Street Build Dihtung glava's eclipse

[Dihtung Glava]

This is the Build Thread for Dihtung glava's eclipse. Index:
#2: Assessing the damage
#3: Making bumper supports
#4: Unclogging the radiator and discovering more shitty wiring
#5: Making better bumper mounts
#6: Rear hatch struts
#9: I wrecked the car
#11: Parts car
#12: Radiator support removal
#13: Getting the chassis straight
#16: Reconstructive surgery and adding bracing to the radiator support
#17: Curing cancer on the driver's side strut tower
#20: Rewiring USDM headlights to EU standards
#21: Oil cooler delete and first start
#22: New wheels
#23: First suspension job
#24: Rolling the fenders
#25: Second suspension job

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Ok so, I have no idea if I'm doing this right, this forum's got a realy weird way of operating (or I'm just an idiot '00s kid who only knows how reddit works) but people asked me to fill out a profile so I hope I did it right.

Anyways, on to the important part. It's been over a month since I last posted and it was about potential headgasket problems. Well, 3 weeks after that, we finaly get the car into the bay and dig in.

To clear the issue at hand first, the culprit for the overheating and coolant pressure and stuff was the blown headgasket as you all confirmed in my previous post, so the head is going to the shop sometime this week and we've also got new parts on the way.

Now onto the horrible previous mods... so apparently the previous owners (who are basicaly considered "the rednecks" of our country) just slapped the engine in the bay anyway it would go. They chopped off the mount that holds the engine at its side and squeezed everyting in just where it would or even where it wouldn't go. (For context, the engine mentioned is a 4G63 from a galant, the previous engine was god knows what, the registration says 4G63, but that might just be the current one, without mention of the turbo... I might try to contact the previous owners but at this point I would probably just ask them what is wrong with them? ) Anyways, so, the side mount is missing, the timing belt cover is done for as it was so close to the belt it was cut and melted by it, the wiring is A MESS. It's basicaly what you would expect from a couple of guys just absolutely slapping two wiring harnesses together... and a little worse. Most of the conectors are just raw wires into ports... so we are greatly concerned about water getting in as there's already some corrosion showing at one of the ports...
Next up the spark plug wires... each one is from a different car, idk why they wouldn't just re-use the ones they had and instead came up with this monstrosity... I mean it would have probably been fine if they were clean but 3 of them are just scuffed to hell, won't even come appart and the 4th one which did come apart only did so because the metal part on the inside, the part that conducts electricity to the actual plug was rusted through and through so I have no idea how that cylinder was even getting spark. It was conducting on straight up magic for god knows how long.

In the weeks that the car was waiting for us I did find a free day and I took the front appart (I was curious about why the gap of the bumper under the headlights was so "wavy" and I found that well, the car was probably hit in the front. Not something that suprised me much, rather it confirmed what we already knew when we saw a little crack in the driverside fender liner on first inspection. They did an ok job at presenting the car, I'll give them that. The guy who I bough it from (middle aged man who just wanted to age the car for a while) didn't even know the full extent of it. Like I said, the only thing you could notice from the outside was the tiny crack in the fender liner and I guess the wavy gap under the headlights, if you knew what you were looking at. That turned out to be due to their horrible fix that you could see, once I took it apart. And my god, let's get to that. So the crash bar was apparently unusable after whatever accident it had, they removed it. Then, they got the frame straight. They did ok, other than the first 10 cm of the frame rails, right where the push bar would slide in. The left rail is bent down a bit. But they countered that by mounting two plates on top the rails to hold the bumper up, and just bending them at different angles so they hold the bumper straight. They used raw steel btw, so ofc it's rusted to hell. They didn't bother readjusting them after the first attempt, so when they saw that their work holds the bumper way to close to the headlight to put bolts in anywhere, they just stuffed styrofoam in between the headlights and the new bumper mounts. So the wavyness under the headlights was the styrofoam, bending the bumper because it was holding it up by the edge of the plastic, instead of the proper mounting points. I'll make a second post to show how I'm fixing it as this one is way too long already.

That sums up the major problems I think, I won't go into more detail on this post.
So if anyone's got a timing belt cover, any of the plastic bottom bumper supports and engine wiring to sell, please contact me

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Bumper status, as promised:

So while we're waiting for the head to be machined, I started working on the bumper mounts. The first picture is what the previous owners did, the red and black flat spots under the headlight are plates they welded over the holes in the frame rails, where the crash bar mounts in. The rusty plates right under the headlights are what I talked about in the previous post. They used to mount on top of the frame rails with 2 small screws and were welded prety shitty, so I've since removed them and made my own.

The second pic is what I see people on the internet going for, the supports hold the bumper higher up so it closes the gap to the headlight better. I cant really do it like that because as I've said - my frame rails are welded shut and to be honest, I'm afraid to look inside. So what I'm doing is I'm making the supports some plates that'll mount on the face of the welded frame rails and will be adjustable, so I can move the bumper up and down with 4 bolts, if need be. I'll drill four tapped holes into the face of the frame rails and 2 long, oval holes into the plates I made to allow for that adjustment.

The third pic is the support I made, I've got both of them done now. That's as far as I am going with this part of the car for now, since it's sitting in a prety tight garage right now and I can't realy get a good look at how the bumper sits because it's right up to the wall. So the plan is, we get the car runing and out of the shop first, then I'll park it next to my garage and finish welding the supports when I can make sure the bumper is sitting right.

Another potential problem is that the way the bumper attaches now, without the crash bar, I can't realy take it off to experiment with the height of the bumper and compare it to the headlights whenever I want to, because the headlights need to come out if I want to acces the bumper mounts. So I assume it's gonna take a lot of trial and error to get it sitting right because I'll constantly have to remove and install the headlights to see how the bumper compares, but that's why I'm making it adjustable so at least that part is easier.

That's it for now, thanks.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

To whom it may concern, an update:

I've been busy with uni, work and a little lazy BUT nevertheless, there is now progress to report of. Since I last posted, the engine was put back together and I got to drive the car for a couple days (illegaly of course, as it still probably doesn't pass tech inspection). I also replaced most of the fluids and brake pads. Day 2, I felt around in the engine bay after a short run to a neighbouring town and was dissapointed to find that the top radiator hose was once again hot and hard while the bottom one was soft and cold. I called over a mechanic buddy and he half-jokingly suggested that maybe, the radiator is just very good at cooling, though we all feared that wasn't the case. Something must have been blocking the flow. We pulled the radiator and cleaned it inside and out with a power washer. I was happy to actualy see some gunk come flying out, though I feared it wasn't an amount significant enough to be causing that blockage.

