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mountain_man

Supporting Member
207
140
Apr 18, 2007
Merritt Island, Florida
The goals for Talon have changed over the years but I've finally settled on a clear vision, make the DSM version of Porsche 911 GT2. Psychic steering, reliable power, corners like a Playboy Bunny Hool-A-Hooping, and has a license plate. In the days to come you guy's will follow along with me driving Talon to the track, slaying some expensive cars, probably breaking stuff, and drive him home with all fenders attached. Maybe we'll do some in Time Attack Events, SCCA Time Trials, and Hill Climb events as well, WHO KNOWS!?

It’s crazy to think I’ve been on this forum for 13 years and never started a build profile! But, now that life has calmed down and I’m able to work my car extensively, I’d like to share my build successes and (time) trials with all of you.

My name is Roger and I drive a 1995 Eagle Talon TSI AWD, I’m Talons 2nd owner and purchased him way back on July 11th, 2015 in Seattle, WA. He was bone stock when I got him and the previous owner bought him new off the showroom floor. So what did I decide to do? Turn him into a racecar of course!

Some of you may say not like that I took a now rare, bone stock 2G and hack it up, but… It’s not every day you get to build a car the way you want w/o having to worry about other people’s mods.

Here’s some pics of the day first got him :

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Due to my crazy travel schedule at the time, I relied on a family friends sports car restoration shop to work on the car for me. Due to my long relationship with the owner and knowing the quality of work his show was capable of, I felt like Talon would be in good hands. You will later find out why this was not the case.

Two of the first things I wanted to improve on Talon were the brakes and wheels.

Brakes:

For brakes, this meant Galant knuckles, front/rear Evo VIII/IX Brembo's, new rotors, stainless steel brake lines, EBC Yellow Pads, and a set of Enkei RPF1's! @ec17pse just happened to have a set of knuckles available so I snagged a pair and made a new friend to boot. :) As a measure of safety and since it's already torn apart, new OEM front wheel bearings along with ARP wheel studs were installed.

I can't remember where I found the Brembo's, but the Seller stated they had been rebuilt and repainted. After I received them I quickly realized that they may have been rebuilt but it was years prior and the paint job was garbage. Thank you people internetz for being so very honest:notgood:. These will get rebuilt at some point in the future but for just getting the car broken in they will have to do.

Having heard that the Brembo's have a tendency to overheat on track days when using a bigger / stickier tire, some EVO brake ducts were installed. I can't remember who made these but you should be able to find them if you Google around. These provide direct cooling to the rotor, pad, and caliper and they've been plummet to some NACA ducts underneath the nose.

Lastly, in order to save some weight and because I like to look death in the eye, I made the decision to delete the ABS system.

Wheels:
As luck would have it I found the perfect set of used for one season AutoX season of 17" x 10" +18mm RPF1's on Facebook marketplace. These were way wider than I was planning on going but the offset was such that they would work w/o having to go with wheel spacers. This also meant that I now had to get some kind of fender flare in order to make them safe for track days and road use. But we'll talk about that in another post.

These are wrapped in what are now 3 year old 275 x 40 x 17 Nitto NT-01's.

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In order to accommodate the wider wheels and tires I was deciding between a set of 240Z fender flares, a generic set from Summit and the 2G fender flares from Carbonetics. Having heard that Carbonetics can be slow to mail out product, I messaged them on Facebook beforehand to see if they had a set of fiberglass flares in stock. They did, and within a couple weeks they arrived. Phew...:thumb: I decided to go with fiberglass in instead of carbon so I can repair them myself in the event of a wreck or tire failure.

The quality of he part was poor to say the least which you can see in the photo below. First off, they were all super thin maybe 2 layers? So before doing anything I had to add another 2 layers of fiberglass to a several spots just to get decent stiffness. Second all of them were twisted, so some fiberglass added was to bring the flare flush with the fender. One of which was so badly twisted that I thought it was going to break when securing to the fender. The top flare (Front) has a noticeable flat spot in the middle.

Maybe this is being nit picky but I wish the edges of the flares were parallel with the ground.

Has anyone else had similar experiences with buying fender flares from other suppliers?

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For this post I'm just going to go through what was done to the front suspension because I wasn't able to perform before/after driving impressions. But what I can say is that even before the car was set-up properly it drove phenomenally well. The steering was super precise and I feel like the car rolled into the corners well.
  • Volk Metal Craft / @99gst_racer Lower Control Arms
  • BC Racing ER Coilovers with Swift Springs (15k Front and 16k Rear)
  • BC Racing Spherical Top Hats, these had to come from the UK b/c the USA branch would not sell them to me.
  • RM Front Sway Bar from STM
  • @ec17pse Front Upper control Arms
  • @ec17pse Tie Rod Ends
  • @greengoblin Front Chassis Braces

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Finally got the right front back together the other day. I decided to replace the rivets that hold the flare to the fender with bolts instead b/c I wanted to make the car more easily serviceable in the event I need to A.) Replace the Flare B.) Need to cut/roll the fender due to tire rub or C.) some other reason I can't imagine.

