The Lawn Dart

[Deceus]

Awesome to see an event go off without a hitch (see, I'm also pretending that coolant leak isn't a leak)! Glad you're out there and it sounds like you are coming around the bend with this car. Hopefully we'll see you out at a NASA event soon - would be fun to see the car ripping around all weekend in HPDE 1.

The truck/car matching thing is money. I love it.

That's the plan. Autocross is just a little too much standing around for too little run time to be any real fun. Winter plans are 4 point cage and a better harness so I can hopefully get some track time in. Would really like to make a refrigerator bowl or 2 to start with but that may be a bit ambitious unless I start early. Big picture goal is to get this thing to Hyperfest next year for a hyper drive and the burnout competition.

[Jake]

Good! Can you get a bolt-in rollbar for the car or would you have to have something custom-welded? That, plus a proper seat/harness (remember, mirror it for your passenger/instructor) will go a long way in keeping you planted and feeling safe at speed.

[Deceus]

I can get some pre bent tubing from Jegs for $167 but it has be welded together and welded in. Might just be better to have a custom one installed. Probably need to reevaluate my seats too around then. The passenger seat is a cheapo reclining seat and the drive side is a decent corbeau fixed but doesn't allow for 5-6 point harnesses so I may have to replace both.

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[rherold9]

+1 on the truck/car matching. Glad to see this is finally coming and staying together successfully haha

[ScottyB]

+1 on the truck/car matching. Glad to see this is finally coming and staying together successfully haha

aside from the incredible feat of managing to stay after this project and get it successfully running, all the setback, and ingenuity trial and error, i'm not gonna lie when i say one of my favorite parts is just seeing the colors on your truck and trailered car matching

[Deceus]

Picking up the Ralliart tomorrow, figured this story was worth sharing. The transmission gave out while my girlfriend was coming to meet me in Richmond. She hears a clunk and rolled into a turn lane right outside my apartment then managed to limp it into a parking lot after it decided it wanted to go back into gear after a restart. Figured it'd be a $2k or so fix and just wrote it off until I could deal with it so it didn't ruin the weekend. Got it towed to a Mitsubishi dealership the next morning and didn't really like what I heard. The guy said these transmissions are typically not serviceable and VERY expensive to replace. He even said he was going to hold off on the oil change/inspection in case I decided to ditch the car. This lead me to do some digging and oh boy are there some disgruntled Ralliart owners out there. 1) the transmissions rarely lives past 80k-100k miles 2) they're also $10k-12K to replace and install. Code. Fucking. Brown. This car is barely worth $10k as it sits. Not gonna lie I was panicking the whole weekend after that news. On one hand I couldn't really dump $10k into this thing but I also I couldn't scrap a car I owed close to $12,000 on. Found a few shops willing to do a rebuild on it for around $2-5k but that would mean getting it shipped off to Colorado or Texas and being down to one vehicle for close to a month. Figured I'd wait to hear the official new before worrying too much and left it at that.

Got a call on Monday morning that the repairs where "only" going to be $3900. There goes my signing bonus but at least it's not as bad as it could have been. They're replacing the valvebody and apparently the fluid change alone is $400. They're only charging me for 4 hours of labor and the rest is parts. It was trying to shift into 2 gears at once and that's what the issue was. I'm still going to dump this thing as fast as I possibly can once I have it back. There's at least 2 more things on this trans that lead to catastrophic failure: the shift fork and the torque damper spring. This was Getrag's first stab at a dual clutch transmission and apparently Mitsubishi thought a $35,000 car was the perfect lab rat for a $12,000 transmission ... WTF. They also put the service interval at 60k when most people who know anything about this type of transmission says 30k is probably much more realistic.

The dealership has been really cool though. They replaced my ACD pump under warranty even though the ecu was flashed. I know that definitely wasn't a cause for that failure since they slapped a poorly sealed fluid pump under the car, right behind the rear tire and hoped for the best. Spoiler: they pretty much all failed due to corrosion in no time. So much so they extended the warranty on them to 10 years/100k miles because they eventually realized how bad they fucked up but were rejecting people with any kind of tune. The guy at the shop told me not to worry about it since there was no way a basic off the shelf tuner would cause anything related to this issue. They rushed all the parts in and got done before the end of the week. I was already out of town expecting them to at least take a week to get the parts in and get it done so that was a surprise.

Sooooo now I get to drive this thing around knowing there's a $10,000 time bomb inside it until I can find a buyer, pray for me.

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[D_Eclipse9916]

Carmax and run! Now it's time to finish off the green trifecta

[Senor_Taylor]

Can you do an insurance claim on this? Something broke on your car and it'll cost more than the price of the vehicle to fix. Is there anyway to spin that into a total loss? Most likely not, but it's a thought.

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[Jake]

Can you do an insurance claim on this? Something broke on your car and it'll cost more than the price of the vehicle to fix. Is there anyway to spin that into a total loss? Most likely not, but it's a thought.

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I've heard if you drive through a surprise ocean on the only road that leaves Outer Banks in the middle of a hurricane, you can have insurance cover total drivetrain failure.

[Deceus]

Yeah I'd have to have an "accident" or some kind of natural disaster to get insurance involved.

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[Senor_Taylor]

Drive over a stump

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[Deceus]

Carmax and run! Now it's time to finish off the green trifecta

After this ride the green trifecta would be completed with something more like this:



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[Deceus]

So I figured it was time to get to the bottom of this trans leak considering it was really keeping me from driving the Demon anywhere. Didn't want to cause a fire under the car and watch the damn thing burn to the ground just yet. Got the car in the air and the helicoil kit ready but I was really nervous to drill into transmission housing. Not exactly something easy to un-fuck. I also wasn't really sold on the theory of the pan not being sealed. Yeah those 2 bolts probably aren't torqued down the best but the tranny fluid was getting everywhere. EVERYWHERE. And not just seaping out of the side.