After that my dad did some burnouts in the car and we did some laps around town and it felt good until it all of a sudden stopped revving past 3k RPM. We already knew the wiring on the mass air flow sensor was loose so that's what we checked first. The connector that plugs into the MAF sensor was coming undone but no matter how we postioned it, it still wouldn't read, so we followed the wiring a couple centimeters up where there's another connector that connects it to the harness. (That's how I learned that I have an adapter for the 2G MAF sensor, it's not the original). That second connector was wrapped in electrical tape so I assumed it had cracked or broke and the previous owners just taped it together but oh no, it was worse. We pulled the tape and found THERE WAS NO SECOND CONNECTOR. They just straight up inserted the adapter's wires into the empty pins on the harness and taped around it to hold everything together. So that's what this picture is, the 'adapter harness' as it's called on ebay and its ONLY connector with just wires on the other side.

Now, since I obviously have no idea what wires went into what pin holes as they are even different colors, I ordered a new 'adapter harness' on ebay. It cost me a fortune and it's still being held up at our customs, whom I had to pay even more to get it through. They are saying I should recieve it monday or tuesday so that's another 2-3 days away. Hopefuly they stick to their word this time. I hope to god that once I plug it in it fixes everything because the waiting with this car has been exhausting.
Next update is what I did in the meantime.
Thanks for reading.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Alright, finally a more hopeful update on this shitbox:
While I am waiting on the adaptor harness to arrive, I went back to the bumper supports I talked about a couple posts back and basicaly completely redesigned them but I also got them finished this time. I decided not to use the flat spots the previous owners made to close off the frame rails for mouting my brackets, but to insted cut them open and get access to said frame rails as mitsubishi originaly intended. And boy, oh boy, this car just doesn't dissapoint. Guess what I found, still in the frame rails? The remains of the god damn crash bar. So get this, when they crashed the car - they didn't simply take the whole crash bar out as it was designed to do, oh no. They cut it off where it exits the frame rails and just welded them shut. WITH THE REST OF THE CRASH BAR STILL IN THEM. IT'S 4 BOLTS. 4 BOLTS TO COMPLETELY REMOVE THE CRASH BAR and they just couldn't bother. God, I will never understand people.

So anyways, getting sidetracked, I made new brackets that still support the bumper the same, but they now attach inside the frame rails using the 4 bolts that originaly held the crash bar.

I gave them a nice, thick coat of paint (don't look at that left one too close XD) and they are fully operational:

I thought the downside was going to be the fact that this new design isn't height-adjustable but that wasn't the case, as I made them pretty spot on in regards to height. The problem is, as can be seen in the picture, that at the very ends of the headlights, right where the supports end, the bumper still has that awful headlight gap. I don't know for sure what's causing it now but I think it has to be the bumper that's deformed. It must have lost its edge over the years of being supported only by rusty brackets and styrofoam. Side note: On the driver's side, you can also see the bumper dips a bit on the inside edge of the headlight, right where the headlight comes to a point. I also don't know why that is, but it bothers me and I cant unsee it now XD.

Another great addition with no substantial effect was a new AC condenser. The old one was wrecked from that meeting with the crash bar so it had to go. I had it replaced in a pretty timely fasion:

The reason I am listing it as an addition with no effect though, is because I found that there is no wiring to the valve that controlls the AC, so all this fix did was, it basicaly made it less appalling to look into the grille of the car as you are now greeted with a nicer looking condeser than before. The AC still doesn't work.

I also used some of the paint I had left over on all the rest of the supports that hold the bumper up, but I didn't include those pictures here as I scuffed most of them up trying to get the bumper to sit more straight.
That's it for now, thanks.

EDIT: adaptor harness arrived a couple days after I made this post and it fixed the issue of the car not revving past 3k rpm. Power washing the radiator also seems to have done the trick as the car stays cool through pulls and boost now. It recently passed tech inspection and I got it registered so I guess after 5 months I actualy own a street legal, running and driving car.
More updates soon probably.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Rear hatch struts!

Today I picked up the new struts. Since the car runs and drives now, I spent the whole day just driving around, feeling it out and didn't even install them untill it was already nighttime .

My findings are as follows:

The standard ball joint works great on the hatch (it even has the same thread, just bolts right in), but if you can, get a different joint for the car. The stock struts (on the car, not the hatch) are rivited into the brackets on the car so they have to be drilled out, but it's how you replace them that really matters. If you can, find a joint that's the same width as the original rivet because the channel it has to fit in is really narrow.

I tried to keep my cost at a minimum so I went with the standard ball joint and if you decide to go that way as well, the only mod you really have to do is switch the brackets left/right.

The way they are angled makes the wider-than-original ball joint fit nicer into the channel and the new position of the fulcrum makes the struts clear the rubber liner of the trunk so it closes fully. If you do not switch the brackets out, the hatch will still fully close, but a bump will be felt where the struts press up against the rubber trunk liner instead of dipping into the channel.

Another thing to note is - I went with 250N struts, so about 20N stronger than the original spec, but It's just about perfect.

When I pull the release, the trunk pops up to where it can't latch again by itself so the original problem I had 'of the unopenable trunk' is solved.

The hatch also rises on its own, after a gentle nudge with one finger and stays dead still in the top position.

I highly recomend this fix to anyone who still has problems with the rear hatch not unlatching or struggling to stay open.

 

[chrysler kid]

Great work! I always thought europe had gypsies which was the american version of our "rednecks" (hillbillies)

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Thanks and yeah, we do have gypsies haha, the people who tried to build this car before me aren't exactly them. They aren't immigrants of any kind, it's just common knowledge that something is a little odd about that part of the country . But they did buy the most imports in their time it seems, so we have that to thank them for, everyone else here just buys german or french right out of the salon. And there's nothing wrong with that of course, but you know it's great to see a mustang or a honda here and there.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Well, f***.
Not how I imagined winter would go.

