96_GS_420a_NA
Probationary Member
- 6
- 0
- Dec 30, 2016
-
Spokane,
Washington
Okay, the trans in my wife's car crapped out, so last night we bought a 96 eclipse GS, 420a, naturally aspirated, automatic trans, just under 150k miles.
Body wise, its almost perfect. Only found one small spot of rust bubbling the paint on the driver side rear wheel well.
The engine appears to be mostly well kept. There is a rather minimal amount of oil in places it shouldn't be.
The issues that we bought it with are the exhaust has been straight piped with a crappy muffler. Due to the straight pipe, there is no catalytic converter which is causing a check engine light. Also, I believe this is related to the exhaust, when slowing down after accelerating the engine RPMs dip VERY low and almost stalls but then picks back up to normal, as well as when accelerating hard there is a fair amount of black smoke (symptom of unspent fuel afaik). I plan on restoring the exhaust system back to mostly stock, will this help with the rpm dip and black smoke symptoms?
Also, the guy had some (probably) crappy HID headlights installed which is causing an inability to switch between high beams and low beams. The high beam indicator turns on and off, but its just stuck on low beam. From what I read this should be an easy fix but if anybody has experienced this before, some help would be appreciated.
Other than that everything else should be easy to fix.
The heater isn't working but those systems usually aren't difficult to work on plus the car came with a cigarette lighter plug in heater thing.
The passenger door exterior handle doesn't work.
Missing one piece of exterior door trim.
The drivers (power) window works until the last inch or two of closing it but it can be manually pulled up.
I've always liked these cars and I'm glad we finally own one. I would have preferred to get the turbo model, but its hard to complain for only 700 bucks especially since we were in a pinch and needed the car asap.
Body wise, its almost perfect. Only found one small spot of rust bubbling the paint on the driver side rear wheel well.
The engine appears to be mostly well kept. There is a rather minimal amount of oil in places it shouldn't be.
The issues that we bought it with are the exhaust has been straight piped with a crappy muffler. Due to the straight pipe, there is no catalytic converter which is causing a check engine light. Also, I believe this is related to the exhaust, when slowing down after accelerating the engine RPMs dip VERY low and almost stalls but then picks back up to normal, as well as when accelerating hard there is a fair amount of black smoke (symptom of unspent fuel afaik). I plan on restoring the exhaust system back to mostly stock, will this help with the rpm dip and black smoke symptoms?
Also, the guy had some (probably) crappy HID headlights installed which is causing an inability to switch between high beams and low beams. The high beam indicator turns on and off, but its just stuck on low beam. From what I read this should be an easy fix but if anybody has experienced this before, some help would be appreciated.
Other than that everything else should be easy to fix.
The heater isn't working but those systems usually aren't difficult to work on plus the car came with a cigarette lighter plug in heater thing.
The passenger door exterior handle doesn't work.
Missing one piece of exterior door trim.
The drivers (power) window works until the last inch or two of closing it but it can be manually pulled up.
I've always liked these cars and I'm glad we finally own one. I would have preferred to get the turbo model, but its hard to complain for only 700 bucks especially since we were in a pinch and needed the car asap.
) I took a wire brush and attached it to a drill then went to town with it and got as much rust off as possible, then I cleaned up the area, threw some primer and spray paint, then just covered the fender well with roofing tar and it held up nicely for the year that I had it till I sold it. maybe if ur looking into a proper restore maybe rhinoline the fender wells and underbody, its the same stuff they use for truck beds so I imagine it would work well
