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Street Build Eyesore: '98 TSi clean up

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CheapTalon

15+ Year Contributor
52
3
Oct 17, 2004
Grand Rapids, Michigan
I figured it was about time I started a build thread for this car on a forum that might actually care about it. I bought the car from a good friend of mine that has owned it for nearly the last 10 years. He and I went to high school together and when he was looking to upgrade from his '95 Eclipse RS back then I found him this car. It was either this or a 2gb Eclipse, and with some prodding he decided on this car. Over the next 10 years he modded the car and did a very thorough job keeping up on the maintenance. He went through a motor and two transmissions (among other things) before parking it 4 years ago to focus on more important things in life. Last fall he finally decided it was time to let the car go. It was listed for quite a few months before I made the decision to pick it up. I couldn't let a car that had so much history and care go to someone who wouldn't appreciate it.

The plan for the car is to clean it up, fix the transmission and a few other things and turn it into a fun summer DD. I'll copy some of the pictures and mods from the for sale ad to bring the car up to date with my purchase.

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- Motor -
Motor and head are pretty much stock 2gb
Bottom end was been rebuilt with new factory pistons, rings and bearings
all new timing components
stock 2g head with valve job at time of rebuild
revised 2g lifters
RRE Oil catch can
HKS 272 cams and adjustable cam gears
Evo 3 Intake manifold
1150 FIC injectors with unnamed fuel rail on E85 fuel
Walbro 255 fuel pump with rewire relay kit (for constant 12v)
Megasquirt 2 standalone fuel management system
zetronix wideband o2 sensor tied into megasquirt


- Random -
Stuart Warner Boost gauge, shift light, and EGT gauge (not currently hooked up, never wanted to tap the T3 manifold)
DDM Tuning 9006 HID retrofit kit
HKS Turbo Timer custom mounted in dash (not working with megasquirt)
Aftermarket radio/cd player
100% Full interior, nothing was ever removed


- Bolt ons -
ETS 7" tall street intercooler kit with short route ic pipes all powercoated black
Tial 50mm BOV with 12" vac spring not recirculated
Borg Warner S256 ETT with PTP turbo blanket
Turbonetics T3 manifold
Turbonetics Evolution Wastegate with open dump o2 housing
custom 3" exhaust turbo back with no cat/resonator
4" custom turbo inlet with replaceable filter


- Drivetrain -
95 TRE Stage 1.5 built trans with taller 5th gear (currently broken will detail below)
95 Transfer case
ACT 2600lb full street disk
Fidanza lightweight flywheel with newer surface disk
stock axles and diff
B&M short throw shifter - also still have stock shifter
energy suspension motor/trans mounts


- Suspension/brakes -
Tokico illumina 5 way adjustable shocks
H&R sport lowering springs
Motegi DP10 17" rims with Toyo Proxie 4 tires
Crossdrilled and slotted front rotors with premium ceramics all around


- Fluids -
Engine - 10w40 Royal Purple
Trans - Redline MT90
Rear Diff - 75w90 Royal Purple
 
(A good portion of this log will be catching up on things I have done already this summer. A bit of this is copied and pasted from another forum.)

First things first with the car was waking her from her winter slumber. A friend of mine has a lot of property and was kind enough to let me put it in his barn for the winter. Before closing the doors on her for winter I bought some Fluid Film and went to town on all the usual spots that 2g DSM's get rusty. I would highly recommend this product to anyone who plans on owning their car for a long period of time that really cares about it.

A terrible pic of it packed into the bar. It was literally 2 inches away from an RV parked end to end with another RV. He has like 6 cars, 2 RV's and a sailboat in just this barn for winter.

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It took us about 45 minutes to get the car started because the battery was dead. I hooked it up to my daily with some cables, but it was cold out, the current AFPR is garbage, and it had old e85 in it. Eventually she fired though and I was able to limp her back to my house. Stopped at the gas station on the way back to top her off and grab a bite to eat.

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Once home I made use of my extra set of hands and put my new hood struts on. These might be a small item but are definitely one of my favorite mods ever on a car. Not only do they look good, but they also allow easier movement around the engine bay.

