Well, not really. The blog starts here, but the project has been ongoing for the better part of a decade. I originally bought a stock '91 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS in 95 after my Mustang converted itself into an external combustion phenomenon. After blowing the stock tranny after some rough upper state New York and New England winters, I performed my first modification by swapping out the tranny for a used one off a turbo model. After the shop fixed my hack job (though still for much less than having them do the whole damn thing, I did some of it right) it worked fine until I pulled the motor to have it rebuilt during a 6 month Mediterranean deployment.
This is where the project took a decidedly nasty turn. For some reason, I convinced myself that an old-school V8 guy in Connecticut, where I was living, could handle the rebuild. I also figured I could trust DPR to work over the cylinder head. This despite the fact that my parents lived less than an hour away from Dave Buschur's place and I wasn't going to drive the car till I moved back there anyway. You can probably guess how well this went. When I got the head back from Cali, it looked really pretty. Welded combustion chambers, 1mm oversized stainless steel valves, custom cams and new springs and retainers. Of course, when it was installed it ran like crap. When it would run. The only blessing was that I was able to ditch the Eclipse, which I had basically ruined through inexperience and neglect, and bought a '94 Eagle Talon DL that had had a spring come out of the valve cover and some damage to the side for around $1000, which was great 'cause I hate pop-up headlights. Here I went wrong again, however. I had some unknown corner store put my brand new engine in to the new car. They did a serviceable job for not too much money. And they threw in, for free, a botched emissions system. Luckily I was ably to find a good tune shop that fixed most of these errors for little extra cash while they wired in my Apex AFC and ITC and did the initial dyno tuning. Unfortunately, my new engine blew a head gasket on the 5th or 6th dyno pull. I packed it up for the return trip home.
After taking the car to Buschur’s I was informed that so much material had been shaved off the bottom of the head that it was unusable. There was not enough material to allow the timing belt tensioner to adequately tighten the timing belt. Which was why my pretty 1mm stainless valves looked like pretzels. Crap. And, surprise, no one at DPR remembered me and all their files were shipped accidentally to the Philippines, I believe is what they told me. Me being the master record keeper I was had to eat the whole $4000 bill for a carbon-covered paperweight. So Buschur fixed all that ailed me by slapping on a brand new stock head.
This worked well for 6 months or so, till one day on the highway, my transmission made a horrible sound and refused to shift if I tried to use the clutch. I had to try to coast and slam-shift the tranny when I could keep the car rolling and use the starter to get the car moving from a stop. Talk about sucking. Of course I took my car to Buschur’s and they fixed it….no, not really as that would have meant I learned my lesson. I took it to another unknown shop in Akron, OH. And they replaced my ACT 2100 lb. pressure plate and clutch, since both looked like they had been detonated in a blast furnace. I am told this happens often in these cars if the mechanic doesn’t know to pay special attention to the dowel pins. Well, the car worked great for another 6 months, and it happened all over again. I admitted defeat, pushed the beast into the garage and marched my happy ass into a Ford dealer where I bought a Focus for some semi-spirited but mostly reliable transportation. Which, surprisingly to some, it has been.
