2G ‘97 GS Buyers Remorse

[Magic-man00]

Hey I recently bought my GS and I feel like I made a mistake.

My name is Nick and I am currently 17 years old living in Colorado I am required to find a fwd or awd car and only had 4k to spend.
I bought it for 3500 which I now feel like is more than what the car is worth, the body is super clean and has 101,000 miles. The car has had 3 owners including me and is mostly stock. The only mod it has is an aftermarket exhaust. It had been sitting mostly the past year but runs good with proven routine maintenance (note pad going back to ‘09). It is not very clean on the inside and super dusty.

I guess my question is, should I deep clean the car and try to sell it or stick with it.
I didn’t realize how limited I am with the 420a and what I could do. I wanted a platform I could mod and learn on.

I have support from my uncle who is a mechanic and will help me with any mods I choose to do but I don’t want to jump into rebuilding the bottom end to support a turbo plus the whole money aspect.

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[Mahreeoh17]

If you like the car, keep it.
If you think it's going to be a money pit and you won't be happy, sell it. But a turbo car might be a money pit as well.

Either way, going forward you should definitely do more research on a car before you buy it. Common problems, maintenance issues and costs, are parts hard to find? These things are all problems on the DSM platform, and most of us who drive them are aware of it.
Any project car is going to cost you money. If you're trying to build a race car or whatever, even more so.

At 17 I had a Honda because they were cheap to build and tinker with. Thank goodness I didn't have a DSM because I think I would've been burned out on them.

 

[97egl]

You will always be limited on the 420a platform. It is basically dead in terms of aftermarket performance parts at this point. The only stuff you can find for the most part is parts that are shared with the Dodge neon engine and even some of those are drying up. As the cars become more expensive some parts may start to come back up but they will be more expensive as well.

For tuning you will have to go with piggyback controllers which are very limited in what they can do or you'll have to go with a standalone system like megasquirt which can be A LOT of work to get running correctly.

In my opinion the only reason to buy a 420a car currently is if you just like how it looks and want to have an eclipse but don't care about it being fast.

Sounds like money is an issue for you so to be honest I would just steer clear of the DSM platform overall. Not trying to be rude but they aren't cheap anymore and parts are getting more expensive and harder to find by the day. If you really like DSM's and want to have one what you have now is probably your best option. It does look like it is in nice condition and I think 3500 was a pretty decent price. I'd just keep it stock.

 

[idkiliketurbos]

In my opinion, if you like the car, just keep it and learn some basic things on it. The car you get at 17 is likely never going to be something you plan on keeping for a long time or is worth sticking all sorts of money into it. I say just learn some basic mechanical things, detailing, etc on this car while you save up money for something that has a bit more modification potential down the road.

 

[Canadian_CD9A]

Treat it like a boring commuter car, since they are slow and upgrading them power-wise in a significant way isn’t going to happen. If it runs fine, and has no issues on the horizon, don’t sweat it - just maintain it and use it to learn how to take care of a car. Most kids are eager to modify their cars and make them better, but usually they only make them far less reliable, comfortable and decent, all at the expense of going slightly faster. I suggest you just treat it well but leave it stock. After all, $4,000 buys basically nothing these days and you could do a lot worse.

 

[Magic-man00]

Ok I’m going the keep the car I do really love the look of the car I’m going to keep it stock. Thank you all for your responses. I realize now that it’s not worth it to try and mod it and it being my first manual car I’m just going to learn the basics and once I go to college look at selling it and getting something I can do more with. If you don’t mind what are the value projections for the car in the future?

 

[chrysler kid]

You wont find a better car in your budget

Tastefully modify it with wheels and suspension and a nice stereo while you save money for your next build

If you modify the car nicely and make it look good you will likely get your money back when you have a bigger budget to get the exact car you want


Save more money while you daily drive it to your job. Keep scrolling marketplace but I dont think you will find anything cleaner for the money

Value wise, that car in showroom condition with high mileage is worth what you paid for it. There are fewer on the road every year. But there are also more people every year who want to own one again, or buy one because it was a cultural movie car

 

[pauleyman]

It's your first car. Enjoy it. Detail the crap out if it. Drive it. Good job with a manual trans. I made my 17 year old get one. Hebhated it fir 30 days. Here we are 7 years later and he'd have it no other way. Wheels and tires are fun. Mods don't have to be about speed.

 

[Spleen8urLSX]

Being your 17 I’m going to imagine it’s your only car, keep it as it’s reliable and cheap transportation if you maintain it and don’t abuse it. 17 year old me with my non turbo 2g would kick 34 year old me in the nuts for saying that, but looking back and knowing what I know now it would’ve been less enjoyable. I had the same remorse but now I realize trying to heavily modify or turbocharge an engine never intended for it and relying on it for my only means of transportation would have been completely unrealistic, and while the factory turbo cars can be reliable transportation if left alone and maintained the newest turbo dsm’s are now pushing 25 years old and aren’t practical commuters for at least a younger person. Keep it and learn with it, and once you learn you might grow attached to it and decide to keep it and do something more with it when you’re in a position to buy another vehicle for daily transportation.

 

[SixBolt_16G]

Dont look at it like its the only car you're ever going to own. Its a typical feeling when youre young and get the chance to buy a car, but not getting exactly what you wanted. Learn what you need to learn, work hard, save your money, then move on to bigger and better things. The majority of us have been in your same position.

