Hi guys, I don't typically post too much about my cars but I've lately been lacking motivation to keep going on the project.

The background for this car is as follows. This car is the first car that my wife purchased on her own. At the time (2004) we were dating and I had a pretty clean 1GA Talon. We set out to find a black 2GA Talon TSI AWD 5spd and we were able to find one in town. The car was bone stock (returned to stock by previous owners) and didn't have any visible rust, the only negative was a very disgusting set of chrome wheels.

After a few years of daily driving in Michigan the car the stock 7 bolt crank walked and the strut towers started showing signs of dreaded strut tower rust. We did a stock 6 bolt rebuild on the car, added a 16g, fp exhaust manifold, megasquirt ecu, supporting fuel mods, and a slight clutch upgrade. On this setup, the car managed a 12.1 at 114mph with a stock side mount intercooler.

Here is a photo of the setup slightly unfinished.


At some point during the daily years, we had a "shop" repair the strut tower rust. When we received the car back, I could tell it wasn't quite right, but we lived with it. As the years went on, we upgraded the turbo charger to an HX40 and I designed and built a front mount that fit between the factory 2GA fog lights. While doing all of this, the tower rust returned. After trapping 101mph in the 1/8 @3300lbs with the stock motor, finding the limits of the Centerforce dual friction clutch, and poking a hole in the strut towers, I decided it was time to tear it down.

Here are the last pictures I have of it

On to the tear down. I've never done any body work, but I know people who have and I've watched enough power block to understand the basics. I say this as confidently as I felt, before I understood the learning curve involved.

Initially what I found. Terrible bondo job plus crappy patch job.


After stripping the towers down. You can see the hole on the drivers side strut tower.


Then I started digging into it.


Once I had all of the cancer cut out I started stripping down a decent set of towers I got off of a parts car that a buddy gave to me. Stripping these towers down was a great exercise in understanding the construction of the factory sheet metal and also why they tend to rust so much. Unfortunately I only have one picture of these.

One the spare set of towers were deconstructed, I began cutting out patch panels to fix the bad spots and began welding them in.



Somewhere along the way I decided that my garage did not have the appropriate tools needed to handle the scope of project I was taking on. I decided to move my car to my coworkers house to speed up progress. Sad dsm on a trailer, nothing new there.

Once at my coworkers house, real progress started to happen. I sandblasted the whole engine bay to expose any areas that I wasn't able to see under the paint. This picture was a bit after blasting, and you can see a little bit more cut out of the strut towers than before.


Once able to see what I was working with, I started cutting out patch panels from my set of donor towers.


Once everything was fitted, it was time for welding in. All panels were sand blasted, prepped, and sprayed with SEM weld through primer prior to welding. On that note, weld through primer makes welding an absolute bi***!

With the welding and blending complete on the towers, it was time to finally prep the car for primer. We covered the whole car in 6mil plastic and taped off all areas to prevent over spray. BTW I really hate doing tape work. Seems like such a simple task, but it's horribly time consuming and not at all rewarding.


Finally after many hours of hard work, it's finally ready for primer!!! I decided to use Southern Polyurethane products for this because I read a many good things about them online and had a few recommendations. I highly recommend their products.



The finished primed product. This felt like a huge milestone once we were done.

With the epoxy primer set and all of the bare metal now sealed in to prevent future rust, we set out to clean up the imperfections.

Small amounts of bondo and puddy coat were used to clean everything up and make it smooth.


Once done, we applied another coat of the epoxy primer (not pictured) and then applied a coat of build primer.


The build primer was wet sanded down in high visibility areas to have a nice smooth surface after paint is applied. We also used 3M seam sealer to stop moisture from getting between the layers again.

During this time, I also set out to get the carbon fiber hood fitted and get the Aerocatch hood pins installed. The hood will be primed, sanded, filled, primed, and painted to match the car. I'm not a huge fan of exposed carbon fiber so finding a $50 blemish hood was largely beneficial to me.

This whole process took around 8 months to complete. I'm a manufacturing engineer in the automotive field and am currently working on a fairly large launch that required quite a bit of travel from me. So between the travel and the 1/2 hr drives each way to work on the car, the time line was stretched pretty far. While on one of my work trips, my coworker completed the painting.


Same picture but 8 months later!


And this brings us to today. Now with it home, I can start finishing up some of the details of the rust repair. This is 3M 08881 undercoating sprayed in areas where rocks and debris can hit.


On my next posts, I'll show some of the breather work I have been working on and also an electric power steering solution I am working on to clean up the engine bay and remove the entire hydraulic system.

