Naked with a few holes.

Stripped down to its skivvies and ready for some minor rust repair. These never held up well and even here in the mild NW, rust had started in the tail panel. Not bad but still annoying











Interior out, even the headliner. Had a real hard time getting the sun roof off. And it too had some rust starting as well... common on these apparently.

A few more weeks and then into paint.

Plastic Bits

Found a great local guy here in Seattle that could re-dye all the interior plastic so now it looks new AND is all the same color blue. Not a bad price, had tried Just Dashes in SoCal and they were good but pricey. This was a fast turn and great service!

Shell shock

Took the nose off the car to get to all the insides. Need to paint the A/C and oil cooler flat black along with the fan to make it look clean again.











No surprises other than the fender supports up front were made of tin foil and twisted at the first sign of distress.

There were A LOT of bolts holding the front and back bumpers on. Lots more than in today's cars.








While working on the car in the shop, my friend Maureen had her car rear-ended and towed to the shop.

2002 Mistubishi Lancer ES with not even 50k on it... low miles and clean. Totalled out at $6600 in damage for a $7000 car. Hard to find parts for these even after 8 years, even from the dealer!

In the body shop for its Spa Day

Took the front fenders off to find about 8 inches of debris packed up inside the inner fender. No rust just LOTS of dirt and compost. Car should be about 50 lbs lighter in the end once it is cleaned.














Spoilers and sill plates came off and they too were packed with dirt, filled to the top actually. Thankfully no rust behind any of the pieces I took off and no broken clips either.










Yes that is dirt. The car is white, and once that gets wiped off, it should be white too.












Nose is off, and you can see the piles of dirt hidden behind all the panels. And this is AFTER I spent an hour pressure washing everything I could get into. No surprises so far.

Gutted the interior

Took the interior apart, yanked the carpet, cleaned it and had new backing pad installed and had floor mats made.
















Seats came out and had the rails painted.

















All the interior plastic trim is going to be re-dyed to match (many are different color blues as they have faded over the years).















Steering wheel leather needs to be redone.

Engine clean up

Old valve covers were a bit crusty. Bought a new on from the dealer but could not get the set so I had my body shop repaint the two old ones.











Here is how they look back from paint, amazing job and matched to the factory colors.

Back from the shop

Got the car back from the shop to have a few things checked out. A/C was in-op but a simple recharge of R-12 (the good stuff) and it works just fine.

Engine had a bit of a lag and hesitation on warm up. Found out all the factory-set adjustments had been messed with and set screws ground off but once everything was set back to factory specs, it ran great. Much faster than when I bought the car!


Brakes were all new but someone didn't install them right. Rear pad was crooked and only 1/3 was touching so put new pads and rotors on all 4 wheels. Helps if the pad is really hitting the rotor. Car sure stops alot better than it did.









Got nice new Mountain rotors from Japan, hard to come by some of the parts for this car given its age now.