With the '97 GS-T we have I would imagine some things will be wearing out soon with 111,000 miles. When do turbo's wear out and what is the sign that they are wearing out? It certainly pulls well in the higher RPM's now. I will get a new timing belt soon, it probably is do for that? What is involved in changing it, pulling the motor up to get past the motor mount, or bracing it underneath with a jack and pulling the motor mount, etc? Can you visually see if the timing belt is ok and if it has no cracks in the belt do they get changed regardless. I'm new to this type of motor. Which repair manual is the best? This car was driven by Grandma type people so it has not seen a lot of abuse, and as of now seem like it is unbelievably sound mechanical shape. It does seem to have a lot of torque steer, is this normal?

 

Timing belt has nothing to do with when the turbo spools (superchargers of course do) Im not sure if that is what you were getting at or not, but if your T belt has not been done I would highly recomend it since it is due at every 60k and if it breaks your looking at a head rebuild, to do the T belt you dont need to jack the motor at all and yes even if it looks ok it still needs to be done because it can stretch which is not good. the Haynes repair manual is good for these cars. It is FWD so yes Tq steer is gonna be bad and it is a mitsubishi sports car which always have weak suspension setup for car that make power aside from the evo anyway, every eclipse I have had has more of a luxary suspension feel which isnt helping tq steer.

Back to the turbo. It can last a long time if it is hardly ever boosted but when driving it hard let the car idle for a minuted before shutting it off to allow the turbo to cool it helps the life of them drasticly. Signs of a bad turbo are things such as "death Whine" or blowing alot of smoke under boost and or strange spool sounds

Death whine is when the turbo is dead if you try to spool it it will start as normal then go into a fast loud whine that sounds like a police sireen (only way to explain it) and the car will only hold maybe 3PSI so it will be extremelt slower

stock your car runs 10-12PSI so that kind of a drop in pressure will be a big differnce, depending on mods and turbo every 1 PSI is accountable for 8-12ish HP that is just a general number I go by to attempt to calulate power for the car roughly

 

Thanks for the info. I never meant to try and talk about the turbo spooling and timing belt in the same, just to find out about when both of them usually fail. My turbo is fine at this point and I knew that but was wondering what to look for when they go bad, but I will look at the timing belt possibly tomorrow.

 

The stock T-25 turbo is known to give out at around 100k or so. You can tell because you will get whats called death whine... basically a really really horrible sound... and you wont get any boost!

Also the clutch will be in need of changing very soon

 

did you not read my reply?? I explained the death whine lol

and his turbo is prob fine most t25s go out at 100k with the tipical DSM abuse to go along with it

 

True... he might be ok.

LOL yea i read that after... oh well

 

Clutch was just replaced by a shop before we got it. Turbo sounds fine, no death whine, just the typical whine at the right time. Just tried to teach my 16 year old girl how to drive a clutch with it though, I may need a clutch sooner than normal, but she is starting to get it. Trying to get her to feel what the car wants, instead she tried to turn the radio on. That was a no go. The radio comes after you know how to drive a clutch and don't have to listen to the motor as close. I didn't see anyone mention anything about the CV joints.

 

i never really had a problem with the cv joints but some other parts of the suspension were a pain, i had the struts go out and the wheel bearing.

 

The CVs are usually ok. They only start to go when you reach 300+hp and do really hard launches.

 

cv joints mainly go bad due to a torn boot, I put new brake pads and rotors on my car 2 days ago and found a bad boot so I just replaced both cv halfshafts. Easy to do. But my car is high milage so I expected some simple repairs. I think it has 180,000 miles on it but the motor was just rebuilt right before I got the car. Also I have put on tie-rods, front wheel bearing, and a few other things.