Looks awesome! I like it with the window visors off.

Quick question what is the point of the magnetic drain plug?

 

To catch any loose material drifting around in the motor oil. My engine has probably 130,000 or more miles on it now so I just wanted to make sure there werent any shavings floating around inside of there. If youve ever done an oil change and seen what looked like glitter in the used oil then there are some shavings in there. Happened to my gf's old VW beetle, and I just wanted to make sure there wasnt anything floating around in mine.

Next oil change I'll take another picture of it to see if it has caught anything.

 

Well this little update doesnt have much to do with the Ralliart. But since I brought it up: It needs a new tie rod, and im going to replace a few end links as I suspect they are what has been causeing the clunking since I installed the Whiteline bar. Yippee!

Anywho on to what I was really posting about. My brother use to own a 2001 3g Eclipse. It was never the most gorgeous thing on the block (especially not now that the guy at the end of the block owns a Porsche...) but he got a decent deal on it and it was his dream car at the time. However the poor boy had a combination of bad habits that led to the downfall of the car. 1) he was lazy, the car would be full of junk and only half assed whenever he did something such as attempting to replace the factory head unit. 2) he was lazy, he would never do any of the maintenance on it himself. I had on multiple occasions forced him to come outside to change his oil. and im not sure he ever washed it... 3) He thought he was brian o'conner from fast and furious... He would drive the car way too hard and way too fast and because of reasons 1 and 2 he never quite kept it up to par... Such as the SCREAMING brakes, and the cracked radiator spitting fluid out from under the hood... Then the fateful day when we found out he blew a head gasket (or cracked the head its not been pulled yet to be 100% sure)

Well my father was sick of it and because of reasons 1 and 2 my brother never even attempted to fix it. Well they 'attempted' to sell it which i dont know how they even called it that when it was never put on craigslist, a sign was never put in the window, nothing... but whatever. Anyway the car is now mine, they want nothing to do with it and I think it could (given a bit of TLC) be a fun project. So onward to the pictures.

We will start off with the pretty-est side. lol

I hate the wheels... and most of all that wheel gap on par with the grand canyon... It only has one wiper, and the headlights are a bit foggy but i think i can buff it out.

Second pic. You can see the hood is a little effed up... and the extent of the fogged up headlights...


The ugly side. You can see where the fender was dented in when my brother bought it he took it off one night and tried to 'un-dent' it himself... Also idk if its something he did or not but the bumper isnt exactly hung right i think he forgot a screw when putting the fender back on... Also you can see all the brake dust plastered on those ugly wheels... it seems to be rusted now... :/


The back doesnt look too bad other than the stickers he plastered on it. I love that the bumper has 'mitsubishi' 'eclipse' stamped into it. Thats awesome!


Here you can see the clear coat on the wing coming off. The previous owner (before my brother) added the wing as the RS didnt come with one.


Solid proof of reasons 1 and 2. Also how the hell did they expect to sell a car without at least cleaning the inside... *facepalm* im almost sad to say im related to those two... lol


Now lets take a peek under the hood. You can see the battery is missing as my brother stole it for the jeep he is driving. for whatever reason he cannot understand that running the cars radio without starting it for hours on end kills the battery....


crack in the radiator. my bro attempted to patch it with something but it just made the hole worse...


And the head. I told him for ages to replace the valve cover gasket and the oil on the head would stop but he didnt listen and buried in there somewhere is the problem with the head gasket or the cracked head.



Anyway. I know it looks grim but I think I will be able to have some fun with it. Especially since my second favorite part about cars is working on them, the first being driving them lol!

The plan for now is to replace the head gasket, and order a half sized radiator to drop in there. From there I'll probably pressure wash the engine bay... lol

After that I'll gut the interior and get all his junk out of there. Maybe see about getting rid of the A/C. And see if ebay or craigslist has a cheap header. Then plastidip it black or something lol

And maybe further down the line I'll do an evo 8 head swap and turbo it!

Who knows... lol Im sure I'll run into a lot of little problems but whatever i think it'll be fun if only to tear it apart in the garage! :P Just figured Id share this with yall since its kinda like our engine's sibling 2.4l minus mivec! lol

 

Awesome man looks like a project for sure!!

 

buy a beater 1g or 2g and AWD swap that ****. wait what am i thinking? buy a beater 1g or 2g AWD, fix it up, and scrap the 3g!

 

LOL Yea Id love to if I could find a 1g/2g AWD for cheap around here. I'll get this thing running and clean it up first then we will see where we can go from there.

 

Well I ended up not having anything to do saturday so I figured Id get a few things done to the RA that Ive been meaning to do for a while. The plan: Change rear motor mount, change oil, change spark plugs, put on H-Brace, try out old wheel spacers, see if I could solve the knocking from my rear sway bar, have a few Coronas, have a good time. Well. Not all went as planned...

Changing the rear motor mount was the WORST thing I have ever had to do to my car. It was the most frustrating process, and in one of the worst possible positions... But I finally got it out after hours of trying. Here is what it looked like when I pulled out the old one.


I flipped it over and this happened....


