Leaderboard

Happy new year my friends, To thank all our loyal customers for another great year there will be free shipping on orders over $100.00 of Starquestparts. This goes for the entire site from bearings to cylinder heads. This runs from Jan 1- 2025 to Jan 15th- 2025 so get your list ready!. http://www.dadsengineparts.com Thank you! Dad

Great fitting Silicone vacuum lines, fits 4.0 and 4.5mm ports on Conquest and Starion, nice snug fit. $1.25 a foot. http://www.dadsengineparts.com

Hello all...It's been a long time since I've been here. I apologize for my absence, but life took a turn and I had to focus on other things. I've had several texts, calls, and emails over the years. It's been great to hear from some of you. We just bought our first house, and while going through boxes and such, came upon one of the calendars I did for the club. A lot of good memories came rushing back, so decided to log on and see what's what. I hope the SQ community is still going strong. Give a shout and say hi. Cheers, Nick

Most likely BK227WS with the 24mm, with the snap ring, input bearing. The BK227AWS is for non-intercooled applications and has the 21mm bearing. Although, I have seen an 87 transmission with the flanged input shaft bearing! Maybe a fluke...maybe someone replaced the pan or something. Not sure, but it was a stamped steel pan KM132 out of an 87 and had the 88/89 input shaft bearing in it! That kit will give you the main ball bearings, syncs, and gaskets/seals needed to do a basic rebuild. It will not have the needle roller bearings that are in each gear set. It won't have the retainer or shift works as well. It does include a main shaft nut though. But, more importantly, it doesn't include the shims needed to shim your countershaft. That was the biggest **** when I rebuilt mine. Mitsubishi sold the shims individually. I ordered a few based on some quick measurements. Came from Japan, 4-6 weeks. Turns out, when I torqued everything down, I had more play than measured and needed to order a thicker shim. Ordered a few more of different sizes...again 4-6 weeks. Have no clue if they are still available or not. If I had to do it again, I think I would work with a local machine shop to have some custom shims made for it. Coupled with the lack of available parts, the disassembly is a PIA. Lots of frustrations with pulling the bearings including making custom pullers, etc. I recently added a few more photos to the end of my KM132 rebuild thread in the FAQ forum to show my custom main shaft center bearing puller. I also saw a guy on FB use a harbor freight 20T press to drive out the bearing. Not that I'm advocating a swap, I hate swaps, even if it is just the tranny....but, it may be the easier way to go (and more enjoyable/rewarding).

you may think its expensive but the great thing is they still sell them.also if we dont support mks,dads,etc we will regret it when they are gone.its harder and harder to find parts.thank you guys for still doing it.

Hey Guys and Gals, check out our new website Dads Engine Parts Dad

Some time ago I was trying to grab the VSS Signal from the read switch to input into my ECU. Someone else was also trying to do the same. I think that post was lost during the great outage. Anyways... after many electronics projects and owning a volt meter (and properly know how to read circuit diagrams) I finally figured it out. The VSS Signal comes from a reed switch. That reed switch only switches a ground signal. You can grab the signal from one of the connectors, but I wanted to do non-destructive. I grabbed a ring terminal and attached it under the screw directly to the right of the speedometer. You want to use the lower of the two screws. I'm going to call it VSS-Out This is a floating ground. So to use the signal, you need to add a pull up to 12v (for most applications, 5v for others). This gives you a high signal (+12v or +5v) as the normal state and a low signal (ground) when the switch activates. There are 4 pulses per revolution, resulting in a square wave (⎍⎍⎍) . This should work for just about any ECU unless the ecu is expecting an AC Sine wave or VR Signal. You will need to attach a diode inline from VSS-Out if you are expecting the intermittent wipers to still work, abs, or the cruise control. The line on the diode should point towards the cluster. Attach a wire to the opposite side of the diode with a 10k resistor and connect the other leg of the resistor to 12v. Then from the side of the resistor opposite 12v you can attach the wire to the ECU. I attached a basic diagram

In my case, 2 years living in Ohio. I used to live in Omaha back in my early years, so I am no stranger to what kind of havoc exposure to salted roads can do to a car, but up until now never had a timeline. when I bought the current CQ, the fact that it had lived the majority of its life in Arizona made me overlook the first 2 years it spent in hell. ( read that: Ohio) This is what’s left of the left rear quarter apron. This is the rough cut after removing the lower skirt on the driver’s side.. Annnndd..this is what had become of the wheel well lip, all of which was filled full of body putty in an attempt to hide this mess. Ordinarily, this woulda/shoulda been on the passenger side of the car, due to its constant exposure of curb slush, but the passenger side of the car was “normal”. The tale of the tape best I can see/tell was that the car sustained a small amount of front quarter panel damage that caused a separation of the inner wheel tub from the outer quarter panel, and dude drove it through a couple of winters in Ohio that way. And give Ohio, Nebraska, Michigan, Indiana, or any other rust belt state two whole years to leave crud somewhere where a pressure washer will never get to it… Sweet home Alabama. fortunately for me is that I have modest metal fab skills, I feel confident that I can fix this….repair pics to follow.

