I purchased this car almost a year ago today (10/7/02). This car has provided more fun, scares, and headaches in the past year then I ever thought possible. Here is our story.

I purchased the car in Lancaster, PA. It's a 1988 Chrysler Conquest TSI with all the options except the SHP (Sport Handling Package), an automatic transmission, and a sunroof. It had about 128K miles and I paid about $3400 for it. That's a tad on the high side, but it came with a few features that justified its price. It had fairly fresh paint, a new head, and a brand new stock turbo. It also had a new Alpine headunit and a very clean install of JL Audio tweaters and mids in the factory locations. The body was straight, all electronics worked, it had almost zero rust, and it drove perfectly. The bad news was that it needed tires and a clutch. The seats also had a few tears in them. Despite those problems, it was love at first sight. I had always wanted a Conquest and it just had to be this car!

A few weeks after purchasing the car I decided to visit a friend over in NJ. I arrived in the evening and the next morning we decided to take the car out for a test drive. Picture a cold, damp late-October morning hauling down a treelined, gravely back road covered in leaves...all the while on ancient, rock hard Goodyears. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, a mile or so down the road while lifting off the throttle going into an S-turn at about 30-35 (speed limit was 25) the backend started to come around. We did a few "tank slappers" trying to save it, but I finally lost it. We slid backwards sliding uphill about 200 yards and (miraculously!) hit nothing more than a pile of dirt. The extent of the damage was: a cracked front air dam, a tweaked intercooler, some dirt wedged between the tires and wheels, an altered alignment, and a bruised ego.

That incident taught me a valuable lesson and really opened my eyes to realizing what could have happened if the circumstances were slightly different. The first issue I wanted to address was getting the car back to performing the way it should. That meant getting a new set of tires, an alignment, and the clutch replaced. For tires I chose Yokohama Avid V4's. 205/55/R16 up front on the 7" wide rims and 225/55/R16 tires on the rear 8" wide rims. Next up was the alignment and clutch. I had Fred Beans Mitsubishi of Doylestown do the work, but I supplied the parts. I found a good deal on a stock-style clutch and an aluminum Fidanza flywheel.

I also felt the need to preserve my investment so a high quality, custom car cover was ordered along with leather conditioner to try and restore what was left of my seats. That was the extent of my work for the winter.

As spring began to roll around a few issues started to come up. One was that there appeared to be a small leak around the throttle body and the second was a coolant leak. The gas leak was quickly diagnosed as worn out injector O-rings. A throttle body rebuild kit was tracked down and I installed the various gaskets need to cure the leak. The coolant leak, on the other hand, was a bit more of a mystery. I couldn't pin point the leak any closer than knowing it was in the general area of the water pump. I decided I needed to do something and replacing the water pump seemed like an obvious choice. I purchased a new water pump and on removing the old one I discovered the cause of the leak. A small section of hose, about an inch long, behind the water pump was worn out. So I bought a new $40 water pump when all I really needed was a $0.25 section of hose. Oh well...

Soon after the new water pump was installed I took the car on a very long trip. I was heading to Sebring Florida for the 12 hour endurance sports car race. The trip down went pretty well. The car ran a little hot early on. I stopped and added a little coolant and she was fine for the rest of the trip down. Then, at seemingly random times, while down in Florida the car would loose coolant and run hot. I just kept topping her off whenever it happened... On the way back I hit Daytona beach and later had a chance to wind her up to 135mph for a quick burst while on I95. However, the fun was short lived. When I got about 2 hours from home the car began to lose power and run really bad. I nursed her home, but just barely! I had heard horror stories of the catalytic convertors failing and clogging up the exhaust, I was sure that was what happened to me. A bit of detective work the next day didn't reveal a clogged exhaust, but while looking for it I found the real problem. During my trip, my turbo became hot enough to nearly completely melt through my #3 spark plug wire. My car had been running on 3 cylinders for nearly 100 miles! I also found that the overheating problem I was having was due to a leaky radiator cap. My ego was bruised again, but installing a set of Magnecor 8.5mm racing wires and a Greddy rad. cap a week later helped dull the pain.

All in all, the trip to Florida cost me a bit less than I anticipated. That left me with enough money to purchase my first major upgrade. Read on...