I then got the new solid mount in and buttoned back up. I will never do this process myself again. I will take it to a shop and pay to have it done... UGH! Anyway I changed my oil, and put in one step colder spark plugs gapped at .3 instead of .35 just to see. I then went to put in my H-Brace which didnt work out... Turns out its about 3/4" wider than it needs to be and I ended up breaking the brace... So maybe I'll have my brother weld me up a new one the right size and made of sturdier parts idk... After getting under there the brace looks almost pointless... Or at least as if it wouldnt help all that much... Somewhere along that line one of the bolts on the top of my shock tower came loose from the mount probably rust the top mounts are one of the only things I didnt replace when putting in my new KYBs at the beginning of the year. And I never got around to looking at the rear sway bar because at this point it was 11pm and I just wanted to go home... lol

My dad slipped in and apparently took this picture as Im putting it back together to go home.


Then I wanted to do something about my screaming AC compressor so I was going to get a shorter belt to just leave it out of the routing. And of course Autozone, and Napa neither have the right size. Contacted K.O.I. today and im going to pick up a belt this afternoon to give it a shot.


EDIT:: Dont hate on the lime-a-rita it was the only thing left in the house on a sunday afternoon. LOL :P

So I ordered a new top mounts for my front shocks to replace those I dont want to have any more coming loose and rusting away. I finally ordered the Tie-rod Ive been needing. And new rear sway bar end links that Im hoping will fix the knocking in the back. Been one crazy weekend... lol

 

Sounds like a crazy weekend lol. I am doing my rear end links and whiteline sway bar next weekend.

Quick question, do you have any pointers on how to remove the rear motor mount. I plan to do mine soon, just not 100% sure what I am going to run into. Besides the point of it being hard to get get too, what else should I know. Did you jack the motor up at all when unbolting it to support the motor? What motor mounts did you end up buying? And did you replace them all?

 

Man... Idk it was a pain. If you can afford it pay someone else to do it. That's probably the best advice. Lol seriously though. Time. Give your self lots of time. And patience. You have very little space to work you will inch your way there for a LONG time.

Ive had a blox front mount for a while and i bought a stock replacement and filled it with urethane for the rear.

 

yeah i just had a shop do my rear mount cause of the massive pain i heard it was going to be lol. its only about 1.5-2hours worth of labor if you bring the part yourself.

 

Well everyone. Cross your fingers and say a prayer for me... I dropped off the RA at a shop to have some work done. Im sure most of you know by now that I have terrible luck with shops... And I hate to do it but the things needing done just keep piling up on me... And I was really wanting to go to a cruise this weekend but the way the car was handling it wouldnt have been an option, and where I am staying i dont have the equipment to do all the work.

They are going to be replacing my strut mounts cause my passenger side one spun a bolt loose somehow... It looked rusty so I blamed that. Then doing my inner tie rods cause i couldnt find a single place that had the tool to remove them. And lastly replacing my rear sway bar end links as I suspect they are the reason my whiteline bar has been knocking since I installed it. I went to remove them myself the other night and it was so rusted the wrench spun on one side a then sheered off... :/ Finally they are HOPEFULLY going to give me a proper alignment. Tire Discounters screws it up every time, my grandpa did a better job of aligning my car in his gravel driveway than they did on their fancy machines.

So again cross your fingers and pray for my RA... I hate leaving her in the hands of someone else... :'(

EDIT:: On a side note if you look at my instagram I have a picture of an Evo II that I ran into right after getting off the plane coming home from Jamaica. The guy said he was from Ontario, Canada and he bought it from the guy who imported it for $4500 lol I wish I could find a deal like that around here somewhere! :P It was right hand drive and everything, I believe he was down here for import alliance last weekend.

 

Good luck bother!

 

Thanks Johnny! And my prayers must have been answered! After spending all morning in fear because the shop seemed near incompetent after calling me a half dozen times. I was greeted around 1pm with a phone call saying that the car was ready. I was originally quoted for $300+, the + being if they ran into any problems however once it was all said and done I got all my issues fixed and an all wheel alignment at -1* all the way around for $235!!!

The car felt great on the drive back to work too. I took a curvy backroad and she responded like she use too. It was wonderful. Here I was afraid all the rednecks at the shop would tear her up, but they took good care of her! Im very pleased.

So tonight I make my journey south to somerset, ky to watch an exotic european car get plastidipped, hang out with a big group of guys from KYstreets.com and enjoy the somernites car cruise! I cant wait should be a lotta fun!

 

Today was my birthday! Woot!!! Girlfriend bought me a half size radiator and fan, and dad ordered me something too, said it should be here by the end of the week.

Now I need to hunt me down a big tranny cooler and I'll switch to half size here soon!

Been collecting parts for the eclipse too. Ordered it a half size radiator too, got some lowering springs cheap off craigslist, and I'm going Saturday morning to a junk yard to see what goodies I can come across. I cross referenced a bunch of parts so I have a pretty good size selection of stuff to look for!

 

hey man, just went trough all 19 pages and love the car! just wondering what paint you used to paint the part of the trunk where plate goes black?