Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

Mr. Flibble wrote:When I lived in Victoria I was not able to source parts locally, this may have changed now.

Try Rocky Mountain Imports, they can ship. The best parts and mechanic I know of is Glenn at Coombs Country Auto - but that is not in Victoria as you asked.

If you are not going to do the work yourself, then you want to get that van up North to Coombs and have Glenn take a look at it.

X2

Coombs will serve you right. Best mechanics and parts I know of.

Craig

Probably the best question to ask yourself when considering a Delica is how much seating capacity do I need while offroading in the event you come across the hawaiian sun bikini girls and their tour bus is broken down. If you are thinking 7-8 sounds great then a Delica is what you need.

Yeah, Psilosin's right . . . or 7 elementary school kids needing to get to and from school during a freak coquitlam snow storm. First time out in the snow in my L400 and it didn't miss a beat - I didn't need anything more aggressive than AWD.

Really, it's a mini van on top of an SUV.

Maybe...but I had a friend who was driving north of Kamloops this weekend and hit a patch of black ice in his borrowed L300. 7 people in that van and they did a 360 in the middle of the highway, hit the ditch and rolled it. Very grateful nobody seriously hurt. Got some pretty freaking pics. Even 4X4 isn't a panacea when roads are clear and bare, but there's ice.

Rattlenbang wrote:Maybe...but I had a friend who was driving north of Kamloops this weekend and hit a patch of black ice in his borrowed L300. 7 people in that van and they did a 360 in the middle of the highway, hit the ditch and rolled it. Very grateful nobody seriously hurt. Got some pretty freaking pics. Even 4X4 isn't a panacea when roads are clear and bare, but there's ice.

Always remember this:

4X4 helps you go. It does not help you stop.

4X4 helps you go. It does not help you stop.

Amen to that! Last night my wife got caught in the hailstorm on her bicycle. Some yahoo blasted past her in his 4x4, splashing her with slush as she waited for me at the side of the road. No sooner than she could look up, enraged, he was sliding straight into, and under the back of a full sized pickup that had stopped in front of him. Karma.

Rocky Mountain Imports is in Central Saanich now about 20 minutes north of Victoria

Do they have a physical store? Online there's only contact info. I've also possibly determined that the L300 engine block is almost identical to the one used in some Dodge 80's pickups, 4D55 vs 4D56, so engine parts are available from my jobber quite inexpensively.

Rattlenbang wrote:Do [Rocky Mountain Imports] have a physical store? Online there's only contact info.

Not exactly: no store, but I've gone to their location to pick things up. Ordering online is good, you call, they find and ship, you're happy.

D55 and D56? Not sure other than the 55 was the first version of the engine, and then along came the 56. From the wiki pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi ... ngine#4G55) it looks like the main difference is the valves vs fuel injection. Not being a mechanic, I don't know if that means the heads would be different, but I suspect they would be.

Any real Mitsubishi mechanics out there?

When I've looked for heads and gaskets online, they list the same part number. I'm going to order this set and see if the gaskets are the same. From what I can tell the difference in the block is in the crankshaft throw, accounting for the different stroke, at least for the earlier version of the 56

I know there is two heads one with valves flush with the chamber and one with valves sticking out if I remember right..

I second OEM head gasket and OEM thermostat (not a job you want to do twice)

Other area of concern is the harmonic balancer coming lose and key-way damage to crank shaft...replace the crankshaft bolt and key when you reassemble.

There maybe some differences in head quality depending on who actually made it (no experience on the subject but something to watch for??)

And if you do the belts, do the tensioners too, the balance one in particular has a short life span. Head wise, if you have to replace it, a lot of the aftermarket ones are pretty rubbish.

yojimbo wrote:And if you do the belts, do the tensioners too, the balance one in particular has a short life span. Head wise, if you have to replace it, a lot of the aftermarket ones are pretty rubbish.

I wonder if the L300 "head cracking reputation" is from aftermarket heads being put on?

I'll see what happens when I get the head off; hopefully I won't need a new head. I was able to get a complete head rebuild gasket kit for $140.00, overnight from Coquitlam. It's a well-known brand so I'm hoping quality won't be an issue. It's part # Fel-Pro Hs9084Pt1 Head Gasket Set. Once I pull the old head I'll be able to quickly confirm that the set is correct for this van. Major cost savings by going this route. I know some people have had problems by using off-brand gaskets in the past, but you never know if subsequent failure was caused by poor quality Chinese made part, installation, or an unaddressed problem that caused the original failure.

From what I've always thought, head cracking was usually caused by overheating. A machinist once showed me how thin castings are on aluminum heads, making them susceptible to cracking and warping, compared to the heavy steel castings of previous eras. And aftermarket heads are almost always old OEM heads that have been cleaned up, so there shouldn't be an issue beyond simple quality control.

thedjjack wrote:

yojimbo wrote:And if you do the belts, do the tensioners too, the balance one in particular has a short life span. Head wise, if you have to replace it, a lot of the aftermarket ones are pretty rubbish.

I wonder if the L300 "head cracking reputation" is from aftermarket heads being put on?

It's possible or at least its part of the statistics in some way shape or form, but I think the head is prone to it, and maybe cheap ones more so. I expect its a problem with the material or shape which means the heat cycling plus vibration of a diesel causes it to crack over time, I expect mine has cracks in it for instance, but there's no evidence of it. I spoke to a Pajero owner a while back, he'd swapped his paj for something else, but before doing so had engine work, not head related, but the head had been taken off, it was riddled with cracks and had 150k miles or something on it. But still ran ok. He was also a traffic cop, and spoke to a lot of our recovery guys during incidents, and they had said the 4d56 engined vehicles were incredibly reliable and they rarely got called out to them for engine problems. So its an interesting contrast, if you overheat the vehicle and take the head off, it might be full of cracks, but if it is, they could be 'somewhat' unrelated to the overheating, and just be there, unless they occur somewhere it matters.

Over here we see a lot of 4D56 heads on ebay, and people are warned off the cheap knockoffs due to a lack of longevity, but, over here, head failure often results in the vehicle being scrapped. We pay a relatively low price for them, you guys pay a lot more, so it wouldnt surprise me that someone overheated the head and warped it over there, due to lack of cooling maintenance, swapped a cheap head on it to sell it on and get back some money, and the new owner gets a time bomb.