I have had rear differential gaskets reproduced for the Starquests, I also stock the axle seals and front pinion seals. You can get them at my site http://www.dadsengineparts.com Well I tried uploading a picture 48kb in size and get a message I can only upload file no more than 53.7 kb ?????

“Full” story: There were 2 versions used in 85 and I did not receive pictures of the harness-side of the ECU which had two green plug receivers vs green and yellow. He contacted me Saturday and a replacement was UPS’d out Monday morning, with tracking. So yes, it was made right, immediately. -Starquest Steve

Found it and it tests good under vacuum and pressure. Should clean up well. The rust on the bottom side isn't bad. I'll send the whole distributor. I don't have a use for it since going MPI and ditching this unit. Shoot me a PM with your shipping address.

Hi everyone, I was able to get the car to start-- nothing serious. Removing the sparkplugs and reseating them and getting a new battery did the trick. It's been my weekend driver, wonderful vehicle and I love it. I don't like to drive it when many people are out though for the reason in the title. It was pointed out to me about two weeks ago and I'm trying to figure out for the life of me why this would be an issue. Two months into ownership, I'm really impressed with the care this car was given by the previous owner. There was a thread posted here, maybe a decade back that someone said you'd see rear brake light and rear blinkers not working if there was an issue with the hazard button on the dash hood. I don't seem to have any issues there. I also can't find the thread again, unfortunately. My front hazard mode works fine, my front blinkers will blink and I'm all good. If there's any where I should start besides changing out the bulbs or something (already went through that, got a whole set of bulbs for every lamp and fixture for the car), it'd be appreciated. Just to reiterate, my rear blinkers and brake lights are not working. I'm able to turn on the rear lights otherwise, that doesn't seem to be an issue either! The body work has been going well otherwise, all the rust has been removed and I've made myself a fiberglass mold that I've printed on a 3d printer for the rocker trims for the 85 flatbody that have rotted. This has been a wonderful process and I can't stop loving this car. (Would be happy to pass the .stl for it if any of you have a flatbody. I couldn't find the original part when looking it up, so I figured I'd just draft it up!) I've also fixed the upholstery on the driver's seat. Looks and feels good as new.

That title heading needs an explanation. In 2016 when I had the car painted during restoration, the paint shop told me not to wax the car for the first year. Well, 1 year turned into 2 years, into 3, into 4 ... now its 9 years later. I haven't washed the car with actual water in probably the last 4 or 5 years. (I really do not like washing Starquests due to the foam front bumper support holding water and rotting out the bumper support). The car is garage kept, only driven on nice days and I've always used a Griot's Speed Shine spray wax on it - so it's not like the paint is seeing any abuse, but for whatever reason I was thinking about it this week and I felt like today was the day. Gave it a quick wash Went over the whole car with a clay bar. And then waxed it with some Meguiar's Mirror Glaze. I got this stuff for Christmas from a good friend. I've never really been a user of Meguiar's products, so this was my first time ever using this. I'm impressed. FYI - All these photos are unedited. No filters, just my phone as is. And I took a minute to polish the exhaust tips, which I haven't done in a while. All in all, a pretty meaningless post, but I haven't posted anything meaningful in a while - so why not some pictures of the car! Just trying to keep this forum alive. 👍

Dad aka Randy Gaines, a long time trusted member and part supplier for our cars offers this on his website: https://dadsengineparts.com/dep/productview.php?product_id=Inline Fuel filt Jimmy

