Project WDE Talon

**BigTyla** · 04-07-2011, 08:25 PM

Prelude

WARNING: This first post is story time. It is long. Skip this if you wish. I only included this to chronicle my journey in acquiring a project vehicle.

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When I started looking for a project vehicle, I was looking for something under $2000. I looked around a bit on eBay, Autotrader, local ads, and Craigslist. I wasn’t looking for a particular car. As a matter of fact, at first I was considering undertaking a restoration project, so I ended up eyeing cars like a 65 Falcon, a 70 Mustang, and a 79 10th Anniversary Trans Am. But then I had an epiphany while I was at work one day. My conscience started talking to me:

“Self, do you realize what you’d be getting yourself into buying an old car? You have no welding experience, no body work experience, you have never worked on a carbureted engine in your entire life, and you want to buy a 45+ year-old car to get your feet wet?

“Why don’t you get something that you are more familiar with? Get a car that you won’t be afraid to break or mess something up on. Get a car with parts that are dirt cheap to track down. Plus, you’ve always wanted to go faster. Sure you could put a big engine in one of these old cars, but you wouldn’t want to take your nice restored car down to the quarter-mile strip too often would you? And have you seen an old-school muscle car try to autocross? It’s not pretty.”

My conscience was right. Jumping head-first into such a massive restoration project was not at all practical, not just in terms of my lack of experience in such matters but also from a fiscal point of view. I needed something that I could beat on regularly. Something that didn’t need a lot of body work. Something that I could sand down, throw a decent coat of paint on, wrench on the engine a little, and have it running in no time. So I started looking at a different breed of vehicle. I browsed around for a couple of weeks for vehicles that needed a little work for around the same $2000 budget, and I found a couple of 300ZX TTs, a few Mustangs, a C4 Vette, etc. These cars interested me, but nothing really popped out at me as being the ONE. Then, I stumbled upon two ads in the same day: 1G DSMs. Cheap, ugly, huge aftermarket, highly advanced platform, and can turn in ridiculous acceleration numbers with very few mods.

Brilliant.

Both were turbo models, but one was a FWD.

“FWD?!?! More like wrong wheel drive! My 3000GT was FWD, but now that I have experienced the fun of not-FWD in my 350Z I’m never going back down that road!”

So I took a look at the AWD model. It was a 91, had an extensive report from what seemed to be a pretty knowledgeable owner, and appeared to be in decent shape from the pictures. He said he’d throw in some extra parts as well. Based on the knowledge in his ad, I could tell he was familiar with the DSM platform, so I thought I might be able to track down this car. I used the links of the photos to track his forum posts, and they were consistent with what he was saying. He had rebuild the motor and done a few modifications but was having trouble tracking down a rough idle issue. Eventually he lost interest due to buying another DSM project and decided he wanted to get rid of his 1G. I called him up and asked to meet him the very next day. He gave me his address which was about 40 minutes south of where I lived and his house number in case I needed to reach him. He said that his cell phone service in the area was spotty and that many GPS devices have a hard time finding his residence, so he said I should call him when I get to the county road. Given that information, I should have known what to expect when driving my 350Z down to see this car, but I had no idea just how bad it’d be.

I get to within one mile of his place and make a turn on the county road and give him a call. He gives me basic directions and I begin my trek. The road I was going down was pleasantly paved, so I figured I’d be in the clear.

I could not have been more wrong.

About a quarter-mile into my journey, the paving ends. It’s dirt. I see a red barn he was talking though, so maybe I had already reached my destination. I drive down to the barn and I’m met with a dead end, so I park the Z in the dirt. I see a couple of men standing outside the barn and figure they might be related. They’re both wearing overalls and boots and have about 30 teeth between the two of them. Basically, they looked like Alabama fans. They are looking at me quite puzzled, a look I would expect driving a 350Z down a dirt road to a barn in the middle-of-freakin-nowhere. I walk up to them and ask for the guy, and they have no clue who I’m talking about.

“Guess I was supposed to take that turn 100 feet back,” I say to myself. “But wait, there wasn’t dirt back there. That was gravel.

“…crap.”

I call the guy to make sure I’m around where I need to be. He says he knows where I am and tells me to go down the gravel road and it will take me to his house.

