MagnaP.I's ummm ... Magna?

[MagnaP.I]

Sorry to dissappoint if you were expecting to see the Mighty MagnumPI's 302GT!

Here is my far less exciting ride! Its a 2003 Mitsubishi Magna that I purchased back in 2009 with 100,000km's on the clock. I seen the black paintjob w/green flakes and I was sold on it - mmmm <3 black. It was my first "proper" car that I actually wanted. My real first car will never be talked about in these circles - it was dark times in my life. Sold my first car after 6 months of ownership (for a profit! - #winning) and then bought anouther grandpa car - enter the magna. Unfortunately I didn't get the optional walking stick and knitted cardigan holder nor did I get the woolen seat/steering wheel & dash covers but I did get the grandpa flaps & snoozeamatic gearbox!

50,000km's later its still been a reliable car that has never really suffered any major issues. Been a great car to learn on and finding replacement parts & knowledge about it has been a breeze. Love having access to heaps of these cars sitting in extremely cheap wreckers for when I break things!

The mod list:

Exterior
- 18x8" HP Racing Matt black Wheels w/Falken FK452 235/40/R18 wheels
- Mitsubishi Verada KJ tail lights
- Mitsubishi Verada KJ Xi Chrome front grille
- Mitsubishi Sports/VR-X 1 Piece Parabolic Headlights
- Ground Effects Front lip
- VR-X rear bumper
- Front Factory Fog lights.
- De-badged
- De-mudflapped
- Spoiler removed
- Closed door respray
- Black window surrounds
- Black exterior door plastic trims
- Fitted Ford EF Fairlane dual tone horns

Interior:
- Climate control conversion - full dash out job
- Fitted a Verada style "Black-out" cluster (Looks like this and works like this)
- Centre console from later model TL/TW magna
- Mitsubishi Magna Sports seats
- Custom black suede door trims. Will be redone with perforated leather.
- Painted interior plastics in Mitsubishi "Sienna Red"
- Black cloth centre console lid
- Black carpet from a VRX magna
- Black parcel shelf and speakers
- Leather steering wheel
- Installed a digital clock (wow!)
- LED conversion
- Footwell (puddle) lights
- Keyring surround light
- FPV Momo leather gearknob

Audio:
- JVC K926BT headunit
- Morel Dotech Ovation 6.5" front speakers
- Polk Audio MM1240DVC sub
- Alpine MRP-240 4 channel amp - bridged for 110wrms @ 4 ohm for front splits
- Clarion XR2110 monoblock - 400wrms @ 2 ohm for sub
- 4 guage SCA wiring
- Stinger & Sony RCA's

Performance/Mechanical
- Auto to Manual conversion using a 5sp 3.0L box due to shorter first gear ratios.
- 240mm Exedy clutch from a Mitsubishi 380
- Lowered using King Springs Lows
- Koni Yellow Adjustable front shock absorbers
- KYB Excel-G Rear shock absorbers
- Rear 18mm factory swaybar (soon to be 22mm Whiteline)
- VR-X/Sports Free flowing exhaust
- 200cspi Hi-flow catalytic converter
- HM Extractors from a Ralliart Magna
- 2.5" factory piping
- Lpg conversion - runs on bbq fuel that costs 70 cents per litre!
+ Regular 7500km maintenance.

Future plans/Still to come:
- Whiteline front strut brace
- Fitting Koni Yellow Adjustable rear shocks
- Larger rear sway bar
- Dyeing interior full black
- Mitsubishi genuine "Ground Effects" side skirts
- Repaint front GE lip (full of stone chips)
- Remove and replace old fading & peeling window tint.


New pics will be coming soon. Latest ones are Here

[milkchicken]

WOOOOO Magna

Your car looks super nice and I don't know why you never put it up before. Looks good though and Hopefully you'll put up more and more pics for us

[AUSupra]

A clean car is a good car, love the shiny as paint! How is the engine bay?

[MagnaP.I]

Haven't been on the forum for a while during which time a few things have happened to this magna.....namely ..... A MANual conversion!

Finally have a manual car again - its been a loong while since I had a auto car and missed it heaps.

Will have some pics up soon.

