Ernie88TSi

Well, if the power booster on the brakes fail, yes, you still have brakes. But, if you lose the master cylinder seal, then you totally loose your brakes. The coupler, if it is in good condition, won't fail on you tomorrow. BUT, it is not designed for the excess forces from not having the power steering hooked up. A lot of cars have a steering coupler setup like we do... it's not unique to starquests. I used to work on an early 80's F150 that was lifted with huge tires on it. His pump failed, so he just blocked it off. About once a month he was in for a new steering coupler. And, it was always in on the hook because it was completely broken. You could just spin the steering wheel all day if you wanted. After about 6 months of not listening to us, he finally repaired his power steering system. Moral of the story... When it comes to something as important as the brakes or steering, unless you have the knowledge and skills to be confident enough to do the work on your Grandmother's car, FIX IT PROPERLY, FIX IT IMMEDIATELY, AND DON'T MESS WITH IT. Oh yeah, and quit trying to get around the word filter. If you have to change the spelling of a word because the original spelling isn't allowed, then guess what, it's not allowed around here in other spellings as well.

All that stuff was replaced when I put the ACT clutch in the car. The rod length wasn't the problem. The problem was the plastic wasn't strong enough to hold the rod's position with the increased pressure requirements of the heavy duty clutch. Instead, the plastic would flex beyond what it was intended to do. Watch a stock car's movement with a car that has a heavy duty clutch and you'll see what I mean. I eventually switched to a piece off of a MX6, which is a solid piece.

"Fuel economy gauge, not a digital readout, but an actual gauge" Go drive a BMW.

Additives and stop leak are not the proper way to go... and that goes for any car, not just starquest specific. Almost anything I've seen with a "stopleak" agent in it eventually does more harm to the system than good.

Yeah, watching someone waste away is horrible. All I know is when I go, I'm taking a whole lotta people with me.

I feel so sorry for your Mom...

Keep in mind too that when it brakes, it takes a few mm off of the end of the line. And then, you have to cut a bit off to have a good end to flare. All this shortens the line... And you've got to have room for the line to flex. If you don't, then that puts stress on the hard part of the line going into the pump, stressing the metal, and then you've broken the line again. I've seen many people just re-flare it, I've done it in the past, but I would just recommend a new one.

Driving without the power steering hooked up kills the steering coupler in pretty short order.

Get a new high pressure hose from Napa, they're pretty inexpensive. Around $30 or 40 bucks if I remember correctly.

Don't totally discount the radiator. Remember all that junk that was in the old radiator? There's more hiding in that cooling system.

Read up about it in the factory manual. It'll show the exact specs. Two bolts to remove a small inspection cover is all that's needed to adjust them. The balance shafts themselves have no adjustment. They ride on bearings just like the cam shaft does. The chain does have an adjustment though. The cam chain is adjusted via oil pressure. BUT, keep in mind that the service life of those guides are around 100,000 miles. Most of the time, by the time the current owner gets around to adjusting them, the chain has already chewed more than enough material off of the guides, and they're in need of replacement.

The o-rings are just generic A/C o-rings. They'll be a green color. Make sure to lube them up with ester oil before installing them. Some brands of R134a has leak indicating dye in them. If not, you can buy some to inject into the system. Then, you can go over the system with a UV light (you can buy the UV leak detection kit for pretty cheap). Any leaks will show up as a neon green color under the light. You can usually see it with the naked eye as well, but using the light makes them jump out.

I'm in Jacksonville... where at in Orlando are you?

If you remove the driver's side panel beside the radio, you'll see a servo with a metal rod attached to it. When you move the temp from full hot (90) to full cold (65), you'll see this servo move back and forth. If the servo is moving, look into the duct work, and see if the rod is attached to the door. I've seen in quite a few StarQuests were the rod has just popped off. If you're a bit diligent, you can actually pop it back on without having to remove anything, with the help of a long screw driver.

Yes, it's relatively easy to do in a day. On SQC.com, I don't believe there is a how-to with pictures and everything to show you how to do a timing chain. You do have to pretty much include the timing chain to do the balance shaft elimination, as the BS chain is behind the timing chain. Quite frankly, if your BS are in good condition, I'd recommend leaving them in. What kills Balance Shafts most of the time, is people not doing the timing chain/guides, and the trash from those wearing is what gets into the balance shaft bearings, and starts to eat them up. Like most of the problems with these cars, they can almost always be traced back to owner abuse, not a crappy design by Mitsubishi.

So now do you believe us that the problem isn't with the clutch, but something else is causing it to break?

haha... Mike still puts me to shame as far as explaining things.

