Crankwalk????

Hi , i have a 1990 Eclipse GS-T
Can you guys please tell me if crankwalk is common in my car , and what are some symptons to indicate it? thanks

not in yours

is crankwalk common in a 97 gsx?

Crankwalk in general is not common.. It would be more common to get it in a 7 bolt motor than a 6 bolt. Therefore, the 97 gsx (7 bolt) would be more prone to it than the 90 gst (6 bolt). A sympton would be not being able to start your car. If I am wrong, please correct me. Also use the search button on the top and search crankwalk.. Some very informative write ups by 95 gsxRacer are in this forum.

95gsxracer has a forum at http://www.racingknowledge.org in the eclipse forum that tells you everything you want to know about crankwalk. The 95-99 eclipses all had 7 bolt motors, as well as some of the older first generation ones. However, all 90 and 91's and 99% of 92's have 6 bolt motors that crankwalk MUCH less frequently. You should check out Kevin's post at RacingKnowledge.org; it has some great info. Kevin's main line is that unless you give your car a reason to crankwalk (driving it w/o oil, overheating, poor maintenance, etc.) it is very uncommon for it to do it of its own accord.

95gsxracer has a forum at [url] Kevin's main line is that unless you give your car a reason to crankwalk (driving it w/o oil, overheating, poor maintenance, etc.) it is very uncommon for it to do it of its own accord.


Thats right. Uncommon when you consider how many cars were actually built. Its a pretty small precentage, though no one knows exactly what it is. Some "reasons" you could give the car to CW are

-running low on oil

-running old broken down oil
turbos absolutely beat the hell out of oil. In my NT cars the oil will look a nice honey color for the first 1-2k miles. In the GSX, after a week its black. Tons of heat, and other stress, breaks it down quickly.

-filter coming loose (less common without the sanwich oil cooler, see below)

-sandwich style oil cooler coming loose (quite common!)
On all 91-99 DSMs, there is a sandwich style oil to coolant oil cooler. Its a major POS. The threaded stud that the filter screws onto is also the bolt that holds that POS on to the filter housing. When changing your oil its possible that removing the filter also unscrews that bolt. Then you put the fitler on tight, but that bolt is stil loose. You'll blow out the gasket behind the cooler, and thats how I CWed the second motor that was in the car. The best thing to do is always do your own oil changes, and using a deep 24mm socket and a torque wrench, torque that "bolt" to ~15 ftlbs before putting teh filter on. Too much torque and you will crush the cooler, and oil and coolant will mix. Many times I thought I had a bad HG, I believe it was the cooler mixing the fluids. Lots of extra work for nothing ;) See the vfaqs for how to make it so you cant crush the cooler.


Not sure if I had this info in the RKO thread, but here it is. Hope it helps.

To get rid of the POS oil cooler, you have a couple options.

Use a 90 oil filter housing (only on 1g motors). It has two M16x1.5 ports for the stock external oil cooler. You can get M16x1.5 to 10 AN adapters and run your own oil to air cooler. I just block them off for now, I'll run a cooler when I get a BB turbo. The filter screws on to a stud that is part of the housing, no more shyte stud/bolt to come loose and cost me a motor, or cuase filters to blow off every other day.

If you have no plans to run a cooler at all, get a 1g NT 2.0 oil filter housing. Same as the 90 style turbo housing, but no ports to plug (and risk leaks).

There is also a housing off the galants I believe that puts the filter out towards the front of the car, rather than towards the DP.

Another side benfit to getting rid of that POS is you can get rid of some water lines. The one that runs behind the turbo is a reliability concern because of the heat induced failure it will eventually suffer. I've been left stranded more than once for those little POS coolant hoses. I keep a length of 3/8 hose in the car for emergency repairs... You can get a 90 water pipe to get rid of that port etirely (or plug it up), and a 90 water neck/tstat housing to get rid of that set of ports. Just a piece of mind thing.

Another thing you should consider regardless of what housing/cooler setup you use is safety wiring the filter to something. Put a hose clamp around teh filter with a piece of wire under it. Then wrap the wire around in the direction that will keep it from loosening, and tie it off to something. I just wrap it around the back of the filter and over it, and tie it off to the lower IC pipe of my FMIC.

The more reliability concerns you remove from the car, the more reliable it becomes. ;)