2gGSX
15+ Year Contributor
- 1,956
- 30
- Feb 15, 2004
-
St. Louis,
Missouri
This is the single best thread I've read on here in 8+ years--thanks to everyone for the great stories!
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I look at what I know now and give thoughts to building another RWD again, I can't imagine how fast and reliable it could be now, wow......
Thanks for the great stories!
Dave, Sean, can I ask you guys something?
Back when you were getting into the low 11's and breaking into the tens, did it seem easy? Or was every tenth a struggle?
And when you hit tens, did it seem like you were reaching the limits of the DSM platform?
Did you ever think you'd eventually get into the 8's?
Yes, it was tough getting into each new time zone. I read Sean's post down a few from yours and he says it wasn't tough getting into the 11's. Well the reason for that is it had already been done by the time he got into DSM's. Getting into the 10's was tougher because it wasn't something that was laid out in black and white already. The DSM's ran low 15's stock new, mine ran a 15.11. I bought the first on in November of 1989. I then bought my black cherry '91 in 1991, the car John Shepherd has now. That car was the one I really started modifying. I did a Dynomax 2.25" catback, K&N filter, Horgen manual boost controller and ran a 13.48 with it first time I went out with it. I was HOOKED. I wanted to go 12's and back then EVERYONE said it was absolutely impossible. I aligned myself with Turbo Performance Center in MD. He was a Porsche guy and HKS dealer. HKS was going to release this great new engine controller called a VPC. I got the FIRST one ever, wasn't even in a box. In order to get it I had to drive to Glen Burnie (SP?)MD and have it installed by Mike the owner. I did that, he used a Fluke meter and the 02 voltage to dial it in. I returned home and built more parts. Offroad pipes, down pipes were all BRAND NEW never before offered parts then and I was making them to sell. The car dropped into the 12.90'.s It was a HUGE ordeal, Mike used the car in his ads in Turbo Magazine because of it. Then I said, I want to go 11's. He laughed his ass off. About a year later I had put together a formula to do that too, like now you just buy the right parts, drive decent and run the times because it was all right there on how to do it. Getting into the 10's was tough as hell. I refused to gut my car or take the interior out. I refused to run without exhaust, just like now I wanted my car nice AND fast. There were no good tires for street cars then that fit. We were running on a re-capped radial with some soft compound on them we called "Green dots".
Man I could go on and on and on.....
What would I do different? Oh man, that's a tough one. I have very few regrets. We've outlasted every single DSM shop that was around in the beginning, well Archer Racing is still around but doing Vipers. I don't have many regrets. A lot of people I wish I had never met or wasted time with is the biggest one for me. I think though, so I don't get off on a tangent, you are talking simply about performance.
So, based on that, I would have to say I'd have simply moved forward sooner on technology. Fuel management being one for sure. I'd have also NOT built such a lightweight chassis for the tube car. It worked but did not work that well and we had a lot of handling issues with the car because of my demanding it be super light. By the time Brent decided to use Gary to build his car too, Gary new better than to use the super light/undersized tubing we did on my car. It was safe but not as rigid as it needed to be. I would think running 6's at this point in time in a tube chassis car would be a near no brainer and I'd think it could be done reliably without 80 psi of boost. I mean our black EVO ran 172.74 mph, which is damn near the same as the tube car did and that was shifting a standard stock trans through the gears, more weight, AWD, no real aero work, no nitrous etc. etc.
I'm building a new toy now, '32 Ford 3 window coupe. Ford 9" rear, TH400 trans, same engine/head/cams/turbo/engine management that's in the Bad Bish, should be fun. About 2300 pound when it's done. Was suppose to be a cruiser but I think it will end up doing something else.
There were three things that plagued the Talon: transmissions, transfer cases, and driveshaft yokes. Of course fast forwarding a decade which will mark the anniversary of the Talon breaking into the 8's..... if I had a PPG gearset like I have for the Evo, it would have been only two things to worry about. I had run transmissions from Shep and TRE as well as bone stock units with a welded center diff--- when they worked, they worked but never with any amount of consistency. I had arguments with both Jo(h)n's over it and we never had a real solution. I finally decided to stop running the car until I had a solution for everything. The transfer case is simply small... and the yoke is also in the same boat. Sometimes they would last three passes, others for ten. Not good at all. Usually I would twist the yoke 2-splines worth in two passes.
