Mack's Talon History

I'd been thinking about requesting a feature on the forum for tracking one's own vehicle mods/maintenance. I'm too old and out of the mainstream web loop, so I didn't realize a blog was one way to do this. Now that the forum has a blog, I guess I can get started!

So I need to catch up. It's been 11 years, so this is long. Grab a six-pack and read on...or go do something else.

In the beginning...

I ordered my Talon from the Factory in October, 1996. I'm usually a pushover, but I proudly gave the salesman a really hard time on this - my first new car purchase.

I'd had my eye on the 2gb Talons and had gone down mid-week and chatted with a salesman before I really knew much about buying cars or even the details (options) for the Talon. I asked a lot of questions and got my feet wet on what was involved. I also got the brochure. Then I went back home, studied the brochure and started searching the World Wide Web as it was still known back in those days.

Fortunately, Kelly Blue Book had their site up by then, and I was able to download all of the dealer prices for everything. I also went to the bank and got a $20k loan pre-approval letter. I took that back down that weekend with all of the MSRP and retail items I wanted neatly listed and highlighted. I also had written down the rebates for first time buyer and student discount.

I sat down with the salesman and told him I was going to buy a TSi-AWD. As he reached for his big 3-ring binder of MSRP stuff, I slapped down that stack of prices and info, rattled off the complete list of options, color code, rebates I was entitled to, and my "bonus" to him (above that sum total) and concluded, "All you have to do is go over to that computer, type in the order, and we're done."

He then started flipping through his paperwork looking at my numbers vs. his and asked, "Where'd you get that?!" I replied, "The internet."

Then he called in some other guy (senior salesman or something) to start the slimeball routine typical of car salesmen (nothing personal, car salesmen). I stuck to my guns as much as I could. I even asked for 1 year's worth of free oil changes (I got big at that ). After we had settled on a final price, I announced that I was going to go to a couple of other dealerships to see if they could give me anything better. Boy was he pissed!

So I go to the other dealership, and they can't beat the deal ("Uhhh...we're closer to where you live though...")

So I go back to the first dealership, walk in the door, find the salesman, and say, "Wanna sell me a car?" to which he replies in an annoyed tone, "You wanna buy a car?" I said yes, he said okay, we did the paperwork, car gets ordered. I ended up paying about $1021 over the basic total from kbb.com. Not sure how much of the "non-negotiable extra fees" were legit, but I figure'd I had given it the ole' college try.

Car is being built (kinda cool, they told me the day it came off the assembly line). I tell the dealership that they do not have my permission to put their dealership sticker on my bumper unless they wanna pay me a daily advertising fee. They try "we'll take it off with a hairdryer" and I say, "That means someone at your dealership put it on in the first place...NO!"

November 22, the car arrives. I go pick it up, he gives me the walk-around, I drive home like grandma in my new ride. I still have the window sticker with "This vehicle was built especially for Mark Kenamond" in the corner (Mark's my "real" name). I forget where I put that...need to dig it up and take a picture.

So I got "Wildberry" exterior, tan/black interior, basic 6-speaker AM/FM/CD stereo (I was into car audio, so I knew it would all be replaced), AC, manual tranny (+5 hp), manual seats (less weight), no sunroof (feared leaks), 17" alloy wheels, leather seats, ABS, and I forget what else...gotta find that window sticker.

Generally, I did 3k oil changes with Mobil 1 synth since my 2nd oil change.

Took the car in in the first year due to what I now think may have been lifter tick. They replaced the head.

I also put in the stereo the following spring. Upgraded the amps in the summer. I forget all the details, but I now have (10 years old, mind you) Alpine head unit, 6.5" MBQuart mid-bass in the doors, 6x9 MBQuart in the rear, 2x10" Phoenix Gold X-Max subs in the trunk in a "musical" enclosure, Phoenix Gold ZX450 and ZX500 amps, 6-disc changer. I got some Boston Accoustic tweets that I never installed (still in the box in the workshop ) because I didn't wanna pull the dash and introduce squeaks. I mounted everything over the spare tire on hinges so that I wouldn't be stranded with a flat. I can slide the box forward and lift the amps and CD changer as one unit to get at the spare.

Minor "act of God" things happen to my car over the years, but I get fresh paint out of them with a $50 deductable. Branch falls on my hood, wind grabs the door out of my hand and "hyperextends" the door into the quarterpanel (happened twice).

Then on the day before my wedding (car is 4 years old), my Dad and brother are picking up my car from a bar while I sleep off the hangover , and my dad t-bones some dude that runs a stop sign. Get a new front end. Motor is undamaged, but new lights, quarters, bumper cover, hood. He went under some 2-ton pickup truck at about 20mph, so it scraped over the bumper and frame rails. Car still ran, but the wheels rubbed on metal. So I get the car back and the whole front is brand new.

