Garage Queen

[benspilk09]

benspilk09 submitted a new DSM Profile :

Garage Queen


Read more about this vehicle here...

 

[midwestmopar]

Cant wait to see more on this car! it looks very well kept.

 

[benspilk09]

Thanks! It's been a pretty big project. I spent about a year doing maintenance, repairs, and some light modding, then tore it all down and had it completely painted. I need to upload all my pictures of the process.

The goal is to be a reliable ~300-350hp Sunday driver that I can take to shows, since these things are antiques nowadays

 

[pat white]

Thanks! It's been a pretty big project. I spent about a year doing maintenance, repairs, and some light modding, then tore it all down and had it completely painted. I need to upload all my pictures of the process.

The goal is to be a reliable ~300-350hp Sunday driver that I can take to shows, since these things are antiques nowadays

looks like a beauty !

 

[benspilk09]

I guess I'll finally throw together a build thread on this thing. I'm done with the major work, until I decide to undertake an engine and transmission rebuild.

Here's how I bought it back in December 2018. All in all not in bad shape. It was for the most part complete and stock. It needed paint, the clear was totally gone off the hood, tops of the fenders, and upper 1/4 of the quarter panels. The picture makes it look better than it did.

Engine bay. It came with the stock airbox lid and upper intercooler pipe. Only thing missing are the heat shields and the proper spark plug cover.

Interior. Decent shape again minus the horn button and cracked leather seats.

First order of business was to return it to stock and catch up on maintenance.

Aaaaaaaand immediately torn down to fix the myriad of oil leaks, as well as replace the timing belt and related components. EVERYTHING leaked. Getting it to stop dripping took me several months. I ended up replacing every single seal and gasket on the engine, trans, and transfer case, minus the head gasket. The valve cover was also cracked.

As soon as I got it back together and started driving it, I noticed the clutch was slipping. Out comes the transmission!

Replaced that with an ACT 2600 with a sprung street disk. Will be going twin disk next time, yikes this thing has a stiff pedal.

Put some more miles on it. It started making a hellish noise in the rear end. It was pretty easy to diagnose after pulling the wheel off:


Lol

I decided to go ahead and pull the subframe to fix the rust. Not bad by any means, but there was a lot of ugly surface rust on the rear 1/3 of the car.

Oof

Sandblasted and painted floor. I do not want to do this again.

Blasted and painted subframe, and I did the best I could with the bumper. I am planning on a 4 bolt swap at some point, so I didn't bother making the rear diff and axles beautiful. I also sanded and painted the driveshaft, put carrier bearings in, and replaced all the u-joints.

Back together. Its nice to drive it every once in a while.

 

[benspilk09]

I'm still attacking oil leaks months after buying it. I had a drip that I couldn't locate, and could smell burning oil at stop lights. Through process of elimination, I ended up suspecting valve stem seals. Suspicion confirmed:

I'm getting good at tearing this thing down. Seems like I'm taking the timing belt off for something every weekend. Lol. Its theraputic.

This valve spring compressor is awesome. It made the job really easy.

Have to stay organized. This car is making me a good mechanic.

Since my oil leaks are all fixed and maintenance is caught up, its time to have some fun: Walbro 255, FIC 1025's, ECMlink v3, and SD kit not shown.

I lucked out on the ECU, it was one of the few that was socketed from the factory:

Unfortunately the ISC drivers were bad, so I had to send it in to be repaired so it would idle with the a/c on.

Justin built me a TD05H 20G for that sleeper look. Also rounded up a set of stock heat shields to complete the engine bay:

I also put on a 3" turbo-back exhaust while I had it apart. It was dirt cheap and leaked horribly. Oh well, the piping was good. I have since replaced all of the warped 2 bolt flanges with stainless V-band clamps. The fart can will be ditched for a magnaflow that looks like the stock muffler. I'm also running a magnaflow 3" high-flow cat.

Ugly evo wheels I scored with good tires for $400, test fitting before sending to the powder coaters:

 

[benspilk09]

At this point I had basically run out of mechanical projects and decided to start on cosmetics, so I started tearing the car down for paint.

It did have a little bit of cancer in front of either rear wheel, I fabbed up patches and welded them in

I probably should have gone further, but this car will ideally never see a rainy day again, so I don't foresee any of the existing surface rust inside of the rockers spreading. Plus, I gave the insides a good dose of Eastwood internal frame coating when I was done welding.

Evo wheels back from powder coating. I scored some Enkei decals off ebay that were close to the original size.

About 2 months after dropping it off at the body shop, I finally got the shell back. Paint is one of the few jobs I won't attempt myself. They did a great job. Lots of assembly ahead though.

I should have taken a picture of the hood before. It really looked horrible. The roof had some hail damage as well. Kind of stressful having a scratch and dent free car...

A few weeks later the rest of the parts were done

Reproduction Ebay decals:

First fully assembled shots out in the daylight. Man I love the way these cars look. Its been a dream of mine to have a nice 1ga for a couple decades now.

Now to get rid of that fart cannon. The drone was just atrocious, and I didn't like the look. I chose a 3" inlet, dual 2.5" outlet, 18" long Magnaflow with 2 stainless tips. That seems to be the longest muffler I could fit in the stock location.

Tacked up

Now it could almost pass for a stock muffler

It is a lot quieter than the fart cannon, but it still has significant drone at around 3000rpm. I'm going to see if I can shoehorn another 3" round muffler in front of the axle where the resonators are.