There was one point when running NIRA that the Talon was going to undergo a huge transformation: still AWD, but with a complete R33 Skyline driveline with a Hollinger or Hewland dogbox. That was until NIRA made one little rule that killed that: you couldn't change the orientation of the engine in the engine bay. I figured that at the rate that I was going through driveline parts, that would solve it and a lot of parts were already available.
Engine was always fine and well underutilized, and you wanna know about it....
To date, only two people know what turbo size I had run. Tons of speculation, but I never let the cat out of the bag.... until now. The "T4 Secret" that is listed was a 70mm compressor wheel with a GTQ turbine wheel in a .70 T4 turbine housing and the last one was from PTE--- even for then it was old school, but it worked. Now, the best part. 33psi + 150hp shot of nitrous. Yes 33 PSI. I had never run any more than that for one reason: it would shift even less consistent than it did. So I had capped the boost that I was running until transmission woes were sorted out. And you're wondering what the engine combo was--- another part that is fun as well and never fully let out. The last combination was Arias 8:1 pistons, Groden rods, Moldex custom billet crank that I had on the shelf for over 4-years , and for the head was Ferrea valvetrain, Hyperdrive solid lifters, Crane cams, and the head was done by an awesome friend--- Dave @ Headgames.
I also had tried automatics back as far as 1999 all without luck as everyone that promised they could make something work, could not and I backed away from that three or four times. I even had a transmission company call me and say they could solve the problem of the manual transmission.... they did make the first one on their dime and in the end it lasted 3-passes before it grenaded. Then they bailed.
The only thing that I have never mentioned is the fastest pass the Talon ever had. It was a test pass locally and one small problem was that I blew the transfer case on the second pass to the point there was nothing left under the car except two bolts. The pass was an 8.23.... and it was every part of it, but I HAVE to have a backup run to make it count in my book, so without that I never really counted it. There was also one other pass that was on track (I believe) in the same season at Englishtown. We got rained out on Saturday and Sunday they ran round robin. I went through the traps sideways, chute open, and in a cloud of smoke as an Integra had blown its engine the run before and they never cleaned the track because they were rushing...... needless to say, to see the side of the car next to you out your windshield is not comforting. And when you're sliding at 160mph on oil.... pucker, pucker, pucker... That pass after all of that drama? 8.77.
Yes, it was tough getting into each new time zone. I read Sean's post down a few from yours and he says it wasn't tough getting into the 11's. Well the reason for that is it had already been done by the time he got into DSM's. Getting into the 10's was tougher because it wasn't something that was laid out in black and white already. The DSM's ran low 15's stock new, mine ran a 15.11. I bought the first on in November of 1989. I then bought my black cherry '91 in 1991, the car John Shepherd has now. That car was the one I really started modifying. I did a Dynomax 2.25" catback, K&N filter, Horgen manual boost controller and ran a 13.48 with it first time I went out with it. I was HOOKED. I wanted to go 12's and back then EVERYONE said it was absolutely impossible. I aligned myself with Turbo Performance Center in MD. He was a Porsche guy and HKS dealer. HKS was going to release this great new engine controller called a VPC. I got the FIRST one ever, wasn't even in a box. In order to get it I had to drive to Glen Burnie (SP?)MD and have it installed by Mike the owner. I did that, he used a Fluke meter and the 02 voltage to dial it in. I returned home and built more parts. Offroad pipes, down pipes were all BRAND NEW never before offered parts then and I was making them to sell. The car dropped into the 12.90'.s It was a HUGE ordeal, Mike used the car in his ads in Turbo Magazine because of it. Then I said, I want to go 11's. He laughed his ass off. About a year later I had put together a formula to do that too, like now you just buy the right parts, drive decent and run the times because it was all right there on how to do it. Getting into the 10's was tough as hell. I refused to gut my car or take the interior out. I refused to run without exhaust, just like now I wanted my car nice AND fast. There were no good tires for street cars then that fit. We were running on a re-capped radial with some soft compound on them we called "Green dots".
