Where do I start, my journey with my 97 Eclipse GST started somewhere around mid summer of 2004. Before purchasing the car I looked at many different vehicles. Everything from 240sx's, Jeep YJ's, to Vteekkk powered vehicles. Nothing caught my attention like a dsm. The sound of the turbo, blow off valve and just the way the car looked touched my heart. Little did I know this was the start of a fun but crazy relationship that I would never be able to escape.
What my dsm looked like a little after I got it. The car was by no means perfect, but the body was straight. There were a few things that I needed to address but majority of it was an easy fix. For example, the side skirts were hanging off the car, and the valve cover was leaking badly.
About a month later of owning the car, and fixing things here and there, I bought my first mods. It was a dejon L-pipe, Greddy Type-S and Apexi muffler (I had a exhaust shop build me a custom cat-back with the Apexi muffler on the end).
Sometime in early 2005 I was hit by a woman who ran a stop sign. It was nothing major, just a slight bump on the front bumper. But the angle at which she hit me, cracked/ripped the stock bumper in half. Luckily the only thing that needed to be replaced was the front bumper, and what better way then to get a "cool" new one that fit the trending style of cars at the time... Yes think F&F... But wait, this was actually a nicer Stillen front bumper that was quality. It was made to flow with the stock side skirts and body, meaning no need for aftermarket sideskirts or rear bumper. Plus it was polyurethane, which actually fit better then the stock bumper.
At this point I got tired of the stock horse power and little t25 maxing out at its efficiency rage of 16psi... So time to upgrade. After doing some research I found that a cheap turbo upgrade was to run a stock 1g turbo (14b). I purchased the 14b for about $100 at the time.
Since this was my first turbo swap I did not know what to expect. My first test drive and impression of the turbo was nothing but disappointing. The car felt super sluggish and would barely get into boost. Not knowing too much about turbos I thought "dang this this is laggy as hell." And well, after racing a prelude and racing to it, I knew something was wrong. So I tore the thing apart once again. Come to find out the turbine housing was cracked badly where the internal flapper door was, and the turbine housing was all brunt and bent up. Something I wish I would have payed attention to when I first purchased the 14b. But all that means is to go bigger right? I ended up replacing the ruined 14b with a big 16g. At the same time I installed supporting mods such as a Walbro 190, Evo 560 injectors, pocketlogger and a Apexi AFC.
With the larger turbo, and increased boost I had to to something about the little stock intercooler that the car came with. So what better way then to upgrade to a front mount intercooler! This was roughly mid 2006. I also got rid of the "bling bling" wheels and got something that looked a bit nicer on the car.
At this point the boost bug had bit me. Upgraded from the Big 16g to a PTE 5031e. I think this was around 2007. I also upgraded to larger injectors pte 780's and got a custom eprom ecu with burned chip to compensate for the larger injectors. I also used the S-AFC to fine tune the car.
I rocked this setup for quite some time. It was surprisingly reliable as well. Buuuuuttttt..... FWD was not cutting it for me. I needed traction! So it was time to start collecting parts I needed to convert my fwd to awd. Luckily a guy in San Jose had the same idea, until he sold his gst to get an Evo (ModuleUnknown) I think his username was. So I picked up all the parts I needed to do the conversion, March 2008. But I didn't want to rush into it so I let the parts collect dust.
Winter of 2008 I went to my second dsmtuners meet, where I met yours truly Mr. Ted (orange on the left). He was someone I looked up to in the dsm game after seeing his 1g Talon on Youtube spanking most, and every car on the street. Best of all it was all built in his garage. We talked about dsm's and he gave me respect for wanting to do the awd swap myself. This definitely got me motivated to do the awd swap.
May 2009 I started the AWD conversion with my good friend Nick. The conversion took about a week to do. Most of the work was done over the weekend, and not much was touched during the week. I would say the conversion could be done in about a weekend if necessary.
TO BE CONTINUED
-- Edited by Killa_DSM on Wednesday 29th of January 2014 01:51:07 AM
