4g61t.org

I’ve had a few build threads around the net for this car, but over the year’s images and forums have gone offline, so I thought it was about time to document the story of this car again.

I look back at the 12 years I’ve owned the car and think the journey has been more fun than arriving at the final iteration. I have learnt a lot owning and modifying this car and I’ve tried a lot of things that didn’t work that’s for sure, as you’ll read later.

Taking a trip back, it all started in 2005 when I found this nugget at a Perth importer.



It’s a 1988 Mitsubishi Mirage Cyborg and It has a lot in common with the Australian assembled CB Lancer as far as body panels and standard trim components, but as with most imports the JDM version’s specification was much higher with more standard electric gizmos, better seats and interior trimming, plus a turbo engine and 4WD drivetrain.

You could consider this basically the little brother of the Galant VR4 of the same vintage, but with several differences.

Standard, the specs read like;
• 1600 Twin cam, Turbo and Intercooled / 4G61T / TD04 11g / 8psi
• 4WD with Viscous Center Coupling, Solid Rear Diff (Open Standard/Optional LSD)
• 5 Speed Manual, 2.844 diff ratio
• A/C / Elec Windows & Mirrors
• Grand Slam Sticker

And the standard performance is a spirited;
• 95.5KW / 144NM
• 0-100 kph in 10.3s
• 1/4m 17.2s
• Kerb weight ~1200kg

I can’t say I was wowed when I first inspected it, it had horrid wheels and underwhelming performance and at the time I was really looking for a EVO 1-3.

But after about 3 weeks I convinced myself to buy the car and parted with $7,000 of the good stuff, it was clean, only had 90,000kms on the clock and a very rare option of the sunroof.



This is where the journey began…

The very first mod I did was get rid of the 15” Racing Hart CP Competition wheels, they were very light and probably rare – but I wasn’t a fan. (fast forward a couple of years and the Harts were wrecked when I lent them out)

I really wanted a set of Enkei Tarmac Evo’s, but they were impossible to find at the time, especially in a 4x114.3 stud pattern. I settled on a similar design by Advanti called the SA15 which I ordered in 17” with some 215/40 tyres. This puts the rolling diameter about 10% higher than stock but it is the largest rim/tyre package that would fit comfortably in the guards.

Second mod was to lower the car but of course there were no off the shelf springs available in Australia for this car. The Fronts were easy as the MacPherson strut setup is the same as the ADM CB Lancer GSR, but the GSR springs wouldn’t work in the rear because the Rear diff made the lower mounting higher. With a lack of options, I ended up getting a set of CB Lancer GSR King Springs anyway and shortening the rear springs to fit. This made the rear very stiff and quite horrible to drive, but it looked better than being 4” too high in the rear.

Shortly after I installed an Auto Meter Phantom Series boost gauge that has since day one, never read accurate. It’s always hovered around 1psi when at normal air pressure and I’ve hunted for a calibration bung, but there isn’t one.

The momo steering wheel came with the car and I think it’s perfect, I intended the button as a scramble boost toggle, but it’s never been hooked up.



I drove the car around like that for a few months and then had a custom 3” Mandrel bent exhaust installed combined with a dodgy boost tap the car went pretty good.

Now around 2006, I started attending a few of the local car cruises and on one night I had done a few clutch dump launches in a row and then heard a little “ting”. The car still drove okay but something wasn’t right, it would almost drive like it had a locked rear diff. I wonder what it could be? Mmmm never mind it still drove.

One of the reasons I convinced myself to by the Borg was because of how easy it was to upgrade with VR4 parts and after keeping an eye out in the local trading paper I found a 1992 ADM Galant GSR that had a JDM Galant VR4 Evo Zero front cut installed, but it wasn’t running properly.

This made me start thinking of doing an engine swap, which from what I had read was easy enough as the 4G63T is the same family as the 4G61T except 2.0 litre vs 1.6 and the only real physical different is a 10mm taller block.

A good reason to hunt down a VR4 Evo Zero was because of the factory upgrades over a standard VR4. The Evo Zero makes 176kw and 304nm vs 150kw and 294nm for the standard VR4, this is mainly achieved with 510cc vs 450cc Injectors, TD05 Small 16G vs 14B, Larger Intercooler and piping, slightly more aggressive Cams and a better tune in the ECU, which is a single board and chippable.

When I looked at the swapped Galant GSR, the engine ran fine, compression was good but it wouldn’t shift into any gear and the clutch just didn’t feel like it was there at all, but the basis looked good enough and I really wanted that engine! $1800 later and it was mine.

No use wasting time then…

I sold the stock 4G61T complete minus wiring loom to someone in Adelaide for almost the cost of the Galant with the VR4 motor, probably the best deal I had with the car.

