How reliable has your DSM been?

[TierNose]

Be good to your dsm and your dsm will be good to you!

Amen! No big reliability problems yet...just the normal wear and tear. Kinda funny b/c consumer reports gave the 1997 eclipse a black dot for reliability...

 

[joeym4130]

Any 1g that you will find MOST LIKELY will NOT be cause the MAJORITY of them have already been beat to death

Mine's reliable so far!!
oh wait, i rebuilt the motor after i bought it...

 

[THE_ARTIST_]

reliability all comes down to what the car has been through, if its been beaten to death then no, if its been well maintained then yes it can be reliable, but you have to keep up with the maintenance.

but i would say that DSM's have to be more maintained than most other cars

 

[Defiant]

DSMs are reliable in a function which is the inverse of how hard you mistreat it. Same as just about everything else on this planet.

If you're the sort who worries about how they hold up, and if the transmissions are fragile, it's likely that you're young enough, inexperienced, and so unskilled that no car will be reliable for you.

 

[siceclipse]

just buy one already!

 

[Crawl]

my 2 cents, I bought my GSX in january, its now June, ive spent nearly EVERY day working on my car, now part of it is mods, but most of it is repairs, troubleshooting. My advice, Unless you KNOW how the car has been driven, expect problems, cause chances are, the guy before you beat the living shit out of it. DSM's are great cars, Mitsubishi made them very dependable, but cars break and parts wear, and when you drive it like a racecar day in day out, expect parts to die, I drive mine hard... very hard, so when it breaks, Im not shocked. But chances are that the car you get has been driven in the same manner (speaking in reference to GST GSX TSI mainly) im sure you can get a nice RS owned by some older lady who didnt drive it to hard



Oh yeah, and if you have the money, its damn well worth it.... Too bad i really dont

 

[FORMONTOYA]

DSMs are reliable in a function which is the inverse of how hard you mistreat it. Same as just about everything else on this planet.

If you're the sort who worries about how they hold up, and if the transmissions are fragile, it's likely that you're young enough, inexperienced, and so unskilled that no car will be reliable for you.

AMEN!!

jim

 

[FORMONTOYA]

not to get off subject, but...a couple of years ago my buddy bought a new house and their next door neighbor is and older couple in mid/late 50's. guys a dentist, woman is a real estate agent. in 99 she bought a new white gs-x loaded. got everything possible down to the cd changer and auto trans (auto is the only place she went wrong imo). the thing is garage kept and to date she has not even turned 40k on the car (drives a jaguar for work). with the exception of a couple of minute rock chips this thing is immaculate, i mean almost along the lines of something you would read in penthouse forums it's so unbelievable. since the first day to present, every time i see them i am trying to buy this car from her, but she wont budge. to her the car is 'cute' and fun to drive, and i guarantee she doesn't drive her car even remotely near the way i drive mine. i can only hope she might come around and sell it to me one day. but the point is her reliability issues are far less than mine because of driving habits. you baby your car and the reliability issues all but dissapear. you beat the hell out of it, and expect to pay for it.

jim

 

[Fifty]

i was asking the same question like 2 months ago because reliablity was my 1st priority. since i will be using this car for college and if it break down if the middle of the freeway im screwed. so i did some research and asked around. i ended with this gs-t with 83,000 for 6.5k. it was a good deal so i took it. the owner took really good care of it. no oil leak, passed smog, and it was never raced in, launched, or redline. i took it out to my mech to lift it and check it out and did compression test. the faster you want to make your car go the faster it will break. even honda or toyota thats beat up will not be reliable. i was really lucky because i was really close to buying a 01 celica gts.

if you are looking to buy one i would sugguest looking at your local paper, pennysaver, cars for sale mag but sports edition, cars.com, autotrader
i wouldnt sugguest buying one from here because most of them are modded and beat up. the current owner have the skills and knowledge of mantaining it so they know what to do. once they hand it over you might have trouble trying to keep up with it.

 

[RedRebel]

Im looking for a GSX or GST. It will be my daily driver. Is this a good idea or not? What kind of MPG are youall getting? Alot of my friends say stay away because they crankwalk? What are some symptoms of this? If you had to do it all over again, would you do the same thing as you have done?
Thanks
Ross

 

[paranoidTSi]

Alot of my friends say stay away because they crankwalk?

Ha! Ha! The crankwalk issue on these cars is OVERRATED period. It doesn't happen as often as some would like to think. And some that get "crankwalk" actually misdiagnose themselves. So this is NO reason NOT to get one. If your friends are telling you not to get one for this issue, they are idiots.

What are some symptoms of this?

The biggest symptom is the clutch sticks to the floor on hard left hand turns, another symptom are the RPMs shift dramatically when pushing/releasing the clutch.

Is this a good idea or not?

If you can find one that hasn't been beaten to death, then yes. AWD vehicles tend to take more of a beating on the suspension end than the FWD vehicles..for obvious reasons...no give.

would you do the same thing as you have done?

Yes I would knowing that I have a second car as my daily driver, if I had to actually depend on the reliability from my Talon, then I would have probably sold it a long time ago. Mine stems from getting beat to death by the previous owner, so I'm sure you could find one that is reliable.

What kind of MPG are you all getting?

Well with ONE blown O2 Sensor I am getting 240 to a tank.

