Overland Monty

[Rick_4g63]

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Overland Monty


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[Rick_4g63]

I just wanted to give a little backstory.

The man who sold it to me has a lower trim model (Montero LS) that already had money put into it. His neighbor actually owned this 2.5 Generation (Gen) before him, but it was sitting on his driveway since 2010.
(His on the left, mine on the right)

This guy convinced his neighbor to sell it to him and wanted to bring it back to life, but I'm guessing it was too much to chew since he has other vehicles.

He saw I was looking for a 2.5 gen (only 98-99 had the widebody fenders) and contacted me about possible selling me the Montero.
I decided to inspect it the same day, and to my surprise it turned on and sounded healthy. It was getting dark so I said I'd go back the next day and re-inspect and possibly make a deal.

The next day comes, we talk and I finish my inspection. He tells me he had changed the headgasket, but did not resurface the heads. At that point I knew the heads needed to be pulled again, but that was no problem since timing would need to be done regardless.

As I start investigating the background of the Montero, I come to find out that it was never put in Non-Op and that the tags had been expired since 2010! At that point I knew the back fees would be hefty. Sure enough, I am told I need to pay $9** to register the truck, and that it was only a 3 year charge. I could only imagine how much a 10 year charge could be. Anyway, at that point I wasnt sure about the purchase anymore. But I started to think about the ones that have sold within a day for 7k-8k. I also started to think about how much repairs would cost and if it would even be worth dumping money into it.

Well, the good thing about this predicament was that the truck is in immaculate shape. The seats seemed like they were never used, the headliner was clean with no finger prints, the panels didn't have scratches, and there was nothing wrong with the interior or exterior besides normal wear and tear.
When I looked at the car fax the owners were putting 30k per year, so naturally the ODO read 249k. It seemed excessive, but I honestly prefer high mileage vehicles from highway miles over street miles.

I looked over all the pros and cons, and decided it was a good idea to pull the trigger and I ended up purchasing the Montero for a whopping $1,000.

Since it did sit for 10 years, I got it towed home

As soon as I got home I decided to take it around the block and see if any issues would come up.
Sure enough, there was a huge oil leak that would eventually get burned by the cat, and cause a lot of smoke to come out of the hood. There was also a coolant leak that would later come up when the truck got into temp.

With all that I figured it was time to throw money at it like if it was a stripper on a Friday night.

I bought a group-buy custom aluminum radiator because of course Mitsubishi vehicles don't have any aftermarket support unless its an Evo or DSM.

I knew tires weren't as important at the time being but, since they were 10 year old tires I knew that test drives would eventually be made, and I have a buddy that sells tires and also doing alignments (#MonroviaSpec) so I also bought 31x10.5 tires . They're just a little taller than the OE size. But not big enough to make the truck feel like a slug.

With those 2 things being taken care of the good stuff was up next.
As the teardown was going to start I noticed the power steering went out, but when I popped the hood, the belt wasn't moving, and neither was the alt belt....sure enough the crank bolt got loose and messed up the harmonic balancer, but thankfully nothing got heavily damaged.

I had to huy a new harmonic balancer and a new sprocket. Its no sweat, as long as the crank was ok.
Up next was the teardown, since I never worked with a V6 platform let alone a 90s model I went ahead and got help from Ozzys automotive. And the teardown began.
I drove every single day to the shop and stayed helping and learning how to tear the truck down.

Surprisingly the 6g74 motor is solid!! The cylinder walls still had the cross threading from the factory hone even after 249k.
The heads ended up being completely rebuilt.
New valve seals, etc.

The timing was done using an AISIN timing kit and it came with a Mitsuboshi belt. A Feel-Pro gasket kit was also used.

It turned out that the huge oil leak was coming from the rear cam seals. Apparently those are the seals that usually cause oil leaks on this platform.
The coolant leak I mentioned earlier was coming from the heater hoses, which wasn't a surprise because 10 years does deteriorate a lot of rubber parts.

Unfortunately I wasnt able to take more pics, but I did have the transmission mount swapped, as well as the fuel filter. The injectors were cleaned and balanced, the fuel leveler was replaced, as well as the fuel pump. Little misc things were done to make sure it is as reliable as possible for long road trips.
So after everything I want to say the total for the cost of the truck, plus registration, I spent about $6k
which is great! Considering that others were going for 7k and would need major maintenance either way, and could probably cost me up to 10k to have have the truck be where I currently have mine


The only thing left was making the truck look mint. So I went ahead and did a deep paint correction .

And this is how it sits now. The paint was extremely oxidized and held 0 shine it almost looked like the paint had a matte finish. But here is how it looks after everything!