Man I could go on and on and on.....
There were three things that plagued the Talon: transmissions, transfer cases, and driveshaft yokes. Of course fast forwarding a decade which will mark the anniversary of the Talon breaking into the 8's..... if I had a PPG gearset like I have for the Evo, it would have been only two things to worry about. I had run transmissions from Shep and TRE as well as bone stock units with a welded center diff--- when they worked, they worked but never with any amount of consistency. I had arguments with both Jo(h)n's over it and we never had a real solution. I finally decided to stop running the car until I had a solution for everything. The transfer case is simply small... and the yoke is also in the same boat. Sometimes they would last three passes, others for ten. Not good at all. Usually I would twist the yoke 2-splines worth in two passes.
There was one point when running NIRA that the Talon was going to undergo a huge transformation: still AWD, but with a complete R33 Skyline driveline with a Hollinger or Hewland dogbox. That was until NIRA made one little rule that killed that: you couldn't change the orientation of the engine in the engine bay. I figured that at the rate that I was going through driveline parts, that would solve it and a lot of parts were already available.
Engine was always fine and well underutilized, and you wanna know about it....
To date, only two people know what turbo size I had run. Tons of speculation, but I never let the cat out of the bag.... until now. The "T4 Secret" that is listed was a 70mm compressor wheel with a GTQ turbine wheel in a .70 T4 turbine housing and the last one was from PTE--- even for then it was old school, but it worked. Now, the best part. 33psi + 150hp shot of nitrous. Yes 33 PSI. I had never run any more than that for one reason: it would shift even less consistent than it did. So I had capped the boost that I was running until transmission woes were sorted out. And you're wondering what the engine combo was--- another part that is fun as well and never fully let out. The last combination was Arias 8:1 pistons, Groden rods, Moldex custom billet crank that I had on the shelf for over 4-years , and for the head was Ferrea valvetrain, Hyperdrive solid lifters, Crane cams, and the head was done by an awesome friend--- Dave @ Headgames.
I also had tried automatics back as far as 1999 all without luck as everyone that promised they could make something work, could not and I backed away from that three or four times. I even had a transmission company call me and say they could solve the problem of the manual transmission.... they did make the first one on their dime and in the end it lasted 3-passes before it grenaded. Then they bailed.
The only thing that I have never mentioned is the fastest pass the Talon ever had. It was a test pass locally and one small problem was that I blew the transfer case on the second pass to the point there was nothing left under the car except two bolts. The pass was an 8.23.... and it was every part of it, but I HAVE to have a backup run to make it count in my book, so without that I never really counted it. There was also one other pass that was on track (I believe) in the same season at Englishtown. We got rained out on Saturday and Sunday they ran round robin. I went through the traps sideways, chute open, and in a cloud of smoke as an Integra had blown its engine the run before and they never cleaned the track because they were rushing...... needless to say, to see the side of the car next to you out your windshield is not comforting. And when you're sliding at 160mph on oil.... pucker, pucker, pucker... That pass after all of that drama? 8.77.
Oh, come on! Knowing what we know today, VPC SUCKED!!! Dave, knew his stuff and he made it work "well enough". He was fast INSPITE of having VPC, not because of it! I have little doube that he would have gone even faster had he switched to some sort of standalone EMS.
As I said before, VPC stopped seeing boost at 23-24psi. That is 16G level of boost. So really, you shouldn't use with any larger turbo.
And before you group me with the rest of the VPC haters, you should know that I was one of the faster VPC guys back then, having gone 10.7 on it, back in 2001. I finally switched to AEM EMS in 2002, but I should have done it sooner!!! I kept seeing 13.5:1 AFR's on the dyno (running consistant 450-460 whp on a Dynojet) and thought "I can't possibly be THAT lean, or my engine would have bown". Guess what? I was that lean!!! And my engine was saved by my insistance to always use race gas.