Table of Contents.

1) The Back Story
2) Disappointment and an unexpectedly short first drive
3) Vehicles converge in VA
4) Christmas came late
5) Brakes come first
6) If a part comes off it's got to be painted
7) This bolt goes here, this bolt goes there, wait a second where’d the hub center bolt go
8) It's alive!
9) No you can’t buy my car for parts, well at least not this one.
10) Papa got a new pair of shoes.

How on earth did I end up with a second Talon? I never expected nor did I intend on purchasing another DSM. I had gradually come to terms with the fact that I needed to sell my beloved 1G AWD Talon. I rarely drove it when it ran, I was constantly having issues with it, and I had my hands full maintaining a Passat W8, Honda CBR 1000RR, Honda Shadow, and rebuilding a 1972 GMC Suburban.

Whenever I asked my wife what car she would want if she could have anything she always said an old Corvette Stingray. When we lived in HI she had an Audi Cabriolet and she sold it so that I could bring both the W8 and my Talon to Germany and race on the world famous Nürburgring. I always felt bad about that since I barely drove the Talon so for her birthday I started looking into buying her a Stingray. I searched for a few months and finally found one that was in good condition, was red, automatic (don’t ask), and had T-Tops. I was about to pull the trigger on the purchase and mentioned to her something about a Stingray when she said she liked the idea of it, but didn’t actually want one.

I don’t know what I bought for her birthday, but it certainly wasn’t a red Corvette Stingray. So where is all this going you may ask? Well, in one of the pictures the owner of this Corvette sent to me there was a black Talon in the back ground. I couldn’t help but jokingly ask if it was for sale and indeed it was. With just shy of 57k miles on it this Talon looked to be in great shape. We went back and forth on the price and if I wanted all the parts he had for the car. Eventually I ended up buying everything and started working on getting this Talon home (I was still in Germany, my brother was in Iowa, and the car was in upstate New York).

I eventually convinced my Brother that he needed to take a road trip to New York and check out Niagara Falls. Him and a friend drove up there, checked out the falls, got stuck in the parking lot trying to turn around with the trailer, and proceeded to Lewiston, NY. Around 5:30 Friday night on August 3rd of 2012 I was the proud new owner of my second Talon with fewer than 50% of the miles on my other Talon.

They made it home with no issues other than people trying to buy it off of them every time they stopped for gas. My Brother somehow managed to fit it through the gate into his backyard and cover it up so that it was out of sight and out of mind. Most people’s mind that is. You see, I never told my wife and didn’t plan on doing so until I was able to sell my first Talon. My Dad had other plans. He came out to visit a few months later and while driving to a wine tasting he asked what the plan was for that car. I tried to cut him off and reroute the conversation, but what was said could not be unsaid and the damage was already done. I somehow managed to escape the wrath of my wife, but I presume it was most likely due to the fact that there would’ve been witnesses and I was the DD. Not to mention I had offered to take everyone on a lap of the Nürburgring in the W8

Fast forward to October 2013 when I fly home to see the car for the first time. Wasn’t in as great of shape as I had thought, but was still pretty nice. The chrome rims were flaking, the passenger side door panel was a little loose, the paint was flaking on the side mirrors, and the ebrake didn’t work. All in all it wasn’t too bad, but I guess my expectations were a little too high for a 20 year old car. On the upside, it started right up so I got it out of my Brother’s yard to drive over to my Dad’s where it could be kept in a garage. It wasn’t registered and wasn’t going to be anytime soon, but I had my brother follow me. It was only a few miles so I didn’t think twice about the consequences and repercussions. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

He followed along in his truck until I turned onto the onramp and let loose to test her out. He did not make the light and a cop just so happened to be driving down the highway at the same exact time. He had his lights on before I even merged onto the highway. It happened so fast that I don’t think I was actually speeding, but he was disappointed in my reckless driving and lack of registration. I was disappointed in the obnoxious exhaust note and that I got pulled over. This was the first time I had ever driven the car and I was pulled over within the first mile or two minutes of driving. Fortunately I had the title and convinced him that it was going from garage to garage, that I was only back for a few days from Germany, and that I deeply regretted my actions. He let me off and I showed up a little later to my Dad’s house with my Brother waiting and laughing in the driveway.