Figured I'd wipe everything down and see what I could find. Found entirely too much fluid on top of the transmission for the pan gasket to be the issue and I was back to thinking it was damn plug I was using in place of the neutral safety switch. Buuuuuut I knew that was sealed up pretty good. Then it dawned on me there's 2 transmission cooler lines right above where I'm wiping down the worst of the mess. They're also up pretty high and under enough pressure that they'd be able to spray a decent area given the chance. The front one was bone dry thankfully because there's no way I was getting a wrench on it. The back one however ... was loose as hell. BINGO. Not sure how it got loose but this was definitely the source of the issue. Took 2 trys to get it tight enough because I've learned to be cautious about aluminium AN fittings. They go from leaking a bit to tight enough to ruined all in the span of a 1/4 turn if you're not careful.

Hit the bolts on the water neck because I saw a few more water spots around it on the intake. Nothing to really worry about unless it gets worse. Hopefully that takes care of it and I'm not looking for a 3rd upper radiator hose. Still need to dive into tuning the EFI a little better but it's running good and not dying when I hit the brakes hard now. I'm thinking it was just hitting areas of map that I hadn't before since I wasn't really putting a load on it under braking like I do with the hydroboost. Won't really be able to tell until I get it hooked up to my laptop.

[Jake]

Easy fixes are the best kind! Glad it was just a loose line and nothing more complex.

[Deceus]

Easy fixes are the best kind! Glad it was just a loose line and nothing more complex.

Yeah, eventually I am gonna have to repair those threads but I'll take the quick, easy fix for now.

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[Deceus]

So apparently if there isn't 10 things to fix on this thing I kinda forget I have it haha. Figured I post something other than drama for a change. Working out of town and upper 90s weather really limited how much I drove this thing over the summer. Had a gorgeous weekend ahead and no real excuses other than the power steering leak so I reserved an auto transport for the MBCA autocross last Sunday and planned to attend the welcome back C&C at MAAP. I wanted to drag it to the car show Friday evening as well but we had the kid's back to school picnic to attend so I took it there instead.



C&C went well, chilled with Dave for a good bit and had a pretty good time. No real incidents and it was great cruising weather.



Sunday was also pretty smooth although slow moving. Didn't leave Winchester til after 5 but the course was fun and the weather was perfect again. Certainly beats the 100 degree days even if they tend to end by 3ish. It's always cool seeing the truck and car together, definitely helps me feel like I'm doing alright in life.



Utterly destroying my front tires, definitely committing to a better autocross setup ASAP now the car doesn't really need anything else and is running pretty consistent. Going to keep an eye out on the facebook marketplace since I'm driving through both Richmond and Hampton Roads next weekend. Surely someone has a set of 18x8 5x114.3 wheels out there that aren't $1000

[ScottyB]

Surely someone has a set of 18x8 5x114.3 wheels out there that aren't $1000

can you grab some OEM's off of something like a mustang/camaro? those came stock with 18s and it seems like someone, somewhere is trying to get a set out of their attic for a couple hundred bucks. not sure on hub circle size but it might be something you can get machined to clear if the dart's is larger.

[Deceus]

Surely someone has a set of 18x8 5x114.3 wheels out there that aren't $1000

can you grab some OEM's off of something like a mustang/camaro?  those came stock with 18s and it seems like someone, somewhere is trying to get a set out of their attic for a couple hundred bucks.  not sure on hub circle size but it might be something you can get machined to clear if the dart's is larger.

Yeah that does appear to be the big issue. The hub on my wilwood setup is apparently rather large at 3.10/78.7 fak. Don't see too many 18x8 options with that kinda opening. Probably going to be stuck machining a set for sure at least for the front.

Ugh found a decent set of wheels with some P zeros for $700 but the hub sizing was like 73mm, not sure machining almost 3mm of material off each side is gonna fly. Might just have to bite the bullet and drop the money for a cheaper set of new American Racing wheels and just look for a decent set of used tires. Trying to remember I don't really need something super serious right now but also don't want to trade one crappy setup for another that's only slightly less shitty.

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Looks like Riddler 650s are the only real sub $200 option I see on Summit racing. Cant say I hate em:




Would definitely need to blackout that lip.

[ScottyB]

those wheels look awesome.

as for 3mm off the hub, if there's enough meat on the hub mating surface and around the lugs, i wouldn't be stressed about it. i don't know that i've ever seen a wheel actually crack or fail at the hub, its always the spokes from fatigue stress or the barrel from impacts. the hub circle isn't carrying any weight anyway its all on the lug surface and hub face.

[Deceus]

I still really want these but they're $200 more for the set and they'll have to be machined:



Should probably hold off and get the set I want since wheels are such a big part in the look of the car. I'd hate to hate them but also I really want something sooner than later for autocrossing this fall/winter. I'll probably just send it since it's the last piece to the puzzle. Just need to find a "gently" used set of ~245 Rival S, Pilot Sports or something of that nature.

edit: oooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrr just mount some 205/50s and get an extra set of the 15x7s I have for $450 and just call it a day. I don't really need 245s at the moment. Just dropping 2 inches of sidewall and moving to a 200tw tire will probably be more than enough for now. That's less than a single 18" wheel + tire if I'm going new.