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Got a few more fixes to add. Real upgrades will be coming soon.

I'm mainly going for a stock interior, so all these gauges, radio, floor mats, etc had to go. First one was the radio. Not a bad unit, but doesn't really flow with the interior.

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I scored a stocker from a '95 turbo car on Ebay to put in. Mitsubishi/Infinity were really ahead of the curve with this. Equalizer, CD changer input, tape deck, but most importantly and AUX input. Now I can plug in my iPod/iPhone and jam to tunes.

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Next was the gauge overlay. I suppose it was nice that it was real carbon, but without anything else being carbon in the interior it looked a little out of place. Plus the car has been missing the clear plastic cover. Without the cover the gauges get dusty and the cluster just looks incomplete. I yanked the carbon, scraped off all the glue that held it on, and tossed on a plastic cover I scored at the junkyard.

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Now we're talking.

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The center arm rest had a broken latch that instantly bothered me once I discovered it. Another trip to the junkyard yielded me a replacement one in good shape.

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Remove arm rest, install latch, reinstall arm rest. Good as new!

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Another junkyard score was a cargo net and some anchors. My car had anchors on the side of the trunk, but none on the rearmost portion. I grabbed some brackets that go behind the plastic, and the plastic covers. Unfortunately the covers I got had busted tabs, so I lined them up with my good ones and drilled some holes for the mounting stud.

Junkyard (top), mine (bottom)

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After drilling the holes I secured the plastic back and now have different anchor points for the net depending on what I need to hold down. Right now the net just sits in the middle. (This thing really needs a good vacuuming.)

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That's all for today. I'll be pulling the trans this weekend to send out to get fixed. ECU will be getting pulled as well to get socketed for ECMlink. For now I'll just leave you with a teaser of the wheels/tires. She'll definitely need a roll/pull!

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Big things were coming for the car in the next couple weeks. I was pushing to make Eyes On Design in Detroit in a month. It is an invite-only show with a lot of really high end cars so I have to make sure this lowly little Eagle is in tip-top shape. She currently looked like this:

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Went through a big push and got a lot of things done to the car. I'm happy to say it is running now and I'm enjoying putting some miles on it. I'll start with some of the interior stuff that I have done.

Couldn't find a gauge pod I liked so I had to make one. I wanted something that didn't stick out like a sore thumb and that didn't obstruct vision of the gauge cluster or through the windshield. I also only wanted to run a boost gauge and nothing else. So I chopped up the factory column, bought a cheap single pod off eBay, and went to work.

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It is slightly off center so I can see the full speedo and most of the tach. When sitting in the car is actually covers less than in the picture.

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Being that I am picky I had Autometer make me a custom gauge too. I looks pretty much identical to the factory gauge cluster, and is lit with a red LED. That said, my cluster is currently orange bulbs but I will be swapping them out to red LED in the future.

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Next on the list was getting rid of this awful B&M shifter. The previous owner grenaded the transmission due to his driving habits, and I think this thing had a lot to do with it. The shifter pretty much made you shift on "kill" mode at all times whether you wanted to or not because the throw was so short.

I was fortunate to find someone willing to pay me money for it. I was ready to throw it in the garbage.

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PO kept most of the parts he upgraded, so after digging through some boxes I found the stock shifter. A buddy of mine built a jig to cut down the stock shifter anywhere from .5" to 1.5" so he cut it and tig'd it back together for me. I also made a call to JNZ tuning and bought all new bushings for the stock shifter assembly. Now she's tight like a tiger!

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Top it off with a NOS leather shift knob.

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I was doing my normal junkyard hunting when I came across a 4g Eclipse. If I find nicer/newer Mitsu cars I pillage them for hardware that looks nice and isn't all rusty. While grabbing some interior screws/bolts I noticed the car had a red plastic hood release. Since I always get pissed that I can't find the one on my Talon I nabbed it in hopes it fit since it looked the same. It does! I kinda like the contrast it gives the interior too. I'm such a ricer sometimes.

