Mitsubishi Eclipse - Power Pages

Dyno TestingWe trekked our way up to Dynamic Autosports in Irvine, Calif., after making a date with Eddie Kim, Dynamic's proprietor and Big Man On Campus. He set us up with with some fresh oil and some new spark plugs and sent us over to Aries "DynoBoy" Dizon, tuner extraordinaire. We added some fresh Royal Purple motor oil and a set of NGK BKR7ES spark plugs, and then bolted the car to the dyno. Surprisingly, our horsepower and torque figures increased to 119.0 and 122.7, respectively. This is a good increase from our previous 117.2 hp and 121.6 lb-ft numbers. It just goes to show you a tuned-up motor is a happy motor, and a happy motor is a powerful motor. So, get your ass off the couch and give your car something to smile about.

Now back to the good stuff. the installation of the cam gears on the 420A motor requires quite a bit of effort, and time was not on our side because of the high demand on the Dynamic Autosports' dyno. Therefore, the cam gears and the nitrous kit were previously installed by Pann Auto Performance in San Diego, Calif., who did a bang-up job on installing the bolt-on goodies with precision craftsmanship. The sprockets were installed to zero degrees advance/retard, so this did not alter the baseline settings a bit. Dynamic's Mr. Dizon did alter the settings, and after a few hours of tuning and re-tuning on the Dynojet, he ended up with 126.0 hp and 127.9 lb-ft of torque.

Adjusting the camshaft timing resulted in a shift of the entire powerband from 2600 rpm to redline. The biggest horsepower increases began at 4000 rpm and gradually grew until redline, with the largest peaks seeing about 9 hp. Additionally, low end torque jumped up almost 6 lb-ft and then started to taper off towards the high end, with a 4 lb-ft increase still realized at the 7200 rpm redline. The end result: more usable horsepower throughout the entire range of engine's capacity.

The next thing on our list was the Nitrous Express single fogger kit. We could expect that when jetted for 50 hp, the kit would produce approximately 40 more hp at the wheels (with a 15 percent drivetrain loss figured in). The NX kit delivered, and the final horsepower on the bottle jumped to 163.0 hp, while torque registered a devastating 165.4 lb-ft. Again, examining the graphs and the spark plugs closely after the nitrous pulls revealed that the motor was in perfect health and ready for more. Larger jets were available for testing, but due to time constraints we didn't have the opportunity to put them in.

ConclusionThe 420A in the Mitsubishi Eclipse is a competent motor. Although not necessarily tuned for performance from the factory, the addition of basic bolt-on parts can help unleash the horsepower and torque in this 2.0L motivator. Exploiting the motor's strength, its relatively high torque numbers, seems to be the key to getting the Eclipse where it wants to go faster and quicker. So, if you drive of one of these machines, add some bolt-on goodies, stir in some laughing gas, and shake well for a delicious performance meal.

The FactsEngine Tested: 420AApplication: '95-99 Eclipse RSCommon Swaps: JDM Mitsubishi 4G63 motorsReplacements: '95-99 Neon, '95-99 Stratus