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Ethan's DMC Upgrades

Most Recent list (Feb 16)

We need all of these parts for the coming weekend to finish the front suspension.

DeLorean Go

Total: ~$360

DeLorean Texas

Total is ~$585.

DeLorean Industries

DPI and DMC EU seem to be the only ones that carry this. The DPI one isn’t too badly priced, so I’d get that one.

Total : $142

Throttle Bracket

Tomas provided a few options for these:

Option 1: JEGS

Total: $140 plus shipping

Option 2:

Total: ~$59 plus shipping

List from early February

DGo sells individual marker lights thousings; the red and amber lights for $24 each, and the original amber for $61. The Texas kit is still cheaper at ~~$75, and includes mounting hardware and gaskets (although you already have gaskets). It doesn’t include bulb sockets, but I think you ordered those last time, and you have new LED bulbs.

Headlights

I’ll order these from Amazon:

  • Hella Halogen Headlight Conversion Kit, $256 total

  • Generic LED Headlights, $72 total

Amazon total is ~$328. The motor mounts won’t arrive until next week. Let me know if this price is OK to you.

Motor Mounts

I’ll order these from RockAuto:

  • Left and Right Chevy Engine Mounts, ~$62 total with shipping

“Bonus” Parts

If you feel like spending more money “because we have stuff apart already), you could get:

Total is ~$470. Probably not necessary.

We know the upper ball joints are original, but they seem OK. The UCA bushings seem OK too.

List from 1/20/25

DeLoreanGo Key Parts

Brake Pads

Shocks and Springs

Suspension Parts
These are parts that we’re taking out to get to the springs and shocks, so they should generally be replaced as well.

Total is around $570. Know off $50 if you don’t get those UCA bolts.

Other Important Parts

Also from DeLorean Go

  • 1x Throttle Cable, $51
    Yours is probably original, and the sheath seems brittle. Good to do while we have everything apart.

  • 4x Side Marker Gaskets, $4.25 each
    The old ones are bad, and it would be good to have new ones while we’re replacing the marker light bulbs and wiring anyway. Note that we may need new sockets if they probe bad as well, but we won’t know until we replace them.

  • 1x Cargo Net Clip Kit, ~$20
    Order everything selected by default on this page.

Total is about $75

Optional Parts

Properly fix the ball joints for your louver struts. From DMC TX, since DGo doesn’t have these for some reason. Not critical.

Total is about $50.

Side Marker Light Sockets. We may not need any, we may need four. We can wait until we figure out if they’re actually bad or not.

Parcel shelf light

I need to get one myself someday. Tomas suggested the DMC one sucks, and get get one from ebay:


Should or Must Do

Brake Fluid Change

Your car very likely needs a brake fluid change and new pads. We can do this at my place; it’s easier with a lift since you have to take all the wheels off to get to the calipers to bleed them.

New pads are readily available from the DeLorean vendors, and you might as well do them while we’re changing the fluid.

New rotors are also available, if you want to do that too. Replacing the front rotors may require replacing the front wheel bearings (they tend to fall apart when you take them off after 40 years), which I’ve done a few times now. If you don’t notice a vibration when braking, I wouldn’t bother with new rotors.

Adjust E-Brake Cable

You may need to have your e-brake cables adjusted. If your e-brake seems fine, then we don’t need to worry about it. Easiest to do this here on my lift when we do the brake fluid change.

Repair Marker Light Wiring

The marker lights on your car don’t work (except the font left one). We likely have to remove the rear fascia to fix at least one of them, and we’ll have to investigate the other ones.

Make Marker Lights into Turn Signals

This is a relatively simple mod in the front to make the marker lights blink opposite the turn signals. You can also buy a module that makes this even easier.

Rear Turn Signal Re-Tinting

DeLorean Go sells the paint for the faded turn signal lenses. It’s $11. Michael Spieler has the paint for this already.

LED Headlights

You can upgrade your halogen headlights to LED. This is extremely simple, and barely more complex than changing the bulb, since you already have halogen housings. Just buy some off-the-shelf halogen-compatible LEDs from Amazon. Here’s the page where I describe what I did, which includes the LEDs I bought from Amazon.