Ever since I first took this thing apart to find no crash bar, I told everyone who ever rode with me "you know, if we crash, it's done for, there is no safety measures between us and whatever we hit" and I always imagined it would either be a tree or a street lamp that does it in. But to have my baby killed by a f***ing deer!
It was one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life, I spent my whole summer clutching university and fixing this thing. In the 3 months that were supposed to be summer break, I only saw 2 whole days of vacation and seaside and that was it. I put everything I had into this car and It was officialy registered and road legal for 13 days.

I poured my heart and soul (as well as my schollarship XD) into it so I see no reality in which I could get rid of it. I'm actualy f***ing cursed to pour more money and time into now it if I want to make any money back. Which kinda sucks 'cause (if you've read any of my other posts, you'll know) it wouldn't even be a presentable car when fixed, with all the wiring issues and what not. So even selling it fixed is of the table, unless they shoot up in price to like 2x what they are now.

I had plans for wheels and suspension over the winter but it looks like that'll have to wait. And I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to get parts in Europe. I had an amazing oportunity to buy what would be a donor car recently, but the guy must have sold it or something because he stopped answering and now all I'm left with are sketchy-ass facebook part-outs that don't even want to ship overseas.

So if you, or someone you know wants to sell me some parts and is willing to ship to Europe and not scam me out of even more money XD please hmu anywhere.
Untill then, I'm working on pulling the frame straight and fixing anything else I can fix without specific parts, then I'll probably get the car inside over the winter.

Thanks for reading and be safe.

 

[DreamChaser7]

Dude that sucks I’m sorry. My dad used to tell me my car was “past the point of diminishing return” and that was years ago before I even started to tear it down or buy any parts. I said bury me in it. Point is if you really love it and want to fix it back up do it for yourself and ditch the idea of ever “making money back on it.” Unfortunately that’s the reality that goes with the DSM sickness/madness.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Been a while, but I've finaly got some good news to report. First, I just wanna say how much I appreciate this forum, people here are by far the nicest and most accomodating car community I've met. Whether it's giving information or sourcing actual parts - they will do it all and It's such good motivation to keep messing around with these cars, knowing there are people who will help you when you run into a problem. Idk if any of the guys who answer my questions on random threads will read this, but if you do, thanks again.

Anyways, the shitbox. Since the crash in october I've pulled a second miracle. The first one being that I ever found one of these cars where I live, and the second one - that I've now got another one. It took a lot of digging and a lot of help but now I have a decent candidate for a parts car. It's a 98' pre-facelift eclipse GS. Also in red.

I finaly got a little break from university with the holiday season and knowing that won't happen again for at least another month and a half, I dug in right away. I was pleasantly surprised with the condition of everything, which made me feel worried I might regret not saving this car... It's been quite a dilemma, trying to decide which car to part out since this one really isn't that bad. On first inspection I found the valve cover was leaking, front right caliper was seized and that there's about a 10 cm^2 patch of rust under the rear window but that's it. Wouldn't mind it as a project car for myself but as things stand now, one car has got to meet it's maker and this one smells worse. No time to feel bad about mistakes I haven't made yet.

All in all, the car was a solid deal. It gets me the hood, the windshield and the entire chassis, even though I only really need the front 20 cm of it. It also got me new headlights and a bumper, though they are for a 2GA model, where I prefer the 2GB. I will be able to re-use the old 2GB bumper I have, but since it's not compatible with the 2GA headlights, I might have to run the whole 2GA front for a minute. At least until I find new headlights. I might be exaggerating thought, the 2GA look is kinda growing on me. Especially since this new car looks/is(?) lower than the old one.

That brings me to another subject - both cars (according to their papers) are on Eibach lowering springs, but ever since the ride height on the new one cought my eye, I'm not sure I can really trust that. It's for sure on H&R springs, and the old one doesn't have any identifiable information on the springs. I'll have to compare them both once the old one is off jackstands and if it turns out that this new one is lower, I'm swapping the springs as well. I've been looking for a replacement ever since I first drove the old car and found how soft the suspension is. Plus, It'll look much better a little lower.

Another thing that came on the new car was EDM taillights.

I know how desirable these bad boys are and I never imagined spending the money to get them specifically, so I am beyond happy they came with the car. I swapped them first thing, as if I don't still have an entire car to fix. They are in perfect condition too. If I ever get rear ended now, I might just lose my mind.

Another thing, and I was told this by a memeber here, I don't think I would have cought it otherwise - the new car has a 4-pin wiring harness, which Is exacly what I need to replace mine. In the same thread we also lerned that I've never even had the right ECU for the old turbo car, but they are at least easier to find than entire harnesses, so I am very happy that problems are being solved as soon as they are discovered.

The price of individual parts I've listed up to this point already exceeds what I paid for the car so I am happy with that. Good to know I didn't f myself over again. When I'm done with the rebuild I'll put what's left of the car up for sale, so If anyone needs anything - be on the lookout sometime in the next 45 years XD.

Today I took the front of the car apart to prepare it for surgery. I plan to cut the radiator support (idk what to call it, basically the flat piece of metal that goes across from one fender to the other, that the headlights and radiator mount to) at the seams, where it meets the fenders and weld it onto the old car. I'll just call the cars eclipse and declipse from now on to avoid confusion. The new one, that's about to be decomposed, being the declipse, of course. I also plan to use the radiator and AC unit, since they are both smashed on the eclipse.
I'm not entirely sure if I want to cut the frame rails as well. On the old eclipse they are a little beat up from when the previous owners crashed it, though I can't imagine welding them back on would be very fun with how deep into the engine bay I'd have to dig. I guess I'll see what I can do when I get to that stage.

Here's a few picures of the car today:

I'm happy with just how stock this thing is. I haven't seen that plastic air dam that sits in front of the radiator in real life before. There was a time when I was looking for one of those .

I'm getting close to the end of this update now, so I'd just like to take one last moment to curse whoever's idea it was to mount the foglights OVER the bumper on the 2GA cars and to do it WITH PHILLIPS SCREWS. They have to be removed becasue the bumper can't come off if they aren't, but the screws are corroded to hell since they spend their entire lives on the front of the car, taking all of the water and salt and debris and anything else that might wear them down to the structural integrity of a sandcastle. I stripped the phillips shape out of the bolts as if it was never even there. It took me an ungodly amount of time to drill those f***ers out after that. At least give them hex heads, so that they can still be cracked loose with a wrench if need be damn it.

