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Death Star of Orion: 1988 Mitsubishi Starion EX, blue smoke machine


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When I originally checked the car out, Mike, the previous owner, warned me that the original Starion radiator had at some point been replaced with one out of a L200 (possibly with fewer cores). As a result the replacement may not have been 100% up to scratch and he'd noticed the temp gauge rise above halfway a handful of times, but it wasn't really an issue as he hardly ever drove in stop start traffic and the fans had been upgraded as well.

 

Now luckily I generally drive against the flow of traffic every day, and didn't think it would be much of an issue for me either, but today I had to head to Penrose on an errand after starting and finishing work early.

 

As soon as I hit gridlock at Market Road I noticed the temp gauge starting to climb...

 

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You could blame it on parallax error perhaps, but that needle definitely looks like it's sitting above halfway to me :(

 

It got a bit higher than that, but I managed to get off the motorway at Greenlane with windows down and heater on max (OS car lyfe)... and continued on to my destination at 50km/h urban speeds with no further issues.

 

Fortunately I've already thrown caution to the wind, and picked up a spare original Starion radiator with fan setup, so will drop that off to get inspected and possibly reconditioned as soon as I can. The guys at the shop are going to chortle heartily as they currently have my DR30 Skyline radiator which is in for a de-sludge and general clean.

 

I'm not much of a cooling system guru so I have no idea if I'm heading down the right path - but surely two less cores wouldn't make that much of a difference unless the radiator's really gunked up? I've already replaced the radiator cap as a precaution, there's still plenty of proper coolant in the system and overflow bottle, and none of it has escaped at all. Pretty sure the water pump was replaced not long ago as well, when the cambelt was done.

 

Discuss... the imminent BHG? //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/54171-ted-huangs-starorion-0r10ns-1988-mitsuhishi-starion/

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Does anyone else think this logo looks uncomfortably similar to a certain famous movie franchise set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"?

 

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Picked up the spare Starion radiator from the shop yesterday morning ready to go. It was 70% sludged up, and had a bunch of badly bent cooling fins, but cleaned up quite well and the guys even re-attached the mounting bracket running down the middle. Here it is all shiny with the OEM fans. This will help greatly when I get around to re-fitting the factory air conditioning - the smaller fan on the left is controlled by the HVAC system and engages with the A/C compressor.

 

Trevor French Radiators - look them up, they do a good jerb. I failed to get a photo of the Skyline one but it was even more impressively clean.

 

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I should probably throw these fucked tyres in the garbage, and refurbish the standard 5-stud narrowbody wheels. As if I didn't already have a thousand other things to do :)

 

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Also, if people paid more attention to the caution label back in the day, we probably wouldn't have all the old barrys today still whinging "mayte, those turbo Jappas mayte, they're god damn unreliable pieces of junk, mayte. Get a FORD/HOLDEN mayte," before jumping into their Great Wall utes and peeling off in a plume of oil smoke.

 

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Finally, to round out this blabbering update of not much usefulness, here's a neat little time capsule of NZDM goodness that the previous owner generously included with the purchase of the car: the factory MMNZ first aid kit. I showed it to Ant and he reckons it's from 1989, as the logo on the top post-dates the Todd era. The kit comes complete with these glorious late '80s versions of Pamol and "Curity" brand bandage tape, along with a bunch of bandages, plasters and other triage-related items, all similarly decades-old and a bit dog-eared.

 

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One of the previous owners must have had the lurgy (or a hangover) at some point, because one of the capsules is gone :D The rest of the packet is still there, but given the expiry date on the side it's most likely all turned toxic by now, so I doubt anyone will want some to cure their headache in any great hurry! I'll inventorize the contents of the kit and pop down to St. John to have it all updated.

 

If we assume a five-year expiry on all the items in the kit then the 1989 production date makes sense.

 

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Wow, this newfangled phone of mine actually takes a decent shot. Too used to shitty budget phones with potato quality output! (compare the photo in the second post above)

 

Now that I've got the radiator back, and daylight savings has kicked in, the plan for this coming week is to spend time in the shed after work doing some investigation on the cooling system.

 

Discuss: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/54171-ted-huangs-starorion-0r10ns-1988-mitsuhishi-starion/

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The past few months of Starion ownership have been fairly uneventful but definitely enjoyable. Being a 1980s Mitsubishi I was expecting to be topping up the oil every few weeks, but I can safely say that after 3000 miles I've only needed to put about 500ml in.

Did my first service on it the other week and my fears that shitty burnt treacle would come out proved to be unfounded as well - the oil was still clean as a whistle!

Even managed to set a respectable time at Oldschool Drag Day. I honestly thought the car wouldn't have a shit show of breaking into the 15s, but boy was I wrong.

Voupd40.jpg

Not bad for a stock 8-valve with lazy diff and even lazier turbo. Goes hard for what it is.

But as luck would have it all good things must come to an end, and whilst sat in the usual mess of rush hour traffic last Thursday evening I noticed the temperature gauge creeping towards the top end of the scale again. Immediately chucked the heater on full hot and the blower on max which brought the temperature back down below 4/5, but it was still reading too hot for my liking.

By the time I'd cleared the traffic and started moving at pace the gauge settled to just above halfway, and I made it home with no further dramas. Eventually turned the car off, inspected the engine bay for leaks and listened for signs of gurgling, boiling, or hissing, of which there were none - which I thought was a bit weird. Checked the coolant levels the next morning, and it hadn't lost any - which again seemed a bit weird - but throwing caution to the wind I took a different car to work that day.

This morning after finding no coolant loss at all I was convinced that Thursday's scenario had been caused by a random airlock in the system and assumed over the weekend it had bled itself out, so hopped confidently back into the Starion to drive to work; lo and behold the journey was uneventful with no temperature dramas.

Unfortunately this afternoon after leaving work I got caught in another traffic snarl-up and the needle started pegging at 4/5 once again. Again the jam quickly thinned and I was once again able to get home with the gauge sitting at a more or less "comfortable" level, but this time I was able to observe it rising when queuing or stopped.

Rolled into the shed, and once again inspected the engine bay and radiator... hello, what is this?

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TL;DR: Two pinhole leaks in the top tank have now made themselves known, which weren't immediately obvious last week. Not bad enough to cause firehose-spec coolant loss, but still bad enough to flake off the paint and wreak havoc with the system pressure :(

So now comes the fun task of draining and pulling it all back out, and organizing the radiator to be sent back to the reconditioners under warranty. I hope they'll be able to do something with it, because I don't fancy my chances of finding another good radiator, and I'm certainly not going back to the L200 one.

Discuss: http://oldschool.co....uhishi-starion/

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