Door Pistons (aka struts)

The various vendors sell door piston kits. Your car needs door pistons and louver pistons, but you might as well get the whole kit with trunk pistons while you’re at it.

DeLorean Texas. At the moment I prefer these myself.

DeLoreanGo. I found these a bit “soft” and slow to open the door all the way. They also sell them in stainless for twice the price, but remember that you’ll need new pistons every 2-4 years.

Door LEDs

Best to just get them from the vendors. Different vendors have different bulbs, which have different looks up against the lenses. I have the DeLorean Go ones at the moment.

$10 from DeLorean Texas

$20 from DeLoreanGo

Remember to remove the white lamp delay module from the relay compartment after installing these, or the dome light will never turn off.

LED Tail Lights and Turn Signals

These are available from SuperBrightLED.com, among others. They even have a selector for the DeLorean.

Note that you’ll also need a new flasher module or you’ll get a hyper-flasher effect. I have details about this on this page, including a link to the flasher module on Amazon.

SuperBrightLED Selector


Completely Optional

Power Steering

This is a $2k kit from the DeLorean vendors. You really don’t need it once the car is rolling, though, and I don’t know anyone who has it. It provides a fixed amount of assistance, which is manually adjustable via a dial.

I plan on doing a common aftermarket conversion using a Toyota Prius power steering shaft. That’s about $400, but you have to weld in the shaft yourself. It provides a constant amount of assistance with no adjustability unless you provide it with a speed signal, which I plan to do, at which point it varies the assistance based on speed (more assistance at lower speeds). But this isn’t exactly a plug-and-play project, and the DeLorean doesn’t provide a digital speed signal for off-the-shelf.

Upgraded Front Brakes

A recent upgrade is to put Mazda Miata brakes on the front of the DeLorean for better braking performance. There are a few other brake ktis available, but nothing really for the rears at this time. The Miata one has the advantage of being really easy to find replacement parts for, since Miatas still exist. There are also Willwood brakes available, which I guess are better.

$1000-$1500 from DeLorean Midwest

A/C Recharge

Your A/C needs to be tested so we can see if it works or not, and recharge it if it doesn’t. It’s likely the original R12 system, but it’ll be easy to check that. An R134A upgrade is possible — I’ve done it myself. R12 is hard to come across, but there are R12-compatibles that many people use instead of upgrading the entire system. I know how to fill the A/C system.

Lowered Suspension

You have a stock front suspension height, which is fine. I have a lowered suspension. Reports are that the lowered suspension feels better than the higher one, but I’ve never driven a car with a raised suspension, so I don’t know.

Specifically, I have a KW coil-over kit. This is specific to the DeLorean, and is around $2k, if I remember correctly. You can adjust the ride height and stiffness, which is nice.

If you want to go a cheaper route, you can just buy lowered springs from one of the vendors, which have a non-adjustable height and stiffness. That’s only around $630 including new shocks.

EFI Conversion (Old)

This whole section is mostly obsolete, but I’m keeping it here in case we want to referene it.

The motor is an ‘87-’92 GM (Chevy) 4.3L roller block (based on the 1015867 printed on the top rear of the block).

EFI Conversion Kit,~$2200

There are various conversion kits. The trick is finding one that fits.

These Edelbrock kits only support motors made before 1986. Some of these kits claim up to 550 HP with this setup in a 4.3L Chevy. However, the Renault transmission is really only rated to somewhere in the 200 HP range as shipped with the DeLorean. You can get upgrade parts from Europe to strengthen it, but I don’t know much about that. Otherwise, a $8k Porche transmission would provide more strength, but I don’t think it’s worth the money unless you plan to go racing. The point is, don’t slam on the gas too hard or you might break something.

Other kits I’ve found are discontinued, or for different motors entirely. It seems some parts are available piecemeal, but I don’t entirely know how to find what we need.

Jeff suggested that this motor originally came with EFI (he says he has a van with the same motor), so we may simply be able to get the original parts from eBay or a junkyard and install them directly.

The worst-case scenario is we do it ourself with MegaSquirt and a custom harness. We’d need to get an EFI intake manifold for the fuel rails, but that should be feasible.