And if anyone isn't convinced yet and feels like telling me I should have kept this car and just swapped the engine from the old one - please don't - I've been listening to people tell me that all week. The sheet metal might still be clean but I broke 75% of all the bolts I touched and there is rust, it's not in mint condition.

The car is not THAT nice ok? It has to go. I don't feel bad. I don't. I'm not making a mistake. I'm not making a mistake lalalalalalaalala I can't hear you lalalalalalalala XD

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Alright, It's been 3 months since I've last posted and about 6 since the eclipse was totaled, but I wanted to wait until I had a project or two finished before updating the build.

Right after the last update I took basicaly the entire front of the declipse apart and planned out my surgery. I realised that simply cutting the radiator support out and welding it onto the eclipse would be too easy, so I decided (since I'm this far into the car now) to just go all out and do it properly. I got a set of spot weld drill bits and an angle grinder and went to town on both cars.

I decided to drill out the factory spot welds that connect the entire radiator support to the chassis and only cut the parts that the previous owners already ruined. First one up was the wrecked eclipse, in case I made any mistakes on my first attempt at doing this. They wouldn't be significant though, with all the shit the previous owners already did...

They literally wrapped the frame rails in their own sheet metal and painted it. I swear this car just keeps surprising me, every single time I go to work on it. And since I'm already complaining, let's just get this out of the way - here's some more redneck shit I found while taking the eclipse apart -

Incredible stuff.

In the end, I got the front off in a couple hours, it took me a minute to find all the welds. If anyone else is stupid enough to be doing this, there's 6 on top of each frame rail, 3 on the bottom, 2 on the side, in the engine bay and 2 on the front, at the outer edge of each rail. Then, there's 4 on each corner, at the fenders (these you have to drill all the way through, because they hold 3 separate sheets of metal together instead of the usual 2) and about 3 or 4 on each side running from the fender to the frame rail, under the gaping holes where the headlights go. Then you just unbolt the black support arms at the sides (where the tow hooks are) and the bottom chassis brace and the whole radiator support can be pulled off of the car.

Doing the eclipse this violently proved to be enough practice to get the declipse done in one piece and about half the time.

In the spirit of doing things the right way, I took the new radiator support to get sandblasted. Sadly, this revealed more rust than I initialy expected.

​

I was prepared to deal with it, but this put quite a delay in my albeit very loose schedule. I took the next couple of sessions to fix all the holes. I really can't recomend this, as satisfying as it is to fit pieces for puzzle welds, it was pretty boring and time consuming, even with a plasma cutter and a new welder. Here's a pic of a couple patches on the inside before I sanded everything.

Getting to test fit the new radiator support was quite rewarding though, made the car seem whole again. But not for long though, since the frame rails it sits on were not level (from the previous owners crashing it), I still had a ways to go.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Getting the chassis straight

Basicaly, the driver side frame rail had to come up about 2,5 cm (about an inch in freedom units) for the unmolested radiator support to sit straight. This is pretty bad for a rail this large and this short so I had to get creative.

I braced a long piece of lumber between the frame rail (as close to the firewall as I could get it) and my ceiling, and got a hydraulic jack under the very end of the frame. I put lumber into the driverside rail to support it and put a spirit level across both rails.Then I jacked the thing up little by little. This was increadibly stupid and you probably should not try this at home, I'm an engineer and I wore a helmet.

Those more skilled will probably notice the wood brick on top of the jack is crooked. That's not good, it means the rail didn't go straight up with the jack but rather it went up and to the right.
I fixed this with an equaly sketchy setup

After this, the rails were dead straight, level and the correct distance apart.
Only part I couldn't straighten out with a home setup was a little kink under the fender, so that became a little easter-egg for whoever takes the fenders off next.

Which is probably going to be me but whatever

 

[DreamChaser7]

That is some pretty good redneck engineering ( I mean ingenuity)!

 

[Dihtung Glava]

That is some pretty good redneck engineering ( I mean ingenuity)!

Thank you friend. I'm ok with redneck shit as long as it doesn't show on the car like those welds they did before me.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

When I tried fitting the new radiator support, I found that I had no way to connect it to the frame on the driver side, other than welding via butt joint all the way around, since I had to cut so much of the old frame away with the wrecked radiator support:

But since I have a whole other car, I decided to transplant a piece of the frame as well, to make it easier to connect the radiator support and to avoid visible welds on the chassis when you open the hood. I was going to cut it like this ˇ and weld in that same outlined piece from the new car.

Taking the designated piece off, I found more shitty welds and a change of plans. Or rather my dad did (gotta give him credit where it's due, the car is growing on him ). I listened to him and once again made my life harder by going the extra mile and "doing it right". I decided to drill ALL of the spot welds on that part of the frame in the wake of replacing it all together. This is the outside half, taken in full off of the parts car:

And since the inside part can't be drilled out, I did end up cutting it off of the car:

The inside piece was also first in line to be welded and primered,

followed closely by the outside:

You can see how the radiator support now fits onto the fork the two pieces form. I was satisfied with the result, it looks better than a shitty weld and functions perfectly. The fit is so good that the fork splits the two sheets that form the radiator support like factory and you couldn't even tell it was crashed. Twice. That we know of.
Now, being an engineer, I am expected to learn from mistakes and improve whatever I am working on with every iteration so "improve I shall" I said, as I designed braces for the new radiator support. 2G guys will know the thing is basically made of cardboard, and since I now have a phobia of hitting deer, I felt the structural integrity of my car should reflect that. I let my instagram followers (all 4 of them) vote on the shape of the bracing and thankfully, they settled on my favourite (and also the most structurally sound) "A" shape:

Even though it's just 2 extra bars, it feels like the car could take a f***ing house down now and I love it. I also have a video of me jumping on it so when the neighbours inevitably have me arrested, I can argue it was all part of the development process and I'm not just running the angle grinder to annoy the neighbourhood.

p.s. neighbours, if you're reading this, thank you for being this cool with all the noise I'm making, you're the best.