Before just throwing parts at it, go over Indiana's post again. The block filled with rust and crap is a lot more common than most people think. I remember that specific block he was talking about... and yes, without being there, you wouldn't believe the pile of rust that kept falling out of it. It looked like the pile of rust was going to end up being bigger than the block. lol. Also, the plastic and the underbody metal piece is a lot more important than most people realize. Air will NOT flow thru your radiator properly without that stuff there, especially that plastic piece. I remember back at one of the old Englishtown meets, Pete Yack (this was in like '99) had that plastic piece come loose on his car. I was spending a couple days out there, and we went on the exact same road/speed as the day before, same outside temp. The day before, his car ran great... the next day without the plastic, he was overheating. Put that piece back in, and back to no problems.

Short answer, no you can't swap. It's not like the type of resistor that you're probably thinking of. StarQuests were available with manual controls (technically, the auto climate control was optional). To find one, you'll have to search for like an 83 or 84 model that's being parted out. But, keep in mind, you'll have to swap everything climate control related behind the dash.

Sounds like a bad connection at your headlight fuseable link. Wiggle the fuseable link and see what happens.

It's not the ETACS... clean the contacts in the wiper motor. It's a pretty common problem.

Granted, your car may very well indeed new injector clips... BUT, instead of throwing parts at the problem, and not knowing what is going on, sit down and actually try to diagnois the problem. Go down to your auto parts store and buy what is called a "noid light". Use the one for Delphi/GM injectors. This light will flash every time the computer tries to fire the injector. Keep in mind, at idle, the noid light won't flash... only when you actually gas the car. Do NOT use a test light to try and recreate the noid light. This can very well fry your injector driver or the complete ECU. No way to prove it, but that is something your previous mechanic may have done. If you go and rev up your motor and the noid light flashes, that means that everything is ok up to the injector. If the noid light doesn't flash when you try to rev the motor, then you've got a problem before the injector, either the clip, the wiring, the injector resistor, or the ECU.

Another thing to look into is the fact that there is probably a ton of rust and debris sitting in your cooling passages, limiting the flow of coolant in your engine.

Another thing to consider when you've just installed a heavier than stock pressure plate is the adjuster for the master cylinder... Along with the problem of the hole elongating from wear, there is another way for the adjuster to cause problems. The plastic in the adjuster is not strong enough to keep the rod for the master cylinder from deflecting as you push the pedal in. Look up under the dash, and push the pedal in with your hand. The rod should move straight into the master cylinder. When that plastic gets weak and fails (I've seen a lot of aftermarket ones do it right out of the box), the threaded part of the adjuster first flexes until it hits the outside of the adjuster, and then it starts pushing in the rod for the master cylinder. When you push on the pedal to adjust free play, it'll adjust to spec... but the reality is when that flexs when you go to actually push the pedal down, you're wasting a good part of your pedal travel to flexing everything, instead of pushing in the master cylinder. A few times in the past, I've taken that piece out and just welded around the threaded part, connecting that to the outside of the adjuster. That way, nothing can flex.

For what you're considering, which is flow AFTER the engine is shut off, look into turbo Porsche/Audi/VW models. They use an "after-run" pump that is inline of one of the hoses in the cooling system. After you shut the car off, it'll keep running. Another thing that those cars (along with some other cars, turbo and n/a) do is they let the cooling fan run even if the engine is off. This isn't a new idea, and used on cars such as Audi 5000/200 models, Porsche 951 (Turbo 944), etc. Those cars still use a conventional belt driven water pump. By itsself, the pump will not flow enough to keep the car cool if the water pump fails, btw. Also, keep in mind that just because you shut the engine off, the coolant doesn't instantly become stagnent. Because of different cooling rates, you get a bit of a convection effect. Another purpose of the thermostat is to control the rate of flow thru the engine. If you don't run a thermostat, despite what you may think, you can run into problems of overheating. This is because the coolant starts moving at too fast of a rate that it can't shed the heat fast enough. On the other side of things, it can't pick up heat fast enough either, creating hot spots in the engine. On a street car, I would stick with the factory setup as far as the electic water pumps go. They're geared towards racing conditions. The design, requirements, and build process of a race engine is a lot different than an engine designed to run 200,000 miles. I really recommend to stop trying to reinvent the wheel, and just PROPERLY fix your cooling system. Mitsubishi didn't do as bad of a job as most people seem to think... The OEM system does what it's designed to do just fine... it's when years of owner neglect comes into play, that everyone seems to want to blame it on Mitsubishi. Of course, I can say the same thing for balance shafts, jet valves, etc etc. BTW, wiring your fans together doesn't constitute PROPERLY fixing your cooling system. The primary fan will very rarely need any help keeping temps under control when the rest of the cooling system is up to par. Wiring your fans together just creates higher power requirements from your 20 yr old alternator that's probably alreadfy strained from other modifications to the car (stereo, extra lighting, etc), along with just adding unneccesary wear on your other fan motors, etc.