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Once I got the interior back together I was very eager to try out the radio. Turns out I needed a code. I had to call 8 dealerships before I got a guy willing to help me out. Some told me they can no longer look it up, others told me I had to pay/come in, one transferred me to parts and then service and then I hung up. The final one the guy had it for me in less than 30 seconds. After that the radio powered up but didn't have sound. Turns out the car has a factory Infinity amp that wasn't plugged in under the seat and I didn't plug into the back of the stereo since I didn't know it was there. Still didn't work. After fiddling with some buttons I finally got sound and can jam to my iPod on the sweet factory AUX input.

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Too bad I get almost no radio reception because I ditched the factory antenna for a shorty. I'll take the trade off since this looks good and lines up perfectly with my factory spoiler.

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Got my beautiful trans back from Team Rip Engineering. Jon is local to me and is THE best in the DSM transmission game. He tore down both the transmissions I brought him right in front of me to assess the damage and go over potential upgrades.

Original trans had seen better days. F that stupid B&M shifter.

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Current trans from the car didn't look so bad upon first inspection. Car had no 3rd/4th gear and Jon immediately noticed the shift rail was broken. I took the piece of the rail home to serve as a new mascot of the car. I shall call him, Railbert!

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This trans was built by Jon in 2003 and already had a few goodies. Most notably a 10% taller 5th gear from an Evo III. We decided to do an Evo III 1st gear as well along with a 4-spider diff upgrade and his usual shot-peening and other small tricks. Unfortunately after digging into the trans more he found it needed a completely new 3rd and 4th gear, intermediate shaft and some other stuff. $2600 later I had my trans back. I lost the pic I had of it all shiny and new, so you'll have to settle for it in the car.

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Trans went in pretty smooth but I ran into a big problem when both ears of the bracket for the equal length axle shaft on the driver's side didn't line up. Turns out the bracket is different for a 97-99 DSM and one bolt goes to the a/c bracket and the other to the block, as opposed to every other year DSM which has them both bolt to the block. Weird thing was my car has an a/c bracket from a 95-96 car. That means my factory axle only had one bolt holding it on the block. This is really sketchy because it is notorious for breaking these bolts off in the block if you abuse the car and they are loose or one is missing. Fortunately I had an extra bracket to press onto the 97-99 intermediate shaft so that I could bolt it all up correctly since the shaft is also a different length. Crisis averted.

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Trans is all bolted up and ready to go. Let's focus our attention on that horrible AFPR.

I guess bolting down important parts of your fuel system is for the birds. Regulator just hanging out in all its terrible glory.

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Mismatched lines/fittings.

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All black everything.

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Decided to take my other Magnus rail I was going to use on my Colt and use it on this car when I had a problem with my A/N fittings. It also was black and looked much cooler.

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Made new feed/return lines.

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Found a nice little spot on the firewall.

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Ick. Changing injector seals/boots yearly is a good idea for a car that runs ethanol.

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Cleaned the injectors with some gasoline as well while they were out.

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I also changed out the brake master cylinder and booster a little while back to one from a 3g Eclipse. I plan to upgrade the brakes in the near future and this is supposed to increase pedal feel a good deal. I don't have any pictures because I was too busy swearing and bleeding to take them. Next post, body work!
 
B&M Shifter caused the trans carnage? How?

Basically, because the throw is shorter, you shift faster and honestly DSM syncros have enough trouble with stock shift length. So nothing lines up as you crash gears together and something has to give. I believe in this case, the 3-4 shift fork kicked the bucket and then everything else failed afterwards. When this trans failed, the car was locked up and had to be drug up on to a wrecker. The process of shaking it off of the flat bed actually freed up the drivetrain to roll around my driveway.
 
^^^^What he said. Imagine power-shifting everywhere you went whether you were racing or just driving normal to the grocery store. The much shorter throw didn't really allow the driver to "feel" the trans out while shifting and let it fall into gear. It was more of forcing it into gear. I hated the shifter and the feel it gave. It didn't feel like a faster shift, it just made it seem like it was on the verge of breaking something each time I changed gears.
 
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