1990 Talon Tsi English Racing build 2016

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1990 Talon English Racing build


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We're on Boost updated 1990 Talon Tsi English Racing build 2016

New alternator - again.
Added a custom heat shield for the alternator.

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We're on Boost updated 1990 Talon Tsi English Racing build 2016

PPG dogbox from Tim Zimmer, on the way. Stock tranny broke.

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I finally got a good picture of the modified clutch pedal clevis on my car.
This was done by English Racing in 2016.
They did a really nice job of welding a nut to the forward face of the clevis. Beautiful little weld.
I've only seen this with my cell phone camera. Have never been able to get my head into a position to see it like this.
Marked it up -
Blue arrow is the nut they added
Red arrow is just pointing to the weld.
They put it on the invoice like this:
"Once installed new motor with new clutch there was not
enough travel on the clutch adjustment. Had to pull out the
clutch pedal assembly and add a nut to the clevis."

 

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Took the time to get some good pics of this Quarter Master twin disc clutch with blue spring, from TMZ.
It's an 8-leg, "gear drive", Street friction material, Street flywheel for 6-bolt, hub for 1" x 23 spline input shaft.
And a blue spring, which is nominally 2500 - 2700 pounds rated. The color code is one finger painted blue.

The spring in mine, they are calling it 2550 pounds.
Which is pretty cool because I had also thought about getting the grey spring which is the next one lighter.

Right now I'm waiting to get my car to English Racing for the install.

In this last pic, if you look between the fingers you can just barely see the splines that are the drive from the discs to the hub. Those splines have an OD of about 2.5 inches.

 

[1cleangsx]

Can you purchase the 6 leg version with the lighter springs or is just the 8 leg? How do you like the clutch so far?

 

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Can you purchase the 6 leg version with the lighter springs or is just the 8 leg? How do you like the clutch so far?

I think you can get the 6-leg with lighter springs, but Tim would be the one to know that.
I've been trying to get my car in to English Racing for the install ever since Jan 19 and am still waiting for them to come and get my car. Myles has been telling me end of Feb/early March is probably when they can start.
So anyway, I don't have it in the car yet.

I was a little skeptical that Quarter Master would even send the clutch out with the spring we ordered.
So the way we did it, Tim ordered the clutch assembly sent to him first. That way he can check it all over, make sure it is the right stuff.
Tim ordered from QM on Dec 21, 2020, and he got it Jan 12. So it didn't take very long.
Then he gathered up the bolts and TOB and other stuff I had ordered and sent it all out to me a few days later.

I had gotten a copy of the QM spring chart long before all of this, but the chart all by itself doesn't do you much good unless you have some numbers to relate it to engine torque. So that is something that Tim and I discussed by email. Along in there Tim told me that John Freund is one of his customers using an 8-leg with a blue spring, so I had some conversations with John about it. He seems to like his clutch pretty well.

 

[1cleangsx]

That is the clutch I’m going with this year for my build, but as recommended by Kurt @bastarddsm , I want to run the lightest spring possible on the street version like you have. I’ll buy either version, other than the lighter springs I’m not sure as to why buy the 8 leg over the 6 leg other than price obviously. The evo guys seem to prefer the 8 leg, but anyways I hope that set up works out for you

 

[DSMPT]

Can you purchase the 6 leg version with the lighter springs or is just the 8 leg?

Most of DSM related shops sell the clutch kit with a white spring on either a 6 or 8 leg kit which is the highest pressure and the sale page normally doesn't allow you to select the spring color. So just tell the vendor that you want a lighter spring before placing the order.

 

[1cleangsx]

Exactly why I’ll go thru tmz, thank you

 

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I’m not sure as to why buy the 8 leg over the 6 leg other than price obviously. The evo guys seem to prefer the 8 leg, but anyways I hope that set up works out for you

I didn't have much to go on either, for 6-leg vs 8-leg. But of the comments I've seen by users, the more favorable ones seem to come from 8-leg users.

Since it will be a while before I have my own opinion about it, I'll post here some comments I got from people in private messages with 4 users of a QM twin. Only one is a 6-leg user, the other 3 users have 8-leg.

The 6-leg user doesn't like it very much, because of chatter and sudden on-off engagement. He thought I should try an 8-leg if I wanted to try one at all.

The 8-leg users' comments, one of them I won't relate because his is a race version. But if the race version is what you want, this guy would be interesting to talk to because he has put 15,000 miles on his! He is user "TWOpointFORliter".

