After owning the car for less than 48 hours and driving it 147 miles, SMOKE WAS COMING FROM MY ENGINE. I immediately took the car in for repairs, but after five days I still have not got it back! It appears that the engine had defective front and rear main seals that allowed gear oil to enter the main engine housing. The engine has been taken apart and rebuilt before its first fill up.
When I requested a new fully operational car, I was informed that it is not Mitsubishi's policy to give customers what they purchase (i.e. a WORKING CAR!)
I have owned three cars in my life:
1. 1984 Mazda 626 (bought used in 1993)
2. 1986 VW Rabbit (bought used in 1996)
3. 1998 Ford Escort ZX2 (bought in 1998)
I drove each car for more than 30,000 miles, without one instance of a smoking engine or TWO REPAIRS! Mitsubishi make defective cars!!
Every car company produces a few lemons. Do not think that this is common thing for Mitsubishi cars because it isn't.
Sounds like you got a crappy dealer. You should have got a different car. I hope that this has been resolved. I didn't even get mine from a dealership, and they have been more than gracious.
I purchased 1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse brand new off the showroom floor. Within the 1st week the transmission went out, not long after it went out again. The dealership supposedly found the defect, now it does not even make it to 20000 miles and goes out again and again.
Over 8000 dollars in warranty work. Mitsubishi refuses the warranty because they say we abused the car, and they are not going to spend another dime on it. I pay 500 a month plus insurance for an unreliable car from the start. Dealership stated they would never take a hit on this car, they kept fixing the transmission but never tried to figure out why it keeps blowing, except with the excuse of abuse.
I am so upset I have had to turn it over to a lawyer and my car is sitting at the dealership, unable to move unless I have a tow truck. It is a beautiful car, but not worth the money I was charged for it.
Sorry to hear about your car. I purchased my 2000 GT almost a year ago, I still have not broken 10,000 miles yet and the only problem is that I have 2 bent wheels and the clear coat is peeling on all 4. My dealer is giving me a real hard time about replacing these wheels under warranty under the basis that I abused my car!! That is totally ridiculous because I pamper my car more than I pamper myself! It sat in storage for during the winter months!! There is no excuse for any of my wheels to be bent or to have the clear coat peeling. Other than that the car is great the but my dealership isn't.
What the hell does curbing your wheels have to do with your auto dealer?
I bought my 2000 Eclipse GT 2 weeks after it came out. I love driving my car. And for you other Eclipse owners who took their cars for a drive on winding roads and roads with steep incline, you know what I mean. But for the 2 years I've owned my car I have taken my car back 3 times for recalls. 1st was tightening the hose for the radiator. 2nd was changing battery wire to a bigger gauge. 3rd was replacing transmission fluid for better shifting. Besides these small recalls, my car runs great! I have a question though, did the turbo charger came out yet for this car? =)
I own a 2000 Eclipse GT and I have had more BS problems with this car than any car I have ever owned. You all might want to check out this site and see some of the problems everybody else is having. This car has the build quality of a yugo! And every dealer I have talked to about anything has given me the runaround... I will never buy another mitsubishi again. PERIOD! Bad service, bad quality!
To everyone who has owned a 10 spoke wheel. These wheels are DEFECTIVE!!! These came on the 98 and 99 GSX. I have seen a bunch of comments on here about the soft rims... Besides the fact they suck. I believe they made the same rims on the 2000 rims and maybe 2001 rims also. Well here is good news! Someone has filed a CLASS ACTION suit against them. My rims did the same, and I joined the fight. There are already about 300 people in on this who have had the same problem. PLEASE email hilton@litigation-results.com. They will send you the information and something you can sign for them to represent you. It may take a year or two, but it is worth replacing your rims. And if you already have, get your money back! email me at isobro@yahoo.com if you need help signing up. Here is the website with some info on the case. http://www.shslitigation.com/news_mit.htm.
I am a mechanic of about 10 years. I have had three eclipses in my time and my latest is a 1995 gs. I just put on some new tires and was surprised to find that when I balanced the tires (something you must do after installing a tire) I found the rims to be bent. All of them. Not only bent, but the clear coat is peeling and, by virtue of a total garbage design, the center caps are totally corroded. The center caps are corroding and chipping and the inferior plain steel retaining clip used on the inside of the rim to hold the center cap in place all, but crumbled to a pile of rusty dust when I had to remove it for balancing. I have also compared the wheel studs and lug nuts to those you would find on a toyota (where I now work) and found the mitsu lugs and studs to be about ten times more corroded and rusted than the toyota. The funny thing is, the toyota was older and had more miles on it. The lug nuts seemed to be identical in shape, size, and thread type only obviously inferior in quality. So I ofcourse switched all my lugs to the toyota lugs, I have yet to change the studs. I have found in general that mitsubishi engineering seems to be totally inferior to toyota engineering and after a brief search on the internet I have concluded that mitsu rims, studs and lugs are cheap pieces of junk just sitting there waiting to rust and cause problems. I only hope mine last longer than I own my car.