[Mistah JT]

Should of let the spoiler. Makes it look nicer. Seems naked without.
Also would love pics of the engine bay. Feel like mine needs changing

[MagnaP.I]

Should of let the spoiler. Makes it look nicer. Seems naked without.
Also would love pics of the engine bay. Feel like mine needs changing

Haha I'm not a fan of spoilers unfortunately! I like the clean look - that's why tis car has no badges - at all! I suspect this car will a lot less "naked" when its finally lowered and I fit up a custom made garnish I've gone plans in the pipeline.

Engine isn't too flashy but I'll get up a pic soon enough .. You've pretty much got the same engine bay as mine bar the manual gearbox...

[Onikage]

Looks nice and tidy, was the black with green flake paint factory, or the last owner had it custom sprayed?

Was the manual conversion hard to do with this car?

[MagnaP.I]

Looks nice and tidy, was the black with green flake paint factory, or the last owner had it custom sprayed?

Was the manual conversion hard to do with this car?

Thanks!

The black with green flakes was actually a factory colour. It's called "Sable Black." Looks fantastic in the sun as the green flakes shine through. It was one of the reasons I decided to buy this car over others. I've found out that the base black was actually used on the Holden VY/VZ's except they added Blue flakes to it. I think the one thing mitsubishi always did well was its colour choice - esp. in the 2003-2005 era.

Manual conversion was moderately difficult. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who has never done anything of the sort before as it would be very difficult for them. Thankfully I'm fairly mechanical minded and so are my friends - however we're never done a fwd manual conversion using a push type clutch so there were a few hiccups. All of our experience is with old rwd cars.
I actually bought a wreck and stripped the parts out that car so we were able to see how it was setup from the factory.
Fitting up the gearbox in a odd fashion (i.e. horizontal vs. the usual vertical layout in rwd cars) took some time and patience due to the lack of access. We didn't pull the engine out as most people do so we had a bit of a hard time fitting it up - took at least 1-2hours alone. Similarly, getting the heavy auto box off was a good challenge. Otherwise the rest of the install was fairly easy - just time consuming as we had to strip the wreck, take out the auto parts from my car and then fit up the manual bits. Then we needed to fit up hydraulic lines for the clutch, drill a hole in the firewall, modify wiring for auto ecu to run with converson, modify the driveshafts for the manual (take them apart and fit up manual intermediate shaft as it's smaller), modify the sandwich plate and fit the manual shifter & linkages, and then the car back together!

But it was well worth the trouble. <3 my car again! In manual - these things are pretty fast for a granny car. We did a 0-100 run and got around 7.3 seconds. A review of the VRX versions got 7.02 for the 0-100 split. Engine performance-wise the only difference between exec's and sports/vrx magna was the exhaust and I've got the VRX exhaust fitted so if I get my clutch changes right I could probably improve that time. Not bad for a family car with only a 3.5L 6cyl engine.

[AusHiede]

Magna's are pretty under rated for power - they are a really strong powerplant, my parents own a pair of TL/W Magna's and bloody heck they get up and boogy when you put the boot into it.

Love how yours looks, keep up the good work!

[Onikage]

Thanks!

The black with green flakes was actually a factory colour. It's called "Sable Black." Looks fantastic in the sun as the green flakes shine through. It was one of the reasons I decided to buy this car over others. I've found out that the base black was actually used on the Holden VY/VZ's except they added Blue flakes to it. I think the one thing mitsubishi always did well was its colour choice - esp. in the 2003-2005 era.

Manual conversion was moderately difficult. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who has never done anything of the sort before as it would be very difficult for them. Thankfully I'm fairly mechanical minded and so are my friends - however we're never done a fwd manual conversion using a push type clutch so there were a few hiccups. All of our experience is with old rwd cars.
I actually bought a wreck and stripped the parts out that car so we were able to see how it was setup from the factory.
Fitting up the gearbox in a odd fashion (i.e. horizontal vs. the usual vertical layout in rwd cars) took some time and patience due to the lack of access. We didn't pull the engine out as most people do so we had a bit of a hard time fitting it up - took at least 1-2hours alone. Similarly, getting the heavy auto box off was a good challenge. Otherwise the rest of the install was fairly easy - just time consuming as we had to strip the wreck, take out the auto parts from my car and then fit up the manual bits. Then we needed to fit up hydraulic lines for the clutch, drill a hole in the firewall, modify wiring for auto ecu to run with converson, modify the driveshafts for the manual (take them apart and fit up manual intermediate shaft as it's smaller), modify the sandwich plate and fit the manual shifter & linkages, and then the car back together!

