gibbon

couple more pics for fun had the old scuttle sandblasted. Lucky it wasn't going back on RH door is kooked. Panelman said he could fix it but it'd be a fuckaround. LH door is spotless. In fact I've never seen a starion door rot out at the top like that Donor door has a tiny ding in it but is otherwise perfect. I have an entire unused container of bog (starion strength) which I have lost the hardener for, I'm disproportionally upset about this EDIT: found the hardener, score! My offspring attempting to torch the project. This guy is also the reason the brake pins went missing and I only found them days later when I turned the dryer on

The next step for me is to start reinstalling the interior, then I'll probably sit on it for a few months as it's not exactly painting weather. I've got to clean up the floor under the dynamat, but the next bit is a bit of a big decision - I sort of need to sort the wiring out before the dashboard goes back on. But I don't know if I want to keep the original ECI setup or go with sik modz and run an aftermarket inlet. So far I've amassed a 4age quad throttle inlet, a CA18DET 4 > 8 port lower manifold adapter, and my flange that I copied off the spare manifold. So I do have the ingredients to make a pretty swank inlet, which will then of course need an aftermarket ecu to run, I'll probably go with a microsquirt, speeduino is more appealing to a cheapass like myself but it doesn't have knock sensing (yet?) OR I keep the original setup as-is. It's a rare car, it's a rare engine.... maybe these things are going to be worth something someday? Having said that, the panelbeater did change one of the hinges from an integral to a bolt-in item, so the chassis isn't as-factory original anymore. That'll probably lose my descendants a fortune at the classic mitsubishi auction of 2080

Discussion thread

In this topic we discuss hints and tips for paying someone else to do the hard work https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/75053-gibbons-85-dash-starion/&tab=comments#comment-2321029

RH box ready to go on Poor old panel man had to use the donor scuttle, there simply weren't any other options. He made a hell of a go with what little I'd given him though Lined up for repairs.. everything in that missing middle section ended up being scratch built as neither panel was any good. Little bit of rust around the RH rear wing getting fixed, plus the obligatory rear hatch seal rust getting sorted out Meanwhile I'd been given a spare inlet manifold and decided to make a flange for it at work in case I had a sudden attack of sik modz and decided to go MPI in the future. I also threw tools everywhere for good measure (pictured) and got a LOT of aluminum in my coffee Back at home I wire wheeled the remaining rust out of the upper windscreen frame and brunox'd it Little bit of surface rust around the spare wheel well got the same treatment. Had to abandon garage at this point as the Brunux fumes were starting to take hold

Box popped off and seam rebuilt Box back on again Patching the holes in the firewall - I did have a go at doing this myself before I realised just what a job it was going to be to do it properly Soo easy to do when it's just an OS montage. Rot at the bottom of the A pillar post removed. A side note, the underside of the car is actually in fantastic condition. Patched up, simple as. RH upper firewall getting the same treatment. Box section off, rot out and the whole lot cleaned back more new than old

Here's how she left: here's how she came back: The next couple of posts are pics provided by the panelbeater Rebuilt upper firewall LH section New heater duct box built up/tack welded in You can see where he's unpicked that box section to get at the rot underneath (top of the pic)

The buggered scuttle Stuff like this is what ultimately made me realise I could never fix this myself - seam/upper side of the firewall blown through beneath a box section stiffener - the whole section would need to be unpicked to get at it. So I loaded it up and didn't have to look at it for another couple of months. In the meantime I contacted the original owner who I don't think was 100% thrilled about who had ended up with his pride and joy - surely he remembered the sik modz I did to my old starion back in the day. Anyway he had a bunch of other spare bits and pieces still in the garage, so popped by and donated them to me.

Pulled the whole scuttle panel in the end. Rot had even punched through the side of the heater duct for good measure. I've got a bunch of other photos but you get the idea moisture defying gravity to rot the underside of the scuttle panel because nothing nice is ever allowed to happen. Lockdown ended, replacement scuttle arrived but tbh was only marginally better, I was a little upset about that. Pictures somewhere but can't find em Panelbeater showed up for a look, he was surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing. Gave me a fantastic price to do the job, I was stoked as. This is where I feel like a bit of an ass as a lot of oldschoolers would just post up a few quips and a montage of them fixing this shit like it was no big a deal, but I have zero ability to weld. So yup, a good chunk of my "project" was just to pay another guy to fix it up. Sorry. Actually it was extremely liberating to sit on the couch with a beer knowing that some other poor bastard was wrangling the rot out of that old hulk. Panelbeater was impressed with how many pieces I'd managed to pull the car into. I've got a bunch of other pics but need to work out how to resize them

I pulled the dashboard and wiring looms to get them out of the way, had a bit of a panic here as I thought the floor had been dodgily repaired with fibreglass, but on second inspection it's clutch fluid leaking from the blown master eating up the dynamat. Here's where the water has rotted through the scuttle, through the upper firewall, and is running down to the bottom of the A pillar, to rot out the sill and onto the floor. Door hinge attach points are mercifully solid. But it's the reason all the wiring had to come out. LHS was marginally better so the (extremely rare) ECU hadn't gotten wet at least Lockdown was dragging on so I started to peel the scuttle back, to just find rotten shit everywhere. Had a look around for donor vehicles (good luck)

