Life expectancy of motor.
Apr 29, 2010, 01:02 PM
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Life expectancy of motor.
Just a quick question, what is the general life expectancy of a general turbo car. Basically will my car last me for 5 years or do turbocharged vehicule tend to "blow up" faster than naturally aspired vehicules. I'm taking about a stock ralliart with regular maintenance compared to say a stock corolla or civic motor lifetime.\
Thanks
Thanks
Apr 29, 2010, 02:48 PM
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From what I have heard, mitsu engines are pretty good as far as time goes, its the tranny thats probably gonna go before the engine. I am getting the elite extended warranty that covers everything, its actually better than manufacturors warranty. If you plan on keeping your RA, like me, I would suggest going that route. Plus its a good selling point when selling the car.
Apr 29, 2010, 03:43 PM
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There are still alot of 4G63 Talon's from 1990 running around. I think it is more common for the body to give out first or once a vehicle gets to a certain age it is so expensive to maintain people just upgrade to a newer one for the same cost.
I think the 4B11T will outlast the rest of the car, the turbo may need replacing after 8-10 years of use.
I think the 4B11T will outlast the rest of the car, the turbo may need replacing after 8-10 years of use.
Apr 29, 2010, 04:07 PM
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It will depend entirely on how well you take care of it. I've seen 1990 4G63s in great shape, and newly rebuilt motors let go due to abuse. From all reports the 4B11 should be as good from a longevity point of view. I suppose we'll see in another 10 years. 
The two big things that will shorten the life are knock (either boost, fueling or timing related) and oil pressure. You keep those things in check and it should be good for a long time barring some unlucky event.
The two big things that will shorten the life are knock (either boost, fueling or timing related) and oil pressure. You keep those things in check and it should be good for a long time barring some unlucky event.
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Apr 30, 2010, 12:43 PM
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Perfect thanks for eveyones input...
Ambystom...one quick question, how the hell do you get 13 xxx some posts. I check evoms at work but damn you must be on here a lot!
Ambystom...one quick question, how the hell do you get 13 xxx some posts. I check evoms at work but damn you must be on here a lot!
Apr 30, 2010, 01:23 PM
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The 4b11 is also engineered for turbo. The 4g63 was not, but that cast iron block is very strong. You can always rebuild and put in cast ductile iron sleeves into the block for more strength.
Apr 30, 2010, 04:08 PM
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When an engine fails, it's not due to the block falling apart. Something else lets go, and blows through the side of the block. You could have a titanium block and it will make no difference when a piston comes smashing through it!
Apr 30, 2010, 07:28 PM
#13
Just a quick question, what is the general life expectancy of a general turbo car. Basically will my car last me for 5 years or do turbocharged vehicule tend to "blow up" faster than naturally aspired vehicules. I'm taking about a stock ralliart with regular maintenance compared to say a stock corolla or civic motor lifetime.\
Thanks
Thanks
Originally Posted by jbasol
Well guys, I completely understand if everyone thought I was dead. I have been so crazy busy lately with both work and other crazy projects. I thought perhaps you might all enjoy a little update on the notorious Twin Turbo Eclipse GT.
Strangely enough neither I nor the car are dead, but rather we're both cruising along just fine.
You may all remember this pic from the original build thread (which appears to have been deleted - so sad):
Well this morning I took a similar pic as I drove in to work:
Yup yup....100,000 miles of 15psi fun.
As I mentioned in the original build thread. This car is my daily driver, it makes a 100 mile round trip to work every day. For the last 100,000 miles it's made that 100 miles trip a WHOLE lot more FUN! :twisted:
Not surprisingly, the car entices every Honduh with a fart tube to try to race me. Aside from the fart tube, they all have one thing in common. They loose painfully. It honestly isn't even any fun. They're the only ones who don't know what the outcome will be before they hit the pedal. Me and the rest of the world already know... :wink:
But over the last few years I have had a few challengers that were actually fun:
E46 BMW M3 - I have one of these myself, so when one just like mine wanted to give me a go it was a great chance to see if the newest horse in my stable was 2nd or 3rd fastest. While it certainly wasn't a blowout, the Eclipse made no mistake it wasn't going to put up with any Kraut from it's newest stablemate.
Porsche Carrera 4S - This was pretty recent, and while I'm not very impressed with Porsches, I must admit, this guy gave me a good run. I was hard pressed to get much more than 1/2 a car length on him at any point. Thank god it was a roll-on, I'm pretty sure he would have had me from a dead start.
Evo 8 - A good friend has an Evo 8 with nothing more than an intake, exhaust and flash done to it. He has me pretty bad from the dead stop, but I start realing him in about 40-45mph. Roll ons from around 50 are real fun, the Eclipse just gently walks away.