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Another project I recently finished was the driver side strut tower rust.

I found a little crack in the paint a while back and now, while I was waiting for the primer on the frame rail to dry - I decided to poke at it. I knew I was going to have to fix it eventually but my monkey brain just wanted to see it get smacked with a hammer. So after a couple hits, I got some of the putty off and found this:

Bigger hole than I expected for sure... But this is kind of a curse for these cars from what I've gathered. The way the two sheets of metal that form the fender and strut tower come together in the wheel well is really awkward because they meet on one edge, but then the first time they are actually welded together is like 10 cm from that edge. That leaves a pretty large, unsealed area for water to gather in if it makes it behind the fender liner. The adhesive rubber liner Mitsubishi used behind there to keep the water out is actually really tough and applied well, problem is, they only used it on the first 1/3 of the wheel well (looking from the door forward) so if water makes it any further along behind there, it reaches that exposed edge at the strut tower and even a couple others. Plus, the liner was pretty weak on mine already, since it forms cracks when the fender is crushed (like in an accident).
What bugged me more than this manufacturing oversight, was that the previous owners actually filled it with putty. Why not weld it when they obviously have a welder and they've already welded a metric f***-tonne of steel onto the front? It's like the only work I'm doing is cleaning up their mistakes.
Anyways, digging in further (now with an angle grinder) I found more rust:

and more...

Until I finaly decided to just cut the whole thing off:

Then it was time to clean the rust and fix everything properly:

Just as I was hammering in a new piece to cover the hole, I found another spot of rust, a little further along the strut tower and this one was rusted through both the bottom AND the top sheet.

More puzzle welds ensued:

Ignore the ugly welds, I had to mess with the amperage a lot since the metal was really thin... angle grinder took care of that problem though (once again, I thank the neighbours for tolerating my shit)

Primer...

Putty, used correctly this time:

And finally, paint.

 

[1990TSIAWDTALON]

You are a TROOPER to go through this much stuff and still be a DSM man! I salute you sir! Good job with what you had, jeeeze it was a mess. I am impressed as hell!

 

[Dihtung Glava]

You are a TROOPER to go through this much stuff and still be a DSM man! I salute you sir! Good job with what you had, jeeeze it was a mess. I am impressed as hell!

Thank you for the kind words sir! I wouldn't have made it half this far without the support of this forum. You guys are the best.

Car still has a LONG ways to go though, the wiring is still the same as it was appart from the MAF sensor adapter but it feels nice to at least have the chassis back at square 1 instead of square negative 12. I have a couple of updates left to post in drafts, but if everything goes to plan, the car might just start up this weekend

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Alright, sadly no start this week, I'm still having some trouble with the oil and coolant routing so I'll just drop a couple aesthetic fixes in the mean time.

The wrecked 2GB polyurethane bumper popped back into shape when I unbolted it from the bent supports, so I decided to keep the whole 2GB front. Since both healights were goners, I had to get new ones. The driver side took most of the impact so the headlight was absolutely destroyed - housing, lens, clips, everything. Passenger side was actually fine at first glance, but somehow all of the plastic tabs where it attaches to the car were broken. So I got new headlights off of ebay for about 200€:

I left them in the box for months while I was working on the chassis and only ran into a problem when it was finally time to instal them - they are American. Well, they're Taiwanese but they are ment for the American market - which means they aren't compatible with my European car. You probably didn't even notice a difference in the picture and thats because it's not as much aesthetic as it is functional.

You see in Europe, all cars need to have what's called "position lights". You would probably call them (daytime) running lights in the states. They aren't ment to illuminate the road, they just supposedly make your car more visible. They turn on automatically with the ignition on newer models, but on older cars like the eclipse, they are activated by the first click on the left stalk. Second click are the standard headlights or low-beams and pulling the stalk is the high-beams. The wiring is very similar on both types of headlights, though the bulbs themselves are a little different. We spoke more about this with @chrysler kid on this thread, so I won't go into that much detail here. Basically, I would have to open up both headlights and swich out the parabolic reflectors and wiring, since the european headlights have an extra hole in them for the position light bulb to poke through and a couple extra wires for the headlight adjustment motors. So I needed the NEW housings and lens, but I also needed the OLD reflectors and connectors.

I was looking forward to making a whole tutorial on baking headlights 'cause everyone is always asking about the temperature and timing and stuff but that plan was cut short by the fact that the headlights don't fit in my oven. Bummer, I know. Basically, somewhere around 100-150°C is where you want to bake headlights at, but stick closer to 100 than 150. Around 120°C should do fine. That's 250°F in freedom units.
Preheat the oven, then put a damp towel onto the tray you are using, because you don't want the plastic to be touching hot metal while it's in there. The headlights should stay in the oven for about 10 minutes (that's about 600 american seconds), but don't hesitate to check on them every couple of minutes.
When you take them out and try to disassemble them, pull by the entire housing as well as the entire lens, don't go picking at the very edges, because you can easily warp them when they are hot. Especially the taiwanese plastic ones. OEM is a little tougher. And of course - wear gloves, they are going to be hot.

Since mine don't fit I had to use a heat gun which is also very simple, just a little bit more involved. I turned it up to 200°C because it goes up in strange increments and did a couple slow laps around the entire seam of each headlight, at about 5 cm of distance (That's about 2 american inches). It took me considerably longer than 10 minutes but I got them open all the same.

I undid the 3 bolts used to adjust the reflectors, took out the bulbs and they were ready to come out.

I put in the old (slightly used ) reflectors and bulbs,

And stuck the new lenses back on:

Normally I would advise against re-using glue to seal the headlights, but the people at Eagle Eyes used so much of theirs, I doubt any water is getting in. I heated the glue in the housings same as before and then spent an extra minute or so heating the glue that was left on the lenses themselves so that it was also malleable again.

Do not reseal your headlights with the remains of the original adhesive if any of it came off while you were disassembling them or if it dried up to the point where heat will not make it soft again.

I think they came out okay, you can kind of see a tiny piece of the reflector is missing on the bottom of the driver side low-beam, but I doubt anyone but me is going to notice that.

If anyone is retrofitting headlights or just generally needs USDM parabolic reflectors, wiring and 3-port connectors for something, feel free to contact me, I will likely never need them as they do not plug into the European wiring harness.

