I own a 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse, GSX, and I love this car. I've driven it for the past five years, its fast, its fun, I love the body, and I've always told myself I want to keep it forever.

Problem is, its starting to have problems, and I'm at the cusp of deciding if I should just sell it now and buy a new (and far less classy) car, or tough it out, and get some repairs done on it.

My car currently has roughly 105,000 miles on it. Its having some squeaking belt problems that come from my car having a start-up idling problem. I took it into a local mechanic, and he was able to clean the part up and get my car back to normal. However, he told me the problem would return, and it is. That alone should cost me 1000 dollars in repairs (He said the part alone was 350, and I would have to go to a dealership b/c it requires a specific Mitsubishi tool that he didn't have). Anyways, on to my question.

Is an eclipse worth keeping past the 100,000 mile mark? I love the car, but if I have to put thousands of dollars into it every year just to make it to work, I should probably bail now. Any and all suggestions/thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

it all depends how much you love your car. If you started to learn how to work on your car, you're only stuck paying for parts and not labor. Its all about your personal preference. The second generation eclipses are starting to get old and will need repairs. Its natural that parts will break down. Look at it this way though. Once you fix a part, you should have roughly the same amount of miles and year before it should need to be replaced again. Like i said though, its all about how much you love you car and if you REALLY want to keep it or not. Good luck brother and if you need anything else don't hesitate to post a question. A lot of the guys on this site know more about these cars than mitsubishi techs.

 

run down a tool truck and get the tool your self and find out out how budget tuners do it , or guys who don't pay 40% mark up on parts.and some one 75 dollars an hour to do something you can do your self

 

i agree with both of them. Lets just say this is only thestart of problems. The car is 10 years old. You have to expect problems with it. That seems like a pretty steep price to me for repairs for the type of problems your having. But id find out first what it is he is saying you need to replace and what tool you need. And go from there.

 

its a dsm, its going to have problems, we all face it, but it teaches US as the owners to fix it ourselves.

 

true that, if i got the manual, i can do almost anything. which reminds me i gotta buy the chilton's manual

 

if it was me i would just keep it. its 10 years old and a dsm, you are going to have problems. remember dsm = dumb stupid mitsubishi.
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Truth be told, I've never worked on cars before. I did pick up the eclipse manual recently, and I'll dig up the invoice that talked about the problem, maybe I can get some advice from you guys.

My only worry is busting something in my car and not being able to go to work the next day! If only I could afford two cars.....

 

I would never suggest to anyone making a 4g63t powered DSM a DD... Especially a 7bolt.

 

im sure you wont mess anything up too bad, just use common sense...if you know you cant work on a certain part, just take it to a tech...but other than that i think anybody can do 50-80% of their own work on cars if they are willing to learn on their own or with a buddy.