Category Archives: 1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX

All the updates

Here’s some updates;

One day, on my way to pick up the turbine wheels you’ll see below, the Eclipse started to overheat. I was running ~70mph for an hour, messing with fuel trims, seeing how lean it would run cruising. It didn’t have a problem until about 15:1, just surging a little, so I dialed it to about 14.5. When I got to the dudes place, it was burping a lot. Temperature looked fine though, so I headed home. About 45 minutes into it, temperature started jumping up, so I pulled off. A dude in a lancer stopped and asked if I needed any help, it looked like I was low on coolant. He gave me some coolant he had. I got back on the road. About 5 minutes in, it started overheating again. I pulled into a Gas Station, bought a couple jugs of coolant, let it cool off and had some lunch, then headed home. On my way home it ran cool, until I got close to home and decided to see what happens under boost. Whala.. Increase in temperature with boost. No good. I got home, check some stuff, seemed like a bad radiator cap, but I knew what it really was, just didn’t want to admit it. Headgasket, right? Yep. Next week, did a full boost run, 21psi, blew the lower radiator hose off, overheated bad, smelled like burnt oil, nasty. Real nasty. Trailered it home, with the help of my girlfriend Jamie. Compression wound up being 0-40-80-20, something like that. No good. Bad news. So I put it on the trailer, and parked it in the back yard. I’ll get back to it later.

These are the turbine wheels I picked up.

15×10 and 15×7. 5×4.75 Bolt pattern Mag lugs. These are for the colt. Which, are 4×100, sooo…. It needs some stuff changed. Like the rear-end and front spindles.

In the meantime, I started checking out the trucks hard starting issues. Looks like there’s a short directly to ground off both batteries.

I just put a piece of hose around it and taped it up, now it starts pretty easy.

The colt is getting the 4G61T that I was planning to put in the Arrow. The Arrow is getting the g52b that was in the colt last season. This simplifies the Arrow a little bit. It should make for a fun daily driver again.

It does however, make the Colt more complex. But, for a race car, that’s ok I think. It only races once a month or so. We’ll see anyways.

I found the transmission leak.

So now the Colt will be:

4G61T, itbs, 5 speed, Chevy 10 Bolt 3.73 w/lsd, 15×10 rear 15×7 front, conquest spindles, s10 front rotors, 2g twin piston calipers. At least that’s the plan at the moment.

Laying pipe

The Eclipse got some intercooler pipes this weekend. I dug through the piping bin and came up with some decent piping. There’s a few more couplers than I’d like, but it’ll work.

Disregard the yellow in the headlight, that’s from the garage lighting. I went with the crushed 1g blow off valve. It goes 1.75″ turbo outlet, 2.25″ intercooler inlet, 2.5″ intercooler outlet, to 2.25″ bend in the wheel well, up to 2.75″ throttle body.

I’m waiting on the GM maf and translator to come in before I can go any farther with that.

Progress

So after a trip to Kentucky over the weekend, I came home to a few parts that I was waiting for. Timing belt set, water pump, injectors, cam sensor, and other little bits. So I had to get started. I got started around 8 or 9pm, and quit around 12:30. I didn’t make as much progress as I hoped, because I got sidetracked swapping wheels from the cr-z to the eclipse, and cleaning some parts.

La llama azul

I picked up a winter beater. It’s a 1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX automatic. It’s got about 160k on it, but the trans was rebuilt in 2012 according to the receipts.

When I picked it up, it had no timing belt on it. I like it’s ridiculous paint job. I got it cheap, and it needs quite a bit of work. But it’s pretty straight. The strut towers have a couple spots of rust starting, but I’m planning to get in there before winter. It came with a 16g and 3inch exhaust. I put a front mount on it already, it’s just a generic 2.5 in/out, but it fits well.

From the looks of the pistons, I think it crashed the valves at some point. I had a spare 2g head, for the cam sensor mount, but it needed cleaned.

It looks like the stock 2g auto cams are a little lame, so I put some 1g manual cams in it. The previous owner did a bit of spray painting under the hood, so that will need cleaned up a bit. I started with the intake manifold, I had a spare 2g intake manifold and 1g na throttle body (2.75″), so that’ll go on it.

So far the build sheet is:

•7 Bolt block

•7 Bolt head with stainless valves

•1g manual cams

•1g na throttle body

•2.5″ ic piping

• front mount ic 2.5 in/out

•1g crushed bov

•Apexi SAFC

•550cc fuel injectors

• adjustable fuel pressure regulator

•450lph walbro fuel pump

If I have any trans problems, I’ve got a fully built IPT trans with torque converter and 6bolt adapter, if I need to go that route.