fuel

I recommend watching some videos from this guy (Paint Society) on Youtube -

3" isn't enough, it needs to be blended over 50-100cm and as tortron said needs to be fanned across gradually blending from new to old paint. You have a very prominent cut off where the new paint stops. Also just checking, the clear coat has been painted across the whole panel right? It's just the base colour coat that gets blended but you still need to cover the entire panel with clear coat.

The width of the panel is too small to blend that, you would want to paint the whole panel and then blend the surrounding panels.

is that a blend on the same panel? can't quite tell in the pic. Are you saying the left portion is the new paint and the right portion is the existing paint? to me yes the paint colours aren't a match but also it seems the blend is quite abrupt.

all 4G9x engines are narrow block however from the CM5A GSR (Evo 4 shape) onwards the bellhousing pattern changes slightly (same goes for the Evo 4+ 4G63). The transverse 4G9x doesn't have any provisions on the block to mount RWD engine mounts to, however if you can find a 4G92 from a Jap import L300 van you would have a 4G9x RWD block and water pump/water pipe routing setup from factory.

Now to get motivation to do the rear 297mm 2 piston GTO setup, though it's not much of an upgrade over the stock 284mm items.

Swapped on the 2nd gen GTO 315mm front brakes onto the AWD Diamante sedan with the help of some Volk Racing caliper brackets Bit of a difference from the stock 276mm twin piston to the 315mm four pots

Also finally fitted the Whiteline 26mm rear sway bar that has been sitting on a shelf for 5 years, was a bit of a mission to get it out with the subframe in place. I dropped it down about 2 inches as the handbrake cables, ABS sensor wires, 4WS fluid lines etc were connected and couldn't be bothered disconnecting it all.

Rear brakes were also renewed at the same time, but only got around to swapping on the braided brake hoses this visit Also replaced some bushings in the gearbox side linkages with custom machined bronze bushings, made a bit of an improvement reducing play in the shifter.

Swapped in the K&N air filter for sweet churbo noises, into the original airbox for stock look. Small chance I may be picking up a Ralliart CF air box when I'm in Australia end of the month. Superpro rear sway bar waiting to be installed. I need to drop the exhaust to fit the sway bar, and I have since picked up a Kakimoto 3" catback that I will swap in at the same time.

Black Friday has come and gone which means I picked up some stuff: - Braided brake lines - Superpro 24mm rear adjustable sway bar - Varis CF shift knob & shifter bushings (for when I do the 6spd swap) - Rear diff poly mounts - K&N air filter Made a start with swapping in the braided lines. You can see the brake calipers need some love as the original clear coat is peeling and fading. I have to swap in a different brake master cylinder reservoir when I do the manual swap so when the brake fluid is all drained again I'll get them done then. Have ordered up replacement brembo decals already. The existing brake fluid seems fresh and not discoloured which is a good sign, I opted to use some regular DOT 4 fluid I had on hand for the brake line swap and will wait for the new master cylinder reservoir and caliper overhaul before using the good DOT 5.1 stuff.

I've had good success with Meguiars, depending on availability/cost I would use the heavier cut M100, M101 or M105 for the first few passes then finished off with the Ultimate Compound and then a good wax/ceramic coat on top. I just can't believe the cost for some of these compounds in the NZ though - the Ultimate Compound is like $45-50 at SCA/Repco but it's literally $15 in US/Canada. 3M commercial stuff is good too but can't speak of pricing/availability in NZ.

