Bought the car last summer, looked like shit, dents all over but guy claimed na accidents... later revealed ... bull shit! ... painted with gray primer, nothing was taped off ... ya ... :squint


was dented in on drivers side and filled with bondo .. which cracked so i did some sheet metal and proper bono work...

15 mins down highway ... car overheats on day of buying. ... call guy back ... no answer ... surprise! .... :twitch

called tow truck hauled it home, headgasket bad...

top end gasket set and found the engine had been refurbished recently. and a new timing belt ...
wonder why.... :shrug

bought gasket from felpro (worst decision ever)

found many many riggs the guy made made up for random stuff



along with some mis threaded bolts. ... needless to say working a couple hours a day it took a month...





got back together... finally ran great! fixed the excess primer issue, on the windows, lights, mirrors, everything.... then brought the car down to the paint booth for some paint... no near professional but looks great compared to primer...




ran it for a few months and then one night .... its always a night too isn't it?
at 134 AM i relized the car was over heating again... about that time it came to a screeching stop.... did i mention 5 spd....
:squint :censored

so after another tow truck and ripping it all aprt and finding more rigs... the gasket i bought from felpro ... failed. leaked anitfreeze out, witch made it run hot, leaked anti freeze into the oil, which we know cleans oil off anything... and ruined the whole motor....
:( ;( :bash :wallbash

so i bought a master rebuild kit... stock parts... high school cant afford the turbo build yet... :rolleyes

sent block to machine shop ... its done i just have not nearly enough money to pay for it yet and advanced auto the "service is our best part" people ...ya who i bought the defective kit from will not give me any type of compensation... and felpro will not even talk to me ...
:wtf

rawr! so im stuck untill i can afford to pay this bill for the motor... and then finish the rest of the body work and paint ... finally save for the performance part....

random pics...






repainting engine bay

will update with more pics as project continues...
sorry for my stle of typeing and making this really long... newb and from maine ... so yah haha

Pretty much welcome to the club...

Originally posted by Slo2g
Pretty much welcome to the club...

+1

Also just found some more bondo work that chipped off the pass rear quarter ... About as thick as my thumb and all over .... This pannel isn't reshaping very easy .... Any tips or ticks ?

You found this after it was painted? Either try and pull the panel out some so you dont have a layer that thick of bondo, or replace the panel

Buying a 2nd, 3rd, 4th+ hand car, especially one of these cars, I'd expect to run into issues like this.

Good luck.

Originally posted by SilvrEclips
or replace the panel

how do you do this with the rear quarters?

Cut out the old panel and weld in the new, apply filler, primer, feather together, wet sand, paint, be awesome.

where would i find a donor pannel? in maine so these cars ant round here in junkyards much

First of all, let me just say you've made a shitload of progress. The fact that you're a broke-ass high school student makes what you've done so far even more impressive. Don't discount the road you've been down as a curse so much as a comedy of errors. You are being forged in the fires of automotive paradox. When you emerge on the other side, your gearhead skills will be hardened steel.

The car looks great. Forget about the mouth-breathing cock holster who tried to scam you on it. That shit is poison and it will eat you from the inside out. He hamfisted that shit back together to the best of his crack-baby abilities and probably blew all the money you paid for it on fake portal vents and a piece of shit that will leave his sorry ass stranded on the side of the road some night. Karma always comes correct, and the longer it takes, the sweeter it is. Look how much better that car is because you owned it.

Be extra careful with the re-assembly. I'm not saying the Felpro gasket failure was your fault - shit happens, right? But I have used pretty much nothing but Felpro stuff on all my cars and have never had a problem with it. Short of serious investigation by qualified engineer-types, we may never know. Just be extra vigilant when it all goes back together. After all, which is more important - proving who was wrong, or making sure it's done right?

You're not alone. Way back in the day, I completed my first engine build in a friend's mom's backyard. A couple months later, I installed a $2000 race head. A month after that, a wrist pin lock failed, resulting in a $400 set of forged Wiseco ash trays.

I ordered a set of Venolia pistons from ERT.

SEVEN MONTHS LATER I got my pistons. We rebuilt the engine.

THREE DAYS LATER, the clutch bolts backed out (didn't chase the threads before install, slight surface rust from being exposed for seven fucking months in a friend's mom's backyard). The flexplate turned into a circular saw one night (yep - always at night) at about 7000rpm as I was breaking in the new bottom end. Sliced a hole in the transmission, puked out all the fluid. Left me stranded.

It took us a week to get the thing apart and get a buddy capable of welding cast aluminum to seal it up. I was back on the road.

THREE DAYS LATER, the input shaft bearing scattered inside the transmission, leaving me stranded again.

