fuel

And this weekend just gone I went to the 33rd annual DSM 'Shoot-out' in Norwalk OH where I camped pit side in the back for two nights - I was quite surprised it actually worked out and was comfortable enough to sleep in. Not quite a comfortable as the Diamante wagon though!

And some semi professional pics from my buddy

Also went back down to tail of the dragon a couple weeks ago for a week long event

So did end up tearing half the rear interior out again to fit the foam rings around the rear speakers and that has fixed the rattling in the rear. Now have a new rattle in the front left door which I guess I'll deal with when I can be bothered. Replaced the front tweeters too with the Hertz tweeters which came with the front K165's, just as well as it seems the OEM tweeters were completely dead anyway. Also replaced engine and gearbox mounts with billet aluminium Torque Solutions mounts which I had purchased years ago but only just got around to fitting now. The gearbox mount alone is a good 2kgs lighter than the OE cast iron unit. Unfortunately it has increased the NVH quite a bit, so I might take them out again and drill some holes through the polyurethane to soften them up a little.

Welp... a little sad update on the RX-7. I finally had an interested buyer who pulled through with the sale and he drove it away today to Montreal and is currently en route on his ~7 hour journey home. I'm happy that I had some fun with it (though I only did about 3000km in my ownership), but I knew I just wouldn't have the time, deep pockets or the skillset to do what I wanted to do to it and I'm better off focusing on the Evo wagon while in Canada and the Galant VR-4 and Diamante(s) while in NZ.

I think from start to finish you could probably knock it out in less than half a day especially if you had a hoist - I was working in a 28-30deg garage with little ventilation rolling around on the floor on pieces of cardboard so I basically just did chunks of an hour here and there over a few days. No special tools needed - just a 24mm for drain plug, 12mm for end case bolts, 10mm for pan bolts and valve body, 8mm for shifter detent holder. A couple of long flat screwdrivers help with removing the snap rings and a hammer to help seat the first snap ring after fitting the harder to compress wave ring. I basically watched these two videos for taking it apart and putting it back together but these videos here also came in handy. For the 5 speed you will need 6x of the 2502A004 (superseded the MR486844 which is NLA) o-rings and an additional seal. Here's a good thread on the Oz VR-4 forum detailing the parts needed and the work too. To replace the 2nd brake oil seal (the little seal tube) you have to remove the valve body but if you're careful with removing the 2nd brake piston thing you probably could get away with not needing to do so if the original seal is still intact. I actually ended up damaging the replacement seal making it worse than the original intact seal that came out. I would recommend filing the hard cut edge of the 2nd brake piston around where the seal sits as even trying to reinstall with a thin feeler gauge in between the piston and the seal still caused it to get cut up. I refitted the original seal and all seems to be ok.

Mating surfaces cleaned up and final part which I struggled with lining up all the splines and clutch plate teeth with back in. I did have to remove the inlet piping and battery tray to gain access to the transmission mount and rear roll stopper mount to allow the transmission end of the engine to drop down about 30mm so I would have access to things. I hate how crusty this engine bay is for how not really old it is. It's back together and refilled with about 7L of fresh fluid and still seems to work - in the first two gears and reverse moving it around the car park at least. At some point I'll get around to taking it for a proper drive to make sure it's all good.

So one of the (many) common issues with these cars is the wave spring in the transmission breaking sending smaller portions down into the bottom which somehow gets sucked up through the internal transmission filter and into the pump destroying it along with many other components. It's basically a matter of when not if this will happen, and given that my transmission looks like it's never been opened with the original OEM RTV I figured I may as well replace the wave spring with the updated wave ring minimising the chances of the transmission grenading leaving me stranded. Once the parts arrived from Amayama I could get to work: I started by draining the transmission fluid and inspecting the drain plug magnet - usually there would be a portion of the wave spring stuck to it But in my case there was not, leading me into a false belief that perhaps mine did not break I removed the end case to reveal the internal gubbins And the 'oil pan' that is actually on the side to gain access to the valve body Fishing a telescopic magnet in around the filter area however did catch two pieces of broken wave spring however Removing two sets of clutches and the planetary gearset reveals the broken wave spring The wave spring is meant to do almost two full rotations so it appears I'm still missing some but I could not fish out any more portions from in or around the filter. Perhaps some smaller parts have come out with the magnetic drain plug with past fluid changes? No sign of broken portions wedged among the clutch plates either. New thicker one piece wave ring fitted And going back together bit by bit

Replaced the original Infinity headunit with a cheap ATOTO Linux based double DIN with CarPlay/Android Auto, reverse cam input etc. Couldn't turn it down for the US$40 it cost anyway. Downsides are it takes a bit of time to initially boot up (but I was able to add a Mitsubishi logo so that makes it all better) and the RCA line out to the factory Infinity amp has too much gain which is not adjustable so I will have to wire in some resistors to make some makeshift attenuators Also tackled the bad paint on the boot spoiler. This is what we were starting with even after a bit of a clean with a clay bar: Sanded back the clear coat until the finish was smooth Painted with some colour matched paint out of a rattle can with clear coat over top, and wet sanded after to get rid of dust nibs and orange peel. Not perfect but miles better than it was before. Maybe after summer is done I'll spend some time to do a proper paint correction and ceramic coating on the rest of the car.