But it was well worth the trouble. <3 my car again! In manual - these things are pretty fast for a granny car. We did a 0-100 run and got around 7.3 seconds. A review of the VRX versions got 7.02 for the 0-100 split. Engine performance-wise the only difference between exec's and sports/vrx magna was the exhaust and I've got the VRX exhaust fitted so if I get my clutch changes right I could probably improve that time. Not bad for a family car with only a 3.5L 6cyl engine.

I see, I was thinking of doing a manual conversion to a RWD car, which might be a little easier as there is more space to work with and engine mounts don't need to be touched.

Practise will make perfect with your shifting, a 7.3s run from 0-100 is a good effort, those 3.5V6's are no slouch and will easily give a 6 cyl falcon/commodore a run for their money.

[MagnaP.I]

Magna's are pretty under rated for power - they are a really strong powerplant, my parents own a pair of TL/W Magna's and bloody heck they get up and boogy when you put the boot into it.

Love how yours looks, keep up the good work!

Thanks heaps mate! Exterior wise I won't be doing much more apart from colour coding the trims, lowering, fitting up parabolic headlights (like the Verada's or Sports/VRX magna's) and slightly tinting the tail lights. I'm quite happy how it looks now.

I'm glad your parents are happy with their TL/TW's they're great cars if you can get over the bugeye look. I think they actually a lot better today then they did when they were released. The previous TJ models and earlier (like mine) look dated. TL/TW's have more features, a better steering rack and are a bit safer so they're a fantastic bargain.

I agree that most people underestimate how powerful these cars actually are. A 5sp auto or manual version would make mince meat of any equivalent falcodore. When the VRX's were released they were faster than the V8 Falcon's and even the XU1 commodores! 4sp's lack a bit down lown but get the revs up and she goes. Overtaking on the highway is really easy when you get the 4-2 kickdown.

I see, I was thinking of doing a manual conversion to a RWD car, which might be a little easier as there is more space to work with and engine mounts don't need to be touched.

Practise will make perfect with your shifting, a 7.3s run from 0-100 is a good effort, those 3.5V6's are no slouch and will easily give a 6 cyl falcon/commodore a run for their money.

It'd be much much easier to do a rwd manual conversion. The best part is that everything is easier to get to as the engine & gearbox isn't shoehorned horizontally. This conversion took us 2-3 full days whereas rwd manual conversions we've done in less than 1 full day. With rwd setup's you don't have to worry about linkages, driveshafts etc you'll still need to fit up clutch cable or hydraulic lines (shorter than fwd ones and not tucked tight behind the engine) and probably do some wiring modifications or change your ecu and/or looms (depends on vehicle.)

If you've got a fairly popular car then jump online and join some similar car forums/clubs. Get active and if you make some good friends then you may just score some free/cheap labour or at least contacts to get expertise and/or things cheaper.

[MagnaP.I]

Few happy snaps from Sundy after a wash:

[milkchicken]

It's clean!

Nah looks good. Good old magnas. Give them love and they will love you back. Loving it

[SillyCar]

Definately would look even nicer dropped a couple inch

[MagnaP.I]

It's clean!

Nah looks good. Good old magnas. Give them love and they will love you back. Loving it

Haha - thanks! Yeah being black means it lives it life mostly unclean. I just don't have the time to wash it every 2 days! I really got over this car but now with the manual gearbox I love it again.

Definately would look even nicer dropped a couple inch

No doubt. The 4x4 setup doesn't look very good :/ it's practical but I don't go offroad much LOL . It will lowered in the near future but waiting until my insurance premium drops a bit when I'm around 22 years old. Insurance companies don't like the idea of a young P plater with history having a lowered car. Rims I can get away with, but not suspension changes. In the future this car will have new lowered suspension with stiffer shocks, a strut brace over the front, and a thick 24mm adjustable rear sway bar at the back. I might also change all the bushes as well. Should look good and handle well.