So I'm still a workaholic at this point and know nothing about my car other than how to wire in a stereo and change the fluids. I get to about 60k and have the local shop replace the AC belt. One month later, they get to replace the alt belt (that pissed me off...change them both!!).

At 65k my clutch starts to slip (turns out it just needed adjusted ). So this is when I discover this web site. I do some searching, read the 2g staged mods, etc. I read a bit and settle on an ACT clutch and flywheel. I also am reminded that I need to change the timing belt.

Having no real knowledge of my car, I pay the local shop to change the t-belt and install the clutch. I ask for the stock clutch and flywheel back which is how I discovered that the clutch was fine. Oh well, now I can support more power!!

I dunno...around 75k miles I get a lot of stuff painted (same colors). This is the 2nd door hyperextension due to wind issue, but while the car's there, I figure I get all the dings fixed and whatnot. Front bumper cover, quarters, doors get new wildberry. Roof and spoiler get new black. I guess everything but the rear bumper cover got painted. Got the hood touched up and clear-coated to save a bit on the cost. Only had a couple of chips in the hood, and they touched them up. The guy at the body shop says they couldn't find any of the wildberry Talon decals for the bumper cover, so he took the liberty of putting a silver one on. I like it, but that really pissed me off (uhh...ask first maybe?). So that's where that came from. I've grown to love it...subtle non-stock look...I'll be keeping that look. But the body shop is apparently getting lazy or something (same place I had all of the act-of-God and t-bone work done, all of which turned out *perfect*). This time, they messed up just about everything a body shop could possibly mess up. The color (silver decal is very noticeably *not* wildberry), dust in the clear coat on the roof and spoiler (all the black), runs in the clear coat on the edges of the rear quarters, door and front quarterpanel on the driver side (damaged from the hyperextension) are very poorly aligned, and when they did the complimentary interior detailing, they scored the crap out of my leather steering wheel wrap with a buffing wheel or something...razor slices every 1mm for about an inch along the wheel. And when they open the driver's side door, the door scraped the quarter and chipped paint off (you figure they'd notice that when hanging the door and aligning the quarter). Oh, and they broke the plastic on the inside of the interior door handle where that screw holds the door panel to the door. So I tell them to align things. "See how the passenger side looks? See how the driver's side looks? Not at all the same, right?" So they make it better...not good enough, but I had given up on them. And they used touch-up paint on the front edge of the door where the paint had chipped off.

But from a distance, the car looks mint. And the silver logo grows on me.

Couple of months later when backing out of a parking space, I find out the hard way that someone has cut a street sign off about 10" high. The front bumper cover catches and rips and bends and ... a real mess. Sickening. So I bend things back so that it looks less horrible and doesn't drag on the ground.

So at 78k miles I've not had any mechanical problems with this car other than the ticking that got me a new head. Nothing bad happened until 78k miles when my T25 began to fail. Sounded like an old-fashioned siren. I go a few days with the car drawing some attention under load, and finally it lets go with a magnificent smokescreen while I'm on my way to the gym. I pull over immediately and walk to the gym. I get the car towed home afterward and sign on to this site officially. This is Feb, 2006.

So I spend a couple of months slowly working on the car.

A lot of the time is spent waiting on vendors to send me the correct UICP. I get one that won't fit from Incline Design. Sent it back and never got reimbursed for it. Oh well. Then Dejon sends me one flanged for Greddy. I send it back and get the right pipe. But it has a leak in the weld between the pipe and the TB flange (boost leak testing!!). So I get another and it's fine. I think that burned up about 3 weeks.

I got a new FP Big28, K&N filter, Dejon intake pipe, Dejon LICP, UICP.

Cleaned the SMIC and straightened the fins. I'm kinda OCD and a perfectionist, so the fin-straightening was enjoyable. Some of the bug carcasses were ... interesting.

When I drop the T25 I realize that the turbine wheel is disconnected and just sitting inside the housing. I pull the turbine housing off and find that the shaft snapped on the turbine end. That'll do the trick!! The compressor wheel was pretty beat up from grinding into the housing. Didn't have the tools to pull the compressor housing off...some day.

I did a lot of researching on porting and had a grand old time with that. I did a practice port job on the T25 housing. I didn't do any flapper wheel sanding on it, but if anyone wants a T25 housing ported to the 7cm gasket, let me know!

I ported the 2g mani, turbine housing, and O2 housing. Perfectionism and OCD compelled me to make the turbine housing shine on the inside.

Put new mani studs in and got new turbo/mani bolts (replaced the stud w/ a nut). One of the stock bolts was broken in half.