C6 Corvette Convertable - This was by far my most memorable boosted moment. Given a stick and good driver the C6 should have had no trouble shutting me down. I don't believe this particular C6 had either. I'm on my way to work one morning, having just dropped off my daughter at daycare (Yup the baby seat was still in the back). I'm sitting at a traffic light waiting to make a left down onto the freeway. There are two left turns lanes, which of course merge as you head down the entrance ramp. I'm the only one at the light when the C6 pulls in behind me. He's got the top down and the radio blasting, at 6 in the morning. Somehow he thinks the light's not going to last long enough for BOTH of us to clear the intersection or something, and decides to pull out beside me in the right hand-left turn lane. I let out a little sigh, and began to watch the cross light for timing cues. :roll: My wife closes the lid on her coffee, and grabs on to the door handle...she knows... 8) The light turns green and I take off, trying my best to ease into the throttle and keep traction. The Vette stands on the gas like an idiot, and proceedes to slide his way around the corner onto the ramp. At this point I have about 1/2 a car length on him. My shifts were quick and crisp as I pulled to about 2 car lengths on him by the bottom of the ramp. My wife began laughing. I slowed down, and he darted out around me to line up for a roll-on. I can only imagine how mad he must have been to see my smug little grin, and my wife laughing her *** off at him. I'm sure he just mashed the pedal all the harder...didn't do him much good though. We were very even up to about 80, after that I started creeping away. He tried not twice, not three times, but rather FOUR TIMES. All with the same results. His only parting gift was that my wife had stopped laughing by this point, and was now starting to feel sorry for him. I'm betting he took the car back to the dealership for a check up, something was CLEARLY WRONG.
So there have been lots of fun times. How about not so fun? As I said, this is my daily driver, and I need it to be reliable. I'm happy to report that it has not let me down much there.
Those who followed the project at the beginning already know about the biggest issue that arose. A slight machining error in my limited slip diff caused the drive axle to pop loose on the drivers side, and all the fluid leaked out. I had to completely replace the transmission, but Quaife and I worked it out. I'm very happy with them and my diff is still doing it's best to get as much power to the pavement as possible.
Not long after the diff issue, the main alternator feed wire was touching the front O2 housing, burned through the insulation, and subsequently shorted and blew the main fuse. It was a simple fix, but I felt stupid for forgetting to secure the wires away from the exhaust.
Next was the only other major issue that's come up. As some may remember from a different post, I learned the hard way that the harmonic dampener doesn't last forever. Mine back itself into the timing cover and snapped the belt. I got to replace heads and timing components while fighting the worst chest cold of my life. Lesson learned.
The last issue I had was an easy fix, but was tricky to diagnose. All of the sudden the car started running extremely rich at cruise and idle. If I held the throttle wide open it seemed to be better, but part throttle and idle were horrible. It started on my way home form dinner one night, and we had work the next day, so we drove the M instead and when I got home I began troubleshooting the Eclipse. I hooked up the laptop and started the car. Everything seemed fine, and the car was running perfect. Confused, I took it for a spin and everything was perfect. Drove it again for a couple weeks before it did it again. This time when I plugged in the laptop I was not seeing any airflow signal coming into the stock ECU. A look into the eManage revealed no airflow signal coming into it either. The next device upstream was the MAF-T. There was no signal coming out of it, but I wasn't how to test the MAF sensor itself. Turns out, an aircompressor can provide enough airflow to test the sensor just fine. My sensor was OK. MAF-T was malfunctioning. Replaced the MAF-T all fine since.
Aside from that it's been just maintenance. LOTS of oil changes, a couple spark plug changes, timing belt service, brakes, suspension, and countless sets of tires.
I'm still on the same tune I rolled off the dyno with. Still running 15psi on pump gas. Still getting 29-30mpg on the highway and about 25-26 in town. Most importantly, still convinced Mits should have turbocharged this car from the factory. What a blast to drive!
Someday I'll get around to putting bigger turbos on the Eclipse. I have most all the parts needed, just need more time. Sometime this summer I'll be finished with the airplane I'm builidng now. Then I'll probably put the Eclipse up on the lift again. For now I'll keep taking it to work. 300k miles is probably only 6 months away.
Regards,
John Basol
'00 Eclipse GT Twin Turbo
Well guys, I completely understand if everyone thought I was dead. I have been so crazy busy lately with both work and other crazy projects. I thought perhaps you might all enjoy a little update on the notorious Twin Turbo Eclipse GT.
Strangely enough neither I nor the car are dead, but rather we're both cruising along just fine.
You may all remember this pic from the original build thread (which appears to have been deleted - so sad):
Well this morning I took a similar pic as I drove in to work:
Yup yup....100,000 miles of 15psi fun.
As I mentioned in the original build thread. This car is my daily driver, it makes a 100 mile round trip to work every day. For the last 100,000 miles it's made that 100 miles trip a WHOLE lot more FUN! :twisted:
Not surprisingly, the car entices every Honduh with a fart tube to try to race me. Aside from the fart tube, they all have one thing in common. They loose painfully. It honestly isn't even any fun. They're the only ones who don't know what the outcome will be before they hit the pedal. Me and the rest of the world already know... :wink:
But over the last few years I have had a few challengers that were actually fun:
E46 BMW M3 - I have one of these myself, so when one just like mine wanted to give me a go it was a great chance to see if the newest horse in my stable was 2nd or 3rd fastest. While it certainly wasn't a blowout, the Eclipse made no mistake it wasn't going to put up with any Kraut from it's newest stablemate.