The green and silver rust converter earnestly applied by someone down the line was reminiscent of band-aids on a terminal cancer patient. Turns out after all the love and attention the car received back when I knew it, it'd somehow ended up parked under a tree for a few years which basically rooted it Inside of one of the guards. Both were completely blown out at the bottom. Someone had cut the top of the firewall out to assess the rot beneath the scuttle, it'd punched through in about half a dozen places This was rapidly getting beyond my mediocre ability to fix. Workmate knew a panelbeater who worked from home and offered decent prices. I tee'd a time for him to come and have a look, then lockdown hit. So I stared at this rotten old thing for a month or two. Actually I did a bit more than that, fixed the brakes up, and pulled the turbo to bits for fun But first some more corrosion gore

I last owned a starion almost a decade ago and it didn't end well. Since then I've gone on to be a bad owner of a number of other cars, and I can't say I ever kept an eye out for another one, or really even thought about them. Doesn't help when you literally never ever see one on the road ever ever ever. I was doing the obligatory "old coupe under x amount" search on Trademe and this one came up. I actually knew a guy who owned it for YEARS back in Hamilton, and he'd always taken good care of it. As it turned out it was also advertised for sale here on OS. Anyway I chucked a bid on it for fun and never thought about it again. I'd had a bit to drink and somehow didn't see the red flag come up. Fast forward to when I got an email late at night a couple days later, my blood ran cold lol. The missus was fucking furious The seller was a good fella, straight up about the issues with the car, he'd bought it off the previous owner that I knew but didn't get far before having to get rid of it. It had a cracked windscreen but he arranged to get it replaced - didn't get that far unfortunately as the rot around the lower part of the screen would have to be dealt with first. So it came up with the screen taped on, workmate had to collect it for me as the missus was still too angry. In the garage, starting to strip it down for an assessment. Didn't get far before the list started growing. The good news is that the motor had been rebuilt a few years prior (with receipts), Vr4 pistons, balance shafts removed etc. Couple of grand spent there. Oh and a serious crapload of spare parts. I have a pic somewhere but can't find it right now. The car was running, but not great. No handbrake, offset by the fact that all the brakes were frozen. Power steering pump noisy but that's so far down the priority list I could barely care THIS was the bigger issue. Where the car was straight, it was bloody straight. And where it was rusty, it was bloody rusty. I'd written off my last starion over corrosion like this and I'd be damned if I'd let it happen again. Plus pride was on the line for my accidental purchase, I couldn't just write it off.

I've got a 12 valve 4g63 head, it has 8 inlet ports in a very similar pattern to the ca18det. The engines only came with a garbage single point injection, and the 12 valve heads cant be fitted with a magna MPI inlet like the 8 valves can. Since starting this thread I've picked up a 4age silvertop ITB inlet I'll try and fit up to the other side of your 8 port section, that'll face the right way at least. Shoot me a PM, cheers

Yeah that's the other odd thing I noticed, the offset injectors. So once those butterflies open, you get pure air coming out of the "secondary", and an air/fuel mix from the primary.. I wonder how well it actually mixed at high RPM Any chance I could convince you to part with that 8 port manifold? Not fussed about the missing butterflies

My centre gap is 35mm, and an 11mm overall discrepancy just means 5.5mm each side, I need an adapter plate anyway so can incorporate that, so still pretty keen, if the spacing is the same on the later manifolds. I need a fwd manifold to get the tb on the right end, what does that leave me looking for... turbo bluebird engines?

Oh and the distance between the centres of the two outermost ports, if its anything near 310mm I'll be a happy man indeed

That's actually looking pretty promising, the only measurement missing is the size of the center gap... what the heck are those elongated ports for? Interested to see if the later manifolds share the same spacing, I'd prefer a throttle body on the end rather than a top-loader

Thanks guys, I'll take the measurements of anything that's available

Wondering if anyone could help me out here, looking for the port size and spacing for an 8 port ca18det inlet manifold? For a project, alrwady tried a TVIS 4age but too small overall...

Heat soak on the starter terminal wire perhaps?

Thanks for that, ideally I'd like something showing the eight individual ports but yeah I can extrapolate from that I'm dicking around with possibly fitting MPI to my 12v 4g63, which has a similar port design (2 pairs, gap, 2 pairs) to the tvis 4age. I suspect that the whole thing may be physically so much smaller as to be useless though

Anyone got one of these in bits? I'm looking for the port spacing measurement for the 8 ports of the inlet manifold... thought about buying a gasket to measure but it's even cheaper just to ask...

How about regular insulation batts? They're fireproof, deaden noise, and would stay in place if theres the inner skin to sandwich them

Hard to beat this though