Turning it down from 11... Making a bonkers DSM more street friendly.

#Introduction

Hey All,  

I debating making this thread, but I think it is the right thing to do.  Many of you know I was attempting to sell my 600+HP AWD DSM for 4 weeks.

Link:  For Sale Thread

 I had alot of interest (from people all over the country), but no deal was made.  After conversing with dozens of people, I found that the things that made me want to sell the car are the same things that denture buyers. My car seems to fall right in the void of too race car for some or too street car for others.  To provide bullet points, these are the "problems" with my car... 

- Car had IAC removed (never bothered me, but requires an attentive driver to not stall at stops) 

- Minimal Interior.  Car is missing the carpet interior panels and most importantly the innards of both doors.  As a result the car had no door glass and was not weather tolerant.  

-E85 Tuned. Car is tuned to run off of E85.  Most people were turned off with combination of the need to run e85  and the 8 gallon fuel cell.  

- Big boost on a stock bottom end.  While the fuel and intake system were able to support 42 psi, some were cautious of big boost going through a stock bottom end.  

So what's the point?  The above are the same reasons I wanted to sell the car and did not use it as much as I would have liked to.  I have 3 weeks off in December.  My plan is to address each of the above and either have a change of heart to keep the car or to make it an easier sale. I will probably address some small thing i've been wanting to change as well.    The car is still for sale or trade, but I'm not going to push it.  

I'm looking forward to a mini build on this car.  I only have a few minutes now, but i will break out the path forward in another post.  

Justin  

This should be fun to watch and learn from. 

I love it when you show your work. 

#Mechanical Baseline 

All right,  so it has been about 6 months since I drove the Talon so step one is the start the car.  But, before that let's catch some pictures right off of the trailer. 

Put some fresh e85 into it, drop in the injectors (which always soak in lucas oil when not in use), attach the battery, and we start right away.  

Video: Car at Idle

OK.  so we have a running car.  First area of fucus is checking all the fluids.   Oil is good and coolant is good.  As the car was idling I noticed a small weep from from lower radiator hose.  Those are cheap, so off it comes and I clean the coolant.  The coolant looks clean with no sign of contamination.  Next step is to pull off the TB so I can get at the IAC.  On a DSM the IAC is bolted to the bottom of the TB.  That comes off and I set aside for the time being.   IAC fix will happen soon. 

To continue checking the health of the car I pull the plugs.  The plugs have a nice tan burn characteristic to them.  The oil on the threads is from the last time I did plugs; I coat the threads with oil as anti seize.  Overall I am very pleased with everything I have found. 

The final step is to do a quick compression test.  The Talon gets 145-150 PSI on all cylinders (well within spec) cold.  I would expect this number to go up slightly on a warm engine.  I have heard of strange instances where compression goes down on a warm engine; but the overall concept does not seem reasonable.  Just for info, the service limit on a 6 bolt 4g63 is 120 psi and the factory claims 165/170 psi as a new warm engine.   

Just before I finish for the afternoon I drain the E85.  I refill with 93 octane and let the fuel pump cycle for a couple minutes to coat the lines and injections.   This isnt my typical storage method, but it should be OK for a couple weeks. From here I take a break and order intake gaskets for the TB, a new lower rad hose, thermostat gasket, and thermostat.  less than $30 shipped; Thanks Rock Auto.  

#Black Friday Sale 

The salvage yards here in FL are mainly owned by LKQ Corp and lucky for me they post their cars online.  I search all of the yards within FL and find  there is 1g Eclipse in Tampa FL on their lot.  To make the proposition a little sweeter, LKQ is have a 40% off sale on Black Friday.  I beg my wife for the time to drive 5 hours round trip to pick at this 30 year old Japanese car.  After asking several times, she finally gave in and I was on my way.  I'm pretty sure my emotional equity is bankrupt as a result.

However, we have parts! $130 later I have what I need to return the front of the car to factory appearance.  

All of the parts will need some detail work, but I at least have the raw components.  

Following with interest 

#That Escalated Quickly 

I hadn't planned on working on this project until next month, but I was able to find a couple of hours this weekend and went ahead and jumped in.  Plans went in a slightly different direction than what I thought. Originally, I wanted to prep and pain the doors off of the car, but due to time constraints and the desire to be able to store the car outside, I decided getting the doors on sooner rather than later was the best path forward.  About and hour later I had doors with glass on the car.  