The other two:
#1: (Babyviper) “There is a break-in period that sucks with this clutch. Doesn't want to slip at all. But after a dyno session and about 100 miles she is all good. It's definitely daily drivable now, you can slip it as well. I can take off at idle speed like stock clutch. It was not like that for the first 100 miles. Still makes noise at idle and louder when clutch is depressed.”

#2 (John Freund) Talking about street manners. John said “They're not bad for driving but you will still stall things out more often, and hill starting is a bit of a bi***. I basically overrev a bit and don't freak out about slipping the clutch at a higher rpm than other clutches.”
I said “Yeah, starting uphill is where I have some trouble even with my ceramic single disc clutch. That's what I do, hold revs to at least 3,000 and try to feather it in slowly.”
John said “Eh I think 3,000 is pushing it. I'm talking like starting from 2,000 at most. Just takes getting used to it. It's very light on the pedal pressure. Pedal feels nice.”

If you think you would want a triple disc for whatever reason, talk to Hiroshi (DSMPT).
That guy knows so much and is so helpful!
The reason I could think of would be, 50% more torque capacity per pound of spring. If you know what I mean.

 

[ChessmoDSM]

I didn't have much to go on either, for 6-leg vs 8-leg. But of the comments I've seen by users, the more favorable ones seem to come from 8-leg users.

Just curious, how much HP you pushing or looking to push as your goal..

 

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Just curious, how much HP you pushing or looking to push as your goal..

Well that's easy to answer because my engine is done and dynoed and I'm not ever going to be looking for more power. Take a look at the "Photos" in my profile, there is a dynojet chart there that shows hp, torque, boost, and A/F. In the title at the top you can see where, when, turbo, correction factor, gear, ethanol percent, and smoothing factor. This was the final tuning run that Aaron did after my engine was finished in 2016. A few days later Lucas did some minor tweaking on the tune to get rid of that little flat spot that you see around 3,700 rpm.

I like this engine a lot. My joke about it with Myles at ER is that it will probably last longer than I do. I'm going to try to make that happen. That is actually my goal . Usually I am running it at lower boost though, than what you see in this chart, and lots of variation in the ethanol %.

 

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At English Racing for most of the afternoon, April 20, with the QM clutch installed:

First thing I noticed is that the input shaft slows down probably 3 times faster than it did with the ACT 2700 clutch. This seems unreal. But it was every time. Car stopped, engine at idle, push the pedal in, and you then need to get it into 1st (or reverse) right away – less than 1 second. With the ACT 2700 and the all-ceramic disc it was less than 3 seconds. I don’t know if this is because of less Moment Of Inertia or less drag (more complete disengage). But whatever the reason, I like it. It should make life a lot easier for the dogs when they are engaging the next gear. I hope so, that’s about half the reason I bought this clutch.

If you wait more than 1 second, the input shaft stops and chances are the dogs won’t be lined up so you can’t get it into gear, so you have to start all over again and do it quicker to get it before the input shaft stops spinning.

The other main reason I had for buying it was to have, for once, enough pedal travel for thorough disengage. I was tired of having the engage point with the pedal almost to the floor. Just doesn’t seem right, how can there be enough disengage when it’s like that?

Well it’s a big success in that area too. Lucas adjusted my pedal to where he thought it was the best for all things considered, which includes not “over-stroking” the clutch.

Where it’s adjusted, I have about 3/8” more pedal free play (at the top of the stroke) than I used to, and I have at least 5/8” more pedal travel from the floor to the engage point than I used to. I had my mirror with me so I didn’t have to guess about the pedal free play. The other one, from the floor up to engage point, is more of a guess by feel. So overall, I estimate I have 5/8” plus 3/8” that I didn’t have before, about 1 inch, or more. Probably more. That’s excellent.

So I now have a little more pedal free play than is normally necessary. I could reduce that to bring the engage point even further up from the floor. But Lucas said not to because then I would maybe need a pedal stop on the floor to keep from over-stroking the clutch. It’s good where they put it and that’s where I’ll keep it.


When you are letting the pedal up, there is an “over center spring” feeling to it. This happens right about where the clutch is starting to engage, which is not good, because it interferes with your ability to have a slow progressive engagement. You are letting the pedal up, trying to hit that first little bit of engagement nice and slow, and all of a sudden something is pushing your foot up faster than you wanted.