Mostly, we need to talk to Jeff about the specifics of what we need, since we don’t know enough about these engines.

Distributor, $70

We may or may not meed a more basic distributor. This is readily available on Amazon.

Fuel Pump, $600

The low-pressure aftermarket fuel pump will have to be replaced with a stock DeLorean high-pressure fuel pump. DeLorean Texas sells these for $400, but people (including myself) have had reliability problems. I notice they sell parts for those pumps now, at least. The DeLorean Industries one is probably a better bet, but it is more expensive at $600.

While other aftermarket fuel pump systems are possible, it’s really just simplest to get a proper DeLorean one and install that.

Fuel Lines and Adaptors, up to $200

The low-pressure fuel system in this car may have modified the fuel lines. I noticed an unused fuel line in the engine bay, which I believe is the return line. We may need some extra parts from a DeLorean vendor to connect the old fuel pump back up.

We may also need some adaptors or to make some custom fuel lines to mate to the EFI kit. This is fairly straightforward, and I have the tools to do it, but we may need to buy some parts like fuel line, 6 AN connectors, that kind of thing. All stuff I did on my 3.0L EFI conversion.

Vacuum Adaptors, $20

Mostly for connecting to the brake booster and climate control doors. Easy to get.

Fuel Pressure Regulator, $150

Readily available with adjustable ranges over 100 PSI.

Spark Plugs and Wires, TBD

We may need new plugs and wires. We should probably get new plugs anyway, since we don’t know how old the ones in there are now. The manual high EMI suppression plug wires may be desirable (the incompatible Eddlebrock recommends them, for example), and resistor-type plugs (same). Not exactly sure what those are, but they should be easy enough to find.

Oxygen Sensor Bung

An O2 sensor needs to be installed in the exhaust system. It comes with an O2 sensor, but we’ll need to install a sensor bung in the exhaust itself. It might be worth building a new exhaust first (if you want) and having the exhaust shop (or me, if I’m building it) install the bung at that time.

Throttle Cable Routing

Mostly just figuring out how the throttle cable should be routed to the intake. Not a big deal.

Air Cleaner Mount

It seems this doesn’t come with an air cleaner. It says it’s a “4150-style flanged throttle body in a conventional 4-barrel pattern”, so we can probably just find an off-the-shelf filter for that.

Custom Exhaust (old)

This is also obsolete, since we have a new design that should fit. Keeping this since a number of parts are the same, and it’s useful reference.

If you want a quieter exhaust, you probably have to rebuild the exhaust itself. This would be completely custom due to the use of this motor in a DeLorean.

The good news is it’s not terribly hard. It’s mostly just welding parts up. This page covers how I built my muffler. These are the parts:

  • Headers. These go from the exhaust ports on each side of the motor into a collector (meaning, the three pipes go into one pipe). This has a flange on it that bolts up to the muffler side of the exhaust. Your car already has these installed, and we’d reuse them for any future exhaust.

  • Muffler, $250. I used a dual in/dual out Borla Pro XS. It might be too wide for your car, but it depends on how you route the pipes. A less-wide muffler might fit better (and be cheaper), if we can find one.

  • Catalytic converters, $100. These are technically required by law for emissions, but are optional. Your car doesn’t have them right now. I have some simple, inexpensive ones on my car, in part because they also reduce the noise a little.

  • Assorted Pipes, flanges, etc, $200. For connecting everything together.

  • Exhaust hangers, $20. Basically, rods are welded to the muffler and go through rubber mounts on the motor. This supports the muffler while mechanically separating it to reduce vibration.

  • Exhaust tips, $50. They just make it look pretty. Optional (you don’t have any).

  • Silencers. I’m using four Car Chemistry silencer inserts: two in the pipes just before the muffler, and two more in the tail pipes. They come in 2, 3 and 4 disc varieties — the more discs, the more silencing. You’re also reducing the power of your car when you do this, but it’s by maybe 5% at most — you’ll never notice it.

I can weld up a new muffler for you, but it won’t be pretty. I did mine myself. No one really sees the muffler, but on your car it hangs right under the bumper, so it might be a bit more obvious.