Thread: 2003 mitsubishi eclipse install

Daves 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS

Just a little background on this vehicle, it had one other owner prior to myself. I was on deployment overseas Apr 2005 and overheard one of my fellow airman talking about a car he was trying to sell. The only problem was his ex-wife had the car, but the judge made her give it to him. That is what she did, however he didnt say in one piece or not. I came home several months later and there i was minding my own business when i saw this eclipse sitting on blocks with the windows busted out, perched in a field. Everyday i would pass this car on my way to work, finally i stopped, knocked on the door and there that guy was I was deployed with. I asked him about the car, he told me what happened. I went to take a look at it, the dash was destroyed, carpet and seats soaked and mildewed, engine knocking like the three round burst of an M-16A2.
I knew i had hit the jackpot, i love a good project!!! The odometer only read 35,000 miles on it, he never filed a claim so the title and carfax was still good, and he only owed 4,000 bucks. Time to wheel and deal, i went to the bank, pulled out $4,500 and bought it the next day. Towed it to my garage, yanked the motor and tranny and completely gutted the interior.
After tearing into the engine, i discovered it wasnt in too bad of shape, the block and head were perfect! Pistons, rods, crank, not so good, valves bent as well. So i began the rebuild process adding better performance internals after having the block machined and resurfaced and the head ported, polished, new valves, seats ect. Couple of bolt-ons, i wanted a turbo, but too expensive, must come later, so HKS catback exaust, Injen intake, ect.

Now the interior was a little bit trickier. After i completely gutted it, i went through and simple greened all of the metal, I had the dash all laid out on the ground so it would be the first thing on my list to do:

I have to dig through all of my pics but here are a couple of the screen fabrication and HU bezel

I then filled every crevice of the interior with insulating foam and dynomated over it. Laid down the groundwork for the pc and audio system. I started with MB Quart compontents, Optima battery, 0/0ga power wire, upgraded the ground to 0/0ga as well, making sure to keep the power and RCA cables on opposite sides of the car to reduce EM interference from the power cable. At first i had a Kicker L7 12, powered by a 1800W monoblock SPL amp. The speakerbox was made of 90% fiberglass, it took me about 2wks to fabricate, but it sounded awesome:

Unfortunately the weekend after i upholstered it with vinyl someone broke in and stole it. The good thing was he left half a finger sitting inside my dash where he tried to remove my screen. Unfortunately my car was a bloody mess afterward. However it did prompt me to make a new ceiling panel out of fiberglass, due to the fact the old one was saturated with bloody hand prints:

MY GHETTO CEILING AND SCREEN INSTALL
(yes that is what you might think it is)

I took the insurance money, purchased a Kicker L7 15 and a 4500W SPL class D monoblock amp, also upgraded the PC:

(I built this one out of 3/4" MDF instead of fiberglass)




BEFORE

(crappy M2ATX, M10000 MB, 80gb HD, Win XP just sitting in dash)


NOW
(M4atx, Zotac IOn MB, 1TB SATA HD, 4GB RAM, Win 7 64bit)



(Yes the socks crammed into the vent holes are clean)







MY M4ATX PSU and COOLING FAN
Its sooo purty!!! Best PSU ever!!!




SUCK THE COLD AIR UP THROUGH BOTTOM

I then decided to do something a little different with my screen, so i added a 3D tribal dragon down the side, inspired by a tattoo i found online:

BEFORE

AFTER

As you can see I have put allot of work into this project, but with most projects you are never done, always something new and exciting to add, so i will constantly be updating this thread, feel free to leave any comments or ask any questions.

Thank you,

Dave