I own a 1999 Eclipse and its been GREAT!!! The people that have problems with their cars obviously do not take care of them. I have owned three cars in my life and my MITSUBISHI has been the most RELIABLE!!!
Given I have only owned 1st gens eclispe's (my favorite) I have had a lot of problems, but just due to the fact all 3 have over 150,000 miles on them. But my mom owns a 2001 gt, and its one hell of a good, I personaly don't have any problems with eclipse's, I love them.
First, I'd like to say to the person who feels that those of us having problems are not maintaining our cars that it may be the case with some of us, but I'm an old school driver who still enjoys donning the monkey suit and doing as much maintenance work as possible on a religious basis. Oil and filter changes are done every 3,000 miles. Tune-ups, tire rotations, coolant changes all follow the owner's manual schedule. My friends consider me a granny driver, so it's not like I neglect and flog the vehicles. My Lancer was a lemon and I don't miss it one bit. OK, to the point. After my 1998 Dodge Avenger (built at Mitsubishi's Illinois factory) was rear-ended and totaled out I bought a brand new 2002 Lancer. I had assumed that because one Mitsubishi had given me such great service (111,000 trouble free miles) the new model would be even better. I also assumed the start-up knock would either work itself out in time or the warranty would cover it without quibble. Well, you know what happens when we ass/u/me. The knocking got so bad that a co-worker innocently commented that he wasn't aware that the Lancer was available with a Diesel engine. The dealer stonewalled and bluffed. The service rep tried telling me the engineers design the piston slap into the engine. Baloney! Only after I sent a registered Last Chance or Lemon Law letter to the dealer principal did the rep tell me they would order a short block, adding that he was certain it wouldn't cure anything. Too little, too late. By that time I'd traded the car in on a Toyota Echo. Now there's a car I'd recommend anytime. No piston slaps, no orange peel paint, no grinding brakes after 5,000 miles. Steer clear of Mitsubishi, please!
I have a 98 eclipse with 100,000 miles on it. I love my car and have never had a problem with it. I hope to drive it another 100,000.
I have owned a 95 Eclispe for about 3 years now... I love my car and the next car I own will probably be another Eclispe! The only problem I have ever had with my car would be my rims being bent! And I am not no crazy driver or anything :)! But other than that problem I WILL ALWAYS LOVE MITSUBISHI!
I have owned two Eclipses. I bought a 1995 and traded it for a 2000 in 1999. While I have nothing but praise for my low-end 1995 RS, the complete opposite is true of my 2000 GT which I purchased loaded at higher end car price. I can't remember the order in which things started to fall apart because it seemed like once one thing went, everything else followed. The motor on my passenger side window fried. I went out one night downtown and had to leave my window all the way down in the middle of a NY winter because it wouldn't go up. After it was supposedly repaired it only worked intermittently. My sunroof was determined to be defective after I brought it in to be looked at because it resembled a Mexican jumping bean bouncing up and down each time it opened. The dealer replaced the sunroof which obviously resulted in some driving time and inconvenience. Granted the billet gas caps are an after market product, but they serve to as the icing to my cake. I have been through two of them because they consistently peel and chip and look downright awful. And now I am on to the rim issue. Unaware of the wide spread issue with my rims, I purchased a new rim from the dealer to replace a bent one. Had I been informed this was a wide spread issue a year ago WHEN the vehicle was in warranty when I had to replace the first rim, maybe I would have had better luck having them replaced. But I was not and I spend about $400 on a new rim, thinking it was my fault. Now, a year and a bunch of miles later, I have yet another bent rim and one that is cracked! The cracked wheel obviously poses some sort of threat to my operating safety, however I have been faced with nothing but uncooperative people at both the Mitsubishi customer service and the dealership level. Now that the vehicle is out of warranty I have having a very hard time getting the Mitsubishi people to do something about the fact three of my rims have had issues that could cause serious safety problems. My question is, why does it matter if a vehicle is in warranty or out when a part is defective from the day it was installed? My thought is this: Mitsubishi made a mistake when they installed defective rims on my vehicle. They have jeopardized my safety and the safety of others on the road. Regardless of how many miles are on the vehicle or how the vehicle has been maintained, they have a responsibility to me, the consumer (and multiple Mitsubishi customer) to right their wrong. Don't you agree?