Hello guy, Im new here and was intresting in picking up a 2003 Mitsu Eclipse GS for a good price. The only problem is that it has 230,000 km on it and he says the engine lifters tick. The car is drivable.

So my question for you guys is..

1. What should i watch out for when buying a 3g
2. Would an engien rebuild be too expensive for these cars?
3. Would you recommend it to a student / worker for a daily driver in cold canadian winters?

Any help is great,

Regards,

Bobby

 

3g's are very reliable last a long time, the 4 cyl are especially easy to work on also

There are a few common problems with them though, 1 is the lifter tick, it doesnt hurt the car but it there, mines been doing it for while and i got alittle over 100k miles. The dashes also tend to crack and the clearcoat on some of the early ones tends to fade and make the paint not look very well


I dont know how much it is to rebuild the engine but there are several 4 cyl that i know of that lasted past 250,000 miles which is about 400,000 km. so if the car has been taken care of you wont need to rebuild for a while if it was taken care of.

But make sure the timing belt and water pump has been changed as it is supposed to be replaced every 60k miles, 100k km, and that can be pretty expensive to have replaced.

I know there are a few members on other sites from canada that drive 3g's and I expect they hold up well. Mine has been my daily driver for nearly 5 years and has never not started.

 

Thanks for the help Killswitch.

So the lifters ticking is not a serious problem? why havent you gone around to fixing it?

 

The only way to fix it is to replace the lifters, and since it does no harm to the car i really dont want to go through the trouble to get them out and replaced. now if i had to replace the head gasket or something along those lines i would go ahead and do the lifters while i was at it

 

Thank you kill switch. You have been a great help for me. I thought the lifters ticking is a serious problem which is why i was considering a rebuild. I have one more question. Is there a way to check the codes of the Che k engine light without connecting to a pc?

 

well around here you can take it to any auto parts store (autozone, advance auto parts, etc.) and they will read your code for free. i imagine that it is the same there if you have the auto parts stores there but not real sure

 

Ok well I test drove the car and the ticking is accually very loud and fast is that like other one that do that? and the check engine light is also on.. could that be because of the lifters ticking?

Other than that the car drove fine..

 

the lifter tick can be very loud and it will be fast, mine actually stopped by itself for the most part, just soft ticking at low rpm's.

but get the c.e.l checked before you buy it and see what it is

 

most of the time changing the oil will reduce the sound of the lifters. Also the CEL could be anything, typically a CEL is minor only relating to a sensor or something. But its worth looking into before buying