HISTORY:

I hatched a plan in years ago to pursue the "AWD 14b no nitrous record" after following Project Goodwill and doing a lot of reading about Phil Beers and Leon Reitman. Eventually I was reading the pursuits of Dave Womer, and then Phil Beers rejoined the efforts.

I started with a 90 Eagle Talon TSI AWD shell that was donated to me in 2009. The exploits of that car can be found here:
http://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/splitsecondracing-project-14b.445299/

With that chassis I attained my goals, eventually running 11.146 ET and setting a best mph of 120.8 (two separate passes).

But, the local track wasn't having it anymore, too quick and fast without the proper safety equipment. I thought about putting a rollbar/cage into the old blue car, but the northern rot had taken over. It didn't seem logical to put that kind of time/money into an old rotten chassis.

So a new plan was born, I found a shell in Eastern Pennsylvania with a 6 point chromoly rollbar. Drove out there, hoisted her onto a trailer, and the next dsm chapter started.


PLANS:

Old blue was scrapped and everything has been swapped into the new 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX.

Plans are to make everything as clean as possible, while remaining functional. My old blue car was never pretty on the inside or out, so efforts are being made to clean up the new shell.

During the 2013 shootout, my gorgeous wife approached the good folks over at ECMLink and asked if they gave sponsorships (without my knowledge I might add). Sure enough they found my build interesting and they were impressed with the times I had achieved on the little 14b utilizing their old V2 setup. They offered me a very nice discount sponsorship so the upgrade was made. So part of the plans are to get the V3 SD setup hooked up on the car and learn to tune with the new system! I can't thank ECMLink enough!

The plan for now is to stick with the 14b. I want to try a few new upgrades and things to get better times out of it before I go to a bigger turbo setup.

GOALS:

The initial goals are of course to get the car up and running, and get a decent tune on her.

After that the first goal is to break into the 10's with the stock 14b turbocharger that is on the vehicle now. I then want to swap on an authentic 6cm hotside and see what kind of results I can get from that, currently an old Big16g 7cm hotside is on the turbo.

Once I hit 10's on the 14b, we'll see just how deep I can take it into the 10's. But, after years on the 14b I'm interested in making some more hp eventually. So an Evo III 16g will be put on the car and I'm going to shoot for very low 10's on it.

SUMMARY:
Time to make an AWD stock 14b turbo no nitrous dsm go 10's in the quarter mile.
Also she's being called an Eclipsalon due to the fact it's technically a Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX, but it's sporting Talon tails and a Talon Center grill. The eclipse tails I have are cracked, and I do not currently have an eclipse center grill. So far I like the look, it just may have to stay.

PROGRESS:

So this is where it all started. The shell had subframes laying under it, unfortunately the rear didn't have spindles and therefore my wife and I had a hard time hoisting her onto my trailer. It was definitely interesting.


Once I got her home she did a lot of sitting on the trailer throughout the winter. Little to no work was accomplished.


Finally after the snow was gone I started working on her. Most of the time was spent taking the shell completely apart and cleaning. Finally I painted the interior and rollbar so that I'd have a cleaner interior to bask in during a 1/4 mile blast.


And eventually the engine bay got some attention. I cleaned up the K-member, installed new Poly bushings, and threw the engine in it!


Got everything hooked up and ready to fire. Including a new 1 gallon fuel cell, external walbro 255, -6an lines, and Fuelab AFPR.


During the process I installed some stainless brake lines for peace of mind. I also gutted more of the wiring harness to save a little more weight. Obviously in order to make a low hp car go quick it needs to be light! After fixing some of my wiring mistakes, a few fuel leaks, oil leaks, and coming up with solutions for other minor issues, she was ready to fire up! She now runs and drives, but the tuning is just beginning. I've started playing around with the idle tuning and quickly discovered I had better do some boost leak testing before I get too far along. I'll be sure to update as I learn V3 SD tuning and finish up getting her ready for track time.

SBstar updated 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX


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Tuning has gone fairly well considering I can't really "drive" the car with the 1 gallon fuel cell. She idles well and can go up and down the street without issue at least. WOT is going to be another story. I may have to break down and take her to the dyno for initial tuning. My plan had been to use our local 1/8th track for tuning, but they've been caught up in legal battles due to noise complaints all summer.

I added an Evo III exhaust manifold thanks to @95talongirl which finally replaced the 1g manifold I'd been running for several years, which coincidentally had also come from her old car. It should help open up some flow.