Decide to fix the VC gasket leak while the car is torn apart. One of the spark plug gaskets pops out of place when I put the VC on, and I end up totaling the VC...ohmygod was I pissed. Ratchet flew across the garage. Profanities were shouted.

So I get a new 1g VC out of that little exercise. Very pretty! In hindsight, no regrets.

So while I'm waiting on the new VC to ship, I work on the boost gauge install. While attempting to zip tie the vac line so that it doesn't get wrapped around the steering column, I end up dropping a broken zip tie into my open head. No profanities. Panic. Look around with flashlight. No zip tie in the head. More panic. No zip tie on the garage floor. Even more panic. Finally conclude that it's either hiding somewhere safe or it's in the motor (unsafe).

So I get to pull the oil pan. And get to pull the exhaust...to get at the xfer case...so I can pull the oil pan...but no - the axle is in the way of one of the oil pan bolts. So I also get to unbolt the driver's side axle bearing bracket, too. This sort of learning is good...but not until you're done and look back on the experience. I was pretty angry throughout that ordeal...which we've not yet reached in the story.

So I finally drop the pan. Zip tie is there!!! Woohoo!!! And there's some big hunks of bronze in there too. Not Woohoo. After thinking about it for a bit, I suspect that it's just the T25 thrust bearing. The pieces were all close together right under where the oil return tube bolts to the pan. I put the pieces together and it sure looks like some sort of bronze thrust bearing. So I Google a bit and find a T25 thrust bearing picture. Same thing. Good to know. So the zip tie was the DSM gods telling me that I had some metal chunks in my pan? Anyway, I get the pan back on (what a pain!) and the xfer case and rehang the exhaust (what a pain!).

So now I can finish the boost gauge install.

I also have the screwed up bumper cover off the car, so I unbolt the metal support that runs along the lower lip of the cover. It's twisted a full turn and bent pretty bad, so I beat it back into the right shape and bolt it back onto the cover. Made a huge difference. From a distance, it looks normal!!

Finally get everything installed and do a boost leak test.

TB gaskets leak badly (the Dejon UICP replaces the TB elbow, so I had to unbolt the TB, and I ended up re-using the metal gaskets). So I pull it apart and spray the gaskets with copper gasket maker (what a mess!!). Fixes those leaks and I find out about the weld leak in the Dejon UICP mentioned previously. Yay...get to wait a week for the new part and screw around with more copper gasket spray!!

TB gasket leaks fixed, so I now find the injector insulator leaks. Replace them and the injector o-rings. Depressurizing the fuel system according to Haynes rewarded me with a spray of gas in the face when I pulled the high pressure fuel line out of the rail. Whatever.

Finally holds 20psi and leaks down 1psi every 3-5 seconds. Good enough.

Time to make some POWER!!! So I do the BCS restrictor mod.

Car starts. YAY ME!!!

Feels about the same as the T25. Maybe a bit stronger from the intake mods.

Eventually I get a PalmIIIc, pocketlogger, and a Joe P IL MBC. Get that all installed and working. Do some 3rd gear pulls and find out that timing is being pulled even at 9psi. Seems just as bad at 15psi as it is at 9psi. But at 15psi, the O2v drop past 6k.

Everyone I ask seems to think that shouldn't happen. So I change the O2 sensor and decide to rewire the stock FP.

But when I pulled into Radio Shack to get the rewire stuff, I forget to set the e-brake (2nd time since I bought the car, but I caught it just in time the 1st time - which was about 1 week after I bought the car). It drifts across the parking lot, jumps a curb, and smashes into a building. Took a while to get it un-stuck. The parking lot ends at a curb. Then there is a 3-foot dropoff for about 4 feet, then there's a building. So the ass-end is hanging off of a curb, and the frame is resting on the curb. And the passenger rear corner is mashed into the building. Many pallots, scrap 2x6 and 4x4 lumber and my floor jack do the trick.

Bumper cover is scraped a bit, but just needs some paint. Corner of the quarter panel next to the corner of the hatch is mashed in about 1", and said corner of the hatch is bent in a bit. Frame rail is buckled a bit.

Oh, and all of this damage occurs while I'm in Radio Shack. It's hard to describe the sinking feeling when some stranger announces to everyone in Radio Shack, "Does anyone own a maroon Eagle Talon?" I say "I do." He says, "Uh, you have a big problem."

So I'm an idiot, apparently.

So then I rewire the stock FP. Must...move...forward... Doesn't help. Still knocks. Still leans out past 6k.

So I just don't run past 6k rpm and lay off the boost unless it's cold (seems to help with the knock - starting to think cold-air-intake is needed).

Lifter tick pisses me off and is getting worse, so I install the revised 3g lash adjusters. That was fun and actually went well. I didn't even drop a zip tie into the motor or break the VC!!

That pretty much brings me up to date.