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Dedicated Road Course Trackday/Autox Taser

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I picked up this 1992 Plymouth Laser RS around December 2020 and am just now getting around to start documenting my build of this trackday/HPDE/autox beast. I bought the car from the previous owner as a roller because he had some unfortunate issues with fuel that caused the car to lean out and blew the engine. He lost motivation to put it back together. It sat for a few months and he decided to totally give up on it and sold it to me. The car was set up from the previous owner as a 10 second drag car sporting a Holset HX40 and a bunch goodies that I could use for road course purposes (and a bunch of drag-only stuff that I can't use either). It has the following:

- Drag race roll bar (I'll keep)
- All polyurethane engine and suspension bushings (good)
- Some metal drive shaft carrier bushings (good)
- Drag KSport Coilovers (I sold them)
- OEM non-power steering rack (I removed and put it on my shelf because I don't want to run a non-powered rack on race track). If anyone is interested in an OEM non-powered rack in really good condition for $250 + shipping, let me know.
- Tubular crossmember 1-piece (I will either modify this to become 3-piece, or just replace it with OEM 3-piece)
- Ingalls rear upper control arms (These are the nice newer ones, but I shelved these)
- Jay Racing ATE (These are keepers!)
- RX7 FD 16" wheels (I sold them)
- Non ABS brakes setup (I'll keep this)
- Blown 2.0L engine with forged internals (I'll cover that later)
- Punishment Racing FMIC (I will likely use this) with piping and Tial Q BOV (I'll keep this)
- HX40 turbo setup (too big for autox/roadcourse use, so I sold it)
- 6AN stainless braided (synthetic CPE rubber) fuel supply hose from tank to filter rail (I will replace with PTFE lines since it will run E85 with flex sensor)
- 6AN Fuel Lab filter (I will keep and replace the element with fiberglass filter for E85)
- Some Walbro pump re-wired (I will likely replace)
- Catch Can with breather filter elements (will likely replace with enclosed setup, Calan if possible)
- Baby battery under the catch can (will likely replace with full size battery, because baby battery doesn't work well with E85 on cold starts :( )
- Built manual trans with Evo shift forks and welded center diff (I will store on the shelf for now, will replace with another trans that doesn't have welded center diff)
- ECMlink V3 (keep and re-tune)
- NRG Fiberglass driver's seat, rigged and appeared super unsafe not suitable for driving (I will replace with a proper race seat/harness setup).

So far, the plan is as follows:

I have another 1g Eagle Talon TSI that I plan to pull parts off of to transfer to this car.

Suspension:
- JIC FLT-A2 coilovers
- Front Ground Control adjustable caster/camber plates
- Front strut tower brace
- Stock front sway bar with poly bushing
- Modified front control arm with extended balljoints
- Modified RM rear sway bar (with connection point at rear trailing arm instead of lower control arm, using rod end links)
- Rear upper Volk tubular control arms with rod ends
- Swage-tube DIY rear lower tubular control arms with rod ends
- Jay Racing ATE (retained)

Brakes:
- 3g MC
- Re-do all brake lines that have any corrosion bubbles
- Replace all braided flex hose since they are old
- CTSV Brembos with 13" Mustang Cobra rotors.
- Brake cooling deflectors
- This will be a non-abs setup (unfortunately, because I like ABS and would love a way to have an updated ABS system)

Engine:
- 2.3L Stroker shortblock (no oil squirters) with OEM 6-bolt G4Cs virgin crank, Manley Rods, Wiseco 9:1 pistons running E85 on Flex fuel via ECMlink V3. BSE
- OEM front case with straight cut gears
- OEM head gasket
- FP3 cams with Skunk2 adjustable cam gear and Supertech dual spring setup
- 1g cylinder head
- FP3052 turbo
- FP recirculated O2 housing and Tial MVR
- FP cast exhaust manifold
- Extreme Motorsports/Hogan SMIM. This intake has 5.5" runners and a plenum that is only slightly bigger than 1g intake manifold. My hope is that it will have decent midrange and won't result in HP drop-off at 7500 rpm redline (low redline due to stroker).
- Punishment Racing FMIC (retained)
- Will need an oil cooler setup
- Moroso baffled oil pan

Drivetrain:
- 2g AWD TRE "stage 3" trans with Evo shift forks and TRE 4-spider
- 3KGT modded short shifter
- Evo 3 rear diff
- SB Clutch setup
- Trans cooler setup (will need to figure something out on this, for trans longevity from track use)

Fuel:
- Will figure details out later, injectors and such
- 6AN PTFE stainless braided fuel lines front tank to Fuelab filter to rail.
- Aeromotive AFPR
- Walbro 450 with Holley Hydromat (hopefully this address fuel sloshing during hard left turns)

Steering:
I will need to retrofit a powered steering rack with a real cooler

Seats:
- Not sure if anyone has any good seat, and rail experience, I'm open to suggestions.
- The current drag roll bar, combined with funky 1g "trans tunnel" will necessitate a rather narrow seat. This works fine for me because I'm pretty skinny and could easily fit in a 16" wide seat I think.
- I contemplated a 16" wide Kirkey Road Race seat, but the cost of the seat ($450ish), and possibly the mounting solution Bastarddsm's Kirkey seat mounting solution ($175ish I think), and adjustable back brace ($100ish) make the Kirkey not a cost effective choice?

