fuel

I get rid of the GTO to get me down to a reasonable 7 cars and then.... Basically I was in the right place at the right time and was offered this 2004 Diamante VR-X for basically free because the owner wanted it to go to a loving home rather than end up in a junk yard. 2004 was the first and only year they were available in Canada, and they probably sold only a few hundred of them so getting parts in these neck of the woods is a little difficult. Beyond a little bit of roughness here and there that can be tidied up, it's fairly solid and only has 170k with two owners - the last of which has owned it since 2008. It's a bit of an oddity as despite being a 2004 with the last ugly Olivier Boulay facelift, it still has a 90's 4 speed auto and gauge cluster with mechanical odo which the Australian models ditched in favour of 5 speed and digital in the turn of the new millennium. Being the VR-X it has a bit of a sporty flair with a black leather interior, but seems to miss out on the side airbag seats outside of North America markets received It has a few little issues which I hope to resolve over the coming months, such as: - fuel gauge doesn't work, am hoping it's just a dirty/bung level sensor or wiring connector, seems to be a common enough issue that's easily sorted - handbrake doesn't work, feels like a cable is snapped given how floppy and loose it is - bonnet struts are toast, already have replacements ready to be swapped on - paint on the spoiler is fucked, needs to be resprayed along with some other body work tidy up here and there - roof head lining is no doubt going to fail at some point, it leaves a permanent imprint when you touch it - headlight bezels inside the housings have melted, I suspect too high wattage headlights were fitted - TCL light is permanently on, usually it's just a solenoid but may look at just bypassing it completely as it's fair low tech anyway - has some rust on the underside, for NZ standards it's a bit of an issue but for Ontario standards it's basically mint Some common issues for these cars that I no doubt will have to sort at some point: - wave spring in the transmission which likes to fail sending shards into the oil pump that basically explodes the whole transmission. - heater core leaks from plastic fittings, right on top of the engine/transmission ECU - it's a Mitsubishi so probably valve stem seals lol More to report when I actually have it in my grubby hands this weekend. I still have to sort out putting it through the equivalent of a WOF, insurance, new plates etc

But during that time TradeMe had a $9 listing day deal much like the year prior when I listed it up and then immediately trashed the engine. I was hoping for no bad ju-ju this time round. Thankfully nothing happened other than getting a really good offer I couldn't say no to. So in Feb a guy from Matakana came down and drove it away. Conveniently just weeks before 98 octane started skyrocketing to $4/L and beyond. I did get a couple last parting shots of the AWD fleet together for the last time: I did sell the GTO with the BBS Evo X MR wheels that were previously fitted to the Diamante which was a bummer, but I did manage to find another set that were in rough shape that I plan to refurbish. In hindsight I should have just spent double that money and picked up the other set that were for sale that were already in good nick, but oh well where's the fun in that?

Realised I didn't update this when I came back to NZ last Christmas/New Years period. I threw on the new lower timing cover, put it through a WOF and proceeded to drive the shit out of it for the next few weeks clocking up almost 3000kms in that time. I figured I may as well get my money's worth given the time and anguish it gave me in the previous 300km haha.

I hope you didn't discard those original bolts because they sure as heck aren't one time use bolts. Heck if you even had the original original head bolts, you didn't even need to replace them with new ones to be honest. Only once they started going to the narrower 11mm shank with the 12 point heads, is when they were stretch bolts. Anything with the OG 8 or 10mm hex head, including 6G7x engines right through to the 2010's, still uses reusable head bolts. Just make sure you measure the length to make sure they haven't stretched, and are the correct ones in case they get mixed up. early 4G6x head bolts are a few mm longer than 6G7x head bolts but otherwise look identical.

it definitely has a few overseas folk scratching their head wondering what it is haha.

Am a bit late to the party but Evo 4 and I think most other Mitsus with those twin piston front calipers (ie Evo 1-3, E39A/E74A/E84A Galant VR-4, Diamante etc) have a 1" master cylinder, and Evo V onwards have 1 1/16" master, along with the GTO. Evo 7/8/9 has EBD and always wondered if it could be easily retrofitted into earlier cars like the 4/5/6.

Have you seen this?

Are you in either of the two Evo wagon FB groups? Here and here. There's also the Evo VII GT-A owners group here which I actually found more useful for the manual swap information. You'll need some bits from a RHD donor like the rear transmission roll stopper bracket, brake/clutch pedal & clutch pedal firewall bracket because the LHD items wont work, unless of course you are converting your wagon to LHD using parts from the US Evo 8.

the ironic thing is if you leave the auto pedal in place technically it should be ok, but it creates an even bigger safety issue of the pedal interfering with the other pedals.

ah yes - you'll want Starion turbo master & slave cylinders, clutch pedal, manual driveshaft and the turbo KM132 box. I think the auto still used the same 3.545 ratio as some manuals but just check in case. Some manual models ran the 3.909 rear diff too.

Is it getting revinned or something? The manual donor car is N/A right? if so it wont be too useful for some manual parts as most of their manual parts are different as mentioned (cable clutch vs hydraulic, live axle vs IRS so different driveshaft etc). Wiring is the easiest part - simply bridge two wires together at the inhibitor switch and the car thinks it's in neutral so will start. Then run two more wires for the reverse light switch. You could definitely drill out the clutch master cylinder holes while the dash etc is out and then just cover them up with bungs or tape, and then you're good to go when it comes time to manual swap, rather than awkwardly try drill them out later on. For both my Diamante and Evo wagons I had to pull the dash to get better access to the firewall, with having to weld in a bracket on the latter. I think on the Starion the clutch pedal and master just bolt in.

the good thing about an auto shell is that the transmission tunnel is larger, so you could fit something like a T56 in future haha

haha I was just thinking this myself

Yeah I think people these days are just more careful with spending and perhaps have a little less sitting around to spend on a toy. I know the rust situation of mine doesn't exactly help, but it's far from terminal and can all be fixed by someone who knows what they're doing (ie not me). But compared to other cars on the roads here in Onterrible, it's not even that bad. You see 5-10 year old cars here with giant fist sized holes in the fenders and sills etc. My then 10 year old VW that has a galvanised body had more underbody rust, especially in the rear subframe. I'm asking CAD $8.5k which is like NZD $10.5k. I could probably sell the glass sunroof and targa band to recoup some money but would prefer not to.

Yearly bump. I still have this. Incidentally I did put it on the market more than a year ago to see if anyone with more dollars than sense would be interested in it. Evidently not - just a constant stream of delusional low ballers. I lowered the price to something that I felt was more than reasonable, but still yet to have one single person actually come out and look at it. So I'm taking that as a sign that I should hang onto it and continue with my eventual plans. I did clean it up and take some more pics for the sale advert: I also performed a compression test by removing the schrader valve from my compression tester and film the results in slow-mo to see the compression for each rotor face. I've got 95-100psi even across all six which while not spectacular, is still fairly decent for a 40+ year old unopened rotary. My plan now is to do some work to the Pacific widebody kit I picked up and mock fit it so I can measure exactly how much extra wider wheels I would need. Discuss failings here -