to 88mph. I got my license in 1985 so this was a dream car of mine as well.

So, one of the things that will be interesting on this will be figuring out what to do regarding all of different parts I'll have to decide what to do about- since I'm in effect going to be going through the entire car, with only a few exceptions I'll be looking at and going over pretty much every part in the car in some capacity. With each part, I'll have to determine:

Is this part fine as it is? If not, does it just need cleaning up? If it needs more than that but the part itself is still usable, what more needs to be done (powder coating, painting, rust protection, etc)? If the part is not usable (or there is a solid reason for replacing it) what are the options for replacing it? Is a NOS part available? Are there updated/improved parts (in many cases stainless) available- and if so, do they make sense to use (this isn't always the case...)? Is this part something that could be fabricated simply/cheaply? Or is it something that I have an idea for a better part?

There's already a pretty perfect example of all of this: consider the 'Harness Clamp' on the roof box. This is the part that was held down by the screws I had to grind off in post about pulling the doors. There are two of them, one for each door, that hold down the door wiring harnesses while still allowing some flex in the wiring for the doors opening and closing. They're part #10 in the 8-4-0 Doors/Struts/Seals drawing. They're fairly simple, bent sheet metal parts- in stock form they're just bent steel with blank paint/coating on them.

One of mine survived pulling the doors- the other had to be cut apart to get the passenger door off. The surviving part could in theory be cleaned up and repainted/powder coated, but since I'm going to be redoing the roof box at least in part, I figure that it makes sense to just put new ones on it. This part is also interesting in that there are a number of possible options for how to replace it. For example, there are NOS parts available from DMCH: 108297 Harness Clamp. However- they're also $30 each, and will have the same problem as the original in terms of rust.

So, are there improved parts available? As luck would have it, yes- one of the main aftermarket part vendors for DMCs, DeLorean Industries, makes and carries a stainless version of them: Stainless Harness Clamp. Not only are they stainless so shouldn't have the rusting issue that the original ones had, they're also sold as a pair- and cost just under $50 for the pair of them ($10 less than buying a pair of NOS ones).

But there's one more consideration- these are pretty much dead simple bent sheet metal parts. How difficult and expensive would it be to get some stainless sheet myself and cut and bend up the parts? Well, a 12"x12" 16-guage 304 stainless sheet is just under $20 from Amazon (and presumably would be a similar price from the local metal shops I'd prefer going to)- so the raw materials are solidly cheaper. However- cutting and bending the part anywhere near the finish level of the original is beyond the equipment I have at home. Thankfully, I'm 95% certain that the local Makerspace has both a CNC plasma cutter that could handle cutting out the parts and the necessary brakes to bend the part. A monthly membership there is about $80 though- so if I were to only use the material and membership to make this one part, it would be half the cost to get the premade stainless ones. However- these parts would use like less than 1/4 of the stainless sheet (at most), and I would almost certainly be using the equipment at the Makerspace for a whole lot more than just this one part.

So- the decision on this will likely wait a bit until I know whether there are enough other things to make the cost & time to make them myself will be better than just ordering them.

Didn't get a whole lot done yesterday- just finished up something I had started before KYAllroad arrived to help with the doors on Saturday- cleaning out/taking things apart unde the luggage compartment cover.

Here the carpet and cardboard cover for the spare tire compartment have been removed and you can see what typically resides under it: the spare tire (of course), jack handle, wheel chocks, and my laminated copy of the wiring diagram for the car. This is about the only place it fits well in the car, and has saved my butt on multiple occasions when things have gone wrong away from home.

Here the spare and everything else have been removed, making all of the access panels in the luggage compartment visible. Inside the spare tire well is the access for the top of the fuel tank, which is triangle-shaped and sits between the front forks of the frame under the luggage compartment. Up and to the left a bit is the cover for the fuel filler neck and clutch fluid reservoir, and directly above the spare well is the access for the brake master cylinder, steering shaft, and some other stuff.

In a 'stock' DMC-12, all of these covers are held on by steel screws that go into aluminum rivnuts. These berkers were the bane of my existence when I worked on the car originally- unsurprisingly the fasteners and rivnuts had corroded such that in many cases they were impossible to get out- and just as often as not the rivnuts would fail and spin in the plastic body. It was a nightmare. Now, I use plastic screws to hold all of the panels in place- they still go into the rivnuts, but they won't sieze up like the metal screws.

