An automatic tranny in a sports car is about like a submarine with screen doors! No way I'd own a DSM with an automatic. I once test drove one and even with a turbo it was pretty pathetic. As a matter of fact I once top ended a buddy of mines AWD turbo-auto DSM playin on the freeway one night in my old NA Talon

My oldest daughter (with my newest grand daughter in tow) came out yesterdee and let me pilot her Kia the hour and 1/2 out to pick up the new "Black Steele", which of course meant I was able to give it a sweet hour and 1/2 shake down cruise on the way back home last night. What I can say with certainty is DAMN I MISSED HAVIN ONE OF THESE TOYS!!!!

I never could get the complete story about how the cat I bought it from wound up with this car, but evidently the previous owner had brought it to his dads shop after it having sat in storage for 7 yrs and he did a 4 wheel brake job and replaced the fuel pump on it, after which it had one of those nasty timing belt events that often lead owners to throw their hands up when they find out what the repairs are gonna cost. Evidently that happened with this one and he then said to hell with it and just walked away from this one, leaving it with the kids dad who then had the head rebuilt and did a timing belt/water pump replacement on it.

To the mechs credit it seems he got the timing belt on and correctly tensioned, which on these engines is a double barrelled nightmare [tech.mirage-performance.com] <- a lengthy how to I penned some years back.

On the down side, in my exuberated state when I test drove the car last mundee night I never bothered to look at the oil pressure gauge while I was hammerin on the car, I mean hell, why should I with a car w/only 69k on it, right ... come on, please someone agree with me ... PLEASE? Well, I should have!

On the shake down cruise home I realized the oil pressure is pathetically low, which now makes me feel like a total dumbass

Drivin along with my mind runnin through every mechanical possibility of how this could be presenting itself in a car w/this little mileage I concluded it problee came from the very oil dry start up when it was 1st fired up after its 7yr nap. More than likely this led to an instant shearing away of precious layers of crank and rod bearing material (I surmise it likely did the same to the rings) and this led to an instant loss of the engines ability to develop good oil pressure, since the crank and rods are the 1st place the oil flows to from the oil pump.

I'm gonna do an oil change on it today and will be inspecting the waste oil for metal particles to confirm my diagnosis but my guess is I'll be droppin the pan and changin out the main and rod bearings next weekend while hoping there's no scoring of the crank itself