'96 AWD Spyder Daily/Street Car

[ReivaXVrai]

I haven't been in the DSM game for long; just over a year, and I've been working on cars for an even shorter amount of time. I decided I would start a build journal just for fun and to see what people think about what I'm doing. It's going to go very slow after this first post. I have a year to shove into one post, so here we go. : D

Back in the summer of 2012, I was looking for a car, but I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted just yet. I was looking at Civics, Accords, Sentras, and Eclipses (2g and 3g). My friend had just gotten an '09 Lancer GTS, so I was beginning to lead towards the Mitsubishi side and I began to like the Eclipse more and more. I inevitably decided that's what I was going to get, but I couldn't decide which generation I wanted. The 3g was a little bit out of my price range, but I had no clue what the 2g was. I looked around for months and did as much research as I possibly could. If I was at home, I was either looking up Eclipses for sale, or trying to read more about them to help me make my decision. Eventually, I decided I wanted a 2g, and that made finding one that much harder as they are rare to be for sale around my area. Craigslist was failing me and one day I decided to just google, "Eclipse for sale" in my area. I came across a '96 Spyder that had low miles; 96k and was owned by a middle-aged lady that took damn good care of it. I went to see it and I immediately fell in love. I knew I had to have this car! She was asking $4k for it because there was an issue with the convertible top, but she didn't know what it was. My dad and I took it to our mechanic who checked it all out and said it's in great shape and worth the buy. I got her to drop it down to $3.5k since we had no clue what was wrong with the roof and would have to buy a new one. The next day, I ended with my first car that opened up a world I didn't even know existed.

A few weeks after bringing her home, my dad and I decided we should replace the convertible top and find out what's wrong with it. I had done some research and found out that the links that help it retract were known to break and needed to be replaced. Luckily, I found them for only $75 and we spent 11 hours taking the old top off and putting the new one on. Absolutely grueling. (Second picture.)


After a few months, I knew I wanted to start modding it. I was constantly reading up on parts to buy, but I had no clue where to decide. One day, I just said screw it, and I purchased the first part for her. An SRS 3" Catback Exhaust off of eBay. It was well priced, and I couldn't wait to get it so I could put it on. After it arrived, I spent 3 hours underneath the car on jack stands with my friend trying to get the 16 year old bolts off of the old exhaust. Everything went smoothly until we had to get the muffler off. That was not easy in the slightest for us. That damn three point flange did not want to clear my trunk, so we ended up scraping the hell out of it. Got it on and fired her up for the first time and damn, I fell in love all over again.

 

[Insane20]

Nice car man. What are your goals for it?

 

[92AWDHX40]

I really like that exhaust.

 

[ReivaXVrai]

Nice car man. What are your goals for it?

Thank you. : ) 350-400AWHP daily.


In January of 2013, I really began to start modding her. I ended up getting a $20 Injen intake+filter+MAF from a guy who had it lying around. After that, I purchased my CXRacing front mount since I knew I was going to need to cool the turbo down better once I started going larger.

Sadly, I had no idea what I was doing, so I had my buddy who owns a shop down here put it all in for me while he replaced the belts and water pump. 100k mile maintenance is expensive, haha. While it was in there, I was looking into what I would need to do to tune the car soon, and so I bought myself an EPROM ECU.

I got the car back a little bit later with the maintenance done and the new parts on the car. I decided to take it on a run up a local uphill trail and ended up blowing the hell out of my clutch. Took the car back to my buddy who threw in a brand new Competition Stage 4-6 6puck Cerametallic in it. The car actually stayed running for a couple months after that, until I took it to the drag strip for the first night.

I was ridiculously nervous, because I had never actually raced before, and it was my first time at the strip. I made my first few passes and ran terribly. 16.692 ended up being my best time for the entire night. On all of my runs, I was trying to slam gears too fast and it stopped short of second and third, causing me to grind the hell out of it. I took the car home and parked it overnight. When I went out to look at it the next day, it had spewed all of the coolant out of the system, and my transmission was leaking a gray fluid. I took it in and found out I had thrown the differential through the wall. Time to make a decision. At this point, I could have either gotten that FWD tranny rebuilt into a stage 4, or gotten an AWD donor and done the swap. I chose the latter.

Less than a month later, I had found the car I was going to be using to make my Spyder into the only AWD Spyder near me. I drove 4 hours away to Roosevelt, Utah so I could tow the car back and get mine up and running. After a tedious drive, I got back into town and was so excited to get my car running again. However, I was not able to do the swap myself, and I had to have my friend do it for me. Three months of waiting and a lot of money later, my car finally got off of the lifts and was now AWD with a brand new 3" turbo back exhaust and 255lph pump sitting in the tank. The first AWD launch I ever did. Damn. Nothing beats it. Sadly, the car was back down less than 2 weeks later due to the starter mount being completely destroyed. I had to wait another month to get the car back up due to the spacer between the transmission and the engine not being the correct one.

I got her back and was driving her with a just a few little issues here and there; such as it blowing out the spark at WOT and the upper radiator hose blowing one night, up until just recently. While I was actually able to drive it, I finally decided it was time to buy DSMLink. It was WELL worth the cost. I've got it in the car, and I'm waiting to get it tuned.

Now she's running lean for no apparent reason, and I'm working on rewiring my gauges and getting my wideband put into Link so I can get it logged. My next purchases performance wise: Evo 3 Big 16g, Forced Performance Exhaust Manifold, and FIC 750CC injectors. I just have to get her running right, first.

 

[ReivaXVrai]

In my pursuit of trying to figure out why the car was running lean while it as idling, I purchased a few upgrades. I essentially redid my entire fuel system, only to find out that all of the exhaust gaskets between the turbo and my wideband's sensor were done for, causing the lean reading. I bought a Walbro 255lph High Pressure pump to replace my TRE. I got an Aeromotive A1000 AFPR, FIC 1120cc injectors, a stock fuel filter replacement (worst experience working on this car so far), and I also got a Forced Performance DSM Race Manifold. My most recent purchase is a 14b that I'm having converted to a bastard 20g the moment. Once I get that, I'm going to be throwing it in and hopefully getting my car tuned so I can drive her again. I would post pictures, but it's saying I've reached my limit.