Hey everybody, Hope this post finds you all well, I have been lurking for a little while and watching lots of videos to see what I'd be getting myself into with getting myself a Dodge Conquest/Mitsubishi Starion. Really love their look, flat or wide body. I recently got an 85 Conquest from a friend who had it laying in storage. I like to think it's in pretty good condition and the interior is a real gem. The digital dash is to die for, and there's just something all too charming about the car as a whole. I know that I'm in for some surprises with a 40 year old car, but I'm excited to start. I've studying up as much as I can about the G54B and some common failure points from you guys, and I know I'm in for a very fun ride. The only real issues on it seem to be a head gasket related problem, some minor panel rust on the wheel wells, and some clear-coat separation on the hood. I'm excited to get this thing punched up and looking beautiful. A little about myself: I am a software developer and studied electrical engineering. I live in Texas. New homeowner and starting a family soon (I hope!) I'd like to see myself in manufacturing one day, but programming just seems to pay the bills a little better. I like to program for fun too, I work a lot on signals processing as a matter of hobby and real-time optimizations for graphics rendering, but my heart will always be stuck on seeing something real and physical and I hope to be in a field that'll let me do that before I die. My family used to run a machine shop and I was raised in that, and I miss the days of being able to ask my dad, "Hey, I want to make something..." and he'd show me. Life story aside, I hope to get to continue getting great information and insight from you guys and that I won't try your patience too much when I ask a question or seven. Thanks again!

Here's some more pictures. These were kindly taken by my friend who offered me the car. Very excited to get in and do some deep cleaning but, just looking at everything, it really appears to be in fine condition compared to the few I've found around Texas that I could get within my budget and repair-tolerance. Gas tank is definitely first on the list in terms of things. Undercarriage looked great too. He did a wonderful job of keeping this in good of shape as one could for 40 years old when it was his occasional driver. I've scoped out a reasonable budget to make it run, and some overflow to "make it OEM+" (as my mechanic friend puts it). But, first things first is just hitting those common problems as discussed. Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. Here's a picture where you can see the rust on the rear panel wheel well a little more clearly. I'm not too worried about that, all things can be fixed in time.

That response has you rebuilding the bottom end ... cleaning the block and putting in new bearings. If you just had a blown head gasket you could literally just pull the head and leave the block in the car and replace the gasket. Depending on the severity of the situation, of course, but that response is more of a total engine rebuild.

Ha, yea i miss it.

I personally don't know anyone who has one, let alone someone who has one for sale. That said, if you do some digging on here there was someone years ago who had posted a link to the audio file. If that file is still around and you have some graphic art skills you might be able to ship the cassette image and recreate it? Heck, I think I'm talking myself into this.

Finally purchased the remaining parts needed to install the Motocam MS3 engine management system. Rebuild the rear suspension two years ago. Plans are to have it on the road soon and mechanically sorted by fall. Then to tackle the horrible color change.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there. My reservations are from Thursday til Sunday, 7/24-7/27 at Econo Lodge PF Riverside. Jimmy

At the end of last season my OEM rad starting leaking. I took it to a shop to have it looked at, but they wanted crazy money to fix it. So, I'm eventually going to attempt to fix it myself, but for now I needed to get the car back up and running so I can get the car moved and get a different project in there. Anyway, I ordered up the CXRacing Radiator since it's about the only left you can get. I've heard and read on here often about "fitment issues". I wanted to share my experiences and feedback here. Showed up boxed really well. It's a nice quality pc, gives a good impression out of the box. I decided while I had it all apart to clean up the fans. So I took them apart. I cleaned all the bugs and road rash with Simple Green and then scrubbed them down with some 3M pads. Then I pained them white with some plastic adhesion spray paint. Reinstalled them. Still have some Natallica repro stickers left over from my restoration - so I figured it was time to bust these out too. Remounted them in the OEM locations. When I went to mount the fans I ran into some of my first issues. Each fan has 4 mount points, on each fan, only 2 of them matched up, the other 2 needed slight adjustment. Not bad, but just off by about a mm or two. I used a Dremel with a metal grinding bit to enlarge the radiator holes out a bit. After adjusting a few holes I got everything mounted up alright. Then I ran into the next issue. When I test fit it in the car, I had a vary similar issue withe mount tabs from CXRacing. I had to enlarge them just slightly to get the holes to line up there too. In this pic I had to enlarge the right hole a bit. Finally able to get it installed and mounted up. Fitment is definitely tight as others have said. Here's a pic of the distance between the fan blade and the water pump pulley. There's about an 1/8 inch clearance. Here it is from the front. All back together. I did have a little trouble with the OVCP, but after some "persuading", I got things to line up. So, overall, a pretty easy install. Not 100% plug and play. But, if you have any capabilities at all, it shouldn't be bad to overcome any fitment issues you might run into.

