fuel

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 -

At this point I had wired up the reverse lamp switch and the speedo input. I repurposed a no longer used auxiliary power feed from the battery terminal that the Japanese owner neatly fished through a firewall bung, where it passed right by the ECU below the glovebox. On the ECU, I needed to tap into pin 80 which was the speed output to the instrument cluster. On the automatic models, it doesn't have your typical output speedo sensor on the final drive, instead it has no less than three input/output shaft speed sensors that the TCU, which is built into the ECU, calculates the actual road speed. So I just had to bypass that and send the speed signal from the manual box to the cluster. The previous owner (or installer of that awful wiring mess that went with the Carrozzeria headunit) already conveniently had tapped a wire into pin 80 and had it labelled, though it was tucked up not actually used. Maybe it was meant to be the speed sensor input to the GPS unit or something, I dunno. I did also pick up a donor manual transmission mount bracket off the same car I got the clutch pedal firewall bracket from too, so will eventually have this welded in. I also need to obtain a battery tray/bracket from a manual Evo as even the original auto battery tray and bracket is different.

Also looking back the last page it seems I skipped progress pics of getting the manual box in completely. I actually had the manual box in and mounted by end of Nov last year before I came back to NZ over Xmas/new years, but as it was the first time dealing with a 'pull-style' clutch I wasn't 100% sold on where the clutch pivot arm was sitting in relation to the opening once the release bearing was supposedly clipped into the ACT 'monoloc' pressure plate. The only way I could verify was if I hurried up and fitted rest of the clutch hydraulic system, but by that point time ran out and I was back in NZ, and on my return it was still winter for a good couple more months and motivation was generally low working in a garage below freezing. Thankfully the clutch did work correctly once I had the clutch pedal in and bracket temporarily mounted to the firewall with some large screws hah, it just had to hold for long enough to drive the car across town to have it welded properly. I also had to fluff around with spacing the gearbox down about 20mm from its mount because the mount bracket off the chassis leg is different between the auto and manual body shells, presumably to accommodate the taller/larger auto transmission. I ended up removing the original studs from the box and replaced with M12x50mm bolts because the original studs don't have enough thread with the spacers inserted. Everything else refitted - axles, flywheel plate, rubber bungs etc

Definitely made it more engaging and more lively that's for sure - I just wish the 6 speed was geared a bit better haha. I wonder if anyone still sells a different final drive kit - you can easily sit at 50km/h in 5th gear and not labour the engine when you go to accelerate. I can easily overtake people on the highway without even dropping out of 6th gear haha. Now I just need to find a MIVEC cylinder head and manual Ralliart gauge cluster to make it a fully complete manual IX wagon, but definitely nothing stopping me from having fun in it until then.

I did take it camping once last year but it was to a campground that had cabins haha. I'm not really a fan of wagons with roofracks and roofboxes etc. There's a guy who splits his time between Toronto and Ottawa and has a black manual wagon that he wrapped in white Ralliart livery, but has a roofbox and in my opinion it kind of is overkill, especially when its empty 99% of the time. He did take his around Laguna Seca (sans roofbox) though which is epic I had roof racks on the Diamante wagon and the whistle at highway speeds drove me nuts, so am not going to do that to mine. I have been using mine for wagon duties lately - I saw someone nearby on FB marketplace selling an Evo wagon rear bumper for $200 so had to jump on it. Will probably keep as a spare if I never need it, or maybe sit on it and sell to Americans who want to convert their regular Lancer wagons into an Evo wagon.