Unfortunately when I swapped manifolds I discovered quite a bit of oil in the 2nd cyl. exhaust port. I've long suspected I should replace all the valve stem seals which is the most likely issue, but the turbo's shaft play makes me suspect the turbo seals as well. This prompted a compression test which resulted in showing 140, 140, 140, 123ish. Disappointing, but she should hold up to what I'm putting her through for a while.

Glad you found that manifold in the piles of parts in the garage!
That's a bummer about the recent discoveries, but it's all part of the game! Car looks great!

That engine will take a bit more beating. SOOOOOOOO close to getting it out to the track.

I'm going to do a leakdown test and see where the issue is at, pretty confident it's rings. I'm probably going to send the turbo out for a rebuild and once it gets back see if I can get some WOT tuning done. This will either have to be done on a track or a dyno at this point so either way there will be some numbers to look at.

Turbo is getting torn out tomorrow and sent off to @JusMX141

Very nice Shane. This is the first I've seen of this car. Glad you got something with a cage already...and are getting closer to getting back out to the track!

It's coming along. I'm not forcing myself into trying to get it on the track this year. I'm just getting one thing done/fixed at a time. Yesterday I sent the turbo out for the rebuild, ordered new valve stem seals, ordered a new battery, and today I mounted the glass in for the side windows and made myself a door latch handle. I will be putting lexan in the sides but the glass is to get me by for the rest of this year at least. Once the turbo gets back the next step is an alignment and I need to fabricate my air intake. I might do something simple for now and get more elaborate with it next year. Time and money willing I want to get some kind of WOT tuning done, either on the dyno or at the track before she gets put up for the winter.

Here you are trying to go to lexan and im over here gonna swap back to glass .

I see a lot of the local honda's with a steel piece down the center of the windshield when they run lexan. Do you know if this is necessary when switching to lexan? As far as I can tell it just needs to be 1/8 inch.

Lexan flexes very easily, you'll want a center support bar/steel piece in the center of a piece that see's pressure such as the windshield.

What's the reason for going back to glass Justin? Just tired of the scratches/yellowing? We'll see where my weight ends up but I have a lot more fat to get rid of than you do on this awd pig.

Got the rebuild back from @JusMX141

Looks absolutely beautiful, and I'm hoping the 18 psi actuator helps things out as well. Going to get this back on the car soon.

Hope it works as good as it looks!

I realized after it left that day that I forgot to attach your new oil drain gasket and j-pipe flange gasket to the box...PM me if you still need them and I'll throw them in an envelope and have them headed out tomorrow.

There continues to be progress! I figured out the issue I was having where the car would not rev past 6500ish rpms. Turned out the line I had going to the Map sensor was too long. Shortened that line and the car revs freely. I also spent some time cleaning up some wiring and other miscellaneous little things. The biggest job tackled was swapping the sunroof skin for my old non-sunroof skin along with making a lexan windshield. I think it came out ok, time will tell how much I'm going to hate the lexan as it scratches very easily. Also due to where I usually work on the car it's developed a name. I dub it The S.U.B. - Storage Unit Built

Awesome! Have you thought about a CF hatch? Side view mirror delete?

Looks great hope you break your goal!

Thanks buddahboost! It has a carbon fiber hatch w/lexan rear window. I've thought about the side mirrors but they really come in handy backing off the trailer and into the garage at times. My memory might be off but it's something like 5 lbs total for them, which is a decent chunk but I've been able to find that elsewhere so far.

Thanks Maes! Should be within reach if I can get a good tune and figure out consistent launches this year.

SBstar updated 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX


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SBstar updated 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX


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Quick update for those who don't follow the 14b drag racing thread. The car went 11.26 at the shootout and earlier this year did an 11.30 at 122 for a new highest 14b awd mph. I've been working on suspension tuning in order to get the 60's smooth and consistent. I went with a much softer spring combo which resulted in smooth launches at the shootout but hurt traction and made it tough to cut them quickly. I'm going to try the in between setup the next time out and I hope I can find a balance that results in those low 1.4's but without the bouncing! Looking forward to beating my old 14b time and shooting for that 10 second pass!

I saw that pass at the shootout! I didn't realize you were still on a 14B. Pretty impressive! What do you think your car weighs now?

Car with me in it sits at 2330, I'm about 190, so the car is around 2140ish. Hoping to get back to the track this week!

Keep it up, I love seeing your progress.

Did an 11.18 yesterday morning at the private track rental for a buddies work. Didn't plan on pushing the car and forgot the laptop so no tuning changes from the shootout.