It’s the same thing that the “turn-over” spring does in the pedal assembly. Only stronger, and it happens in a worse place (the turn-over spring goes over center higher up in the pedal travel, as I remember).

That, combined with the very short engagement window (pedal travel from start of engage to fully engaged) makes it tough for standing starts and for maneuvering around at very slow speeds like in a gas station or a parking lot.

So that’s going to take some practice and getting used to.

But I was getting the hang of it already with just the little time I had, and when Lucas was driving he could make the car roll around very slow with the clutch slipping all the way, and hardly any chatter. In fact by the end of my time there that day the chatter had reduced to a very small amount. My ceramic disc in the ACT 2700 chattered way more than this one at the same point in life, and it didn’t simmer down until I had about 200 miles on it.

Lucas is going to be doing some pickups and deliveries around my area on May 10, so I should be getting my car back then. ER is about 160 miles from here.

 

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I sent some pictures like this to Hagerty in April when I was signing up for insurance from them.
They insured the car for $22,000 and the cost is lower than "regular" insurance.
Could insure for higher if I got a proper appraisal done.

 

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One of the cooler things in life is having your car delivered by Lucas English with this humongous transporter. The extra talk and demo time really helps.
Yup they washed my car too, before loading it up.
There was a 1967 Corvette on the upper deck, going to somewhere north of here. Tomorrow he will have 4 cars in this thing going to California.

 

[1cleangsx]

So cool! Can’t wait to see what you do with it this year

 

[Vegas Smith]

In the frontal pic, what is that black box to the right of the fmic?

That's great that you have access to such an accomplished shop. A lot of people are stuck with these no-name shops that will be out of business in 2 years due to bad ethics/incompetence. If you're going to have someone else work on your car it's so importance to have them know what they're doing. You literally have the best of the best.

 

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In the frontal pic, what is that black box to the right of the fmic?

That's great that you have access to such an accomplished shop. A lot of people are stuck with these no-name shops that will be out of business in 2 years due to bad ethics/incompetence. If you're going to have someone else work on your car it's so importance to have them know what they're doing. You literally have the best of the best.

That black box is an indigo colored LED light that lights up inside the nose and under the car. Except it isn't bright enough to do much. It was put on by the PO. But my son and I kind of liked it, so when we built the nose mounting system, we re-mounted the light onto it. There is a horizontal aluminum member bolted to it which recieves the nose. Here's a pic that shows it together, with the nose taken off.
The fiberglass nose wasn't made with any mounting system. We put 2 pieces of fiberglass square tube horizontally inside the nose and Kitty Haired them into place nice and solid to the nose. The horizontal aluminum members that you see with thick felt on them fit inside those fiberglass square tubes. So the whole nose just slips on and off real easy. Pull it straight forward about 3 inches and it comes right off. All it needs besides that for mounting is 1 bolt in each fender well, to keep it from sliding forward.
Building that nose mounting system was a real cool thing because that's how I taught my son basic machine shop practices. It was theoretically his car at the time, so he was very interested in it.

Yeah it's great to have English Racing within 200 miles! This last time, Lucas really went above and beyond. When they were done with the clutch install, I had a little communication problem with Myles and Jimmy in the front office. So Lucas called me a few minutes later and spent a good 30 minutes on the phone with me, which was great, I mean it was all explaining stuff that I wanted to know. Then a few days later I drove my 1990 Toyota down there to try it all out. Lucas spent about an hour answering all my questions and showing me stuff. That's when he showed me his Huy Tran lockout shifter. For god sake, he brought out another roll of paper toweling when I was cleaning my windshield!
They charged me $750 for installing the clutch, which I had bought from TMZ. They put 6 gallons of E98 into a tank for me and only charged me for 5 gallons.
Then yesterday, the transporter to here, that cost $300 plus tax. 160 miles. Before loading up the car they washed it and filled the tank with E98. Then after unloading, Lucas drove me around my neighborhood so I could watch him using the clutch and shifting the dog box.
Pretty good deal all around I think.

I really need this kind of stuff from them because the car people I know here don't have DSMs, don't even have Evos, don't have dog boxes or crazy ceramic clutches. All my car buds here have Nissans, Mazdas, Subies, Hondas, or German stuff, or American stuff, or old Alfas.

So Lucas, ITADAKIMASU - which means, "I humbly receive". Or something like that. Right @DSMPT ?

 

[DSMPT]

ITADAKIMASU - which means, "I humbly receive". Or something like that. Right @DSMPT ?