I went the better part of a YEAR on a single tank of gas. Daisy was my daily driver at the time, too. And I still get shit for parking my car in run4cvr's mom's backyard. (The irony is, in a week or so, I'll be helping him move HIS non-running 2GNT into the same parking place.)

The more fucked up the story is, the more useful it will be to you down the road. It fucking suuuuuuuuucks today, but tomorrow you will laugh.

Hell, one year we all chipped in and bought DarkOne three hours of dyno time for his birthday. He blew his engine on the first or second pull. No one is immune to the suck. Embrace it. Laugh at it. Cowboys from motherfucking hell.

Hope this helps. :)

Originally posted by DR1665
Hell, one year we all chipped in and bought DarkOne three hours of dyno time for his birthday. He blew his engine on the first or second pull. No one is immune to the suck. Embrace it. Laugh at it. Cowboys from motherfucking hell. Hope this helps. :)

LMFAO! That is epic

ya no kidding your so right

anyway i haven't been on lately so ill post some new pics of my progress when i get back from graduation practice...

i cleaned up in the inside of the engine bay and repainted it black and also done a few other detail things.
i kinda run my own side garage for people i know and he couldn't pay his bill and needed the car back so instead he gave me a NEW set of 16" rims with tires (worth easily 1200) for a brake job bill of 150 bucks ... haha

ill be back on later so post some more stuff ...

btw- is it worth it for me to rip the old 394 gear our of the neon in the back yard and swap them now or wait till the turbo build down the road? opinion needed

hey posting an update

got motor back from machine shop, the bottom end at least
was so excited i got right to work




Assembled the pistons and rings, cleaned the bearing caps and all that jazz




laid out all the parts and finally assembled it.

Our of all the motors i built(usually big blocks) this was obviously the easiest and fastest. took like 1.5 hrs.




also painted the block blue but forgot to take picture(color matched to car in high temp paint)

now waiting for head work to be finished (decked and cleaned)



Anyone know what to use for a valve spring compressor? the normal twist type wont fit in the head? besides i just spent like all my money...

also been pending what i want to do with body work?
forgot to get pics but i have stripped down that entire panel (in some places like 1/2 inch thick)




bondo goes all the way down panel

i think i will wait for the money and let a body shop do it this time, way to much for me to handle.

also instead of painting the car, i think im gonna wrap it in blue carbon fiber. cost is about 600

o yah then i went to my graduation!

guy behind me is my buddy zack , we are both leaving for UTI soon!
out of 800 students i placed 3rd and he placed 5th in the scholorship testing = 16,500 dollars!

Nice job with the motor. Looks to be coming along nicely. I'm not much of a body guy, but that does look like a major pain to deal with.

...and congratulations on graduation and the scholarship funds. Here's to the future!

I hate that I have had my rebuild planned since last year, and yet you are finishing yours before I began

ya but im cutting corners like crazy and im anal about that

i cant stand doing things the wrong way even if it doesn't matter, wont see it , etc

i know its there and it bugs the hell out of me
o well as long as it runs for now ill be happy

planning on putting together the rest of the block and head work today

then in the car sometime this week

Are those stock rods? Whats the plan for the motor

plans were to rebuild the motor with all a stock internals cause being a high school student i couldent afford the performance parts that i want to put it. but i do have my plans for the future all set up just not the money


motor was runined by a freek chain of reactions when the head gasket went to i just decided to make it a reliable ride for college and redo the whole thing stock for now. minus the port and polish

hey question

need to find the dowel pins for the head to block and also from the block to the tranny


i have the part number for the head ones but i dont know it for the tranny ones

and where can i get these things? napa dont have them

dealer part maybe?

Originally posted by driverx08
hey question need to find the dowel pins for the head to block and also from the block to the tranny i have the part number for the head ones but i dont know it for the tranny ones and where can i get these things? napa dont have them dealer part maybe?

I had a similar issue when I was doing my work. I ended up getting the closest size I could get...which was slightly larger than stock. I filed them down to fit and was good to go.

Might be a possible solution.

Originally posted by driverx08
hey question need to find the dowel pins for the head to block and also from the block to the tranny i have the part number for the head ones but i dont know it for the tranny ones and where can i get these things? napa dont have them dealer part maybe?

If you searched, you have found this post. You are not the first person in the Eclipse world to need dowels, you know.

http://forums.2gnt.com/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=5&topic_id=82760&mode=full

finally got the motor in and it ran and everything seems fine

have a small leek from a bad hose going to the heater core no biggy have a hose on order

but i tryed to bleed the clutch and theres nothing comming out

like i filled the resovar and it wasent going down or anything and no clutch pressure whatsoever


dont know what to do to fix it need some help

anyone with ideas?

How long did you try and bleed it for? New ones can take many cycles - many. Try using a vacuum pump.

Also make an attempt to use proper spelling/grammar/punctuation.