You are a better man than me with this! Give you credit where credit is due though. Patience , persistence,NICE hell of a job!

Came out great! Cant wait to see more

Well done! When it's complete, body work is satisfying, but can't help the feeling of frustration of the hours needed just to return our cars to the way they should already be. It's especially madenning when you discover how poor design played a part in hidden areas that turn into problems later. Great photo documentation. Congratulations on a great job and thanks for sharing this with us.

Thanks for the kind words guys. I didn't really do too much on the car today, my hammock was way more appealing. I did however make it to the junk yard for the Memorial day sale to try and get my COP coils on sale. After an exhausting search through the import section and seeing every single Toyota picked through for it's coils, my wife found one car with the engine cover still on it. Upon removal of the engine cover, I was able to get the Denso coils that I was looking for.



These are used typically in the Evo world and in the SpoolinUp COP system. It is my understanding that these will not typically work on a dsm because we have an external ignitor where the Evo has the ignitor circuit built into the ECU. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. Either way, my solution for this will be farther down in this post.

Also last night I was able to assemble the shifter base. The shifter arm itself has been shortened by 2" using a jig I designed and had built by a friend. Using my jig, I can shorten directly along the vertical axis and prevent any distortion or bad assembly. You can also see that the whole assembly has been powder coated. This is just a small part of a large pile of parts that have been powder coated by a local guy. More picture of that later.



If you're wondering about cornbread, my buddies think I'm country I guess, so they call me cornbread.

Now onto the solution for the COP and certainly my biggest purchase ever for a DSM. A huge thanks to Tyler at Force Engineering for helping me select this. His advice, support, products, and services have helped my car perform at its best and flawlessly over the last few years. If you're looking for things that work, he's your guy.


Pictured is an Elite 1000 Ecu with wideband controller, 2x pressure sensors (fuel and oil), coolant temp sensor, flex fuel sensor, and EBCS. I've have very little time over the last few weeks to look at the documentation for this or to look at the software, but I'm very excited to learn something other than Link or the Megasquirt systems I have been using for the last 12yrs.

That's all for tonight. Thanks for looking.

So I haven't updated in a bit. I've been chipping away bit by bit on the car but it's hard to make a huge push because I still need to get a few things painted and powder coated.

This weekend I dropped off my #41 brake booster, proportioning valve, and the steering box housing off to a friend for paint. These items are getting painted the same color as the engine bay. I also worked on a mounting solution for the Haltech ecu and wideband controller. The bracket that I used for mounting is the transmission computer bracket from an auto car. The car I got the strut towers from was an auto car and I ended up finding this bracket and saved it for this specific purpose. If I ever have to service the ecu, it will be a total pain, but during normal operation this is a nice packaging solution that will keep the ecu out of the way.

Here is where it will sit. Tucked up nice and tight.


I've basically got my coil-on-plug setup done. I designed the plate in CAD and then printed to scale at work on paper to verify fitment. Also you can kinda see my -12 breather setup that I designed, had machined, welded and blended into the factory valve cover. I plugged the original breather and PCV holes for a very clean look.


For the breather setup, I've been given a lot of crap for this on the Facebook groups. My plan was originally to run two -12 fittings to a vented catch can but after discussing with a few people, I decided to also vent the bottom end to help with any oil drain back problems that might arise from all of the crank case pressure coming up through the oil drain back channels. BTW, I know how this forum feels about vented catch cans, but after many conversations with high hp drag racers, I'm comfortable saying that this is the best possible way to go short of an exhaust driven solution. If someone can provide me with crank case pressure pressure data from a car with a 60mm+ size turbo at 40-50psi that has a turbo driven crank case evacuation system that looks favorable, I'll consider changing.

I made a fitting for the back of the block. It was really nerving to drill such a big hole in the back of the block. The hole is tapped for the same thread as the DSM axles.

The final breather location is the stock balance shaft location on the front of the motor. I designed and machined a fitting that uses an o-ring to seat against the stock shaft seal ledge. The flange was then designed to work with the Kiggly Racing 12 tooth crank trigger setup. Overall I'm super pleased with how this turned out.


My final update is one that I've been working on for almost a year now. After looking into the MR2 or Renault electric power steering pumps, I decided I wanted to look for an alternative. Looking around online, I saw vintage car people doing an EPAS setup on their cars. I decided to pull a steering column from a Chevy HHR and start retro fitting the electric assist motor to the car. Making this fit isn't really easy because the motor is pretty bulky, but it can be done while allowing plenty of room for your feet under (I wear a size 12 shoe and have plenty of room). I bought a very simple controller from epowersteering.com which has a manual potentiometer to manually adjust assist. The whole system will be started using the manual potentiometer which will need to be adjusted from parking lot to highway driving, but I have most of the code written for an Arduino digital potentiometer solution that works based off of VSS feedback. If the setup works as well as I hope, I'll get the Arduino setup going later this year.

