The Beginning of a Long Journey

Hello Fellow DSMers. It’s about time that I created a built thread for both my 2G DSM’s. I will start off with my first DSM. This is my 1998 Eclipse GSX Northstar White. I bought this car back in 2010. I drove all the way out to Chicago with my family to pick it up. This is how the car sat at the dealership.



My first impressions of the car when I arrived at the dealership was priceless. I was shocked at what condition the vehicle was in. This being my first car I could not wait to drive it….Except I never drove a stick shift car in my life before. So my father took the car for a test drive as he was an automotive mechanic back in Poland so I trusted him with all the feedback he provided me. The test drive went great and the car was solid. I gathered all my money that I have saved (cutting grass, detailing cars, Christmas, birthdays…..) and bought the car with cash right on the spot. I couldn’t believe that I finally bought my first car and it was the car I have wanted since I was 10 years old. So the first thing i did was take a wheel to her and completely detail the car to get any imperfections out.




After this was done I couldn’t wait to start modifying it, and guess what … life happened so the car literally sat for 7 years only driven maybe 100 miles a year and I bought myself a DD to get to and from school and work. I went to college and got my bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and graduated with no debt. Small price to pay to be able to have toys. But in those 7 years I accumulated 3 full shelves of parts that I planned on using on the white car. I had a ton of parts but I decided I wanted to keep the white eclipse semi stock. Below is the list of parts I put on the car as well as how the car progressed.


Parts :

Full Evo 8 Brembo Brake Conversion
Hawk HPS Front and Rear Brake Pads
Brembo Brake Adaptor Kits For the Fronts
Goodrich Full Stainless Braided Brake Lines
Evo 8 Enkie Rims
Nitto NT05 235/45/17 Tires
Eibach Lowering Springs with Tokico Blue Shocks
Ingall Camber Kit Front and Rear
RM Sway Bars front and Rear
Redid Whole Front and Rear Suspension with New Components
Apexi N1 Full Turbo Back Exhaust
Cold Air Intake

First i lowered the car and resprayed the factory rims:


Then i went ahead and completed the full evo 8 brembo brake conversion.

Evo 8 rims before : Had to weld the lip on one of them due to bad curb rash.


Evo 8 rims after:


How the car sits as of now:



So for the white car the build has been completed and as of right now I have no further plans for it. But on the other hand I still had a ton of parts sitting on my shelf. So in the mean time I was constantly searching for a 2g to pop up close by to pick up. Well that never happens here in Michigan and especially a clean one for cheap. So I had to broaden my horizons and I finally found a perfect candidate. Stayed tuned for the sneak peak of the 2g i picked up.

“A GSX at the local junkyard?”: 10/06/2016

A couple of months before I picked up my 2nd 2g I had plans to fully build a 7 bolt engine. Except for once I wanted to enjoy the white eclipse and not have it just sit in the garage. So I picked up this 7 bolt from a pick and pull for $200. Tore the motor down and surprising it was in great shape. All the bearings looked solid and there was no sign of any foul play/engine related issue for it to be in the junkyard.



I went ahead and send my block and head to the machine shop to get looked over. In the mean time I cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned all the misc parts for the engine itself.

Time to Weld: 11/02/2016

Now that I had another valve cover and oil pan it was time to do some welding. I went ahead and welded in two -10 an fitting to my valve cover and welded in the -12an return bung to my oil pan. You can guess what turbo I’m planning on running .

Valve cover :


Oil Pan :

“E-Day” Finally Picking Her Up: 12/21/2016

I picked up this beauty. This was a 1997 Eclipse GSX Cayenne Red Pearl. It was a 4.5 hr trip but I grabbed the truck and a trailer and of course the girlfriend to keep me company and we were on our way. My overall goals for this car were to have a 500 AWHP DSM to have fun with and to cruise. Overall I was pretty impressed with the car. It was definitely not perfect and needed a lot of work but I was willing to put the time and effort into it to make it what I wanted. I picked up the car for only $1200. Not too bad for a rust free 2g with only 90,000 miles on it. The guy claimed that it has been sitting in his garage for 10 years just collecting dust, as he clearly had no idea what he was doing with the car except just throwing money at it. The car supposedly had 15K invested into it, but I was just mainly looking for a clean shell to play with. The car had a fully built 6 bolt motor, fully built shep trans, aem engine management system and a ton of other parts that came with the car. All the parts that came with the car are going to be sold, and all the parts I have acquired over the time will be put in instead. Enjoy the build and the journey to come.

Parts alone are worth more than the $1,200, plus a clean 2G AWD shell.. Lucky

GPLaserRS said:

Parts alone are worth more than the $1,200, plus a clean 2G AWD shell.. Lucky

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I appreciate it buddy. More pics and updates to follow.

Looking forward to future updates. Got a nice car to start with.

spyderdrifter said:

Looking forward to future updates. Got a nice car to start with.

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Thanks much my friend. A lot has been done with the car so there will be plenty of updates to come.