Gave the VR4 motor a birthday, new Cambelt, pulleys, water pump and balance shaft removal.

When removing the balance shafts in 4G63’s it tends to increase the oil pressure significantly, it’s not uncommon for it to go way above 100psi which can cause a few problems with turbo oil seals etc.

The common solution is to port the standard oil pressure relief valve, I may have gone just a little for far here, but it works!

I had a new engine, just needed to sort out a gearbox. The one that came with the new motor was cactus, it had a dodgy FWD conversion done, broken bellhousing from probably running into something and the clutch release bearing had collapsed. I stripped it down for some bits and binned the rest.

It wasn’t too much of an issue that the VR4 gearbox was unusable because with just a VR4 clutch and flywheel the stock 4G61 gearbox would bolt up fine. I just needed to find a clutch and flywheel…

Lucky for me I guess, I found a Direct Clutch Twin Plate for sale on eBay, total over kill!

Remember the “Ting” noise I heard when I did a launch earlier? Well it seems I smashed the two spider gears in the Centre diff and they had wedged themselves in such a way that they locked the diff up. This explains the car driving like it had a locked rear diff.

So why not do the job properly and weld the whole thing together with bird shit? Theory being it won’t break again right?

With the drive train sorted, I swapped the 4G61T engine mounts onto the 4G63T and it all dropped in like it was meant to be there.



I wish I had known at this point how much further I had to go.

With the 2.0 litre finally in the car I started on swapping some of the VR4 sensors into the 4G61 loom, mainly the Cam/Crank Angle Sensor, Throttle Position Sensor and Idle Stepper Motor. I also added a SARD FPR to the stock fuel rail and gave the rocker cover a lick of paint.

Electrically, the swap from the 4G61 to 4G63 is very easy as the wiring between the Cyborg & VR4 is almost identical. Only a few sensor plugs need updating and the VR4 ECU even plugs right in.

I then started to plan the fuel system, the standard pump is guessed to be around 120lph which would probably be ok for standard power levels but I wanted to build some future proof in.

My thoughts were to use the stock pump as a lift pump into a surge tank with a single Bosch 044 as the primary. That should give me a bit of head room. Now, where to put it?



Might as well relocate the battery to the boot at the same time, this will free up some engine bay space for cold air induction. I ran a length of 32mm2 double insulated power cable from the front to rear of the car.

Speaking of induction, you may have noticed no exhaust manifold/turbo or intake in the previous images.

Well, I happened to acquire a TD05 16G-6 from a Hyper RVR, this turned out to be a bit of a gem as when we looked closely at it, it was the same physical size as a normal Big 16G but had a revised compressor wheel, which I assumed to mean good things. One drawback was that I would need to clock the turbo compressor cover to fit and that would mean I couldn’t use the stock internal wastegate and actuator. Damn.

So, to solve that problem I purchased a TRR Stainless manifold with a 38mm Tial Wastegate. This was before the golden age of Chinabay and quality was assured

A couple of other parts arrived, a 2.5” Throttle Body Inlet and an Injen Turbo Intake for an US Eclipse.

A bit more happened on the fuel system and boot. I wasn’t thinking of building a show car, just a nice streeter and I was trying to keep the boot a usable place.



Battery boxed and a huge fuse added inline.

I have a friend in the sign writing business who owns a CNC router, he machined me up this awesome custom sparkplug cover and I added some Taylor Ignition leads for something nicer to look at.



The standard intercooler wasn’t going to work for this engine, its tiny and sits inside the driver’s side wheel well. The obvious choice at the time to was use the VR4 cooler, being the Evo Zero spec it was slightly larger than the normal JDM Galant cooler and with a 2.5” end tank mod should work well for this setup.

I positioned the standard VR4 Oil Cooler in the passenger side wheel well, it gets its airflow from the standard bumper vents, but probably needs a little fan behind it for the summer time.



…and I also added a little cold air induction on the driver’s side in the form of a 250mm 90deg Bunnings spec storm drain, this earned the car the affectionate nickname: POSBOG from my mates.

With Cyborgs & VR4’s, they share a lot of wiring and sensors. This made the swap quite easy but when it comes to ECU’s there are only a few good ones and they are the single board ECUs from late model VR4s.

These late model single board ECU’s can be chipped and they can also data logged via an OBD like protocol.

Thankfully with the 2.0 litre engine came the accompanying MD165808 ECU that I had socketed and chipped by a local guy to include a stock VR4 RS Fuel & Ignition Map, updated code for the newer E1-3 Air Flow Meters and “stutter box” which is a launch control mode that creates about 7psi of boost while popping & banging.



The data logging on the single board ECU is done via a Palm IIIc with MMCd Logging software installed. It works really well and is a lot faster than real OBD/II, enough so that it actually provides useful information and can be setup in a dash mount with night lights.