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epic car failure, drivetrain?

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blade970

10+ Year Contributor
190
0
Apr 4, 2009
Billings, Montana
So, I am driving along(interstate) and I hear a loud noise, crap thundering under my car, just sounded like rocks being kicked around so no biggie.
Pull off at the exit about 45 miles down, press on the brake and the car starts shaking like a doped up squirrel. Maybe super warped rotor? Wheel freaking out?
Pull into a gas station and check the sitch.
Remove all 4 wheels, check rotors, replace wheels, head towards my destination.
The car is still shaking like mad, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, get on the interstate, 5th gear...
Shaking starts to die around 75 mph, and is only intermittent between 60 and 75.
Finish the 25 miles to the cabin, not really wanting to see what happens tomorrow.
When I go to head home, same thing, super shaky. The power feels like it went through the floor too.
Rev the car up, boost fine. 13 lbs all day. And at full boost I feel like I would lose a race to my 1990 Sunbird with a bad cylinder.

The car is a 1990 talon AWD, no mods that would affect anything, engine still sounds great, no misfires, no codes, great compression. I looked under the car and everything seems to be fine.

My only guess is maybe the transfer case went? So it is still putting some power to the front wheels through the transmission allowing the vehicle to be driven? But every time I heard of Xcases dying the rear tires locked up and people's cars almost killed them. Can an Xcase just stop working and spin freely without catching the driveshaft?

Ideas?
Please and thanks.
~Michael
 
I don't hear any grinding, although there was a lot of juice behind the xcase and around the first foot of the driveshaft, so i am assuming it was bad anyways.
I have a spare tranny and xcase I will be throwing on sometime in the next few weeks anyways, I just wanted to make sure that this was my issue
 
My question to you would be is the steering wheel shaking real bad or is it the body of the car or both.

Sounds like it could be the transfer case but I have never had that experience before. I would also tell you to check your driveshaft for any excessive emovement or wear in the joints. Possibly the carrier bearings are going bad the the driveshaft is bouncing around. Only other thing I can come up with is if the vibrations are more in the steering wheel is a boot has broken and the joint is catching real bad during rotation...?
 
Alright, just tossed the pig up on jackstands.
All the wheels rotate when the car is in gear except driver front, and the transfer case literally POURS out oil when it is in gear, but BARELY drips when it isn't. So, still xfer case?
 
sounds like a bunch of clicking and clacking right from the middle of the car then yes i would say transfer case. i had one do that to me on my 92 awd and barely made it 20 miles
 
Thread rez.
Not that anyone cares but that same day I figured out what the problem was...the bolts that hold the intermediate shaft to the block came out (WTF?) and the intermediate shaft came out of the transmission..... so the driver front wheel was basically just flopping around there....it was dumb. Car is still down though, decided that since it was already dead I might as well do some upgrades, so I got my new turbo set-up on and am about 2 or 3 days away from it being road worthy again
 
Definitely thanks for updating. I wasnt leaning towards it being the transfer case at all to be honest.. If that was the case and your car is basically stock. You wouldnt have made it far.. Without a welded center diff you wouldnt be able to make it very far on just fwd... I thought when I was at the track and if Id broken the rear end or tcase I could just drive home fwd. My buddy (wiseman on here) informed me that that isnt possible Id need that done.
 
Haha, remember when i said 2 or 3 days form being running? Man i'm a lazy procrastinating fool. well, everything is back together now. bolts are all tightened and fluids are all in. Went to jump start the car today with my jumper box........it was dead :/ #rageragerage
So the jumper box got to charge tonight and I will try again tomorrow. I'll update when it is officially running. I'll attach a new picture then also.
 
Grats hope all goes well when you go to crank it, we all know what happens when we do "upgrades" :rocks:.
Definitely thanks for updating. I wasnt leaning towards it being the transfer case at all to be honest.. If that was the case and your car is basically stock. You wouldnt have made it far.. Without a welded center diff you wouldnt be able to make it very far on just fwd... I thought when I was at the track and if Id broken the rear end or tcase I could just drive home fwd. My buddy (wiseman on here) informed me that that isnt possible Id need that done.
As for this statement, if you removed the drive shaft it would drive just in FWD mode, it would be very weird and risk breaking the viscous coupler but would roll still no problem. I drove my car home like this about 40 miles when I first bough it. It feels like your clutch is slipping super bad. Luckily enough it wasn't driven at all with the drive shaft out and when the new one was in worked all fine.
 
So, started it today for the first time.
Took forever to get it fired up, and at few times when we were trying to jump it from my dad's 68 chevy truck the negative terminal would spark then everything would shut off. Then a few minutes later it would work again? (not running, but electrical back on)
So we got it jumped with a little jumper box, and it starts smoking like CRAZY! and smells TERRIBLE!
I was freaking out at first, then i realized the smoke was ONLY coming from the heat wrap on the exhaust manifold? Is this normal with heat wrap? It smelled really poopy too.
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~edit~ Also, the smoking nearly went away after running for a few minutes but was still there, just to a lesser extent. Should this eventually stop entirely?

So, this is how the car sits and looks now.
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I know the wastegate doesn't have anywhere to "waste", thats a non issue right now. And the catch can is kind of bulky.
Coming plans for the car are a battery relocate to truck so I can free up space for a proper catch can, reroute some wiring, ecmlink (christmas present to myself), injectors, apfr, wally 255, etc. Nothing new as far as that goes.

I do still have one more problem though. As far as I can tell, everything is wired up properly. The car is a 1990 so it had a cruise control box where the catch can is right now, but I removed that, so there is no cruise and there is nothing connected to the wire for the cruise coming off the positive terminal.
My issue is that my tach isn't reading anything? Ideas?
I haven't moved the car so I don't know if the speedo is working or not yet either.
I am going to do some searching, but i usually have this page open in a tab so if anyone has some insight, please, drop that knowledge on me.





~ edit~
I may have just found my fix in this thread.
http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/articles-electrical-wiring/414636-how-fix-1990-dsm-tach.html
I will post up either tomorrow if I can get to it, or monday or tuesday (I work just weekends but work 300 mi from home so I won't be near my car, and finals week is next week) :)
 
Last edited:
Update: The fix listed in the link above works great. Took me about 15 minutes to put together and test.
Bought an optima redtop to get the ol' girl running strong again. It shows up on Monday, then i will take it for a test drive to make sure everything is working great again.
 
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