I used stainless steel bolts, lock washers, and nuts just as an added step against corrosion as they'll prolly see rain at some point. So you may notice that they're painted... due to social distancing and quarantining I choose to shoot them with a coat of paint instead of going back to the "ACE hardware and Racing Supplies" for black oxide coated ones.

As part of making the car easily serviceable, I added a front bumper quick disconnect kit from Brian Mitchel https://www.facebook.com/brian.mitchell.0911. He was super easy to work with and responded quickly to a DM on Facebook. If you're on here Brian please let me know and I'll leave you a positive seller review! :thumb:

When installing this kit make sure you drill the hole for the push lock carefully, I messed this up slightly on the passenger side. I was able to fix it by relocating the bracket from the underside of the fender lip to the top but it was my fault and got lucky by being able to fix it easily.

Black Fender flare Bolts.jpg
Black Bolts Fender Flare.jpg
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Thank you very much! This is my 5th 2G DSM and the build I've always wanted to commit to, short of what @Atuca is doing/planning.
Yeah, we'll he's going pretty extreme compared to what most of us would be doing. I love the extreme builds, but builds like yours show how to go about modding a DSM to be a fun track day car with a more "reasonable" budget.
 
I am all about the love for the cars actually on the track racing and learning. That's way more important than the sitting, dreaming, wishing, but in the end doing nothing (or worse: wasting money during a build to inevitably not finish and then part out). Stay focused on the attainable goals for your build one step at a time and let's all get back out there when the tracks open back up!

As for the fiberglass work, I've been through a few aero bodies, splitters, and diffusers from a few different manufactures now. None were perfect. There is so much that has to be perfect, from the initial mold, to the materials lay up, resin ratios, temperature while applying resin, temperature in the shop while it cures over night, to the force required pulling the part from the mold. Then there is handling the part while doing final prep and trimming work, handling while packing the part, and shipping variables. Let's also not forget, your car might be tweaked, few mm variance between car to car when it was spot welded at the factory, or just 100k+ miles and/or 20 years on a chassis will put a bit of a change to the sheet metal. Just stating a few facts that folks may not consider. It's rare an after market composite piece is not touched or influenced by human hands, and I have yet to hear anyone say a part was perfect. When I see panels or cars online with installed parts like that, I can always appreciate the time I know someone put into it. It's also why body shops exist and charge so much if you don't want to do it :p John's v1 body cost more to install than the panels themselves, for example.

Again, I praise your determination to not let imperfection hold up your build. Sometimes I whine at some friends online or stare at the car/part/problem but at the end of the day the best bet is to do what you did and just move forward. Everyone else can be stuck at the "wait til someone else fixes it" stage while you are already out tackling the next problem. That kind of determination gets you trophies on track while everyone else still "building" in their garage.
 
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Today was a great day! Got the left front put back together ready for set-up! Here's a pick of the car on the ground for the first time in 8 months. Nothing radical but it's ready for the next Dan Partelo to do his magic in setting up the car.

https://www.facebook.com/DanParteloRaceCars/

If any of you have any recommended specs for road racing, please feel free to comment!

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One cool thing I meant to show you guys the other day was the under tray my Dad made years ago when I was AutoX'ing heavily. It's a a super simple piece to make and it worked great not only for lower speeds but I could tell a big difference in brake feel when carving up the the Tougé (mountain pass). It's just a NACA duct cut into a piece of aluminum that's bolted to the underside of the front bumper. We also cut out two holes in the middle of the panel for the frame rail bolts.

If you go to do this, make sure your NACA duct exit hole is the same as the brake ducts. You can kinda see in the photo's that I had to use two different size of ducting in order to make it work. If this happens to you just slide the smaller duct into the larger duct and zip tie.


IMG_1914.jpg
IMG_1917.jpg
 
One cool thing I meant to show you guys the other day was the under tray my Dad made years ago when I was AutoX'ing heavily. It's a a super simple piece to make and it worked great not only for lower speeds but I could tell a big difference in brake feel when carving up the the Tougé (mountain pass). It's just a NACA duct cut into a piece of aluminum that's bolted to the underside of the front bumper. We also cut out two holes in the middle of the panel for the frame rail bolts.