I ran into this site via a google search on a totally different topic. Has a vast majority of the dealer brochures (perhaps complete for the North American market on the starion variant only....was there ever an 89 starion brochure????). I was surprised on how many of these brochure's I owned already. I also like their color chart, best one I've seen for these cars. Darren's ImportArchive / Japanese Car Brochures and Paint Codes

The passing control relay (plugged into B-39 to the left of the glove box behind the dash) is primarily comprised of circuitry to raise the headlights. The reason it looks so complicated is because of the theft alarm circuit that is built into it. The ECU (this is really the ETACS computer under the driver seat, it is sometimes referred to as ECU in the schematics) can activate the headlights to raise and flash when the car decides it is being stolen (there's lots of ways to trigger it). I can break the pinout down if you really want me to, but that's the gist of it. These cars are pretty easy to steal regardless, so there's not much harm done in removing the anti theft headlight flashing feature. If you ctrl-f in the electrical schematics on the phrase "passing control relay", it describes this anti theft feature in great detail. I would certainly not waste $100 on a replacement and wire in a suitable relay with a plug of your choice. It really doesn't matter. Just make sure it's a common part that isn't NLA or discontinued. Any time I have a part like this fail on one of my cars, I find a suitable part that is readily available and install it. I have not had to do this with the passing control relay as I have several spares. When the day comes, it will be cut out.

Thanks to @psu_Crash I was able to get a hold of the vector logos that Natallica used to create custom floor mats for a group buy back in the day, so I figured I'd share that here in case someone else needs it, see attached. It's an EPS file, which is a vector format, and includes the "Star Wars" Starion logo, Conquest logo, rear hatch Conquest graphics, a custom Starion version of that, TSi logo, flatty "turbo" logo and more. I hope it can help someone else trying to reproduce these! Conquest & Starion Hatch logos_Mike.eps

I pulled the HVAC and replaced all the foam on flapper doors and I'm very glad I did. Everything I touched turned to dust so no way any of it would have sealed, plus condenser was very dirty.

I'm starting to think it is an ETACS issue, what your describing is kind of what an immobilizer does. These cars had ETACS issues, especially the 87-model year. Try swapping it out with another one and see if that solves the issue.

The technica cluster does not need any signals from the ECU. I can provide you the entire pinout and schematic that I have drawn up, although the colors may be inaccurate as I put it in an 87. It is currently unfinished. I converted my car from analog -> digital gauges and still need to finish the HVAC patch cable that I've been putting off, but the rest of it is finished and confirmed working. When this is done completely, I will be posting the schematics for free for anyone to use (unlike a lot of people who have charged for these things in the past). I can send you the unfinished one if you'd like

Hey all, new membership to this site but was a member along time ago with user name fish fingers… I’m a very experienced starion owner here in New Zealand! anyhow I’m looking for a big six bolt lsd diff either complete with torque tube or just a outer housing and torque tube and possibly a 3.9 ratio would be great also- I have axles and a lsd centre already- will look at any options - must be able to ship to New Zealand. Thanks in advance.

I hope you all had a wonderful day with friends and family!

Agreed! Merry Christmas (1 day late) everyone!

And it runs again. Must be a Christmas miracle. Or the fact that I hooked up the wire that actually goes to the fuel pump and now it works. I dug so far into this car all for a single ground cable. Then created other issues for myself when I tore it apart. But now I know it's right and I'm more knowledgeable about the whole thing. Now to make sure things work right before I tear it all out and put an LS into it 🙂

Great to hear man, thanks for the update. I've learned from owning these cars is they will act crazy with dirty/bad grounds.

Hi Merv, I have both in stock and I’m happy to look into shipping, but the rear diff would be a heavy/expensive cost most likely to ship it to New Zealand. I’m happy to check if you’d like. I have shipped other parts to New Zealand before to a couple of other Starion owners. I’ll send you a message. Steve

He is Steve Sutherland on Facebook. Jimmy

Well…. Im retired. This car is my “job”. Every morning, I go into the garage at 9am, and work on it relentlessly till the trend of the day at 5-6. Sometimes, I’ll take a lunch break, sometimes I’ll just work thru till the end…dragging my a-ss up the stairs at the end of the day wiped out. Some days I’ll hang my head, cause the car kicked my a-ss,….other days( like today), I’ll come up with a little smile. Knowing that it was my foot that did the a-ss kicking that day. Today was one in the “ Mike wins” column. The interior is wired. Everything that I can think of has been accounted for. Gauges, Audio, Boost, Afr….. I put the carpet back in. You probably cant see it from this pic, but there are no factory connectors going to the gauges. Weatherpack connectors are now there. You can see the electronic power steering motor and its controller under the column. If you’ll look to center, you’ll see the external crossovers for the component 5.25 speakers up front that’ll be under the head-unit. I also have component 6.5’s in the rear factory location. Kinda up in the air on whether I try and start it w/o the dash in place, or just put it all back together and pray.