 

[madhatter210]

Ha! Ha! The crankwalk issue on these cars is OVERRATED period. It doesn't happen as often as some would like to think. And some that get "crankwalk" actually misdiagnose themselves. So this is NO reason NOT to get one. If your friends are telling you not to get one for this issue, they are idiots.

Yea for real, its more of a conversation piece. It makes one sound like they know what there talking about when they say "crankwalk". Its also been known to be used as a bargining chip when buying, I have heard this "UMmm, so how many times has it been crankwalked" I wanted to pee myself laughing for real, like where do learn this term when you have no clue about what your buying in "genera"l knowledge (meaning not even knowing if its the 420a or a 4g63 but yet asking the crankwalk question) .Because that was the second questioned asked "is this the 420a or 4g63" it made me laugh because he was looking at the motor but was just asking about crankwalk.

Any car with proper maintence is going to make a great daily driver. You can take any car and not take care of it and it will turn into a piece of crap. The harder you drive something the faster its going to break that is for sure.
If your not going to buy something new you only have the word of the previous owner to know how hard its been driven and its maintence records your always going to take a chance, heck even new cars have problems right off the line.

When you look at something for the first time most sellers always change the oil, plugs ect ect before they sell so it looks like its been taken care of. I have been fooled before and had stuff break before I got 10 miles away. I didn't complain it just made me a smarter car shopper in general. I wanted the car so i just fixed/gone though it and that way I was sure of what maintence it has had. It sucks though when it won't even make it home to really check it out. Good luck and buy smart

 

[No_Skillz]

I drive a 99 GST (dont have to worry much about crankwalk on that year) w/ light mods as daily. No problems, just have to replace some small stuff the previous owner wore out. I drive pretty conservatively, maybe 1 hard pull every couple days, and I get almost 300 miles/tank. If you can take care of the engine it will send you 150k and beyond.

 

[93greentsi]

I drove a lightly modded 93 awd talon for 2 years as a daily driver w/o any problems. Only since I started modding it more (fuel pump, more boost, bigger turbo, etc) has the clutch gone. They work great as daily drivers.

 

[95eclipseGST008]

Pretty much all highway driving with 100+ mile commute, I get about 22 MPG cruising at about 75-85 the whole way. I usually go 270 miles between fill ups so the range is probably about 300 miles per tank. Is it the best daily driver? No but is definitely a good compromise between reliability, mileage, price, etc.

 

[shuiyuan]

i owned my 95 talon for 1 month, throwed $3000 on that car. it gives me new problem every week,i am thinking to sell it now. i dont really want say bye to dsm, is 92-94 dsm will better than 2g?

 

[xveganxcowboyx]

I would think that if you already dropped $3K it should be relatively reliable at this point. Remember, older cars tend to have more problems. I say stick it out and fix whatever is left.

Also, if you sell now you're basically throwing away $3,000.

 

[alex99gst]

A car is only as reliable as you/the previous owner makes it. If you beat it to death it will not be reliable when you need it to be. If you know its limits and don't beat on the car, then you can rely on it to work properly.

 

[ddavisaf]

The 6 bolt is more reliable. But just remember, you start modding and stuff will start breaking. These cars are old now.

 

[Hughes]

DSM - Reliable isn't that an oxymoron.

 

[JohnlukePiccard]

I'm pretty new to the whole DSM thing. I've been putting my 91 Talon TSi AWD together in my garage for about a year now in my spare time. It's just about ready, but I dunno if a turbo car is really a good daily driver. When I think about a Turbo car I think about all the bad things that COULD happen. Oil line comes off or breaks, crankwalk, oil leak, turbo failure...Etc. I know routine maintinence is important, but has anyone ever stopped at say Best Buy, or any other store and came back out to an Eclipse that won't start with a growning puddle of oil that sorta resembles the gulf of Mexico? Or you blow your turbo on the interstate doing 137mph, and pieces of the compressor wheel become mangled shards inbedded in your pistons. Your intercooler fills with oil, and chokes your Bulit v8 eater to it's oily doomise. Does shit like this really happen? I don't wanna drive a timebomb around and flunk out while I'm picking up some little bad ass blonde. I got alot of my money (might not seem like alot to anyone else) invested in this thing, and I'm just wondering if I should sell and get it all back or drive it and chance loosing like Ray Charles in Vegas.(Yeah I just made that shit up about Ray ) Let me know. Also if anyone is in the Indianapolis area I need a skilled tuner to inspect my work before I drive, and help me tune my s-afc and translator, when I get new injectors and Turbo. I ain't rich but I gotta a little bit. Let me know. Sorry if I mispelled anything, I'm a dropout who's too impatient to use spell check!

Thanks,
John Luke Piccard

 

[leet]

Laziness will get you nowhere, especially here.

Reliability is subjective to how you treat it.

 

[DSMcrazy3]

If all you wanted was a daily driver, shoulda gone w/ a N/A

Josh

 

[JwUoNoG]

It all depends on how well the car was taken care of (either by you, or the previous owner(s)) and how well you take care of the car. Either way, DSMs usually do require a little more attention than the average car, but it's worth it.

 

[MaroonclipseGST]

I drive my car to school and back which is like 400miles a week. It always starts, and has never left me stranded. Take care of it and itll take care of u.
When i first bought it, i had to pay like 2k in repairs from last owner, after that initial cost, its been perfect.