1999 Eclipse Spyder

[colephillips]

This is the Build Thread for 1999 Eclipse Spyder. Reply below.

 

[colephillips]

This car has been a bit of a rollercoaster since I bought it. The background is I bought it for cheap off a friend when I was "in between" cars, and ended up really loving it. The clutch went completely out in it, and I drove it with no clutch for awhile. The shift linkage also would randomly get stuck in 2nd gear and have to be taken apart at the trans, and sometimes it would lose power due to corroded wiring so it was basically undrivable. Threw a cheap clutch in it in in the street in front of my apartment and it turned into a nightmare. Basically every bushing and ball joint in the front end was bad, the passenger side cv axle was seized in the wheel hub, the motor mounts are totally bad, on and on. Around this time the brackets and cables on the soft top also broke so it doesn't seal anymore, plus the rear window leaks anyways.

I parked it for a year and pretty much didn't touch it. Well recently I traded in the pickup that'd been my daily for a family car for the wife to drive, so I had a choice between driving the Chevy sedan or the eclipse to work everyday. I chose the eclipse. It needs basically all new front suspension, brakes, wheel hubs, motor/ trans mounts, the soft top rebuilt, could use the shifter getting rebuilt, and a deep, deep clean. It probably needs the rear suspension gone thru but I haven't taken the rear wheels off yet to see how bad it really is.

I ordered a mix of prothane and energy suspension bushings for the front end (DST didn't have the full prothane kit in stock and sounded like they weren't going to get it anytime soon). I need to source ball joints, maybe if any 2g guys read this they can recommend ball joints that don't suck and wear out quick. I'm hoping to slowly get the chassis totally sorted with good parts before building the motor/ swapping a 4g63t. This thread will be mostly for myself to document my progress.