In less than an hour both doors were on the car. I was amazed and how easy they went on and that they were aligned without doing any of the fitting you see on the reality shows. Pretty amazing  engineering for the 1990's (The late 80's really).  

So, this is the first time I have seen the car with real doors and glass in it.  It really changes the look and feel of the car.... I will not keep this car.  I will not keep this car.  I will not keep this car. Ok, mental conditioning over.  One thing to point out is despite the doors being on I still had not swapped over the mirrors or the key tumblers. 

However, I did have door cards.  like the doors; it is amazing how well everything fits.  It gives me some hope this car will have a presentable interior when I'm done.  

Later in the weekend, I found time to pull the door cards and install the mirrors from the old doors.  

I also swapped over the handle and key tumbler for the driver door.  I still need to do the passenger door. This was a really tough job due to the tight space.  

Overall, I made some progress.  I'm not sure the car is any bit improved over where it was, but it is moving in the right direction.   The images below are as I left the car.  

The next steps are: 

Receive parts from Rock Auto 

Install IAC 

Refresh cooling system 

Swap over handle and key tumbler on passenger side

Once the above is satisfied, I have one of two directions I could go. I could either begin cleaning up the interior or I could address the turbocharger.  I pulled out the turbocharger I intend to use and ordered a rebuilt CHRA.  The car currently has a Holset HX35; the HX30 is roughly 30% smaller. This should get me right about 400whp on 93 pump gas.  I think this is the right amount of power to make the car both quick and reliable.  Most tuners agree the 6 bolt 4g63 is good for 500whp stock.  Any more than that is a gamble.  

How much timing do you run? What kind of dyno was the car on? Stock heatrange plugs?  As an owner of a 9 second stock bottom end 6bolt, stock cams and 660awhp don't add up to me. I estimated my car to be less than that, and still it went 140+. 

put a ISC in the car but block off the FIAV. Gets rid of coolant going to the TB, but will still idle cold if setup correctly. 

In reply to RyanW :

Hey Ryan, thanks for the info about the FIAV. I will look into it. 

Re: My build, every setup is different. The tuning was done by a tuner here in FL on superflo dyno. All figures have been verified. Regardless, it is too much power for what i want to do. 

I've loved these cars forever, just never dove in after discovering miata's.  Will be interesting to learn something new here.

Whats the plan for the hx35?

Dusterbd13 said:

Whats the plan for the hx35?

HX35 will go on the shelf for the moment.  It had a professional rebuild and balance and will be a good turbo for future projects.  I'm thinking it would be a good fit for a future V8 project.  

Mr. Lee said:

I've loved these cars forever, just never dove in after discovering miata's.  Will be interesting to learn something new here.

I have a turbo '99 Miata and there is no functional overlap in these two cars.  I love my Miata for very different reasons than the reasons I like my Talon.      

#Short Projects  

I'm sorta jumping all over the place, but essentially I am doing things as I have motivation and time.  Not the best execution method, but I'm getting there.  I needed to address the TB.  As I mentioned I had removed the IAC by putting an alumunim block off plate on the TB.  The reason I blocked it off is the FIAV tends to be problematic once you remove TB coolant lines (which I did).  The FIAV is essentially a electrical choke; without coolant it assumes the car is cold at all times which makes a route past the TB.  So, this needs to be closed up.  

I removed the freeze plug to get to the FIAV.  From here I tightened down the valve so it was static and completely seated in the closed position.  For most, this is good enough and solves the problem.  I went one step further and JB welded the vale closed and solid.  

Now, just re install the freeze plug...

So, we have closed the FIAV.  Next step is to put the IAC back on with a judicious amount of RTV.  

An now we have a TB ready to go back on the car.  

Oh, and I cleaned the carpets... 

Dirty...

Hosed down...

Shampooed... 

I'm interested to see how you feel about the car when it's at more of a "take it to the store" level. Watching you bring it back is cool. 

Nice job.  Thank you for all the photos.    A friend of mine mentioned pressure washing a car rug, I was hesitant, but it worked great.  I'm guessing that LKQ car was hideous.  

In reply to spin_out :

The car at LKQ was pretty bad.  Like most of these, It was someone's unfinished project.  I look for these cars on CL pretty regularly and there are at least 2-3 basket case projects for each running and driving example.