Sometimes you buy a used car with high hopes that it will be reliable and trouble-free for a few years. And there are times when you just need an interesting project car for your engine-teardown podcast, so you take a flier on something cheap at auction and hope for the best. When that car arrives, and you discover the engine wasn’t installed at the factory, and that too much boost may have caused problems, well, hilarity ensues. There’s much hilarity with this Mitsubishi engine.
Mitsubishi Engine Teardown SideI Do Cars / YouTube
“Today we are trying to turn lemons into lemonade for the second week in a row,” mechanic Eric says on the latest I Do Cars teardown video from his Missouri garage. He bought a 2010 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart at a Copart auction, only to find the 4B11T engine under the hood came from a 2008 Lancer Evolution. At first, that sounded like great news, and Copart ensured this engine successfully started and ran at idle when it first came in.
Internal Combustion Gone Horribly Wrong
Well, something awful must’ve happened in between, because Eric performs a great magic trick in this episode, pushing a giant steel rod right through the center of the 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder, while the camera is showing a longitudinal view. Once he rotates the engine, you see how the trick was done – courtesy of two gaping holes in the block.
While the 237-horsepower 2010 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart was a fun car (generally considered the “budget EVO”), the 2008 Lancer Evolution was rated at a rollicking good 291 horsepower. “It was a pretty cool car in its own right,” Eric says.
The 4B11T shares its architecture with both the Theta 2 engine developed for Hyundai and Kia, as well as the Chrysler 2.4-liter four-cylinder. “But most of this engine is Mitsubishi,” Eric says. As he disassembles this particular mill, he gradually pieces together how it met its demise, based on all the actual pieces filling up the oil pan. Indiana Jones never uncovered so many ferrous metals.
Mitsubishi 4B11T 2.0-liter four cylinder with massive damageI Do Cars
“I think this engine was blown up, or locked up, or had some damage back in 2022 or 2023 when it was at my buddy’s shop, and then it went to a different shop and got ‘rebuilt,'” Eric says, with finger quotes. The engine had some “nice aftermarket parts,” and it was “actually pretty decent aside from the amount of debris left behind.” There were a few signs of shoddy workmanship.
The main bearings showed signs of damage, and Eric attributes the engine’s ultimate failure to hydrolock or a fuel delivery issue, although he found no signs of water or rust in the engine.
“Or maybe this car was modified,” he says, with a little hint of sarcasm. “Probably running a little bit of boost, and maybe they made too much cylinder pressure for the connecting rods.” The two center connecting rods failed – one worse than the other.
‘Annihilated Everything In Its Path’
Mitsubishi 4B11T 2.0-liter four cylinder with massive damageI Do Cars
Once a connecting rod starts to bend, it keeps bending until eventually the piston strikes the counterweight on the crankshaft. “It probably ripped the wrist pin out at that time, and then the bent rod came down and just… annihilated everything in its path. At some point the wrist pin had enough, and it wanted to go on to its next life.” That’s when the crankshaft and connecting rod worked together to launch it through the wall of the engine block.
In the end, Eric is not bitter that Copart delivered a car with an engine that didn’t run, because he salvaged the cylinder head and should be able to resell it to recover some of his money. But if entertaining his YouTube followers was the real goal, then the Lancer was a good purchase.
“I wanted to have some carnage on the channel and, well, a car that I bought at the auctions filled that void,” he says.
Source: I Do Cars / YouTube
