£1000 Challenge
The Galant makes it to the British Motor Museum on its second attempt – but keeping ahead of its growing to-do list is proving to be a struggle
Mitsubishi Galant
They say lightning doesn’t strike twice, but how about breakdowns? Well, I wasn’t taking any chances and swore features ed Chris to silence as we passed the spot where our Galant’s alternator had given up the ghost on our last trip to the British Motor Museum a couple of months previously. To be fair, it was just the wiring to the alternator that had been at fault, but although I’ve driven hundreds of trouble-free miles in the car since, somehow it was much more stressful attempting a journey that the car had already failed to complete before.
As you will have guessed from the images on this page, however, the Galant did make it to the Gaydon museum and just as importantly, it made it back without any problems, too. Arriving as early as we did, I’m pretty sure that we were the only Mitsubishi on site. There doesn’t seem to be a single example of the marque in the BMM’s collection; to my knowledge it has never built a car on British shores, unlike Honda, Nissan and Toyota. That said, Ralliart Europe’s famed WRC cars were built just down the road from Gaydon in Rugby, which actually ran an E33 Galant like ours in its debut 1989 season. And no, we didn’t receive any offers from the attraction’s curators.
Our trip to the museum was also contributor Richard Gunn’s first time in the Mitsubishi, and the fact that the first thing he noticed was the car’s annoying windwhistle at motorway speeds convinced me that I needed to sort it out. Finding the window seal in the offending door out of place, I used some Holts Silicone Spray and a trim tool to get the seal back into its proper position. A quick test drive, however, demonstrated that the Mitsubishi was still whistling from the exact same spot – perhaps the seal has shrunk with age, but I’m out of ideas.
Moving on to the other old rubberbased problem, I also tried to remove the faulty cruise control system’s dried-out old vacuum pipes. This turned out to be much harder than expected, however, because one of the pipes was routed around – and attached at multiple points to – a near-inaccessible vacuum cylinder in the top corner of the engine bay. The only way I could see of getting to the underside of this unit was by removing it, along with its bracket, but I heard a crack as I undid the first of two bolts and then the ratchet lost all resistance. The old bolt had sheared. Undoing the other bolt on the bracket didn’t release the thing as a result; the stub of the broken bolt held it in place.
I now have no idea how to get this bracket out, and have largely resigned myself to the fact that it is now stuck there, but I was at least able to reach around the back of the vacuum module to disconnect the other side of the damaged pipe. I can’t remove the pipe fully because it is still clipped to the underside of this immovable module, but I will at least be able to fit a new one, running it in parallel. I’ve snipped off the end of the pipe in the meantime, which will help me find the right size replacement. I have had one victory with the car, however. Regular readers will remember that I unclogged the windscreen washer jets at the end of July ( CCW 1499), but while it worked well on the driver’s side, the ones on the passenger side never fully unblocked and have become stuck again. Much to my surprise, I found a new set for sale online, not OEM parts, sure, but pattern parts made for the contemporary Mitsubishi Pajero. The Galant’s cabin may still be full of annoying noise at motorway speed, therefore, but at least we can now see properly. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.