Clinical
10+ Year Contributor
- 1,399
- 10
- Nov 15, 2009
-
Cedar Falls,
Iowa
My goal for this car has always been keeping it simple but respectable.
If there's one pet peeve of mine - it's all the people who think you need to dump 10k into a car to get past the 13's.
I go to the track and see evos/dsm's running GT35rs/HX40s/and other big turbos with built motors / built transmissions / race gas and still running 12's or high 11's.
I see people telling each other that they need to upgrade from their 14b/16g/20g/etc if they want to make 300hp+
I don't know why as time has gone on it seems setups that ran 10's and 11's back in the day are running 12's/13's/14's these days. Also the whole unreliable stigma b/s has really gotten bad because people are still buying these cars for cheap and expecting to throw parts at them and go fast and ignoring the fact that they are 20+ years old now and not thinking of the maintenance a 2-decade year old car needs.
Anyways, I got out of cars for awhile back in 2011 when I sold my 99 Firebird Formula LS1 6spd car that I threw a cam in and made 400whp~. Prior to that I had a 92 tsi awd with a fully stock 6bolt motor/head that I ran 12.7@107mph with on a 20g and 21.5psi on 91octane and a 92 laser rst awd that I bought already built with a FPGreen that I just fixed up a bit and ran 11.7@123mph on e85.
After 3 years I got the desire to have a car again, and a DSM at that since a DSM was my first car in 2007.
So I picked this up. 1994 Eagle Talon TSi AWD 5spd. I overpaid a bit honestly for it, paying $3500 considering it had a fairly decent bucket list of problems including terrible idle surge, needed a tune, fuel tank & sending unit issues, a ton of hack job fixes, terrible rear battery setup, lots of shit wiring from both age and poor decisions from a previous owner, boost leaks, and a improperly installed MLS headgasket (was not prepped properly) that was leaking. (Lots of these issues I did not recognize when I looked at it, it was -45 degrees when I picked it up and I couldn't stand to crawl all around it.. my fault). My main reason for buying it is that it was clean and my favorite 1gb color. Also that it had a rebuilt motor and trans (supposedly, unconfirmed but as clean as both were I believe it). The guy I bought it from did tell me about some of the issues - the main ones I did not know about were the headgasket, bad wiring, and the fuel tank studs all being trashed. Overall he was a decent guy, can't fault him I suppose cause I'm not sure how deep he ever got into this car since from what i know it was just a bit of a 2nd car to him.
Hauled it home, wasn't sure if it'd make it back on its own with all its issues. Picked it up New Years day. Was from Minneapolis (6 hours from me). Original goal was to just fix it up, do some appropriate mods and run 12's on the 16g and keep it reliable. Ended up doing better than I expected in the end.
After getting it home, immediately started doing maintenance and trying to sort out issues. Mainly fixing boost leaks, tried to brush up on my ecmlink skills from years ago and got the car tuned to the point it was decent to drive. Tried to find the idle surge issue but just could not figure it out. New sensors, boost leaks fixed, throttle body rebuilt, and still she surged.
got it cleaned up decent though
Around this time I also learned that a guy I know who is somewhat local whom I've bought parts for my old DSM's from actually used to own the car. He sold it in 2008 and had a pretty killer setup on it. Funny thing is, he sold it in 2008 with 144k miles on the shell. I bought it in 2014 with 147k on it - and from what I've learned it went through 2 or 3 motors in that time with the new owner blowing it up, rebuilding it with a ebay oil pump that seized and shredded the timing belt and bent valves, not sure what happened after that besides getting rebuilt again. Here's a picture of when he owned the car
My issue was i was on a time table to get it DD-able because I bought it January 1st and my University is 3 hour from home and I have limited tools/space to work on the car at my University, and the spring semester started sometime around January 16th or so. I managed to get the car pretty drivable and it made the trip up and managed to do okay as my DD for awhile. Though still overheating occasionally and constantly idle surging bad and the fuel tank issues.
Loaded up for my trip to my University.
Fast forward a month or so, still being an okay daily driver. I finally figured out the idle surge in late february. Turned out to be a stupid issue I overlooked. A previous owner had done the coolant bypass and just looped the lines and didn't block the coolant passages on the TB with anything. Bought a FIAV bypass plate and boom, no more surge!
Random decent picture from around that time
The car still needed a lot of little things but I sold one of my motorcycles and it freed up some cash, and I really wanted to run an external wastegate when I finally started to try to make power with the car as I've always found too many annoyances with internal gates. So for $125 I bought this tial F38 wastegate with springs and the weird dumptube + gaskets you see here off a member here.
Did some misc work/upgrades here and there- nothing worth going into detail over. Basically easy to do stuff when it wasn't -20 out.
I realized the car heating up was getting much worse and found the fans were no longer kicking on at all. Culprit was very piss poor wiring by a previous owner that had broken. Pulled the rad and re-wired the fans and actually tried to wire it in a way that might actually last.
Then decided to look into my fuel issue. Found it dribbled a bit from the FPR return and then that all but two of the pump studs in the tank were broken and the seal was blown out. I temporarily used some RTV that has started to fail again now too, and actually in the next two weeks from posting this journal I'll finally be pulling the tank to re-stud it. Otherwise now it has just been an issue when filling up the car to full. Otherwise the main issues I fixed back in early March
By now I had done enough work on the car with small mods, and lots of fixes/maintenance that I decided to have a little fun. I BARELY had ever gone WOT with it with all of its issues before. I played with it for a bit at the 12psi (no MBC, running low as I could on the internal gate) on 91 octane. Then I threw E85 in the car. Boost liked to spike around 15-18psi. Car ran decent maybe in the 250-300whp range
Found a local guy with a stock 2g manifold with a 38mm wastegate flange welded to it. Not pretty but it works for $50. Selling my 2g mani for $50 so pretty much can consider it a free mod!