If you go to do this, make sure your NACA duct exit hole is the same as the brake ducts. You can kinda see in the photo's that I had to use two different size of ducting in order to make it work. If this happens to you just slide the smaller duct into the larger duct and zip tie.


View attachment 597326 View attachment 597327
That’s much easier than trying to run it from the front openings.
 
I am all about the love for the cars actually on the track racing and learning. That's way more important than the sitting, dreaming, wishing, but in the end doing nothing (or worse: wasting money during a build to inevitably not finish and then part out). Stay focused on the attainable goals for your build one step at a time and let's all get back out there when the tracks open back up!

As for the fiberglass work, I've been through a few aero bodies, splitters, and diffusers from a few different manufactures now. None were perfect. There is so much that has to be perfect, from the initial mold, to the materials lay up, resin ratios, temperature while applying resin, temperature in the shop while it cures over night, to the force required pulling the part from the mold. Then there is handling the part while doing final prep and trimming work, handling while packing the part, and shipping variables. Let's also not forget, your car might be tweaked, few mm variance between car to car when it was spot welded at the factory, or just 100k+ miles and/or 20 years on a chassis will put a bit of a change to the sheet metal. Just stating a few facts that folks may not consider. It's rare an after market composite piece is not touched or influenced by human hands, and I have yet to hear anyone say a part was perfect. When I see panels or cars online with installed parts like that, I can always appreciate the time I know someone put into it. It's also why body shops exist and charge so much if you don't want to do it :p John's v1 body cost more to install than the panels themselves, for example.

Again, I praise your determination to not let imperfection hold up your build. Sometimes I whine at some friends online or stare at the car/part/problem but at the end of the day the best bet is to do what you did and just move forward. Everyone else can be stuck at the "wait til someone else fixes it" stage while you are already out tackling the next problem. That kind of determination gets you trophies on track while everyone else still "building" in their garage.

Thank you very much for the motivation and kind words @Atuca , @Ludachris , @NWHTanK ! @Atuca , Your posts on this forum, YouTube series and decision to make the next bad AF DSM was the spark to get this post started. Here's a link for anyone that hasn't seen it! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWwIlIG5RmrV_ZpDEoStPsA

@Ludachris you're challenge to get people posting during this down time really gave me no excuse to not start!

Truth be told, about a month ago I bought a Tesla Model 3 Performance and lost a lot of interest in completing Talon. Talon just seemed so antiquated after driving the Tesla and the amount of work appeared overwhelming due to having accumulated so many parts over the years. That built up a mental pressure saying to myself you "HAVE" install all those parts "RIGHT NOW" and get racing "RIGHT NOW". So much that it just made me not want to work on Talon.

However, starting this Build Thread has really kept me motivated to get out in the garage even if it's only for a couple hours a week. Thank you guys for keeping the forum around and being supportive to all it's members during this stressful time. It's restored and brought a new sense of community to my life.

Thank you.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK ON YOUR CARS CRETINS BEFORE THE DSM CAR GAWDS CURSE YOU WITH CRANK WALK! haha, jk :)
 
Thank you very much for the motivation and kind words @Atuca , @Ludachris , @NWHTanK ! @Atuca , Your posts on this forum, YouTube series and decision to make the next bad AF DSM was the spark to get this post started. Here's a link for anyone that hasn't seen it! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWwIlIG5RmrV_ZpDEoStPsA

@Ludachris you're challenge to get people posting during this down time really gave me no excuse to not start!

Truth be told, about a month ago I bought a Tesla Model 3 Performance and lost a lot of interest in completing Talon. Talon just seemed so antiquated after driving the Tesla and the amount of work appeared overwhelming due to having accumulated so many parts over the years. That built up a mental pressure saying to myself you "HAVE" install all those parts "RIGHT NOW" and get racing "RIGHT NOW". So much that it just made me not want to work on Talon.

However, starting this Build Thread has really kept me motivated to get out in the garage even if it's only for a couple hours a week. Thank you guys for keeping the forum around and being supportive to all it's members during this stressful time. It's restored and brought a new sense of community to my life.

Thank you.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK ON YOUR CARS CRETINS BEFORE THE DSM CAR GAWDS CURSE YOU WITH CRANK WALK! haha, jk :)
It’s nice to see that motivation in threads like this. These threads motivate others. Keep it up! And thanks for sharing the journey here.

I see random photos and updates on FB that simply cannot be followed the same way a build thread can. It’s sad that people continue to do that. Wish everyone would use build threads to document their build instead of FB or IG. Those updates only work if people see them in real time.
 
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