 

[benspilk09]

Now to tidy up the interior the rest of the way. I had originally wanted to convert it to cloth interior, as I hate leather. I found a set of gray seats in a '91 eclipse in a local junk yard. Only 50k miles, its a shame it was a non turbo with the base seats. Oh well, I think they only charged me like $60 for the set.

After putting a few thousand miles on them, I found out how uncomfortable they were. The foam is too soft, they weren't supportive, and they made my back hurt after about 30 minutes of driving. They have to go.

I went ahead and dropped my premium seats off at a local upholstery shop to have them recovered. The price was steep, but they came out beautiful. I wouldn't have been happy with throwing another set of tired 30 year old seats in this car. I decided to ditch the perforations, since the back seat was just solid anyway. Hopefully they won't crack again.

Before:

After:

 

[benspilk09]

My original goal was to make around 300-350hp with the car, and just have a fun and dependable weekend car. With the SMIC I wasn't able to quite get there, as my IATs were around 200 degrees and I'd run into knock if I went over about 20psi. An FMIC is out of the question, as I don't want to do anything to this car that can't be returned to stock, I don't want to deal with overheating issues (I still run A/C), and I want it to appear stock.

I have E85 available locally, so I ordered up a flex fuel sensor with the ECMlink wiring kit and plumbed it in.

Tuning it was rather straightforward, AFRs were right where they should be. I had been running the stock evo 8 timing map, which was much less aggressive than the stock 1G table as I'm sure you all know. After switching to E85, I threw the 1G timing table back in as a starting point. Boost was still set at 22psi, like I was running on 93.

MAN that woke the car up. I can't believe what a difference that extra few degrees of timing made!

Unfortunately, it also lifted the head. I did not expect the stock head bolts to give up at this low of power, live and learn I guess. So I get to dive back in to install a set of ARPs and a new Fel-Pro gasket.

Back in the service position!

Thank god I didn't have any oil/coolant mixture. It was just pressurizing the water jacket and causing it to overflow.

Unfortunately, a nasty surprise was waiting for me:

The valves had definitely kissed the pistons at some point. I don't trust these pistons to make much over 300hp anymore. I'll take down the high spots just to eliminate some hot spots, but an engine rebuild is in the future.

Some clean up with a dremel and a sanding drum has them looking slightly better. This is a pretty redneck solution, but it should be good for a while.

Installed a new knock sensor while I was in there. Of course the 1g sensors are extinct. Rockauto still had NTK 4G61T mirage sensors in stock at the time, so I grabbed one. The sensor is identical, but it has about a 1" shorter cable.

I don't know why my phone camera was drunk here. I splurged on a machinists straightedge to check the deck and head surface. Luckily it was well within flatness spec, I couldn't fit my smallest feeler gauge in anywhere.

I got the car back together just in time to move to a new house. I finally found a 3 car garage at an affordable price, so the talon can be in its own room safe from hazards like day to day foot traffic

Next order of business is suspension. It had always been on lowering springs, and they were miserable. It was right on the bump stops in the front. I've been launched into the ceiling one too many times, so I broke down and bought a set of stock springs.

I don't know what brand these were, but what a difference in length:

Lining the car up the old fashioned way. I've been less than impressed with the chain alignment shops that I have to choose from in my area (cough firestone cough). I made a ghetto camber gauge to set the rear with, simply an angle finder stuck to a piece of square tubing. Luckily the toe was within factory spec so I only had to set up the string box once. It takes quite a while to get it perfectly centered on the car.

 

[Dat240zg]

Ben: What a transformation! Hard to believe that’s the car I sold you! Incredible job bringing it to life.

 

[Dat240zg]

Just noticed that the pics of it are still in my album. If you want them, let me know and I’ll send you a link to download them.

 

[benspilk09]

Ben: What a transformation! Hard to believe that’s the car I sold you! Incredible job bringing it to life.

Thanks! It's been a fun project, just what I need to soak up all my free time, haha.

Its getting a little boring now that it doesn't need a bunch of work, it just drives. The last thing on my list is to build a bigger side mount intercooler, I've had no luck finding a used one.

I would like to download the pictures you have of it, if you wouldn't mind PM'ing a link. Did you end up getting another dsm?

 

[Dat240zg]

The pics are on my computer at home, but I’ll upload them and send you the link this evening. I’m actually talking with a guy now about picking up his original owner ‘91 TSi.

Fingers crossed!

 

[Dat240zg]

Ben:

here’s the link to most of the pictures I have: https://forums.hybridz.org/gallery/album/1811-other-cars/page/2/.

still trying to find the photos that the PO sent to me.

 

[benspilk09]

Ben:

here’s the link to most of the pictures I have: https://forums.hybridz.org/gallery/album/1811-other-cars/page/2/.

still trying to find the photos that the PO sent to me.

Thank you! I appreciate these, I realized I had basically no pictures of the car before paint when I sat down to make this thread.

Good luck on that one owner talon, not many of those left these days!

 

[Dat240zg]

Hey Ben. Was going through some old emails and found communication from the guy I bought the white talon from. He was on dsmtuners for a while. Search posts by a guy named “aether”. Interesting history of work he did on it. If you want, I’d be glad to forward the emails I have from him.

 

[JosephSMendez]

Beautiful job man you really put blood, sweat and tears into the build!