Thanks for reading

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Well f*** me boys, apparently I lied - car started yesterday!!!

First things first - I decided to delete the oil cooler sandwich plate that goes between the oil filter housing and the oil filter. I talked about it a bunch on this thread. Long story short - it was cracked because my brother overtightened it in hopes of stopping the oil filter coming undone every couple of laps. It worked for the oil filter, but it brought on a new problem.

I'll just write oil cooler oil cooler oil cooler oil cooler sandwich plate oil cooler sandwich plate oil cooler sandiwch plate a bunch so that if anyone is searching by those words they find this - DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN THE OIL COOLER SANDWICH PLATE. This might be common knowledge to most people but it was mine and my brother's first encounter with it, so we did the dumb. Water channels in there are so thin, the slightest excess of pressure from the bolt will crack them. Just one crack is enough to start mixing the water and oil that run through it.

So if your car starts making milkshakes, and you are confident it's not the head gasket, check the oil cooler. My mechanic friend suggested I run a garden hose through it since it's under about the same pressure as coolant in an engine (4 bar). You do this by taking the cooler off, plugging one pipe shut and sticking a garden hose on the other. I did it twice because I got nothing the first time but I really didn't want it to be the head gasket again so I went back and tried it again and eventually spotted a tiny leak.

To eliminate the cracked cooler I needed a shorter bolt, one with a really thin hex on it as well since the filter is shallow and the housing is perfectly flat so the hex shape would have nowhere to be.

When I went to buy hose to connect the two water ports on the engine that used to be the inlet and outlet for the oil cooler together, that same store actually also had a bunch of fittings really similiar to what I needed. Something like this would be ideal:

But the closest thing I could find was this:

If anyone else is doing this, the threads are M20x1.5 on both the filter and the housing and the hole that goes through the bolt is 14mm in diameter.
As I've said, the hex on this fitting was too big and too thick, so I dropped the thing off at a lathe operator and he did straigh up magic. Took him 20 minutes to do what would likely have taken me the rest of the day (and I'd probably even mess it up somehow):

He drilled the 14mm hole through (the original fitting had a tiny 6mm-or-so hole), he cut the hex shape down to about a 23mm diameter and a 2.5mm thickness and he cut the rest of the M20 thread into the space he made when reducing the hex.
I then filed two flat spots into the 23mm diameter to fit a 22 wrench and cleaned everything up so that no metal shavings would make it into the oil.

I fits great! The threads that stick out are a little long for my liking, so I might not be utilising the whole oil filter to its fullest at the moment. I'll keep an eye on the oil pressure for a while and cut the bolt shorter if there's any issues.
You can also see the new oil-cooler-delete hose in action in those pictures.

I'd like to thank @Kryndon @Justin DuBois @19Eclipse90 and @99dsmer4g63 for their help on the thread I linked above. They answered all my questions fast and with a ton of info, which helped immensely.

After connecting everything, filling up the fluids, tightening all the bolts and sacrificing two baby lambs to satan himself, I cranked the ignition. I cranked for what felt like an eternity but the car would not get oil pressure. I called around, googled a bunch and came up with nothing. I didn't f*** with any of the pumps or the oil pickup when I was removing the oil pan and I could hear everything running so it had no reason not to cycle the oil. I was beginning to doubt my work... maybe I did mess up the pickup?

As one last resort before having to take the oil pan off again, I got my dad to give up 5 more liters of his 10W-40 to fill up the engine even further. And good lord, with 10 liters of oil in the engine - we had pressure! We drained the extra 5 liters we added right after and the pressure remained. The car started right away too. It was so good hearing it run again.

I would have taken it for a spin by now but I'm still waiting for someone to replace my broken windshield And I know I haven't posted the whole car in a minute but it's for a good reason - I've got a couple more aesthetic updates in the works I can't share just yet .

But as always, it's not all perfect - spotted a couple of fuel spots in the driveway -

- thought I might just have the first dry DSM in the world after removing the cooler and replacing the oil pan gasket, but no. The car is now sitting outside with cardboard underneath it so I can find where it's leaking from. I am hopeful though, because fixing this leak might help it with starting - the fuel pump is always running if the car has power and I'm assuming it's because it can't build pressure in the rail. It would also explain the profound smell of gas. I guess we'll see.

Thanks for always responding to my threads and thanks for reading these

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Here's the big reveal I was building up in my last upadate. Some of you are probably gonna hate me for this but I started adding cosmetic mods before having the engine at 100%. In my defence...

...I got nothing, I just wanted the car to look cool
I had a couple bucks saved up since I wasn't spending much while working on the chassis and so I went and got some new wheels. I put in the "parts-wishlist" tab on my profile a while back that I was gonna get XXR 527's so that's what I was looking for. Came to find that they are way more tailored to the American market and that shipping a set over here would hurt my wallet big time. Luckily, I saw a meme on instagram that had some "Japan Racing" wheels in it that really caught my attention. They looked a whole lot like XXR 527's (or WedsSport TC105x, since that's what they are based off of) so I gave them a quick google search.

I learned that Japan Racing are a Polish manufacturer that mostly make gravity, low pressure cast alloy wheels but offer some flow formed models as well. Among their many designs they have replicas of almost every noteworthy tuner wheel out there. Many wheels are also TUV certified which is very important in Europe if you want your car to pass the yearly tech inspection and homologation. I kinda liked their JR11 wheel so I set my sights on that, since the price seemed fair and the shipping would be way more wallet-friendly. This thread had a bunch of really useful information that one might need when buying wheels for a 2g eclipse. It also helps that Japan Racing have wheels in every single size/width/offset/bolt pattern you could ever want. I found a set that were the exact size the famous Miguel_DSM on youtube says is "the golden ticket" wheel spec, even though I wasn't even looking for a specific size.

So here are my new-to-me Japan Racing JR11's in 18x9.5 +22:

They are wrapped in 245/35/R18 tires if anyone wants to copy the slight stretch. And don't worry, I know the tires are bald - they are very old and very used, I am getting new ones. In regards to paint, I was originaly looking for chromium-black but the bronze looks SO GOOD against the red I am 100% sure I made the right choice with these:

Here they are next to the old Privat 17x8 +40 wheels:

I saw some people on the forum concerned with the weight of their XXR's so I weighed mine to make sure I wasn't adding an unhealthy amount of unsprung wight to my car. They came to 18.5 kg each, which is just under 41 lbs.