Fast forward to Oct 2014 and I was back in the states and living in VA. I flew home so that I could load the car and my Suburban up and take all my garage equipment to VA. I drove the car maybe 1 mile to my Mom’s house, loaded it up in the back of a 26’ Uhaul, put the Suburban on the trailer, and headed to VA. Roughly 950 miles, about 20 hours, a few Redbulls, and a handful of white knuckle driving in rain and one lane construction zones later I was home.

First to be offloaded was the Suburban. I couldn’t pull into or back into the driveway due to the angle and incline of the driveway, but I was able to jack knife the trailer near perfectly on my first attempt (although completely blocking my cul-de-sac). As soon as I did this one of the neighbors pulled up. He just shook his head and turned the van off. I smiled, shrugged my shoulders, and picked up the pace. I got the chains and everything disconnected with no problem and since my Suburban has 35” tires I just pushed it off the back of the trailer and let gravity take over. Hook the W8 up to it and pulled it up off the trailer and up the driveway as far as I could. Chocked the wheels real quick then moved the Uhaul. At the time I didn’t realize I lived on the cul-de-sac and of course the turnaround was too small for the truck and trailer combination. Made for an interesting experience, but wasn’t too bad.

Next I pulled up along my yard, disconnected the trailer, and back the Uhaul up the driveway as far as I could before bottoming the deck out. Grabbed the ramps I had bought a few years ago and the Talon came off with no issues. Knowing it had no ebrake concerned me, but I checked at every stop and had it pretty well secured so all was well. I was pleasantly happy that within an hour I was able to unload both vehicles by myself and was even able to push the Suburban into the garage. That of course required letting some air out of the tires, but that was to be expected.

I had already registered my new Talon, so the very first time I drove it was to the vehicle inspection place so that I could get my emissions certified and safety inspection completed. Got there, got gas, handed over the keys, walked away and heard the RPMs go up. I looked back and saw they had it on a two wheel dyno. I posted about this whole fiasco earlier so I won’t go into detail. I will say that I noticed there was fluid underneath where the car was so that had me very concerned. I saw that there was actually a trail of it going back to where I had parked it for them. Turns out my power steering rack sprung a leak in their parking lot. At this point, it was my third time driving the car and I had yet to break 10 miles. Fear of the ensuing DSM melt down start to come over me, but I was wearing a suit and needed to get to the Prince William County complex for a presentation. I had driven the Suburban before without power steering and my other Talon had a locked center differential so the added effort was of no concern.

I knew I wouldn’t pass the safety inspection because of the ebrake and now the power steering, but I still wanted to do the emissions check so that I could get a permanent registration. Turns out that one of the previous owners had taken it to Buschur Racing to have a 3” catback exhaust on it and the catalytic convertor had been cut out. So I did not pass that day. I drove off, had no more issues (knock on wood) drove it for a few more days, then parked it on a set of jack stands where it sat until just a few weeks ago.

I spent most of my November and December trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my Talon. When I was in Germany I found myself in a small fender bender with my other Talon while going at slow speeds because as we all know the brakes are pretty weak, so the first order of business was a brake upgrade. I immediately took the aftermarket big brake kits off the list due to cost. I looked at the EVO 8 Brembo upgrade quite a bit, but since the only brackets I could find required a hole to be tapped, the calipers had to be trimmed, and every set of calipers I could find was either pink or outrageously expensive those too were taken off the list. That left me with two choices 1) 93+ 1G, Diamante, or 3kGT calipers and 2) 3kGT VR4 calipers with the Cobra rotors. I did what I thought was a lot of research on the two, but as you’ll see later on I probably didn’t do enough research. I went with the VR4 setup for three reasons; 1) I fell in love with the 3kGT VR4 in the late 90’s when I was in high school and the automotive bug started to bite 2) I wanted to have fun in Rallycross, Autocross, and perhaps a few other events and figured going big now was better than being limited later on 3) I smoked my brakes on the W8 when I went to the Nurburgring and they are much larger than the 93+ 1G, Diamante, or 3kGT calipers.

