My father bought a 1994 Mitsubishi Galant ES brand new, and it was our family "sedan", until I turned 16 and he gifted it to me as my first car.

I had been a fan of the JDM ecosystem for some time, feeling a calling to the Skylines, Supras and early edition Evolutions. I instantly took a liking to the 4G64 platform, and fell in love with the engineering behind our cars, and proceeded to dive heavily into the DSM community, realizing that I had been gifted a somewhat redheaded step child to the more illustrious performance platform that was so popular with tuners and enthusiasts.

After a few years, I blew the (notoriously defective) auto tranny, and after shelling out a lot of money for a rebuild, I was returned garbage. Bad shifting, shuddering, delayed shift points, a total mess. I realized then that a bunch of old guys in a transmission shop don't necessarily harness any special "magic" that a pedestrian like myself can't acquire with research and a pursuit of knowledge. I had already been a mechanic for a few years while in high school, doing oil changes, basic repairs, and alignments. I decided to devote a lot of time, and much of my life, to heavily dissecting and modifying the car, in the pursuit of OEM reliability and non-compromising performance. (So, lots of money.)

I converted the Galant to to a 5spd, and wrote my first tutorial:
http://socallifestyle.com/tutorial/tutorial.html

Since, I turbocharged the motor, but wasn't happy with the tuning options, besides standalone. I converted back to an NA build, and then to a GS Galant (DOHC and a 200rpm higher redline). Over the years I added on every mod in the book: rear sway bar from 2G DSM, poly suspension bushings, Eibach ProKit springs/AGX struts, then Yonaka coilovers, a series of different custom and prefabbed cold air intakes, custom 2.5" exhaust, rear disc brake swap, AFPR, Walbro 190lph, fuel pump rewire, SlowboyRacing LSD insert, extended/taller 5th gear, etc. Every and any mod imaginable. I took great pride in having done all the work myself, except the paint job and a frozen bolt I needed help extracting.

Since the Evo 8/9 hit US soil, my life long dream of actually owning an Evo was now a possible reality.

Closely watching the used Evo market, I realized it was now or never, and bought an Evo 9 SE with 52k miles. Only mods are HKS exhaust, JDM rear bumper, and an old school HKS turbo timer. My goals for the car is to maintain it as close to OEM perfection as possible, minus the exhaust and bumper which I've fallen in love with. Eventually I'd like to run a few more pounds of boost, ETS lower IC pipe, and a tune.

I've had the car for 3 weeks now, and I couldn't be happier. Obviously AWD 4G63T vs FWD 4G64 is night and day. I'm glad to have joined this board, I appreciate the wealth of knowledge I've already found from lurking around.

Thanks!
- Matt

My old website dedicated to the mods for the 7th gen Galant:
http://socallifestyle.com/4g64.html


2006 Evolution 9 SE








My 1994 Galant:

 

Wow Matt. Excellent story & introduction @asayamalaka

Welcome & congrats

Make yourself at home & hope to see you active on the boards w/us owners

Cheers, Joe

 

Clean Evo. Out of curiousity, where did you source yours? I'm back in the market for one myself.

 

thanks. I got it from MDK International here in LA. https://www.mdk-global.com/ I wasn't comfortable with buying one sight unseen, and all the north eastern ones have salt damage, so I really lucked out here...

I was watching all the usual suspects (JDPower, cargurus, carsforsale, autotrader, BAT, etc) since summer of last year, they're dwindling by the day

 

Welcome aboard!

 

Welcome!

 

Welcome ! You have nice car there , looks awesome wish you the best of luck with it!!

 

Welcome!