Let the Teardown Begin: 01/10/2017

With this being my first real build I decided to not cut corners and do it right the first time. Now when I picked up the Red 2g it was not running. The guy claimed he had a ton of stuff done to the car and had receipts for everything but I truly didn’t care, as I just wanted a clean shell. So my first plan of action was to try and get the car running just for the hell of it to see where I stand. In a matter of 1.5 hours I had the car running. Nothing like a car having bad fuel, a fuel pump that works with hammer persuasion and all the fuses, and I mean all the fuses being blown. So at least I knew that the motor was solid and had good compression across the board. The next steps were to pull the motor and everything else from the car and start from ground up.

Bye Bye 6 Bolt. It was nice knowing you!!!

Underbody Madness!!: 01/19/2017

Now with the engine being removed I could start on the underbody of the car. I went ahead and removed the rear gas tank as well as the full rear sub frame assembly. Surprisingly no nuts or bolts broke, they just gave me one heck of a battle. I also went ahead and removed the front sub frame assembly to get that out of the way.



I was curious why the guy gave me the prop shaft to the car separate. Looks like we found our culprit. Nothing like broken studs where the center bearings bolt up too.



New studs welded in place.

Like Putting Makeup on a Pig: Part 1 - 02/05/2017

Now that the mounts for the center bearing were addressed and the rear subframe was dis assemble it was time to clean and paint that underside. As I stated before I truly wanted a clean DSM to start off with and I think I got what I wanted. There was some surface rust here and there but noting an angle grinder couldn’t take off. I was very please with how clean the car was and how well the underside came out. Take a look for yourself.

Before :



After :

Like Putting Makeup on a Pig: Part 2 - 02/10/2017

Underbody is out of the way, let’s tackle cleaning up the trans and installing new seals.



Next was to put the rear sub frame assembly back in. This was a big help from ordering parts from rock auto as well as for the front assembly.



Now I couldn’t leave the engine bay alone. I really wanted it to pop so I went ahead and re-sprayed it the factory color. One lesson I learned was that I should not have reinstalled the front sub frame at this time. Oh well you live and you learn.

Touching up some spots with self etching primer:



Now some base primer, made sure to cover up that clean front subframe:



Now the moment you have been waiting for. Lets see the color pop on this beauty:

Brembos Again?: 02/12/2017

I figured I would let the engine bay paint cure for a little bit before I started bolting parts to it. So lets do another Brembo brake setup. You would think I would have learned and steered away from the brembo upgrade and went a different route. But hey I got a full Evo 8 Brembo brake setup and Evo X rims for a great price that I couldn’t pass up. Working on the knuckle and tapping the top ear is so much easier when the knuckle is removed from the car. On my white GSX I did not remove the knuckle to do this. Either way it can get done.

Tapping the knuckle:


Mock up of the Brembos:


Bought some new wheel bearings as well:


Decided to paint the faded brembo a satin black.

Engine Bay Assembly: 02/24/2017

With my motor coming back to me shortly I decided to go ahead and start putting things back into the engine bay. In the white gsx the brake pedal felt fine after the brembo install. Since I did the evo 8 brembo brake conversion I figured I might as well try the 3g master and brake booster upgrade and see how it really compares to the stock 2g one. I also went ahead and ran all braided stainless lines from the prop valve to the brakes. I kept the stock hardline to the rears but upgraded the small section of line from the wheel well to the caliper itself.



I also went ahead and installed the fuel lab filter i had laying around. Had to use a couple of spacers to space it out from the proportioning valve and line but it came out nice. One good thing about the car is that it came with full stainless braid feed and return fuel line just had to replace the connectors and hook it up.



Along the way I also needed a new wiring harness since the one that came with the car was all chewed up by the previous owner. I called Miller Import Auto Parts and as always they hooked me up with a virgin harness. I decided to just clean the harness up and not delete any plugs that are not going to be used. Just in case. Still came out pretty good.



In the mean time I also fabbed up an aluminum battery tray to lower the battery slightly and clean up the bay as mell as mocked up the radiator.

Love the build thread, you have an incredible attention to detail, and I look forward to where it goes next!

85Entropy said:

Love the build thread, you have an incredible attention to detail, and I look forward to where it goes next!

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Thank you for the kind words my friend. Its only going to get better from here. Stick around.

Engine is Back and In 04/03/2017

Finally came around to getting my motor back together and mated to the trans. Now all that was left to do was put it back into the bay and hopefully get it started soon. Big thanks to my awesome girlfriend for helping me get the motor in even tho she had no idea what to do. Gotta love all the support.

Damn that engine and trans are clean. One day I'll get to that level of spotless.

Very nice work in deed, you got too much time on your hands , i wish i could find the time to clean and redo it all but i run out of seconds real fast ,

Keep up the good work though, its amazing stuff

Very Nice! Keep up the great work!

I love the attention to detail! Awesome, look forward to seeing more.

Thanks for all the great feedback guys. I will try and have another update shortly.

Fuel System 04/05/2017

Another day another task to complete. One nice surprise I found out when I bought the car is that it came with a full stainless braided feed and return line to the fuel pump. I went ahead and cleaned out the fuel lines and put new fittings on them. I also installed my fuel injectors to the rail and fabbed/painted up a plate to mount my adjustable fuel pressure regulator too. I then went ahead and installed/rewired my DW fuel pump but unfortunately did not take pictures of it.

Awesome ,, this is great man.. Lots of similarities in your work and mines . Loving it.

@PLDSM I'm not too far from you so if you ever need a hand just message me