About the same time I made this decision I was getting on a plane to go back to Germany to visit friends and family. Between drinking fantastic Bavarian beer and going to Christmas markets sipping on glühwein while stuffing my face with Bratwurstmit Brötchen I was online putting together a shopping list so that my parts would arrive a day or so after I came back home. The plan worked perfectly and I came home to a late automotive Christmas. I was like Ralphie unwrapping his Red Ryder BB gun. Then I started to see problems.

Problem #1) Why do the matching ebrake cables look completely different? The rubber boot on the bad one wasn't sealed, the cable didn't move freely, and the only mounting bracket it had sharp metal edges.

Problem #2) Why do my matching calipers look completely different?

Problem #3) Why are the bags with my energy suspension parts ripped and missing parts?
Problems #4, #5, and #6) I didn’t realize it yet, but I would find three Easter Eggs later on.

The first thing I wanted to do was fix the ebrake. First off it wasn’t connected so I connected it. Then I realized the previous owner disconnected it because the right line was frozen. The caliper itself was fine so I tried spraying PB blast in the lines. I let it sit for a good bit of time and could no free that line. I thought using the ebrake handle may produce enough shock to pop it loose, but I just ended up breaking the left cable. On the plus side now I know how old both cables are. For anyone that is reading and has never replaced their ebrake cables I’d like to say two things. 1) All the mounts that hold it on need to be saved or replaced. They don’t come with new cables. 2) If you’re like me and threw all the old mounts away with the old cable you can go to any hardware store and buy wire bundle holders and just drill larger holes.

With that resolved, next came painting my calipers. First I needed to get a matching set of calipers. I talked to the vendor and they said I could send one of them back and just hope for better luck the next time. This sounded ridiculous so I called the distributor. They told me that if I put a specific request in through the vendor for either a flush OEM replacement caliper or the actual OEM caliper and the vendor in turn passes that to them then I can get whichever one I want. Otherwise it’s just the luck of the draw. This really didn’t take too long, I wasn’t pleased with having to pay a restocking fee or the return shipping cost, but I got my matching calipers.

I followed the instructions on the caliper paint, but for whatever reason the paint stuck much better to the front calipers than the rear calipers. It took me four days to finish everything. Once you start painting you’re supposed to finish within an hour and then let sit for a day before handling and3-5 days before repainting. I was using the tiny supplied paint brush so I basically did a side a day. Before you start, make sure that the brake fluid lines are capped as the brake fluid will ruin the paint if it hasn’t cured yet. I had remanufactured calipers and didn’t think there’d be anything inside so I learned this lesson after day 1. I may have put the paint on too thick as well so when I laid the rear calipers on a side that had already been painted after a day that side had imprints on it. Because of this I decided to hang the front calipers when they were drying. It was too cold to paint in the garage so I had all of the windows open in the living room and let everything dry in the bathroom which is probably the warmest room in the whole house. It helped that I could close the door and keep the rest of the house from smelling like paint fumes. This stuff was especially strong and I can’t recommend painting inside even with windows open. I got a little lighted headed once or twice. In hindsight, I should have probably had paper on the carpet instead of just the table I was painting on. I didn’t think I would drop anything and made it to the very end before I dropped a caliper. Mostly landed on my foot, but I had to cut some pieces out of the carpet to hide the evidence from my wife. She has yet to notice so I think I’m in the clear. Here are some pictures of the painting process.



A few before pictures.



And a few after pictures.



Here is problem #4 or Easter Egg #1. These are the thinner of my two sets of wheels. The spokes of my 17” wheels almost cleared the calipers, but the 18” wheels needed more than an inch of clearance. I ended up buying a set of 32mm hubcentric wheel spacers.



My old 15” Diamante wheels didn’t stand a chance so I ended up selling them and am currently kicking myself for that.