I had a 347/tr3550 combo back in 2005 that I drove the hotrod powertour. The car was fine at speed and in light traffic, but stop-n-go was pure hell. I had a universal fit aluminum radiator mounted in front of the saddle, and whatever electric cooling fan that was available at the time sucking air thru it, (probably 16” diameter). I tried a diy shroud, but that didn’t seem to help much. today you can fab up some pretty strong dual 12’s that’ll pull a lot of cfm if you haven’t already, and even put a 14-16” pusher on the other side for traffic if you’re not already. That is how my current car is done, but I have yet to drive it to offer testimony as to how it works.

I have the electrical diagram printed out and pasted together to make it "easier" to follow. I'll take a look when I get out there this morning and see if I have any pointers on a probable cause. Edit: Stating on page 178 of the electrical section in the service manual, it shows the ground points. Although I'm not seeing one called out for the headlights right away.

Yes they are all the same. 83-89

Finding replacement will be difficult due to the strange ohm rating on them

if you do change the dash speakers they have to be super shallow or will not fit.

Replace the tweeter speakers while you're in there. From what I understand, they're a pain to get at when the dash is installed

There's a coolant hose on top of the heater core that people usually replace while the dash is out. There are other smaller items that can be rebuilt, but the coolant hose is the main one.

And just like the early 2000s no pictures. Useless thread.

Mini update. 2 big mistakes were fixed recently. First car had a engine vibration right off idle that I could not figure out and a constant cylinder 6 contribution error. Decided to pull the trans to verify it had a 50oz flywheel, this was not as bad as I was anticipating. I installed the engine and trans together from underneath so at first I didn't even know if it was possible to pull just the trans. The new flywheel on the bottom is a 50oz and looks like every other 50oz flywheel I have ever seen, what was in the car I have no idea. It was not a 28oz flywheel ironically its marked 41 and with the drilling I could see that. No ford that I know of uses such a imbalance. So new flywheel is in and its smoother but still does not seem 100% but then I remembered the transmission mount is solid chunk of rubber not like the supper soft OEM ones I'm used to. My 2nd issue was oil consumption and a vacuum leak that was causing high idle. Well this was me not knowing the aftermarket heads drill the rocker bolt hole straight thru the intake runner. Had to use sealant on the rocker studs to fix the oil and vacuum issue. Still beating on this thing around the village with no doors or hatch, its so much fun and feels like it has 400hp but it doesn't. Then I got distracted and made a very bad decision.

Welcome back. All of the people who had several of these laying on their property, acquired when you can get them for a couple hundred bucks, only to clear them out just as the value starts to increase. I'm guilty of it too even though I still own two of them. Seems like this is a trend on most sporty cars. 15-25 years old is their lowest value but 30-40 years old they really start to increase. The middle aged guys/gals want the cars they liked, or had, from their teens and the demand starts to rise. Current demand is mostly on the higher optioned versions, not as much on the rarity though, it seems. 89 starion is like a unicorn to us starquesters but I still see more demand on an 88/89 fiji/electric blue conquest or even just any 88/89 SQ with the SHP package. But I do think the 89 starion price will start rising fast soon not only due to the low production numbers but combined with it being the last year, widebody, available with SHP etc. I see it going up much higher than an 85.5. But, as I continue to share my viewpoint, I don't see much of a benefit to the average active starquester on increased value.

And now for the rest of the story…… Everyone who has an auto knows that the real problem with the auto shifter is what’s under the floor. Worn out bushings, and no source to factory replace the worn out items, leaves most having to cobble something together to make the shifter functional, until the next time the stuff fails. I ain’t having none of that. My solution is much more permanent although time consuming. using the factory cross-shaft, I fabbed up the mounts to support rod ends to hold the thing in place, and mounted it to the factory location on the transmission. Whatever deflection that takes place as a result of driveline twist should be within the capabilities of the rod end. There is also a female rod end on the shift linkage. Side to side movement is stopped by a simple piece of 1/2” heater hose slid between the two rod ends. If additional flexing happens and the linkage shows any sign of binding or the thing tries to change its own gears, ( other than normal automatic operation), I’ll add two more rid ends on the other linkage that goes to the transmission. But if there’s that much twist that the thing comes out of gear, I’d imagine I got mount issues.

south bay makes trilogy injectors

Cool Drove through Lynn recently on the way to Marblehead.

Thought I’d post some photos that were taken and edited by a local photographer at a meet i went to awhile back. Photographer’s instagram is @mage.pics