Our Story So Far

So, some buddies of mine wanted to do a video feature on me and the Lancer and asked me to sort of make an outline about what I wanted to say so they could plan the shots. I realized I’m not good at making outlines so I decided that I’d tell the story here and have them figure it out. I also realized I haven’t updated the blog in a while so, here goes.

So I guess I begin with me; car crazy since birth, largely due to my Dad who was also a car nut ever since he was young. Not too much new there, there must be hundreds of father and son stories like that. The interesting thing is our difference in automotive lifestyle. My Dad is the guy who’d go for all original. He likes things clean and simple. He’d buy a good car and keep it that way. He rarely changes anything, unless it’s a practical necessity- like using a washable K&N Filter and running up rated tires rather than the crap they usually fit as stock. He usually disapproves of aftermarket wheels and wild modifications. Then, there’s me. I like modified engines, I like cars with roll cages, the more highly tuned the engine and the more bars my girlfriend will have to climb over to get into the car the better! It’s a bit strange to have such different tastes, but also, it’s largely my dad’s fault why I’m like this.

I was around 7 or 8 years old. My dad and I were going somewhere in our 1993 Lancer GLXi (CB Chassis). The car was fairly new at the time, and its fuel injected 16-valve 4G92 engine had some performance that was quite a level up from anything previously available locally. On a particular stretch of road, he would gun the engine and tell me to feel ‘how the power surges when it goes past 4000 RPM’. I don’t know how I reacted, but I still remember how I felt. I didn’t know what the heck those numbers meant, but I knew I liked what I felt. I have since been addicted to that feeling of the surge of power.

I read about a saying once that there are two types of car enthusiast; the racers who have gasoline flowing through their veins, and the mechanics who have oil flowing through their veins. I’m not really one who cares too much about racing; in fact I’ve only attended one organized motorsports event ever (a charity slalom/autocross when they were trying to raise some money to support the Ramirez family who were battling cancer at the time). What really interests me is tuning and building engines, trying to see how to get more power out of them, to satisfy the need to feel that surge of power when you step on it.

Which now brings us to the car; it’s a 2-door 1979 Mitsubishi Lancer. My dad bought it brand new from Diamond motors on September 27, 1979. It was his daily car throughout the 80’s until he got the GLXi in 1993. He did a pretty good job preserving the car and it even won ‘best original stock’ at the 1997 Mitsubishi Classic Concourse. He always promised to give me the car when I grew up, so when I started driving it was mine. I used the car as it was through high school and college before I really had the means to do anything with it. In 2005, after not letting me buy a 6^th Generation Galant GTi that had a 400HP Evolution III engine in it, my dad said that we should just fix up the Lancer.

It was then that I started researching about the car. Thanks to the internet, I quickly found out that the car had a pretty interesting history. It was a pretty successful Rally car where it was applied. The car was successful in the Australian Southern Cross rallies and it dominated the African Safari rallies in the late 70’s, beating (in Safari Rally conditions) the likes of the Porsche 911 and Lancia Stratos. Read more here!

I wasn’t really able to do much back then, aside from getting a 5-speed transmission and re-gearing the rear diff to 4.222:1 which according to the specs should have come with the car had it been the version sold in in Japan, there was only so much a college student on an allowance could do. I enjoyed driving and using it as much as I could but, it was not until I started working that I could really get serious with the car.

It’s been quite a long time in development and I have to admit I made a lot of mistakes along the way including something as painful as having an engine that I just built myself blow up after a little over 1000KM. But that’s how you learn. I read and researched a lot. You have to really geek out to become really good at this sort of thing. I’ve had a good amount of guidance from my friend who goes by the handle ‘Oldie’ in our 1stGen Lancer Forum, and from my friends at SMT Competition headers in Makati.

My idea for the setup of the car was to do it like how some Japanese tuners would build cars; take an original car from the factory. Do a built engine, modified drive train and suspension. Bolt in Roll cage and a bucket seat for the driver only. It’s sort of a take on what it would have been like if they were doing that in the 70’s. It’s also sort of a Restomod, but not quite. A Restomod usually means converting the old car to modern engine and running gear and leaving just the classic body. I prefer to keep the original engine, although fully built and modified for more power and modern drivability. I believe the term people are using now for this sort of build style is a ‘Vintage performance’, but I don’t really care for labels. It’s more expensive and difficult to do than an engine swap because it involves tracking down rare parts and fabricating those you can’t find. It’s not necessarily better than an engine swap, there are advantages and disadvantages to either option, but this is much more challenging.

So let’s go through the car. The body was fully restored in 2008 at my shop which is at the back of our furniture factory. Taking down to a bare empty shell, we rebuilt it to be better than it was new. We stripped off all original insulation and undercoat. All the rust was removed and repaired. The body was reinforced in key places. We used modern paint urethane paint system and rust proofing. My estimate is that the body is around 20KG lighter than the original because of the weight of the factory rust proofing and undercoat. The car has a bolt in roll cage made by SMT based on the one for the original Safari rally car. I have a mechanic and metal fabricator in the factory, Dongdong who made the stainless steel strut tower brace and a bunch of other custom parts for the car. The bucket seat is a locally made Carbon-Kevlar piece I bought from a friend online, the harness is a Simpson 5pt. Camlock harness also bought online. The rest of the body and interior is original.