I bought some Rally Art mud flaps that still need to be fitted and installed. I went for a short drive after it snowed recently and the amount of crap slinging off of my tires is ridiculous. I need to find some new wheels that will fit over the calipers and stay tucked into the wheel wells.



I almost forgot about problem #5 or Easter Egg #2. This was mostly self-inflicted, but unexpected none the less. I placed the order over the phone for the rotors and brake pads. When I did this I got packages for rear rotors/pads on a ’92 AWD Talon and front rotor/pads on a ’00 Mustang Cobra. I know I mentioned the 3kGT VR4 pads, but it’s my fault for not catching the fact that I had thoroughly confused the parts guy while ordering parts for three different cars. It wasn’t until I went to install the pads that I realized I messed up and needed pads for the 3kGT VR4. The vendor was super helpful and sent out pads for the 3kGT VR4 and said they would accept the pads as returns without sending the rotors back. They have yet to tell me what the return amount will be so I’m still waiting. That being said, if anyone has a ’00 Mustang Cobra in need of some power stop pads I’m your guy.

The first big issue I had to fix was the fact that the power steering had gone out. I was hoping to get lucky and just need to replace an old hose, but once the car was jacked up I found the culprit was a rusted line on the steering rack itself. So that was added to my parts list. Prior to removing the steering rack, I read the Haynes manual and at no point in time did it say anything about needing to remove the lower control arms or the transfer case. I removed all of the cross members, the sway bar, and the exhaust, disconnected the hoses and the steering column, and could not for the life of me get it to come out. Finally I removed the lower control arms and the metal fitting that the return line is clamped to. With a little more struggling and a few beers I was able to work it out.

One of the control arms looked like a portion of it had nearly rusted through so I went ahead and ordered a new pair. The nuts on the sway bar end links had seized so I ended up cutting them off and ordered a MOOG replacement set. The car came with a set of new (uninstalled) polyurethane lower control arm bushings so I figured I might as well order the whole bushing set and man am I glad I did.

I already did a write up about how I went about installing all of the bushings so I’ll skip that. I will however, highlight the fact that every single one of the bushings was bad and the mount for the xmsn was being held on by just a few threads on each bolt. According to receipts I received from the previous owner, this xmsn was installed in Dec of 2011 by a very reputable shop, but three years later it was hanging on for dear life. The front engine mount was sagging a bit, the driver side mount was torn, and the rear mount was cracked around the entire thin portion.



I ended up suspending the engine with an engine hoist and had my motorcycle jack under the oil pan and another mechanical jack under the xmsn. This gave me a little reassurance since I didn’t do everything in one day and made life a little easier when it came time to reinstall everything.



With all of the mounts, crossmembers, and front subframe off I figured I’d go ahead and repaint everything. I don’t know if it was done in the factory or someone did it on their own, but there was a ton of overspray on everything under the car and fenders. This made life a little more difficult than I would have liked. This became the biggest issue with the brake lines. The point where the brake lines from the engine bay pops out into the fender and the points where the soft lines connect to the hard line that runs across the back of the shock were all seized with rust and overspray. I stripped the first set of fittings and ended up resorting to vice grips to get them off. The hard metal lines ended up snapping after I thought the fittings were moving freely too. I went down to Advanced Autoparts, bought some new brake lines, and rented their cutting and bending tools. Worked out pretty well for my first time. If I had to do it again I’d buy two shorter brake lines instead of one long one so that I wouldn’t have to make my own flanges. That was by far the hardest part.



The big sand blasting box at the shop I have access to was down and mine was too small for the larger parts so I used a wire wheel to get rid of most everything. Turns out I wish I had a pressure washer too, but a few cans of degreaser, a lot of rags, and patience was enough to get everything ready for paint. Once all the parts were clean I started with a base coat of Dupli-Color Rust Fix. Some rust converters only work on rust, but this can be used as a primer or rust converter so I used it on everything. I let that dry for a day and then I painted visible parts with some Rust-Oleum gloss black paint and for parts on the underside of the car I used Rust-Oleum Professional Undercoating. I had been following someone else’s build and they tried both sprayable and brushable undercoatings and preferred the brushable stuff after the spray cans clogged up too much. At the time, someone else had mentioned warming the cans in hot water first. I kept all the cans in a bucket of hot water and I didn’t have a single issue.