If there's one pet peeve of mine - it's all the people who think you need to dump 10k into a car to get past the 13's.
I go to the track and see evos/dsm's running GT35rs/HX40s/and other big turbos with built motors / built transmissions / race gas and still running 12's or high 11's.
I see people telling each other that they need to upgrade from their 14b/16g/20g/etc if they want to make 300hp+
I don't know why as time has gone on it seems setups that ran 10's and 11's back in the day are running 12's/13's/14's these days. Also the whole unreliable stigma b/s has really gotten bad because people are still buying these cars for cheap and expecting to throw parts at them and go fast and ignoring the fact that they are 20+ years old now and not thinking of the maintenance a 2-decade year old car needs.
Anyways, I got out of cars for awhile back in 2011 when I sold my 99 Firebird Formula LS1 6spd car that I threw a cam in and made 400whp~. Prior to that I had a 92 tsi awd with a fully stock 6bolt motor/head that I ran 12.7@107mph with on a 20g and 21.5psi on 91octane and a 92 laser rst awd that I bought already built with a FPGreen that I just fixed up a bit and ran 11.7@123mph on e85.
After 3 years I got the desire to have a car again, and a DSM at that since a DSM was my first car in 2007.
So I picked this up. 1994 Eagle Talon TSi AWD 5spd. I overpaid a bit honestly for it, paying $3500 considering it had a fairly decent bucket list of problems including terrible idle surge, needed a tune, fuel tank & sending unit issues, a ton of hack job fixes, terrible rear battery setup, lots of shit wiring from both age and poor decisions from a previous owner, boost leaks, and a improperly installed MLS headgasket (was not prepped properly) that was leaking. (Lots of these issues I did not recognize when I looked at it, it was -45 degrees when I picked it up and I couldn't stand to crawl all around it.. my fault). My main reason for buying it is that it was clean and my favorite 1gb color. Also that it had a rebuilt motor and trans (supposedly, unconfirmed but as clean as both were I believe it). The guy I bought it from did tell me about some of the issues - the main ones I did not know about were the headgasket, bad wiring, and the fuel tank studs all being trashed. Overall he was a decent guy, can't fault him I suppose cause I'm not sure how deep he ever got into this car since from what i know it was just a bit of a 2nd car to him.
Hauled it home, wasn't sure if it'd make it back on its own with all its issues. Picked it up New Years day. Was from Minneapolis (6 hours from me). Original goal was to just fix it up, do some appropriate mods and run 12's on the 16g and keep it reliable. Ended up doing better than I expected in the end.
After getting it home, immediately started doing maintenance and trying to sort out issues. Mainly fixing boost leaks, tried to brush up on my ecmlink skills from years ago and got the car tuned to the point it was decent to drive. Tried to find the idle surge issue but just could not figure it out. New sensors, boost leaks fixed, throttle body rebuilt, and still she surged.
got it cleaned up decent though
Around this time I also learned that a guy I know who is somewhat local whom I've bought parts for my old DSM's from actually used to own the car. He sold it in 2008 and had a pretty killer setup on it. Funny thing is, he sold it in 2008 with 144k miles on the shell. I bought it in 2014 with 147k on it - and from what I've learned it went through 2 or 3 motors in that time with the new owner blowing it up, rebuilding it with a ebay oil pump that seized and shredded the timing belt and bent valves, not sure what happened after that besides getting rebuilt again. Here's a picture of when he owned the car
My issue was i was on a time table to get it DD-able because I bought it January 1st and my University is 3 hour from home and I have limited tools/space to work on the car at my University, and the spring semester started sometime around January 16th or so. I managed to get the car pretty drivable and it made the trip up and managed to do okay as my DD for awhile. Though still overheating occasionally and constantly idle surging bad and the fuel tank issues.
Loaded up for my trip to my University.
Fast forward a month or so, still being an okay daily driver. I finally figured out the idle surge in late february. Turned out to be a stupid issue I overlooked. A previous owner had done the coolant bypass and just looped the lines and didn't block the coolant passages on the TB with anything. Bought a FIAV bypass plate and boom, no more surge!
Random decent picture from around that time
The car still needed a lot of little things but I sold one of my motorcycles and it freed up some cash, and I really wanted to run an external wastegate when I finally started to try to make power with the car as I've always found too many annoyances with internal gates. So for $125 I bought this tial F38 wastegate with springs and the weird dumptube + gaskets you see here off a member here.
Did some misc work/upgrades here and there- nothing worth going into detail over. Basically easy to do stuff when it wasn't -20 out.
I realized the car heating up was getting much worse and found the fans were no longer kicking on at all. Culprit was very piss poor wiring by a previous owner that had broken. Pulled the rad and re-wired the fans and actually tried to wire it in a way that might actually last.
Then decided to look into my fuel issue. Found it dribbled a bit from the FPR return and then that all but two of the pump studs in the tank were broken and the seal was blown out. I temporarily used some RTV that has started to fail again now too, and actually in the next two weeks from posting this journal I'll finally be pulling the tank to re-stud it. Otherwise now it has just been an issue when filling up the car to full. Otherwise the main issues I fixed back in early March
By now I had done enough work on the car with small mods, and lots of fixes/maintenance that I decided to have a little fun. I BARELY had ever gone WOT with it with all of its issues before. I played with it for a bit at the 12psi (no MBC, running low as I could on the internal gate) on 91 octane. Then I threw E85 in the car. Boost liked to spike around 15-18psi. Car ran decent maybe in the 250-300whp range
Found a local guy with a stock 2g manifold with a 38mm wastegate flange welded to it. Not pretty but it works for $50. Selling my 2g mani for $50 so pretty much can consider it a free mod!
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