As you can see, I had to make a flange to bolt to the Chevy steering motor. I then cut down and welded the stock steering tunnel to the flange.



I ended up getting really lucky and discovered that the outlet on the Chevy motor was the same size and spline count as the stock firewall pass through shaft.


Here it is installed. I did all the test fitting on a car that I ended up scrapping. It fits around the stock brake pedal assembly and clutch assembly without any issue.



That's all I have for right now, hope you enjoyed reading.

wishihadatalon said:

My final update is one that I've been working on for almost a year now. After looking into the MR2 or Renault electric power steering pumps, I decided I wanted to look for an alternative. Looking around online, I saw vintage car people doing an EPAS setup on their cars. I decided to pull a steering column from a Chevy HHR and start retro fitting the electric assist motor to the car. Making this fit isn't really easy because the motor is pretty bulky, but it can be done while allowing plenty of room for your feet under (I wear a size 12 shoe and have plenty of room). I bought a very simple controller from epowersteering.com which has a manual potentiometer to manually adjust assist. The whole system will be started using the manual potentiometer which will need to be adjusted from parking lot to highway driving, but I have most of the code written for an Arduino digital potentiometer solution that works based off of VSS feedback. If the setup works as well as I hope, I'll get the Arduino setup going later this year.

As you can see, I had to make a flange to bolt to the Chevy steering motor. I then cut down and welded the stock steering tunnel to
I ended up getting really lucky and discovered that the outlet on the Chevy motor was the same size and spline count as the stock firewall pass through shaft.

That's all I have for right now, hope you enjoyed reading.

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Darn You! I have the hard parts made and the same manual controller, just haven't gotten around to finalizing and installing it, but literally the exact same epas setup will be going in my car haha. Good deal tho, you'll have to let me know how it works once you get it on the road again.

Great build otherwise, keep it up!

For sure man, let me know if you have any questions. I did forget one picture in the last post. I had to do major surgery on the shaft to make it work. Sectioned the HHR shaft and the stock DSM shaft and had to do a little bit of machining to make it all work. Stock collapsible shaft on the top and the modified one on the bottom. I should note that this still has some ability to collapse.

I actually did the exact same thing with mine haha, great minds think alike? Mine isn't finish welded yet, but it's the exact same concept, I just need to align things a tad and test fit. I actually left my support tube a bit long to extend my wheel toward me cuz I'm a tall bastard.

I would be interested in your arduino setup when you're finished with it, I wanted to setup a speed sensitive system, just hasn't found the diagrams for the motor yet (i.e.- lazy), but yea I'll keep an eye on this and let you know of I finish mine.

That's some nice work. I had not even thought of upgrading to EPAS.

tametalon92 said:

I actually did the exact same thing with mine haha, great minds think alike? Mine isn't finish welded yet, but it's the exact same concept, I just need to align things a tad and test fit. I actually left my support tube a bit long to extend my wheel toward me cuz I'm a tall bastard.

I would be interested in your arduino setup when you're finished with it, I wanted to setup a speed sensitive system, just hasn't found the diagrams for the motor yet (i.e.- lazy), but yea I'll keep an eye on this and let you know of I finish mine.

Click to expand...

I'm going to cheat a bit because I too don't know exactly how the motor is controlled via the epowersteering kit. I'll just put the arduino output in place of the epowersteering 100k ohm manual potentiometer and should be good to go. I'll let you know when I finally get it done. It's been almost 10yrs since I've written any code and I'm figuring out the learning curve is much more difficult as I get older.

wishihadatalon said:

I'm going to cheat a bit because I too don't know exactly how the motor is controlled via the epowersteering kit. I'll just put the arduino output in place of the epowersteering 100k ohm manual potentiometer and should be good to go. I'll let you know when I finally get it done. It's been almost 10yrs since I've written any code and I'm figuring out the learning curve is much more difficult as I get older.

Click to expand...

It'll prolly work fine. I recall seeing a vid on YouTube from a guy in the UK stating that the signals the motor controller gets are vehicle and engine speed. If that's the case it's be easy to get the signals.

If i find the specs and diagrams I'll post them up here.