Steering Wheel:
Gonna go with some Momo Steering Wheel, as I already have a momo hub adapter

Hood:
Need to remove super dooper heavy OEM hood and replace with carbon hood. I also have a nice large aluminum vent that I will need to install on this carbon hood. Not looking forward to hacking up this perfect-condition hood for this vent. Eeek!!!

That's it for now, I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of stuff. As previously stated, I've been working on this car on/off since December 2020 so I've already done a decent amount of the work outlined above. I will continue to post update pics as time allows.
 
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Just catching up from not having posted anything in this build thread in awhile. I have many updates since I've last posted, but only going to post a few at a time as time allows:

Brakes/Fuel Lines: Re-did any rusty brake lines using Ni-Copp from the 3g master cylinder to the proportioning valve to all four corners of the car. I couldn't imagine doing this job with the engine in the car! Made a little master cylinder brace out of some junk parts. I will probably reinforce and weld it up a little better before final install.
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Also ran a new -6AN PTFE E-85 friendly fuel line from the fuel filter to to the pump, as well as ethanol sensor for flex fuel.

Chassis: Grinded out any surface rust off the front subframe and engine bay and primed/painted, as well as installed a freshly rebuilt power steering rack.

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More to follow...
 
Bought some engine internals goodies and had the block rebuilt using virgin uncut OEM G4CS crank, Wiseco 9:1 pistons should be good for E85, Eagle Rods, and ACL Bearings. BSE, OEM front case with straight-cut gears, and OEM headgasket.
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A few thoughts I had on the Moroso oil pan:

1. Make sure you clean it out thoroughly before you use it!!!!! Brand new out of the box, I noticed a noticeable amount of silvery sparkley metallic flakes, particularly at all the welds. I cleaned mined out thoroughly as soon as I noticed this. The picture didn't do a great job of capturing all the little metal flakes on my finger after I ran it down one of the welds, but trust me, the flakes are there! That is crappy Quality Control and not expected from a brand new part if you ask me.

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2) I've read numerous complaints about bad fitting problems with the Moroso pan. I bought mine new from Vivid Racing a few months ago and it looks like Moroso has made some very significant re-designs and changes to this pan. It looks like it fits great now. I've read reports of clearance issues when using this pan with ARP main studs, but I just don't see any of those issues with this redesigned pan. Additionally, others had issues when using a stroker crank and the longer stroker throw would cause the rotating assembly to hit the pan. Well, it looks like they clearly fixed that as well! I stuck some playdoh on the pan and gently rotated the (stroker) crank and took some measurements of the clearance between the rod cap bolts and the pan, and there is 5.5mm measured at the worst closest point.

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3) In fact, the clearance between the (stroker) crank and oil pan is BETTER for the Moroso pan (5.5 mm clearance) than the OEM pan which I measured at 4.4mm clearance! (OEM pan picture below)

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Here is a quick recap of the obvious that I can see on the Moroso re-design:

- See this pic of an older Moroso pan that was confirmed to make contact with a stroker crank (there are witness marks from the smacking). Notice the bends in the sheet metal, which I traced out in the red arrow.

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Here is my newer updated pan. Notice the bends in the sheet metal are totally different to provide the increased clearance to the crank.

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I will report back more on this Moroso pan after I get this motor running. People also complain about the leaking oil drain area, I'm hoping they fixed that as well. Again, I will report back on that later.
 
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I had a used TRE "stage 3" trans with 4-spider and some evo guts sitting on my shelf, that I had opened up and checked out before I included it in this build. It was checked out with a clean bill of health and said to be in awesome shape woohoo!

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Southbend clutch with ACT streetlight flywheelView attachment 648378View attachment 648379View attachment 648381View attachment 648382

Trans bolted up, with the clutch release lever sitting just slightly to the right of centerline (using used Comp Clutch lever/ball un-shimmed, and new OEM throw out bearing)

View attachment 648384

Note that this was a 2g trans going into my 1g Laser, so I used a 2g starter plate, swapped in 1g speedo gear, 1g shifter cable brackets, and also had BOTH shifter lever arms on the trans swapped out to 1g while the trans was at the shop getting checked out. Swapping the first shifter arm was a total PITA! The second shifter arm was a total breeze of course.

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