Here all of the access covers have been removed.

First up is the fuel tank access panel. Here you can see the cover for the fuel pump assembly in the middle- the stock fuel system has a return leg (because as has been discussed regarding the K-Jet, it was heavily dependent on the right pressure). However for my carb-fueled car, it only has one fuel line from the pump to the carb so the second port on the cover is unused. I can't remember just how many fuel pumps I've gone through... for some reason they have a habit of going out, often at inconvenient times. I once had to change the fuel pump out halfway between KY and PA when I took the car to PA on a work trip (I always carried a spare fuel pump). To the right of the larger fuel pump access is the fuel level sender. One the DMC these are notoriously unreliable- I think mine may be an upgraded one, but it may be the original. It's also very finicky (as is the pump itself) because of the placement in the tank- it is toward the front of the tank, so when accelerating hard or going up a hill if you're getting low on fuel you can have problems due to the pump not being able to pick up any fuel (I believe that there are no baffles in the tank to prevent the fuel from all sloshing to the back away from the pump pickup).

Also visible on the left, if my memory serves, are the coolant lines to/from the heater core- one of the important things I'll have to remember to disconnect before pulling the body. There is often some confusion regarding the cooling system on the car with it being rear-engined. The radiator is still located at the very front of the car just like it is in almost all cars, and there are long coolant pipes that run along the frame the feed coolant to and from it.

Here's under the fuel filler & clutch fluid cover. The small canister with two hoses attached to the left of the fuel filler hose is the rollover valve that is there to prevent fuel from leaking out of the fuel filler and (to the back of the car.... which seems kind of weird...) to the carbon cannister located back in the body next to the engine bay. Interesting random tidbit: these parts were sourced from Chrysler and used in late-70's and early-80's CJ Jeeps.

Here's under the brake cover, looking slightly back. Clearly visible is the brake master cylinder & reservoir, just below it is one of the coolant lines, and below that is the steering column shaft. Visible just above the most forward (to the left) hose clamp is the front frame extension- it's the part that has the grey coating flaking off with rust underneith. That's the offending frame part that most badly needs to be replaced. It is actually a separate section of the frame- it is often called the 'crumple tube' as it was designed to do just that- in the even of a front impact it was designed to fold up and absorb the impact and protect the occupants and the main frame of the car from the impact.

Finally, looking forward through the brake cover opening you can see one of the fans, the hose connection to the radiator, a bit of the sway bar, and the horn. The fan is an upgraded aftermarket model- the original fans (from the late-70's) pulled a HUGE amount of power and were one of the bigger sources of electrical woes with the car. These modern ones pull a fraction of the power of the original ones. The horn is an upgraded, far louder one than stock as well- the DMC sits LOW and is often overlooked so you have to hit the horn (which, interestingly, is done by pushing in the turn signal stalk... there's no button on the steering wheel and thus no clock spring...) so it needs to be audible- and the stock one wasn't. Sitting in my box of random parts for the car is a set of 4-note horns from I believe a big Caddy that I hope to work out a mounting for so you REALLY won't miss it when I hit the horn...

I have a hate-hate relationship with any and all rivnuts. Meanwhile, it's good to see that you're making progress on your DMC.

It might be interesting to get something in the light 4cyl turbo side of things.

I haven't been around one enough and the pics on here are doing some strange things but it might be cool if you can ram the small engine as far forward as you can to make it more mid engined instead of rear engined. It's probably not possible at all but I'm throwing it out there

I'd get a couple old white pallets and make a temp stand for them.  Probably wouldn't cost but a buck or two.

In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :

There would be an advantage to a smaller (physically) motor- hence part of why I like the idea of the Renesis. There's only so much that you can do, unfortunately- the car will always be rear-engined unless you do some massive re-engineering. I looked around a bit, and here's a shot of a car with the engine pulled so you can see where the flywheel sits relative to the transaxle...

This thread is just getting more and more useful for me.

What are the odds - the other day another customer called about a DeLorean project. This time a Cayman S drivetrain is destined for the stainless wedgeshaped dream.  In my 20 years of inspecting modified cars, I have never had a DeLorean come by. Now, two (prospective, they are not done yet) in two weeks... :-)

I'm a bit tickled by the mix of solutions that look very much factory (like, a real car factory) and solutions that look kit-car in these.