I realized today that I haven't updated in quite a while. I don't have too many big progress updates, but I have been gathering more parts. One benefit of living where I do, is that I'm 45 minutes away from TRE. I picked my transmission up sometime last year, but after pestering Jon for a few months, I was able to convince him to sell me his final Evo 3 5th gear set. So earlier this year, I dropped off my pretty unused Stage 3 transmission to him and had him install the new gear set. So two weeks ago I went and picked It up.

For the drivetrain at this stage of the build, I have a the stage 3 transmission, rebuilt transfer case, ACT flywheel, and a Southbend SSX full face clutch.


I was also able to install the Hella horns that I purchased last year. I'm hoping these will work well. I told Jon I wouldn't launch the car too much with his transmission, so I have to be able to do some rolls.


Today I was able to mount the remote filter housing. I had to do this for a few reasons. First reason is clearance. Two years ago I was preparing for MOD and found some metal in the oil filter. After replacing bearings and doing a full fluid change, I got it all buttoned up and ready to go. Well when I pulled the oil filter, I had to drop the down pipe to get the filter off. The down pipe had slotted holes and when I put it together, it was all the way to one side. A couple hours from home I noticed my oil pressure dropping. Needless to say, the down pipe rubbed a hole into the filter and it was leaking oil. After looking at alternatives, I thought a forward facing filter housing would work, but the filter would interfere with my hot side intercooler pipe. So this is my solution. Not a new idea, but I really like the idea. I get an extra quart of oil capacity and the sandwich adapter has pretty nice cooling fins.



Also, the remote housing is mounted to the frame rail using rivnuts. If you've never used these, you need to look into them. They are excellent at giving you a great mounting location where there wasn't one.

And finally, I hit a snag with my crank case evacuation setup. Unfortunately the 180 degree swivel fitting has too big of a profile and interferes with the accessory belt. I'm planning on running a Saturn alternator with a Jay Racing relocation kit. I could use the inside belt locations that were originally meant for power steering and air conditioning, but after measuring the pulleys, the water pump would be over driven by 67% which I think would cause cavitation and a reduction in cooling efficiency. I'm going to contact Summit Racing tomorrow and see if there is a smaller profile 180 fitting or if I'll need to run a compact 90 and plan new routing for the hose.


Thanks for looking!

I like that filter sandwich, is it thermostatic at all?

I desperately need to invest in rivnuts when i do the next stage on my car.

Looking good tho, keep it up!

It isn't thermostatic. I went back and forth on whether I should run a cooler or not. Ultimately I decided not to given the greater oil capacity, cooling find on the sandwich adapter, and remote location for the filter. If I drove the car harder or did road racing, it'd be a no brainier.

Sweet build I'm I'm Kalamazoo .

Thank you. I've seen you post on here quite a few time, just never reached out. I honestly have been really bad about communicating with DSM locals after WMDSM slowed down so much.

Oh yeah I remember that right and the founders.

Wow, it's been quite a while since I have updated this. I unfortunately haven't made too much progress on the car, but I am chipping away. Since my last update, I have acquired a very important tool and got it all setup. After seeing it on a Facebook ad, I was able to pick up a Rotary 2 post asymmetrical lift. When finally getting around to installing, I found out that I had to have a thicker floor. So I set it up where I wanted it, marked the floor and cut it out. I ended up digging down 12" (2.5x more than recommended) and using a high compressive strength concrete.

Here is the car finally up on the lift and my buddies sweet 98Tsi AWD coming in out of the elements.


So with the car finally off the ground, I started tearing into it. I've planned on going with 1/2" fuel feed and 3/8" return lines, but I am absolutely not a fan of braided soft line from the tank to the engine bay. So after I was pulling the factory lines, I found that the rear brake lines were a little sketchy. With that discovery plus trying to figure out my fuel system, I decided to pull the fuel tank and the rear end. Once out, the brake line rot was worse than anticipated. So now, I'm using my 3d printer to create a tubing straightener so I can buy a coil of 3/16" tubing and redo the brake lines.


As stated previously, I have a 3d printer. I purchased it to prototype parts, create little odd items for the car, and my wife does quite a bit of cosplay. After spending a bit of time under the car and knowing my eventual fuel line sizes, I came up with a solution to route the lines properly.

Factory on the right and the new on the left.

And finally, my in-laws gave me a really nice Imperial tubing bender for doing small lines for Christmas. One thing I've always wanted to do is a hard oil feed line for my turbo. Once I purchased a relatively expensive stainless steel street tee, I was able to get this line done. The tee allows me to keep a factory sender so I don't have to run an aftermarket oil pressure gage (I'll set up the fail safes in the Haltech to protect the motor).