A little on the heavy side, but I'll rest easy knowing the old wheels weighed the exact same with what seems like half as much tire and less than half as much style:

Car had a monster truck stance though, and a whole lot of poke that would have to go:

And thus, the next project would be fixing the stance (and the windshield ). And since I can tell everyone is dying to know, the answer is yes, despite the tiny offset and very deep dish, these will still comfortably fit a cat:

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Fixing the stance/First suspension job:

Ok, I'm gonna try to make this short becase last time I wrote this post up, I made it to long to process. Long story short; car was waaay to soft for my liking - after hitting a bump the thing would rock like a boat and oscillate for way to long, so I wanted suspension that would give me a solid ride as well as lower the stance a bit to complement the new wheels. After checking out a bunch of options, I went with TEIN Street Basis Z coilvers. Not to be confused with their Street Advance Z's, as those are the next step-up from these.

The difference being that these don't come with adjustable damping or adjustable lower mounts, which means the height is determined solely by the preload on the springs. This gives them a lower price point while still retaining that name-brand feel. You also cannot send them back to be rebuilt if anything breaks like with some higher-spec TEIN models.

I took the old struts apart like an absolute gangster (read: "Idiot" ) :

(Don't try this at home)

The only problem I had was with the left rear strut which appeared to be blown, with the top hat and collar rusted solid to the piston rod. I broke the top hat off eventualy, but the little collar I would have to make myself. Hit up the old lathe and produced this little feller:

After I had the old suspension out and disassembled, I could use the parts to put together the new coilovers:

They went together very easily, paying for a name brand like this really shows, even in the details of the instructions. You can see they are quite a bit shorter than the stock struts with lowering springs. I set the spring perches on all four corners to 4 cm (1.57 inch) along the threaded body, as the instructions state is the reference point for these. They went in with no problems (well, that is after messing with a rusted sway bar link for 3 actual hours):

They left the car at 345 mm (13.58 inches) from the center of the wheel to the edge of each fender. I couldn't find any pictures online, so here is mine if anyone is looking to get these:

They'll leave a 2G quite a bit lower than stock, but at no means "slammed". As for the drive; it's about a hundred times better on these than on 20 year old lowering springs and one blown strut. Could be a bit harder if you ask me though, but generaly, it does feel like a nice split between sporty and comfy if you are looking to put these on a daily driver. The spring rates are 9 kg/mm (88.3 N/mm) in the front and 4 kg/mm (39.2 N/mm) in the rear so that's a good bit harder than the stock 45 N/mm and 26.5 N/mm. This car was on ancient Eibach lowering springs thought, so I have no idea what rates I started out with, just that these are better.

I still wanted to go lower despite all - the website quotes a 77 and 88 mm (3 and 3.46 inch) drop front and rear for these, so I got the car on jacks again and dropped the spring perch collars to about 2 cm (0.78 inch) in the front and 2.5 cm (0.98 inch) in the rear. That is 2 cm (0.78 inch) lower than reference value and leaves the springs with no preload when the suspension is unloaded. Don't try this at home. If the suspension is unloaded at speed, a spring could move out of it's seat and have the strut bottom out when suspension be loaded again. This can and most likely will damage the strut internally, essentially breaking it. Since this isn't a race car and I don't plan on racing it, I am not too concerned with the car coming off the ground, but I will drive very carefully for a bit, while also listening for any metal clunking noises which would indicate a spring moving around.

The rolling safety hazard now looks like this:

I absolutely love this stance and I like the ride, so I would consider this upgrade worth the money. I might look into stiffer springs still, or some helper springs at least, just to be safe, though thus far the only noises I've heard were the tires rubbing. I'll most likely have to roll the fenders pretty soon and give them a little pull as well. I should probably glue the new windshield in too, so that it's not just held in with duct tape but you know, priorities

 

[Dihtung Glava]

A quick tutorial-style update here for rolling the fenders on a 2g.

First things first - the windshield is sealed now, so no more duct tape, yay!

Second, I got new tires (BF Goodrich 235/40 R18). I like that they are new and I like that they are grippy. I do however think I made a mistake by going with the 40 sidewall, as opposed to 35.

The stretch comes out very nice over the 9.5 inch wheel, as you'll see in the next couple pics, but the overall diameter makes the 18 inch rims look like 16's.

Now, onto the desperately needed fender rolling. I did it three times. The first time I did just a touch, just to see what difference it makes - it did nothing. Then I rolled them again, big time. Tires were still rubbing. Then, I did it right the third time - I took the coilovers out and jacked the wheels all the way up into the fenders, marked all the spots that needed work, and didn't stop rolling until everything cleared.

To start on a hopeful note - I learned a lot. The down side is that I had to get a lot wrong first to get the rest right. My findings are as follows:

1. The rears CAN be rolled, contrary to popular belief, but they are a PAIN. I'll put up some artistic renditions for better understanding.
Basically, the tough part is folding the large lip where the quarter panel and wheel well meet and doing it without compromising the beautiful round fender edge that these car have.
What you're going to want to do is hit the lip repeatedly with a fender roller at very soft angles, increasing them only as the lip is folding. The first pass should look something like this, almost flat:

Then, somewhere around the 7th or 8th roller adjustment you should be this far along:

And by the end, you'll have the lip flat against the inner surface of the fender:

2. It goes without saying that heat should be aplied periodically with a heat gun (keep in mind the chances of paint scarring are still increadibly high, as you are folding a thick chunk of steel more than 90°) and the inside edge of the wheel well thoroughly cleaned beforehand to avoid trapping dirt and road debris in the fold forever.

3. Don't expect this to be a 15 minute job like on other cars, it took me 3 hours per side.

4. If you are pulling your fenders as well as rolling, it is absolutely crucial that you have the roller perfectly parallel to the fender as you start pulling. If you keep it at a softer angle (applies when pulling, when rolling soft angles are good), you will only be folding the very edge of the lip out, making an ugly crease in the outside shape (ask me how I know). Since I couldn't keep my roller at a right angle (and you probably won't either), due to the spatial constraints the upper control arm was inducing - I made a restraint that keeps it at 90° regardless of where the force is being applied, that can be seen in the first picture:

Second picture shows how much room I made for the tire as well as the ugly lip-fold you'll want to avoid. Next pic is how the driver side came out, after obtaining this knowledge:

5. If you are going for the absolute limits of the stock fenders, the only problematic spots left after pulling will be the edge of the bumper in the rear and the steering angle in the front.