Most of case it means "I will take it, thank you". Like receiving something with showing appreciation. We mostly say it before starting to eat a meal or when receiving a gift or so.

 

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Drove the car 3 times this week, with the new clutch. I'm starting to kind of like it. My left leg is getting pretty good at finding that narrow spot where engagement starts. I can hold it there and let the clutch slip to roll the car around slow, while modulating the throttle. It's easy to mess it up if I'm in a hurry. More practice will help. There's hardly any chatter when I'm doing this. Slight to none. I've only driven the car about 40 miles total on those 3 drives. When English Racing had it they drove it up and down the dyno ramp a couple times, and did some high slip rolling around in their parking lot. Then I did some rolling around in their lot when I was there. So that's all it needed to bring chatter down to almost none.

When I shift, the dog engagement is usually quiet if I'm just driving around at easy street speed and not high RPMs. Shifting at higher RPMs, the dog engagement can make a clunk or the dogs might bounce which makes the buzz or grinding sound. But the clunks and grinding are quieter, not as violent as with the previous clutch, and they happen less often. So that's good. Double clutched downshifts are still perfect almost every time, but that I could do with the previous clutch too. When Lucas drove it he did some downshifts without double clutching, which makes some grinding sound, but it's less than what it was with the previous clutch. I tried downshifts without double clutching a couple times when I had the previous clutch and it scared the crap outa me. So even with this twin disc clutch, I'm going to continue double clutching my downshifts unless the speed is so low that it's not needed.

Going to work on the shifts at higher RPMs. I probably just have to use a little more force going into gear. For the dogbox, Lucas has always said move the lever "fast but not hard" when you put it into the next gear. So how hard is "not hard"? Well we talked about that a little and basically he said that if I'm getting buzz, I should use more force. I said I kind of question how much beating the forks and soforth can take, because to me they look pretty slender - not my idea of industrial strength. He took me into the shop where they had an evo dogbox partly disassembled and tried to give me a feel for those parts. I'll say it's a good thing I was never an airplane parts designer. All those years I worked for Boeing, I was never an airplane parts designer. Airplanes would weight twice what they do if I was designing them, and they probably wouldn't fly because they'd be too heavy.

 

[1cleangsx]

Thank you for posting this! I think a lot of us 5 speed guys are settling in to the reality of having to go dog box eventually as parts are obsolete. Guys used to say the money spent on a couple different “staged” trannies would cover the price of a dog box, but now with parts obsolete, you can’t even waste your money on one , if your making power it’s either go auto or dog box. How did you like your south bend ceramic? I’m leaning towards that now before I pull the trigger on a twin. I have a fresh synchro trans I hope to get a little life out of, and I think I’d like try the ceramic with its torque capacity before I jump into “axle snapping twin”

 

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Thank you for posting this! I think a lot of us 5 speed guys are settling in to the reality of having to go dog box eventually as parts are obsolete. Guys used to say the money spent on a couple different “staged” trannies would cover the price of a dog box, but now with parts obsolete, you can’t even waste your money on one , if your making power it’s either go auto or dog box. How did you like your south bend ceramic? I’m leaning towards that now before I pull the trigger on a twin. I have a fresh synchro trans I hope to get a little life out of, and I think I’d like try the ceramic with its torque capacity before I jump into “axle snapping twin”

Yeah, that's kind of why I decided to write this stuff up. I think it should be helpful for people who are in that place where they are thinking about it, but have doubts because they don't entirely know what they are getting into, like I didn't.

Well, my South Bend ceramic, the only South Bend part of it was the ceramic disc. The pressure plate was an ACT 2700 and the flywheel was an ACT Streetlite. So there's that.

Anyway, I had used that same pressure plate and flywheel from 2015 to 2019, but with the regular ACT "street organic" disc. That was the clutch I used with the synchro box and the ER engine. That was a good setup, and it was good way beyond the torque rating that ACT gives it. That clutch was the one that ER told me to put in the car when they were doing the engine, and they were right, it worked fine with the synchro box.

Then in 2019 when Tim was building the dogbox, I told him that I wanted to keep the same pressure plate and flywheel because I liked it, and I told him that I did not want a QM twin disc. HAHA. Because I thought the QM twin would be too severe.

But I had to at least change the disc because of the larger diameter input shaft on the PPG gearset.

So he said he could easily get an SBC disc made with a special hub with the right splines. And that’s how the ceramic on both sides disc came about.

