Im not a huge Mitsubishi fan or anything but I have a question. It seems a lot of people on here bash Eclipses for not being great cars. I know the last generation was untunable, but the previous generations made in the 90's had aftermarket support, and Ive seen plenty of them in magazines that made a lot of power. I know a decent amount about cars, I was just wondering if there was a problem with Eclipses I didnt know about.

Reliability issues. The damn things are soft, and after time they bend; get hit anywhere and the roof will bend. Bad headgaskets, bad suspension, transmissions leak/freeze, bad brainboxes, TIMING BELT BREAKS CAUSING ALL SORTS OF HAVOK LIKE BENDING VALVES AND EVEN BREAKING RODS, speed control sensors go bad, ignition goes bad, thrus washer is WELDED to the cranshaft and they have very very frequent failures/defects causing CRANKWALK, defective OEM rims, and defective airbags which fail to deploy. I think I've said enough.

Wow, they really do suck.

true they have there defects but what car dont have some kinda fuck up here lately you buy a car u get a defect so bitch if u plz about them my best friend took one and has made it one of the best cars in our town and there is plenty of competition we have our own race group we have over 200 members of the group and we drag race for money weekly and he has one alot of them so keep up on the eclipses there not that bad of cars you just needa kno what ur doing and how your doing it

..........NO! Read what I just wrote; they're terrible cars, and they break like that stock. "Knowing what you're doing" has nothing to do with it breaking. I dont see Hondas or Toyotas breaking down like that, or even Nissan for that matter.

dude..hello the engine and body and such wont break if u freaking work on one and build it up

But those things that he lists are things that you shouldn't have to build the engine up to prevent. A decent car shouldn't have those problems in stock form, as the Eclipse does.

How are you going to re-inforce the body to not bend without putting in a cage? You can build up your motor all you want, but it isnt going to prevent your timing belt from breaking and bending your valves (destroying all of your nice parts), and most parts dont have an aftermarket support. Get it through your head that the motor is practically the same regardless of mods.

motor in his = not the stock motor body has a cage in it .. i sit here to argue his is very modified...and if u do what he has done .. ur eclipse wont fuck up

So your friend has an adamantine timing belt? Did he also break off his thrust washer and put on an aftermarket one to eliminate the risk of crank walk? How did he eliminate the transmission from freezing and the cam walk? His brainbox is aftermarket too right? Are his airbags made by GReddy or something, otherwise his airbags are still faulty. Get a clue kid, whether or not he builds his motor has nothing to do with the parts that make them fail.

And also, aftermarket parts can make your engine more prone to breaking down. Such as the enginge wearing down more from extended pwoer ratings.

Actually, that may or may not be true. If he is buying things like forged pistons/rods, billet balanced crank, and blockguards/headstuds/rod bolts, then your motor is pretty much protected in terms of reinforcement. On the other hand, because of this, people usually tend to abuse their cars after they have done such upgrades, and it begins to cancel itself out. The one thing he cant protect against is his timing belt snapping. The only way to positively reinforce that is by changing it religiously, and with mods done to his car, it drasticaly reduces the life of the belt. When that belt snaps, then you're history.

But the issue that you are bringing up is not something that is isolated to eclipses by any means. Up until 5 or 6 years ago it was very common to incur damage if your timing belt snapped, and it is still common on cheaper cars (kias, hyundais etc.). Now, I'm not saying that eclipses are any better because the damage problem is more common, but it's still not that unusual.

Not isolated to Eclipses at all, any car can have its timing belt break, but not at the rate at which it happens on an Eclipse. Very many Eclipses have had damage incurred due to the timing belt issue way before the belt was due for a replacement.

yeah yeah yeah ... timing belts break alot damn .... i got a civic and the bitch breaks gotta saleen mustang bitch breaks gotta lowrider s-10 damn thing breaks shall i go any further