6. Fronts can be rolled like on any other car. Make sure that you remove your suspension and jack up the tires all the way into the fenders to see how far along the edge you'll have to roll. These can be done in 15 minutes, but I would definitely advise against trying to set any records, just take you time and adjust the roller in small increments to get the cleanest results.

I'm gonna finish this update here, I think that's about it for the special needs that these cars and their fat fenders come with. If anyone needs any extra pics or tips, feel free to ask - I'd be more than happy to help you avoid the mistakes I made. Thanks for reading and take care!

 

[Dihtung Glava]

Second suspension job

A'ight it's been a while but it looks like the season is slowly coming to an end. Car's registration has expired and unless I get a sudden urge to go try to pass tech inspection again, that'll be it for 2023. I drove the car quite a bit in these last couple of months and I've learned a lot. A couple plans have changed, a lot of new issues were discovered but a lot of what was fixed also stayed fixed so I'm pretty happy.

Last update we were still messing with the suspension and fenders so it's only fitting I start where we left off. Taking the car to work once(~160 miles or so) has taught me that I really did go too low with the stance. The tires cleared the rolled fenders alright, but the Tein Street Basis Z coilovers just aren't ment to sit that low. With absolutely no preload on the springs the suspension was soft enough for the front tires to rub on the chassis when passing over imperfections in the asphalt. Other than that the ride was absolutely phenomenal - you can't beat the Tein quality in this price range. One night while surfing German eBay, I stumbled across an ad selling used 2g Megan Racing coilovers. I wasn't really in the market but I have seen low 2g's run them and the price was really good so I got them anyway. They aren't as respected as Tein but they do offer some more adjustment which I was hoping could fix my rubbing issue.

Well, the price had to be good, since they didn't come with any top mounts XD

I figured I could buy some seperately, but these are megan's old design that used to sport a pillowball mount instead of the rubber bushings, so I could not find a set anywhere. They are also much thicker than stock ones so I couldn't re-use those either. As always - I made life harder for myself and decided to make my own. I started out with a couple cool shapes in solidworks:

But when I got to specing out the pillowball bearings, I found that ISO and DIN standards (the 2 most common standards in Europe) don't really carry a bearing that would work for me. I found only 2 viable candidates, both variants of the DIN 648 series E spherical bearing.

They were crazy expensive at over 80€ a piece and on top of that, every catalogue explicitly stated that they do not support any type of axial load (which btw, is the main load a double wishbone coilover experiences ).
I wasn't gonna risk going over budget for bearings that might just fail anyways so I decided I would make my top hats with rubber bushings. Once again it was a pain in the ass to find standard ones, but after trying to modify a couple sets ment for tractors with little success, I finally found worthy candidates. They were and still are being produced for Mitsubishi ASXs so the design is basically the same as on the Eclipse, only bigger, so as to support a stupid little SUV. I got 4 sets for something over 40€.

I turned the stainless collars to the right diameter and lenght (they had to be a little shorter because the shock absorbers' piston rods are pretty short and don't have that many threads - they were ment to hold pillowballs so they only need enough to go through a bearing and a nut - the rubber ones need enough lenght to go through 2 rubber pieces, 2 washers and a nut)

And the rubber bushings were cut to lenght with a fresh Exacto knife:

I adjusted the final design of the top hats with respect to the large new bushings and sent it to a local machine shop to make out of aluminium on a CNC mill.

It was either that or having them laser-cut from a plate, which would make them flat and loose the extra edges that hold the bushings in place. I'm really happy I went the CNC route because they came out absolutely beautiful:

In the end I also decided to keep the holes for mounting them to the car threaded, against common engineering rules. Having threads in both the nut and the plate you are bolting down makes the assembly over-defined and constrained but I hate the inconvenience of having to hold each bolt down with a hex key in the wheel well while torquing down the nut in the engine bay.

This way, it's also easier to switch the bolts out for longer ones in case I ever want to mount a strut brace to them.
I took the plates to get anodized before mounting them to the car, to prevent any corrosion.

I also got a friend to cut 4 plastic discs on his CNC machine to sit between the springs and the top mounts and allow them to spin freely and not eat into the nice aluminium.

Side note: before going with the rubber mounts, I ran experiments on my parts car to see if the coilovers even move enough to warrant a bearing mount and I think that they kind of do. The fronts stay pretty still through the up/down suspension travel, but they bind quite a bit when turning left or right. I cut the front bushings a little smaller so hopefuly, they will have enough give to not snap the piston rods. The rears don't bind since there's no steering but they do get a couple degrees of angle when fully compressed into the fender. I think the rubber mounts have enough give to allow for that. I'll keep an eye on the shocks for a bit and of course report back if any blow because of this. I have once again resorted to microsoft paint to illustrate what the f*** I'm talking about

This is where the car sits at now. The tires are more tucked than ever and the damping is maxed out to prevent rubbing. Might have to raise it *a bit* because the minimum rubbing just isn't worth the god-awful ride on full stiffness. Might also help if I had the 35 sidewall tires instead of the 40s but such is life when you're trying to balance style and performance.

I know I wrote that this isn't a race car during my first suspension job, but having it actually run and drive and boost has really opened my eyes to what kind of performance I want out of it. Thus, the build will be changing directions slightly, we care about performance now

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: I went to dial in the suspenion further and after setting up the bumpstops properly (so that the shocks bottom out before the tires rub on the chassis) - I once again had no preload on the springs so I finally got some helper springs (red) for the front.

After setting the bumpstops properly I was even able to take a couple clicks out of the damping adjustment. Car has never been this low and this functional at the same time. The ride is soooo nice and I dont rub anywhere if I drive like a normal person. Just need a bit more toe in the rear (and eventually 35 sidewall tires) for next year and we are set!

EDIT 2: Added more Microsoft Paint