The Green Machine
Apr 14, 2014, 11:00 AM
#1
The Green Machine
Well a few weeks ago I bought another Lancer Ralliart. This one is also a 2004 model, except it is a 5speed manual. The previous owners were Smike and Otter. Got the car for really cheap. $1500 for the car and $300 to have it brought down from Akron Ohio. The car jumped timing due to a bad tensioner, and thus bent a few valves.
So now the car is in my hands and here is how she currently sits.
Wheels are 16" OEM Enkeis with Winter tires on the back and summers on the front.
Interior is clean and stock. Has rubber weather floor mats with LANCER printed in them. Center arm console is different than the automatic version, has more padding and no secret compartment. The airbags deployed during a collision caused by a cavalier driver a while back, also had to have the front bumper and hood replaced but you'll see that further down. I also forgot how the headliner once looked before I dyed mine black... lol Also has a short shifter, weighted shift knob, and brass shifter base bushings.
The car is also tuned on an RRM Splitsecond Piggyback ECU. But this method is very dated and feeble now in comparison to the new methods. When it comes time the piggyback will be removed and I will tune the OEM ECU directly.
Opening the boot we find a mostly stock interior, some dynamat sound deadening material, the other two summer tires, tops of the coilovers, and under the false floor laying in the spare wheel I found a free T-shirt! WOOT!!
Now on to the nose of the car you can see the replacement front bumber, it didnt come with the indention for the mitsubishi diamond. No matter though. I plan to chop that portion of the nose anyway. Also the hood is popped in the picture. It doesnt really have that much gap lol.
Opening the hood we find this. Its a bit rusty but considering its spend all its life in the northern part of the country it isnt that bad I dont think. Oh and the strut bar is bent that way from the factory for some reason...
Ceramic coated OEM Header. Kinda starting to flake.
Injen Short Intake. I dont particularly like the angle on this. My DIY Short Intake probably absorbs less heat than this one does... And apparently the intake manifold is ported and polished as well.
Here we can see the adjustable tops of the Megan Racing Coilovers. On down there is stainless steel brake lines, and to the left is a stainless steel clutch line that I forgot to mention.
The red lines are a small portion of the electrical grounding kit. Not sure what that is supposed to do but apparently it helps throttle response and a few things... IDK...
Solid front motor mount inserts.
DIY solid rear motor mount.
The OEM exhaust has a pinched section just under the front crossmember. Here we can see that has been removed along with the Cat. It then flows through a resonator and out the Magnaflow Muffler.
And lastly you can see the Rusted RDD lower tie bar and 21mm progress rear sway bar under the *** end.
Plan for now is to pull the engine and transmission for some work.
Im going to take the head up to Paul at NationalHead.com to have it rebuilt, strengthened, and ported and polished. While is taking care of that I will use the balance shaft elimination kit originally intended for the eclipse on this motor instead. I'll also get my hands on a light weight crank shaft pulley and see if it'll be possible to lighten any of the other pulleys as well. Then I'll bolt the new head on with ARP head studs in preparation of the turbo build. I'll delete the EGR and Evap lines, and install a 4G Eclipse V6 TB. Then paint the block.
For the transmission I'll dissassemble it looking for anything that needs replaced. Maybe do the Mirage LS final drive gear swap, and install an LSD unit. Once its back together I'll paint it then get it ready to be reinstalled. While the motor is out of the bay I plan to clean it up a bit. Debating on deleting the AC. I would like to sand and stitch weld the bay, then repaint it to reduce rust and just to make it look nice.
Once all that is done I'll drive it NA for a while just to get a feel for the car, and to do some upkeep on the white RA. Then the real fun will begin. I'll start adding braces, strut bars, gutting the interior, install the turbo stuff, swap in Brembo brakes and 17" wheels, and begin turning it into a racecar from the ground up. I would like to set it up for AutoX, maybe a few road courses, and I would like to try out a few RallyX events as well. My goal is to at least have it running turbo'd before my wedding in August.
Im still debating on a color theme for the car though. IDK if I should stick with the military olive drab thing (its plastidip) or go with something else. Ive always thought that a White and Green setup would look cool. Any suggestions would be great though.
Thanks for looking!
So now the car is in my hands and here is how she currently sits.
Wheels are 16" OEM Enkeis with Winter tires on the back and summers on the front.
Interior is clean and stock. Has rubber weather floor mats with LANCER printed in them. Center arm console is different than the automatic version, has more padding and no secret compartment. The airbags deployed during a collision caused by a cavalier driver a while back, also had to have the front bumper and hood replaced but you'll see that further down. I also forgot how the headliner once looked before I dyed mine black... lol Also has a short shifter, weighted shift knob, and brass shifter base bushings.
The car is also tuned on an RRM Splitsecond Piggyback ECU. But this method is very dated and feeble now in comparison to the new methods. When it comes time the piggyback will be removed and I will tune the OEM ECU directly.