I started off by inheriting my mom's '93 Mercury Topaz. A real gem of a car. An N/A Eclipse would've been a dream car

 

[Spleen8urLSX]

Dont look at it like its the only car you're ever going to own. Its a typical feeling when youre young and get the chance to buy a car, but not getting exactly what you wanted. Learn what you need to learn, work hard, save your money, then move on to bigger and better things. The majority of us have been in your same position.

I started off by inheriting my mom's '93 Mercury Topaz. A real gem of a car. An N/A Eclipse would've been a dream car

I learned to drive in an 89 Tempo my dad bought for a 200 dollar winter beater that was also my main means of transportation for a few weeks until I bought my first dsm, had a handful of other Tempo’s and Topaz’s for beaters. Back then you could buy them for a couple hundred bucks and they were invincible!

 

[Justin DuBois]

You don't need a big motor to be a fast driver. You want to learn a few things about driving, go see what auto-x is about, and then go see what a road course track day is about. Your brain is at a good age for it.

 

[99dsmer4g63]

My first car was a 95 rs m/t. This thing was clapped and was slow as dog shit with the most obnoxiously loud exhaust you could ever have.

I sank money into that pos and I beat the living piss out of it.

My dad bought me a 99 gsx over junior to senior year. I would not recommend getting a nice first car. You will learn things.

-Daniel

 

[chrisman287]

It may be your first car but it won’t be your last. Don’t sweat it. Make the best of it and enjoy it.

 

[TedBrosby]

Hey kid,
I’m 40 and I was in your shoes when I was 17/18. My mom insisted I get a car from a dealership and she refused to take me to a big city an hour away to buy there. As a result, I spent $15.5k on a 5-speed Corolla LE. I thought maybe I can mod it to make it quick. There were no mods for it. Even though it shared the exact same engine as the Celica GT, it had zero aftermarket support. No bolt one, no performance upgrades. Just body kids and coil overs.

Worst part was my mom made me make the payments so I had to make payments on a car I hated. My best advice for you is don’t spend money on modding this. You won’t get the fulfillment you want and will just lose money on the mods. Spend money on maintenance and improvements for the drive ability for every day commuting. Replace filters, gaskets, hoses, fuses, old sensors… Deep clean and detail the carpet. Restore anything that’s covered in surface rust by cleaning it off, sanding it down, primering it… Get it in great shape and when you have $1500 on the side, put the car up for sale. Spend $6000 to $7000 and get yourself a K20A Civic SI.

Why? Because a turbo DSM isn’t a car any 17/18 year old should pick up as their first. The 2G Eclipse is not only 25 years old, it has a reputation for being owned by cheap modders. They not only boosted the crap out of these cars but they didn’t take care of them. That combination of treatment would be a risk even for a bulletproof platform but for a car as sensitive as this, it’s a death sentence.

Buying a 25 year old turbo DSM, especially the 2G (the same model year as the one you have), you are risking a surprise necessary repair that can hurt your pockets DEEPLY. When the turbo engine on 2nd gen Eclipses fails, it can fail catastrophically bad, meaning $3000-7000 to repair even if you do some/most of the labor yourself. It also takes weeks. This depends on how badly the engine is damaged when the thrust bearing fails. At the minimum, you’d have to disassemble the entire motor, replace the crankshaft, thrust bearing and crank position sensor. However, you’d more than likely have to also have some machine work done on the block. And most people say, which is good advice, if you have the block open you might as well rebuild it. This means, unless you want to seriously regret how you handle this in the future, you’ll want to buy new pistons, rods, rings and all the gaskets and seals. Also even though you’d save on labor for doing it together, you’d still have to PAY for labor… It won’t be cheap or fun for a 17/18 year old. A LOT of turbo DSM’s that get sold are due to an owner giving up after a motor failure. We didn’t even get into the transmission work. If you’re pulling off the transmission for a block rebuild, might as well replace the clutch and flywheel.

Overall, I’ve heard of 4G63T rebuilds after a crank walk costing someone over $7,500 in parts alone just to “get the car on the road” again.

But a K20A? It’s practically bulletproof. Even if the owner didn’t take very good care of it, usually it’s just the transmission that goes. Plenty of parts available. Lots of knowledge. It’s still a very modern platform. Very easy to work on. And you know what? Unless you’re spending serious cash and risking crank walk failures, the average bolt on K20A Civic will walk away from a 2G Eclipse.

I’m happy to finally have a turbo Eclipse to modify, but I am very well aware that any day now I can suddenly be slapped by a rebuild. I set aside over $10,000 for when that happens. Can you do the same?

 

[chrysler kid]

Ill just add another 2 cents.

Growing up in the 2000's I never understood why people were so into Hondas. They were slow and expensive to make fast. It wasnt until I had modified my daily driver so heavily that I needed a basic car that I finally understood the honda fad. They are exceptional at being great cars. What does that mean? They are a car you can dependably get back and forth to work and still have a little fun with a manual transmission and simple mods are extremely cheap.

So focus on making this a good car, that is good at being a basic car, before you think you want a fast car. Typically a fast car is good at going fast but expensive to keep going and means your getting tickets. Enjoy it for what it is before you knock it for not being exactly your dream car