Official Mitsi weirdo buys another weird Mitsubishi

[DriveBy]

You are a sick c*nt. There are literally 7 people in NZ that like oldschool Mitsi’s. (They are probably the wisest 7 people in NZ but). 

[bigfoot]

35 minutes ago, DriveBy said:

You are a sick c*nt. There are literally 7 people in NZ that like oldschool Mitsi’s. (They are probably the wisest 7 people in NZ but). 

I can think of 6 off the top of my head/there may be more of us than you think

[RUNAMUCK]

You're all a very "special " bunch.

..

[fuel]

So I was home over the Chistmas period and gave it a clean up inside & out, ripped off the crap aftermarket whistling roof-racks, replaced broken radio antenna mast, replaced the sagging roof lining, re-glued up some of the door seals, replaced speakers, refurb'd/tinted rear tail lamps, replaced rocker cover gaskets and slapped on my Mk1 GTO 16" wheels with new tyres. I still need to replace some broken interior plastics and sort out the sloppy automatic shifter.

 

[fuel]

long time no post.

So I was in NZ last few weeks and did a little work to the Diamantes. For the sedan I chucked in the factory GTO struts (which have ECS) and it had the effect of slamming it somewhat. Had to put on some Evo X BBS's I had stashed away to get it out of the garage as it was a bit too low on the 17s.

 

[fuel]

 

[fuel]

[fuel]

As for the wagon I lowered it a smidge, chucked on the GTO 17s that used to be on the sedan, and fitted some paint matched sideskirts (yet to paint and fit the lower door cladding, think it looks fine without them for now)

[fuel]

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

 

[fuel]

 

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.

[fuel]

didn't get around to posting up pics last time but did end up swapping on the rear GTO 2 pots, can see them peeking out behind the BBSs here. Gave it a bit of a scrub up too

[fuel]

NaN

 

 

[fuel]

NaN

 

 

[fuel]

Now all back together after everything was out, I also applied some leather colouring balm to the seats and door trims and they came up better than before, can hardly tell there is 230+k kms worth of wear on the interior. 

[shizzl]

How stinky was it when you got to her?

the water that drained out smelled like a 6 day old nappy, I was hoping the drain plugs and lifting the carpet let it breathe enough until you got to it.

carpets look awesome 

[fuel]

 

[fuel]

On 10/03/2023 at 03:01, shizzl said:

How stinky was it when you got to her?

the water that drained out smelled like a 6 day old nappy, I was hoping the drain plugs and lifting the carpet let it breathe enough until you got to it.

carpets look awesome 

surprisingly good haha, any stench must have dissipated by the time I got to it. Once done it smelt like carpet shampoo until I spilled some gear oil in the boot and now it smells like gear oil haha. The source of the gear oil was the almost complete manual conversion parts gathered from @MaxPower the GC last weekend, who knows when I'll get around to doing this though.

[Thousand Dollar Supercar]

So I'm currently back in a Mitsubishi for the first time in over 20 years. 

@fuel's wagon was facing eviction from @OSM Garage's work, so now it's hanging around my place making itself useful while my Jag is in the shop. I'm temporarily an all-Japanese-car household.

Not only is the wagon now on Evo mags, the manual conversion has been done. It's a proper Diamante 30Rse now, not a 30ARse. 

It still has the stock exhaust, which is a shame because nobody can hear the V6 manual sounds.

I will be parking this car out in the elements (since it's Japanese, you can do that) and probably barely giving it enough use. It would appreciate a better home, so if you have room in your heart to adopt a Mitsubishi and become an honorary Mitsi weirdo, get in touch with @fuel. 

[fuel]

Back in the country and thought I would do a sneaky brake upgrade on the wagon as I always felt the stock 276mm front brakes were a little on the small side - even the rear 284mm rotors are bigger than the fronts!

I picked up some 294mm rotors that had the same 24mm width and hat dimensions from a EC5A Galant VR-4 (same as Evo IV and some others) which should be a bolt on upgrade using the USDM 05-06 Outlander caliper carrier brackets like so:

 

.. except that they weren't, because the inside of the rotor hat was fouling on the ABS wheel speed sensor. I carefully filed a little bit of meat off the sensor that I felt would be fine to sacrifice, however the close proximity of the rest of the iron rotor hat was throwing off the sensor readings.

You can see the rotor differences here

[fuel]

 

You can see the rotor hat design of the later Galant VR-4/Evo IV rotor is not so ideal, and I didn't feel good about potentially machining off 2-3mm of meat from its already thinnest point. So while at Pick a Part I found some NA4W Grandis 294x26mm rotors and proceeded to test fit them in a KW Diamante AWD that also happened to be in the same yard, and despite the extra 2mm of thickness they did fit just fine. Despite looking rusty as hell, they had actually recently been replaced as there was zero lip and the wheel mounting face was still a fresh silver, and there had been evidence of anti-seize grease used on the hub flanges. So for the $30 a pop I thought these would be a better option.