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Does someone forget who was going to buy a 95 GS-T on the trade of his Accord?
Believe me, I've done my research. I've drove 4 different turbo DSM's this summer and done a ton of reading up on them. A 96 TSi AWD and 95 GS-T that I was ready to buy, and a 95 and 97 GSX that a friend and me test drove.
There are three main different engines in the second gen DSM's. The RS has the Neon engine, the GS has another gutless engine, and the GS-T and GSX have always had the 4G63.
First off, crankwalk affects every single 4G63 engine. The first gen (91-94) had it happen in less than 25% of them, while 95-96 had reportedly 50% of the engines dying by 80,000 miles. If you are to buy a 4G63 DSM, you need to look at a 98-99 or an ugly 1st gen. 98-99 had around 25% develope serious enough crankwalk problems to cause a new engine.
Now on ways to check for crankwalk. Turn right very sharply and slowly while driving with the clutch in and slowly let it out. If it catches the slightest bit, or if you feel the clutch pedal vibrate at all, those are telltale signs of crankwalk. Such as 99% sure you have it. Now, not every 4G63 with crankwalk will show these symptoms. My friend looked at and test drove a 97 and a 95 GSX this summer. The 97 drove awesome, had no symptoms, handled bad (I had a foot to spare as I almost slammed it into a guardrail on the interstate doing a 270 on the offramp), and to this day still is driving around town just fine. It sold a day before my friend got his load. So, being disappointed, he looked at and got the very next GSX he could find. A 95 that had a salvage title and had been totaled. I have drove this car plenty of times the first month he had it and it showed no symptoms. The car was fast, as being stock they're rated 14.9-15.0 in the quarter mile. I raced it with the Mustang and barely won once he hit the end of the street at 80+.
About two months ago, the car started showing no oil pressure. At all. The car has been sitting at two different shops the last two months waiting for a 6 bolt J-spec 4G63 to be dropped in it. His engine is dead, with about a few days warning before it died.
The moral of the story is, you can't be 100% positive the Eclipse you buy won't develope crankwalk. Even buying a 98-99, you haven't reached that 80k mile achievement, and older Eclipses have even died just over 100k miles. Buying a DSM is a huge, expensive gamble. You'll hear about making a DSM run 13's in under 3 grand. It may be true, but that's using cheap quality parts, and you lose all reliability. Then, after hitting the 13 mark, you pay thousands to get extra tenths of a second. What people do is manual boost controller, boost gauge, new BOV, front mount IC, and new IC piping to gain that first second off. Then you start breaking crap like crazy and you already pushed that 14G to its max 15psi. After that, it's a new manifold, turbo, injectors, fuel pump, fuel filter, gauges, piping, etc.
The ways to have a successful 4G63 is to buy a newest possible (98 or 99) one right away, replace/drill the journals on the crankshaft with new oil passages, never keep the clutch in while waiting at a light, and always watch that oil pressure. That'll lengthen the engine life amazingly. Or you put in or buy a 4G63 6 bolt engine.
I know I'm forgetting a lot to post, but if I remember anything later, I'll add it.
For entertainment purposes, here's two videos of my friends GSX before it died.
http://crew.hondagallery.com/prowler/gsx/driveby.avi 1.9mb
http://crew.hondagallery.com/prowler/gsx/driveby2.avi 1.2mb
And pictures of the GSX. It had 3" catback exhaust with a Apexi N1 clone muffler. It is the best muffler on an import that I have ever heard. It also has a first gen BOV with the top tapped in (tightens the spring and won't leak until 22psi, the stock BOV leaks at ~12psi), K&N filter, purple headlights and foglights (they're really cool), blackouts with Nite Shades, and a nifty OMEGA sticker, too.