It was still cold enough for me not to be able to paint and dry the parts outside, but I did at least move to the garage for the painting portion and then brought parts inside to dry. I was able to hang everything except the subframe on coat hangers and hang them from the bottom of the garage door when it was opened and then transfer them right to the coat closet. I initially didn’t plan on covering anything up in the garage and just laid paper down when I was painting, but I ended up covering my motorcycles and am very thankful for that. The spray paints all worked out nicely, but the undercoating comes out with some force and left my entire garage floor cover in a fine dust. It brushed right off with a broom, but I wouldn’t do this inside my garage again.



It just so happened that all this painting parts and drying inside the house coincided with my wife’s trip to Phoenix so by the time she returned the smell was gone, windows were closed, the temperature inside the house was back up, and everything had been moved back out to the garage.

With everything put back together I just had to install the catalytic convertor before I could get my emissions and safety checks complete so I could finally register it. I received a folder with some receipts for a handful of work that was done to this car by the previous owner. One of the items was a 2.5” downpipe and off road pipe from Buschur racing. With that in mind I was going to order a 2.5” universal catalytic convertor and call it good, but something didn’t look right after I pulled it out. First off there were two sensors that were screwed into welded on nuts on the down pipe. One turned out to be a Ford Ranger O2 sensor and the other is an unidentified EGT sensor. The odd thing is that neither one of these sensors was connected to anything. The pigtails were just zip tied to something else. For the time being, I uninstalled the EGT sensor and capped the port, but the Ford O2 was an 18mm thread and I couldn’t find anywhere that sold a bolt of that size so I just left it and zip tied the pigtail again.

The other odd thing was that the downpipe was indeed 2.5”, but it widened to 2.75” about even with the oil drain plug through the flex joint and widened to 3” after the first carrier bearing. I ended up buying a new 2.75” Magnaflow universal catalytic converter and installed it right behind the flex joint. It only took a minute to make the two cuts and smooth them out, then I just slid everything together and tightened the clamps. I was secretly hoping it would quiet the exhaust a bit, but I really didn’t notice any difference.

Before I brought my Talon down off of the jack stands I figured I might as well change all of the fluids since I had no idea when the last time it was done. The brake fluid had already been changed out along with the new breaks. Oil, transmission, transfer case, and rear differential all look good. I wasn’t super pumped that I needed a breaker bar to get all but the oil drain plug off or the fact that the transmission oil filler bolt was only finger tight, but everything is replaced and retorqued to specifications and that’s all I care about. Last thing was the coolant. The coolant started off green, but towards the end it started turning a bit orange. I got it flushed out to where the water was coming out clean. Then I pulled the reservoir and washed that out. That thing was absolutely filthy and I am very glad I cleaned it. With all the fluids replaced and the P/S belt tightened I was ready to take it for a spin.

The Talon was all buttoned back up, and sitting on the ground for the first time since October. I went to start it and nothing. It had just started an hour earlier to warm the engine oil up and now there was nothing. I noticed the SAFC wasn’t powering on so I pulled the center console back out and made sure I hadn’t loosened anything on accident. When I first took the center console out to check the ebrake cables I found an orange towel stuffed in front of the ECU that appeared to be “securing” the fuel relay. I already posted about this and the solution ended up being a missing 20A MPI fuse. I have no idea why the car was working without it and then just quit or how the fuse was suddenly missing if it had been previously installed, but at this point I don’t care. The car runs and that’s all that matters.

With the car back up and running I took it for a quick spin to break in the brakes. The car runs like a champ.. Something I haven’t experienced with my other Talon in a long time. I did notice that the brakes were “soft” after doing the 3kGT VR4 upgrade, but that was just because I didn’t do enough research and it turns out I need to install a better brake booster and master cylinder. Not a huge deal for the time being. The best part came about an hour later when I passed my emissions and safety inspection.