The engine is the original 4G33 block that came with the car, rebuilt by me in 2011. What we wanted was what we call a Max street engine. So we have some power of the race version while retaining reliability and driveability. Originally 1400cc this has been oversized to 1597cc using ART GS spec. High compression pistons. Internal parts are static balanced and blueprinted before assembly. The head is also the original head, ported and shaved. The camshaft is an original Mitsubishi works cam #4, aka the Rally cam. The cam is originally meant to go into the older version of the engine that used a timing chain instead of a timing belt like what my engine uses, so I also got an Ichiban adaptor to use the cam with my engine. Currently the engine is fed by a Weber 40 DCOE ‘single side draft’ carb on a Lynx intake manifold. We don’t run an air filter, just velocity stacks. I have a cold air tube to bring cold air from outside to the carb while the car is running. A Mitsubishi electric pump replaces the original engine driven one. The Long runner, equal length headers, stainless steel headers have a true merge collector are fabricated by SMT, as is the complete exhaust system. I made the stainless steel flanges though. The headers are wrapped in an industrial grade fibreglass insulation to reduce underhood ambient temperature. Keeping the heat inside the exhaust pipes also improves the gas flow and makes it more efficient in scavenging. For added reliability, there’s a custom oil cooler system made by SMT with hard oil lines and a remote oil filter system. The engine runs on Motul 5w-40 synthetic oil.  The ignition system is an MSD Digital 6 plus ignition box with Blaster SS coil and is triggered by a Pertronix Ignitor in the original distributor. The MSD Digital 6 system lets us have a high speed timing retard, so we can run more ignition advance for good low end acceleration and then step it back for more top end power. It also features a two step rev limiter that is used as a launch control system. Launch control is activated by pulling up the handbrake lever and flooring the gas.

Backing the engine is a close ratio 5-speed manual transmission with an SMT fabricated quick shift kit. The rear end is now a 4.625:1 final drive which I interchange with the 4.222:1 depending on the kind of driving I’ll be doing The lower ratio gives better performance, the higher ratio is better for highway cruising. The suspension upgrades consist of Cusco adjustable camber plate top mounts originally for a Lancer EX-Turbo modified for the ’79. Front springs are original and rear leaf springs are Tiger super leaf springs. I had the springs powdercoated green to match the roll bar. Front shocks are Kayaba Ultra SR, helped by O-Sulee spring cushions. Rear shocks are Kayaba Gas-A-Just. The front stabilizer bar is supported by polyurethane bushings. The car is currently set as low as it will go without upsetting the suspension geometry. If find this just right as I prefer to drive with a good amount of ground clearance so we don’t have to slow down. Everything underneath the car has been neatly tucked up in order to maximize this.

The brakes use an AP Lockheed remote brake servo in order to clear the side draft carb as the original brake system would have interfered. The remote servo is triggered by a Toyota clutch master cylinder repurposed as the brake master. Everything is connected with custom armoured brake lines. Driving a car with a remote brake servo is a little weird if you’re not used to it since it does not have that much feel so the brakes seem like they are either on or off, but when you are used to it, modulating the brakes comes naturally. Front brakes and rotors are the original discs. The rear drums were ditched in favour of rear discs from a Boxtype Lancer GSR mounted to the original rear axle housing with custom brackets. Sportech high performance pads all around.

The Car also has a modern Aircon system built by SMT giving the old car better air conditioning than most modern cars. We added a switch to disengage the compressor when we want to, in order to free up some extra engine power, but with the engine I built, I don’t really feel the need to do so. The radiator is a 3-row Evercool radiator cooled by two large electric fans which are automatically controlled using a Toyota thermoswitch. All the wiring has been redone with modern relays and connections. The battery relocated to the trunk to make space for the brakes and to improve weight distribution. The gauges were rebuilt by SMT and all work, the tachometer is a 5” Autometer Phantom tach, mounted at an angle to put the rev range that we frequently use right in the ideal spot for easy reading. The headlights are a Hella Halogen H4 conversion kit replacing the original seal beam units with Narva 90/100 all weather headlights. I usually have some form of auxiliary lighting system up front, but lately have not had one since the headlights are really good. At the back a Cibie spot light goes on with the reverse lights to illuminate the back.

The car has been through several sets of wheels, currently installed is a set of 3 piece mesh wheels. The fronts are Heroes Rock Racing Mesh measuring 14 x 6.5” +8 offset and the rears are Rays Engineering Volk Racing Mesh wheels measuring 14 x 8” with zero offset. The wheels, despite having different brands width have identical centre mesh and lip profiles. We believe it to have been sold as set originally. Why source the front and rear from different brands, I don’t know. I had the wheels refurbished by Master Wheels in Las Pinas in 2009, the mesh was originally gold, I had them done in green to match the roll cage and springs. Tires are Dunlop SPsports LM703, 185/65/r14 in front 195/60/r14 at the back.

That pretty much sums up the car for now. It’s an ever continuing project and I don’t think it will ever be done. In the future I’m considering building an individual throttle body fuel injection system controlled with a standalone computer for the engine and maybe ditching the rear leaf springs for a equal length 4 link rear suspension with a Watts linkage.. But for now I’m just enjoying the driving the car.

I’m not really afraid to use the car, because to me cars are meant to be driven. If anything were to happen to it, like how I blew the engine a few years ago, I will simply rebuild it and make it better.

Recent cool pic of the car; 

Photo credit: Anthony Magat