Gustaf

In reply to therealpinto :

Cool. If there's any questions you need answers to that will help with things, just let me know. 

The Cayman drivetrain sounds interesting- by drivetrain I would interpret that as them using the transaxle as well as the engine, it will be interesting to see how that works out since the Cayman is a mid-engine and the DMC is solidly rear-engined. 

Thanks!

I probably mis-interpreted their intentions, they will probably use a 911 transmission, I guess.

I'll see if I am allowed to share any photos of the builds if they decide to move forwards.

Gustaf

So, not getting much done today on this since we got our first vaccine shots yesterday and my arm is really sore, plus we have a lot of prep and packing to do before we head off for Topsail tomorrow for the week for our anniversary. But, I did make some progress yesterday.

First off, I got the seats out of the car- probably the last major thing I'm going to do regarding the interior until after I've pulled the body off the frame. I'll ultimately probably be pulling pretty much everything with the possible (but not certain) exception of the full dash out at some point, but for now I want to be able to be getting to the core reason for all of this- so that means getting to the frame to work on it. But first, the seats... thankfully they're very easy compared to many cars- just 4 nuts onto studs from the seat rail that can be pulled from under the car. Long ago I replaced the stock hardware with stainless nuts, so this is much less troublesome than it used to be.

Driver's side with the seat removed:

The white connectors and relay are for the seat heaters that I had installed when I had the seats re-covered when I fixed it up initially. Handbrake is at the bottom of the picture- yes, it's on the outboard side of the seat.

Passenger side with the seat removed:

The compartment on the left is the battery compartment, all of the heavy wiring is for the battery cut switch. Also visible is the wiring for the passenger seat's heater and the loosely-installed 12V power port (the stock one in the car is finicky, so this was put in for plugging in my phone- obviously I'll be putting in a lot more elegant solution (at least one USB port). Something else that I'll be addressing at some point in the build- the controls for the seat heaters. Here's the switches for them now:

They're just loosely run up through the two open switch slots in the center console (the console stock has two dummy switches in those spots- they were included for any future upgrades to the car that might have been made available but obviously never happened. The two switches with the arrows are the window control switches, and the center is obviously the rear window defroster.

One thing that I made annoyed note of after pulling the seat was this:

Those are the switches on the driver's side that tell the car whether the driver's door is open or not. They're very simple things- they're normally closed switches that are open than the door is closed- the door pushes the plunger in and breaks the connection between the wire at the end of the plunger and the housing. They're also ridiculously unreliable- it's very common for the car to go over any kind of bump in the road that jostles the doors a bit and the switches will connect and the interior lights will come on. My plan for upgrading this is to bond magnets to the doors and to use reed switches- or something like a mercury switch in the door so the circuit is opened/closed (depending on how much I re-wire the car...) when the door rotates up.

Finally- probably the biggest accomplishment of the day was doing some organizing, moving things around, and measuring in the garage. The end result of which was this:

All nicely stored in a corner (and hoping that The Dancer doesn't decide she needs any of the platforms for the show this summer...) are the doors, luggage compartment cover (just realized I didn't take any pictures of removing that- wasn't that exciting though...), T-panel, seats, engine cover, and louvers. And there's still room to put more stuff up there as well.

I also took some measurements to make sure that I was actually going to be able to do what I have been planning regarding handling the frame and body- to have them side-by-side in the garage. I measured and have 16 feet of space from the furthest-protruding thing (my blasting cabinet) on the right side of the garage to the edge of the anti-fatigue mats in front of the workbench that runs along the left side (since I want space to move around at the workbench). The car is under 79 inches wide- meaning that the body and frame side-by-side should be under 160 inches wide, giving me almost 3 feet of room between everything (and the cabinet sticks out a modest bit further than the shelving that takes up most of the right side. So, there should be plenty of room- and there's more than enough in the front and back too.

I realized today that the junkyard I spend the most time at has an RX-8 now- and this weekend they had a 'wheelbarrow' sale where everything you can fit in a wheelbarrow and through a 'jig' about 3 feet wide is $100 total- and I'm pretty certain that a Renesis will both fit in a wheelbarrow and through that jig. I'll have to keep my eyes open for another of the sales for when I actually can get up there.