Opening the boot we find a mostly stock interior, some dynamat sound deadening material, the other two summer tires, tops of the coilovers, and under the false floor laying in the spare wheel I found a free T-shirt! WOOT!!
Now on to the nose of the car you can see the replacement front bumber, it didnt come with the indention for the mitsubishi diamond. No matter though. I plan to chop that portion of the nose anyway. Also the hood is popped in the picture. It doesnt really have that much gap lol.
Opening the hood we find this. Its a bit rusty but considering its spend all its life in the northern part of the country it isnt that bad I dont think. Oh and the strut bar is bent that way from the factory for some reason...
Ceramic coated OEM Header. Kinda starting to flake.
Injen Short Intake. I dont particularly like the angle on this. My DIY Short Intake probably absorbs less heat than this one does... And apparently the intake manifold is ported and polished as well.
Here we can see the adjustable tops of the Megan Racing Coilovers. On down there is stainless steel brake lines, and to the left is a stainless steel clutch line that I forgot to mention.
The red lines are a small portion of the electrical grounding kit. Not sure what that is supposed to do but apparently it helps throttle response and a few things... IDK...
Solid front motor mount inserts.
DIY solid rear motor mount.
The OEM exhaust has a pinched section just under the front crossmember. Here we can see that has been removed along with the Cat. It then flows through a resonator and out the Magnaflow Muffler.
And lastly you can see the Rusted RDD lower tie bar and 21mm progress rear sway bar under the *** end.
Plan for now is to pull the engine and transmission for some work.
Im going to take the head up to Paul at NationalHead.com to have it rebuilt, strengthened, and ported and polished. While is taking care of that I will use the balance shaft elimination kit originally intended for the eclipse on this motor instead. I'll also get my hands on a light weight crank shaft pulley and see if it'll be possible to lighten any of the other pulleys as well. Then I'll bolt the new head on with ARP head studs in preparation of the turbo build. I'll delete the EGR and Evap lines, and install a 4G Eclipse V6 TB. Then paint the block.
For the transmission I'll dissassemble it looking for anything that needs replaced. Maybe do the Mirage LS final drive gear swap, and install an LSD unit. Once its back together I'll paint it then get it ready to be reinstalled. While the motor is out of the bay I plan to clean it up a bit. Debating on deleting the AC. I would like to sand and stitch weld the bay, then repaint it to reduce rust and just to make it look nice.
Once all that is done I'll drive it NA for a while just to get a feel for the car, and to do some upkeep on the white RA. Then the real fun will begin. I'll start adding braces, strut bars, gutting the interior, install the turbo stuff, swap in Brembo brakes and 17" wheels, and begin turning it into a racecar from the ground up. I would like to set it up for AutoX, maybe a few road courses, and I would like to try out a few RallyX events as well. My goal is to at least have it running turbo'd before my wedding in August.
Im still debating on a color theme for the car though. IDK if I should stick with the military olive drab thing (its plastidip) or go with something else. Ive always thought that a White and Green setup would look cool. Any suggestions would be great though.
Thanks for looking!
Apr 14, 2014, 02:28 PM
#7
Yea. Im not sure how long it sat with smike been sitting down here for a few weeks now. Going to get it moved into the garage this coming weekend. So Im going to be putting the interior back in the Eclipse this week to finish cleaning out the garage.
And Im going to be really careful about removing bolts and stuff. Im always afraid of sheering them off, I've been bad about accidentally doing that in the past. But everything that I can I'll sand down and repaint.
I keep seeing guys on Club3G that use some type of paint, POR-15, or something like that on parts that are prone to rusting. Apparently it does a good job of sealing and keeping anything from rusting anymore. Gunna need to look into getting some of that stuff.
It really does!!!
The plan for that is to get an aftermarket steering wheel, and to cover the top of the dash in suede or some other low glare substance. That way you wont be able to tell anything ever happened.
Thank you! Im looking forward to it. Should be a lotta fun! It'll be worth it in the end. I think the finished product will be something very rare among the Ralliart community.
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Apr 15, 2014, 08:05 AM
#10
Im really excited to get to work on this. Ive been looking at a lot of rally car builds over on DirtyEvo.com and its really inspired some of things I want to do with this car. 
Apr 19, 2014, 05:49 PM
#12
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Really wondering how the plastidip looks like. I find it looks awesome on the pic but from what ive seen plastidip seems to get dirty quick and hard to clean.
Apr 21, 2014, 08:13 AM
#14
On a side note I have a few interested buyers in the Eclipse. So soon as I can get it fixed and gone then work on this car begins.
Going to work on making an engine hoist in the garage so I can pull it from the bay and work on it that way. Once I have it running NA, I'll drive it for a few days to do some cleanup on the white car. Then this one will go back in for the turbo.
My to-do list right now is to:
Fix the Eclipse's TB, clean and reinstall the interior.
Rig up the engine hoist in the garage.
Build a parts washer.
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