Not sure where you are in the south but there's a red one at ChCh pick a part - https://pickapart.co.nz/eziparts/Display_Vehicle.asp?PriceListID=0&VehicleID=172703&$Location=112105099107097112097114116099111110122&LocationID=7&VehicleDesc=Mitsubishi LB 80-89 Also now that she's done her bumping and bruising and mechanical damage on a first car maybe time to graduate to something more modern, so if (when?) there is another accident and it's more serious, it wont be in a ~33 year old tin can (especially compared to the abundance of overweight cars and dumb SUV's on the roads these days). It's amazing how far cars have come in just the last 20-30 years alone. I had an '89 Galant GLX (even the same Glacier Blue metallic as your daughters Lancer) as my proper 'first' car in 2001. Think I picked it up for something like $800 because it had 361,000kms on the clock already by the time I got my hands on it. 12 years old and it was already considered worn out and quite outdated, but that didn't matter too much as it was meant to be a first car to be trashed and sacrificed. It survived a small frontal accident, gearbox explosion, head gasket replacement, a break in or two and my desire to keep modifying it to make it a car that it wasn't. It wasn't even the base model but still had a carburetor, crank windows, manual mirrors etc - less to go wrong I guess. I did squeeze something like 7 years and another almost 100,000kms out of it before passing to Peter/retep (who pedalled it to almost half a million kms with a replacement engine), but I couldn't help but wonder what else I could have got back then. Anyways, my point is 20+ years on and a 12 year car (like the 2010 VW Passat I have right now as a daily driver) can be picked up for next to nothing but has airbags to oblivion, not only ABS but also brake assist/EBD/stability control and is just generally safer all round, more reliable and fuel efficient because tech has come so far in this time. They are just as disposable and being a 12 year old car you're still going to see rows of them available at your local wreckers yards so parts shouldn't be a problem. My 2c!

So glad about this news!

Are you able to build up a good engine with the parts from the original engine (to keep numbers matching etc) and the current dud engine, plus any new parts?

I saw the advert pop up on Facebook so I did wonder if an update like this was coming and sure enough... Are you able to stash it away (even off-site) and get back to it later on when things have cooled/calmed down? It seems you have got 95% of the way there with fixing all the little gremlins, to the point where the next owner just needs to sort the engine and that's it they have a good running SD1 (if one were ever to exist?) Would be a shame that next owner isn't you!

Yeah only takes about 30 seconds to unscrew the knobs, but the original t-tops had a more elaborate pin and clasp arrangement that took just a second or so to remove. It basically just has perspex blocks glued to the underside to facilitate the mounting screws and feels a bit cheap. Glad I didn't pay the $700+ new retail price for it. All of the above

Thoughts?

I was in the US last week and managed to find an Astro 1 one piece acrylic smoked grey transparent top as a possible replacement of the cracked glass t-tops. I like how the one piece top is under half the weight of the glass t-tops, but the mounting system is a bit crude and not 100% sold on it. Anyway, pics how it looks

And finally the AVH-3500NEX is installed. At first I was a little disappointed in screen quality (it was barely better than the 2005 era unit it replaced) but after playing around with the settings and being able to change the theme and backlighting to match the rest of the interior, plus having touchscreen & Carplay it is just totally worth it. Also was able to add a Evo IX M/T TD05HR-16G6C-10.5T turbo to the collection of parts to eventually swap over, in addition to the 6 speed conversion bits. While in the US recently I picked up some new front axles courtesy of RockAuto - can't complain at $50 a side it was cheaper buying new than it was tracking down something second hand.

If you don't already have GTO 4-pots I would look at something else like the Evo 5-9 Brembos, the GTO 4 pots are Sumitomo just like the FC RX-7, R32 Skylines/Z32 Z etc and aren't as great, plus hard to get seal and pistons for them these days.

Speaking of the headunit, made a start on removing the trim surround and pulling it out slowly to see what I am working with: Yep, it's as messy as you would expect behind here too More shit to add to the pile: It's hard to imagine all of this with 3 separate thick bus cables, two extra processing units, and a hard drive unit mounted in the boot is all superseded with a smaller unit that just plugs into a mobile phone. CarPlay/Android Auto headunits are the best. The AVH3500NEX I went with probably isn't the best unit in the world, but I was very particular about wanting a fold away single DIN unit. I also gotta say, the Evo IX is basically the last older 'feeling' performance car Mitsubishi made. It feels like it's put together just like an early 90's Lancer or Galant - all the fasteners are in logical placements, use standardised sizes, everything comes apart and goes back together super easy, no excessive safety devices getting in the way etc. It really feels like a back to basics car that happens to have a modern-ish (for the time anyway) look and feel but still easy to fix and modify.

Under the rear seat: This is the pile building up so far: And this mess is still left in the passenger front footwell - going to tackle this when I remove the headunit itself:

This mess is peeking out from under the front passenger seat: Removing the seat reveals this: This is under the carpet in the front passenger footwell:

Made a start on getting rid of the excess electrical junk in the car in preparation of changing out the head units. Antennas for the TV tuner GPS antennas for the navigation, toll system, alarm system and remote control receiver