I'm not using them anyway - suspension is mostly stock apart from the Superpro 24mm rear sway bar and Swift Spec-R springs

Long time no update. Not too much to report on, mechanically it has remained the same I have yet to get around to swapping in the manual gearbox chassis rail mount bracket - I guess the temporary solution has become a bit more than temporary haha. Joys of not having a WOF here to pass every year I guess. Because I went down a bit rabbit hole with the Diamante speakers, I ended up ordering a pair of Hertz K165 component woofer/tweeter combo for up front and X165E 2-way coaxial speakers both 6.5" because they were on sale and couldn't say no and kind of wanted an excuse to upgrade the speakers on the Evo. Originally I was going to just use the original Evo speakers in the Diamante but turns out the Infinity system in the Diamante runs 2 Ohm speakers so wouldn't be suitable. Up front taking the door trims off, showing the original 15W speakers that are actually plastic body with a small magnet - was quite surprised with the sound output of these Mounted the K165 woofers with some 3D printed adapters just so I didn't have to drill extra holes into the door or worry about the deeper speaker fouling on the window when rolled down And placed some Amazon foam speaker rings around the outside to better seal against the door trim In the rear it wasn't so straight forward. For starters I had to remove the upper panel trims. In order to remove them I had to remove the lower panel trims. In order to remove those I had to take off the side pieces of the upper rear seat, but have to remove the lower squab to access to the bolts for them. Also have to pull out the boot floor panel to remove the side pieces along with the plastic trim that runs along the boot lip which hides 2 screws for those lower panel trims. So you have something that looks a bit like this: The OE rear speakers are 13cm / 5.25" and it seems the smaller the speakers are the more they exponentially cost. @Thousand Dollar Supercar maybe I could bring these back with me in November to fit in the rear of the Dia-munty haha - though I also wonder if some shallow 6x9's could fit if that mounting plate is removed, but then the speaker trims probably wouldn't have anything to clip into. I wasn't about to pay triple what I did for the X165E 6.5" speakers so ended up getting creative with some cheapo flimsy Amazon spacers and creating a template to drill some new holes just a little offset from the original holes and then mounted up the X165E's. If I ever revert back to stock (which is very unlikely) the extra drilled holes would be covered anyway. I did have to cut down with a dremel some of the reverse side of the upper trim but only because the speaker cone/edge ring was a bigger diameter and would have fouled on the existing protrusions to encapsulate the OE speaker Resulting in this - the orange isn't as noticeable in person it only is visible here because I'm shining a LED work light right at it I didn't end up fitting the foam surround rings like I did up front because they are quite cumbersome and I didn't think there would be enough room, however after just returning from a 1500km road trip this weekend just gone I definitely was getting tired of the upper (and possibly lower?) trim rattling away with the increased bass so I'm probably going to have to pull out the entire rear interior again just to gain access one more time, hoping I can squeeze them on with some trimming.

I also finally got it through its safety inspection so I slapped on the 18" Evo X MR BBS wheels I had picked up for it before I even took possession of the car, and had the windows 35% ceramic tinted Also painted the front grills so they match properly now Working on getting it low next

I went hunting around the web for new or used 6.5" speakers that sent me down a massive rabbit hole over the span of a few days. I thought I snagged a pair of Pyle 6.5" speakers on FB marketplace that would have done the job, but before I handed over the money I'm glad that I plugged them in to test them out. The first one sounded scratchy and distorted, and the second one just plain didn't work at all. It was probably a good thing, as unbeknown to me at the time, the factory Infinity speakers are actually 2 Ω as opposed to the typical 4 Ω of most car speakers. Even if I put in a decent pair of 4 Ω speakers they probably wouldn't have put out the sound output as anticipated. After seeing someone else having great success with re-edging their Lexus's speakers, I thought I would have a crack at it myself. For the ~$10 on Amazon for some generic 6.5" rubber speaker edges, it certainly seemed to be worth a crack. I can report a success on bringing the decent 30W factory Infinity speakers back to life - next up is finding out if the factory 270W amplifier will play ball with an aftermarket double DIN carplay headunit. Another upside is after spending time researching speakers I ended up ordering some Hertz K165 & X165E's to fit into my Evo Wagon. This is what I was met with when removing the door trim panel - the front cover of the speaker has come apart and all the foam surrounds have disintegrated: Removed the remnants of the original foam edge and glue from the basket Glued the new rubber edge on and all reassembled

So I made a FB page specifically for the 2004 Diamante so the previous owner could follow along with progress I'm making with it, but figured I would share it here too - https://www.facebook.com/TheCanadianDiamante I had a issue with the driver's door window rattling when lowered right down which I ended up fixing, but it led me to see the state of the existing 16cm Infinity branded door speakers That would explain why I didn't have good sound coming from the front speakers - there was no bass and it was a bit scratchy as the volume was turned up.

the original front struts are long gone and they were toast - the struts in there now were given to me a couple years ago (earlier in this thread) and were supposedly near new KYB's meant for the V3000 (though I checked part number and it seems the same strut is used for both 4cyl Magna and V6 V3000, at least as far a KYB's parts catalogue goes). I eventually want to convert to air suspension using struts from a parts V3000 SEi I have access to, though am hoping they still work haha. They were replaced brand new about 15 years ago but the parts car was then involved in an accident shortly after and it's been sitting ever since.