I enjoyed reading you build. Good luck

91AwdBigRed said:

I enjoyed reading you build. Good luck

Click to expand...

Thanks. For now I haven't really gotten too involved into my build so I figured I'd work on the narration of what little I have done.

With the car running and officially legal to drive I figured the first stop should be for a new alignment. In going through my folder of goodies from the previous owner I saw that he had gotten everything aligned right before selling it, but I don’t trust my finely tuned eyeball after replacing the steering rack. The closest shop was a Pep Boys and I took advantage of their online discount to set everything up. They didn’t have a drop down for Eagle so I just went with Mitsubishi GSX and figured it’d be all good. Turns out I was wrong.

This was the first time I had ever been to a Pep Boys and I was pleasantly surprised at how nice their setup was and how much selection they had. I dropped the car off and walked around for a bit before settling down in their waiting room. After waiting for about an hour past my scheduled time they finally go to pulling my car in. I heard two workers outside arguing over what my car was so I walked out to explain that it is in fact an Eagle Talon, but other than some minor body differences they’re the same car. The younger guy kind of smiled and said, “Told you,” to the older guy. The older gut then said that even though they are the same car there are different manufacture specs for their alignment. I apologized and explained there was no option for Eagle in their online menu. They seemed to have everything figured out so I went back to the waiting room.

The younger guy then followed me in and immediately started telling me how he had a 2G Spyder that he had just converted to AWD, but the driveline came off of a car with 120K on it. He had seen mine was under 60K and tried a few times to buy it before I left. I told him no, but I have another 1G AWD that he could buy. He didn’t bite.

I told them not to worry about the back since the previous paperwork stated the eccentric bolt was frozen. They called me into the shop to show me that bolt was indeed frozen and that my front camber was -1 on the right and +.74 on the left. There is no way to adjust it with my current setup so it looks like some eccentric bolts up, a camber plate, or most likely adjustable coilovers (I currently have crappy KYB AGX with stock springs) will be in my future. I’ll also be upgrading to an adjustable rear control arm when I get around to replacing all of the rear bushings.

I don’t like the idea of the DME or Whiteline camber adjustment inserts, TunersNation is out, and the Ingalls kit has mixed reviews. In my mind, that leaves 3SX and Maximal Performance as my only options. The 3SX set doesn’t come with hardware, but is $50 cheaper than the Maximal setup and you can buy the two bolts, nuts, and washers at a laughable $32.95 from them. They also have a cute little rubber boot to protect the Heim Joint. Another option would be to make my own set like this. Once I figure out what suspension I want to run I’ll go ahead and replace all the bushings in the rear and make up my mind on the camber adjustments. Until then, I need new wheels to clear my calipers and get rid of my spacers.

In response to an issue I previously created by upgrading to the VR4 calipers, I started looking for new wheels last winter. I'm not a fan of using hub centric spacers nor was I thrilled with all the crap covering the side of my car after a short drive.

I found a guy up in Baltimore with a EVO MR that was selling his BBS wheels for $1000. I got him talked down and headed up in in Feb. As soon as I got on the road it started snowing and before I knew it there was a full blown snow storm in the DC area with everyone driving like it was their first time seeing snow. I made it about 15 miles in 90 minutes before throwing in the towel and heading back home. I learned two lessons from this 1) look at the weather forecast before driving anywhere in DC and 2) Sumitomo HTR A/S P01s are horrendous in the snow. I barely made it up my driveway and it's not a very steep incline.

I made it to Baltimore the next day, met the seller at his house, grabbed one wheel to test mount, and proceeded to slosh through a snow filled parking lot to conduct my test. Everything worked out and I am now the proud new owner of a set of BBS wheels. The previous owner had lowered his car without making proper adjustments so the tires were garbage so I just reallocated my old tires to the new wheels. He was also unable to avoid the curb and had wheel weights mounted on the outside for whatever reason. They're still good enough for me and they'll give me something to practice powder coating on once I get a few other projects out of the way.