At the time I didn’t know that it was easy to get an ACT street organic disc made with the 1” x 23 spline hub. It’s not listed anywhere, they will just make one up for you. They even have a standard “Worksheet” for ordering a custom disc. Eric Weatherwax sent me one and if I don’t forget I’ll post it here. It’s a pdf.

Anyway if I had it to do over again, I probably would have had Tim order a custom organic disc from ACT, because with so many changes all at once, I didn’t know what to make of it when I didn’t like the result, with the new dogbox.

That’s what happened. I got the ceramic disc and the dogbox at the same time. The ceramic disc was chattering like I could not believe. The dogbox was engaging with a lot of violence so I worried that I was wrecking it. The clutch pedal engage point was close to the floor, but it always had been close to the floor, going all the way back to 2004 which is when we first started using an ACT 2600 in the car. But it just seemed like the ACT 2700 with ceramic disc was either not letting go completely, or else it was just a heavy disc with a lot of rotational inertia, which would make for a heavy slam on the dogs when they engage, or worse, make that buzz when the dogs just slide by instead of engaging.

After putting about 200 miles on the ceramic disc, the chatter did mostly go away. Then the clutch was starting to be really pretty ok for low speed maneuvering and for any time where you need to hold a certain amount of slip for a few seconds. But I wanted shifts with less violence to the dogs. And I wanted a clutch with a really robust disengage. Lots of disengage. Lotza, cuz I wanted to remove one more unknown. So I found a few people who were having nice things to say about the QM gear drive 8-Leg twin disc, and decided to get rid of the single disc, replace it with the twin.

There is a spot on Tim’s web site that I look at with new appreciation now. That is at the bottom of the section for the Stage 6 PPG Dogbox Transmission. It says “We Recommend the Quarter Master Street Flywheel 6-Leg and 8-Leg Twin Disk and Triple Disk Options For This Rebuild.”

Aha. The 8-Leg for sure! The 6-Leg I’m not so sure about because Brett in here has told me that his chatters a lot, and worse, he doesn’t find it to be giving him more pedal travel in the disengage region than he had with his ACT single. That was quite a while ago that he said that. Don’t know what he thinks now. But getting the engage point farther off the floor was a big thing for me. I would hate it if the engage point was still as close to the floor as it was with the ACT. It's not. It's much farther up.

Looks like we can't insert a pdf? Ahh you know what, I looked at that ACT worksheet again and I wouldn't do it that way. I would say that I want a "3000303 - Perf Street Sprung Disc" made custom with the 1" x 23 spline hub. That would be if you wanted an organic rather than a ceramic disc, for use with the ACT pressure plate like I had, with the PPG gearset.

One more thing I should add, if the universe doesn't run out of words. Lucas English drove my car up and down their dyno ramp with my old clutch before they took it out. That's the ACT 2700 with SBC ceramic disc with ~250 miles on it. Then he drove my car up and down the dyno ramp with the QM twin after they got that installed, and only a few miles on it. He said it was a lot easier with the old clutch. Well yeah, no big surprise there I guess.

Gary

 

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Ok well shoving it much harder into gear seems to be what works the best, even when driving slow. Just that last part of the shift. Get the gear lever lined up with where you want it to go and then give it a pretty hard shot into the gear. Not guerrilla hard. Not action thriller gangster movie hard. Just a lot harder than what you would do with a synchro box.

It makes sense I guess. You want the dogs to fall into the first lineup they get with the mating slots as they whizz by. Not be bouncing off.

I have a shorter than stock shift knob on the stock shifter, so there's lack of leverage. That would exaggerate the "force problem", if it's a problem.

I'm still taking my time going through the neutral gate and making sure I'm lined up correctly with the next gear before shoving it in. Because if you are going to shove it hard, it better be right. I did have one wrong lineup, was a little too far to the right for 3rd, and it hit something in between 3rd and 5th that made a bad noise. It just bounced back out to neutral and I think no damage.

That little bit of time you spend in the neutral gate seems to be about right for letting the input and output speeds match up better for a quieter shift.

I haven't tried any fast shifting from 8,000 rpm yet. I'm thinking I might wait until I get some kind of lockout shifter into the car. Preferably that would be one of the Huy Tran shifters, if he would ever make one for the DSM!

 

[Vegas Smith]

How did you make that air cover over the front bumper cover and radiator support? Looks like ABS plastic molded somehow?