Porsche Carrera 4S - This was pretty recent, and while I'm not very impressed with Porsches, I must admit, this guy gave me a good run. I was hard pressed to get much more than 1/2 a car length on him at any point. Thank god it was a roll-on, I'm pretty sure he would have had me from a dead start.
Evo 8 - A good friend has an Evo 8 with nothing more than an intake, exhaust and flash done to it. He has me pretty bad from the dead stop, but I start realing him in about 40-45mph. Roll ons from around 50 are real fun, the Eclipse just gently walks away.
C6 Corvette Convertable - This was by far my most memorable boosted moment. Given a stick and good driver the C6 should have had no trouble shutting me down. I don't believe this particular C6 had either. I'm on my way to work one morning, having just dropped off my daughter at daycare (Yup the baby seat was still in the back). I'm sitting at a traffic light waiting to make a left down onto the freeway. There are two left turns lanes, which of course merge as you head down the entrance ramp. I'm the only one at the light when the C6 pulls in behind me. He's got the top down and the radio blasting, at 6 in the morning. Somehow he thinks the light's not going to last long enough for BOTH of us to clear the intersection or something, and decides to pull out beside me in the right hand-left turn lane. I let out a little sigh, and began to watch the cross light for timing cues. :roll: My wife closes the lid on her coffee, and grabs on to the door handle...she knows... 8) The light turns green and I take off, trying my best to ease into the throttle and keep traction. The Vette stands on the gas like an idiot, and proceedes to slide his way around the corner onto the ramp. At this point I have about 1/2 a car length on him. My shifts were quick and crisp as I pulled to about 2 car lengths on him by the bottom of the ramp. My wife began laughing. I slowed down, and he darted out around me to line up for a roll-on. I can only imagine how mad he must have been to see my smug little grin, and my wife laughing her *** off at him. I'm sure he just mashed the pedal all the harder...didn't do him much good though. We were very even up to about 80, after that I started creeping away. He tried not twice, not three times, but rather FOUR TIMES. All with the same results. His only parting gift was that my wife had stopped laughing by this point, and was now starting to feel sorry for him. I'm betting he took the car back to the dealership for a check up, something was CLEARLY WRONG.
So there have been lots of fun times. How about not so fun? As I said, this is my daily driver, and I need it to be reliable. I'm happy to report that it has not let me down much there.
Those who followed the project at the beginning already know about the biggest issue that arose. A slight machining error in my limited slip diff caused the drive axle to pop loose on the drivers side, and all the fluid leaked out. I had to completely replace the transmission, but Quaife and I worked it out. I'm very happy with them and my diff is still doing it's best to get as much power to the pavement as possible.
Not long after the diff issue, the main alternator feed wire was touching the front O2 housing, burned through the insulation, and subsequently shorted and blew the main fuse. It was a simple fix, but I felt stupid for forgetting to secure the wires away from the exhaust.
Next was the only other major issue that's come up. As some may remember from a different post, I learned the hard way that the harmonic dampener doesn't last forever. Mine back itself into the timing cover and snapped the belt. I got to replace heads and timing components while fighting the worst chest cold of my life. Lesson learned.
The last issue I had was an easy fix, but was tricky to diagnose. All of the sudden the car started running extremely rich at cruise and idle. If I held the throttle wide open it seemed to be better, but part throttle and idle were horrible. It started on my way home form dinner one night, and we had work the next day, so we drove the M instead and when I got home I began troubleshooting the Eclipse. I hooked up the laptop and started the car. Everything seemed fine, and the car was running perfect. Confused, I took it for a spin and everything was perfect. Drove it again for a couple weeks before it did it again. This time when I plugged in the laptop I was not seeing any airflow signal coming into the stock ECU. A look into the eManage revealed no airflow signal coming into it either. The next device upstream was the MAF-T. There was no signal coming out of it, but I wasn't how to test the MAF sensor itself. Turns out, an aircompressor can provide enough airflow to test the sensor just fine. My sensor was OK. MAF-T was malfunctioning. Replaced the MAF-T all fine since.
Aside from that it's been just maintenance. LOTS of oil changes, a couple spark plug changes, timing belt service, brakes, suspension, and countless sets of tires.
I'm still on the same tune I rolled off the dyno with. Still running 15psi on pump gas. Still getting 29-30mpg on the highway and about 25-26 in town. Most importantly, still convinced Mits should have turbocharged this car from the factory. What a blast to drive!Someday I'll get around to putting bigger turbos on the Eclipse. I have most all the parts needed, just need more time. Sometime this summer I'll be finished with the airplane I'm builidng now. Then I'll probably put the Eclipse up on the lift again. For now I'll keep taking it to work. 300k miles is probably only 6 months away.
Regards,
John Basol
'00 Eclipse GT Twin Turbo
Last edited by NFSLancerRA; Apr 30, 2010 at 07:35 PM. Reason: Unknown