So here I am in this 350Z, driving down this gravel road. There are no inclines for the first 200 yards, and all of a sudden I see a 90s Saturn sedan behind me. He’s going quite a bit faster than I am, and I’m thinking to myself “I hope you don’t expect me to go as fast in this 350Z that’s driving 2 inches off the ground!” Then, disaster strikes.

Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape. A damn bump in the gravel road rubs up against my undercarriage, making a quite unpleasant sound. I keep an eye out for more bumps and find plenty of them, taking them as slowly as humanly possible but still managing to catch a scrape or two, praying the sound I’m hearing is not my exhaust being totally destroyed. The road begins to twist and decline and I'm cringing as I go down the road, reminding myself that I have to take the same path home. After avoiding all those landmines, I finally get to the guy’s house. There’s a barn straight ahead so I pull in front of it. The guy behind me pulls ahead of me to park. It’s him.

We get to talking for awhile. I ask him all the basic questions, and then I ask him some more advanced questions related to his posts on the forums that he doesn’t know I’ve read. Everything he tells me is consistent with his posts, which reassures me he is legit. I take a look around the car, in the interior, and under the hood. The body is in good shape, the engine is all together, and the interior looks great for being 20 years old.

“This is the car.”

**BigTyla** · 04-07-2011, 08:28 PM

I am excited to begin working on my project Talon I recently acquired and thought I would share my experiences with you all. This is the first large-scale project I have ever undertaken, as the most involved task I had ever done on a car previously was a twin turbo swap on my FWD auto 3000GT, which was not easy by any means, but not nearly as full-scale as other projects you will find.

So what was my motivation for getting this car? What are my plans and goals?

This will be a budget build. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. EVERYONE says that and then one day they go crazy and spend tons of money on stuff and sooner or later their so-called budget build becomes this expensive, crazy, no-turning-back monster. Rest assured when I tell you I am dead serious about this. I don’t have a maximum number, but whenever I have an option to buy X or Y or Z, I will favor the option with the most bang for the buck. I will also be doing all of the work on my own, which will save a ton of money. I bought this car because I knew I could achieve respectable performance from this car for very little monetary value. I also knew it would be a great platform for me to hone basic skills like body and paint work, engine tuning, welding, etc. I also knew it would be a great car to become a better driver in. I have very little driving experience outside of a few trips to the drag strip and a couple of days at a local autocross. I’d like to change that.

I’d be happy with a car that has the potential to run mid to high 11s in the quarter. Notice I said potential because I guarantee I won’t be able to drive this car to its full potential given my lack of track experience. I don’t mind that. This car is for learning.

I’ll first give a brief status report on the Talon to give you an idea of what I’m dealing with. It is a 91 TSi AWD with a manual transmission. I bought the car in February 2011 for $1200 the very day I saw it. It was to be a Valentine’s Day present from my wife (thanks honey). It was not running but was mostly together with only a few missing turbo pieces here and there (coolant and oil feeds, banjo bolts, j-pipe, mounting hardware). The seller threw in an extra transfer case, transmission, a 16g turbo, and a slew of miscellaneous extra parts in the deal. VR4Rob and VR4Dani helped me tow it home by driving their truck down and putting the car on a trailer I rented. I followed them to my place and they helped me roll the car into my detached garage (thanks you two!).

**mb3000** · 04-07-2011, 08:33 PM

Subscribed.

**IPD** · 04-07-2011, 08:35 PM

sorry, tyla. i've never forgiven you for selling your 3/s to the biggest assclown this side of steve68.

**BigTyla** · 04-07-2011, 08:54 PM

Originally Posted by inperfectdarkness

sorry, tyla. i've never forgiven you for selling your 3/s to the biggest assclown this side of steve68.

Well he DID finally pay me the rest of the money he owed me.

Another post coming as soon as I host the pics.

**BigTyla** · 04-07-2011, 09:52 PM

That night I began thinking of a name for the project. Every project needs a name, right? I thought of some different names, but a lot of them had been used before or just weren’t cool enough. Before I went to bed, I was sitting in my office working on the computer. I looked away from the monitor briefly and saw my bottle of Gentlemen’s Jack my father-in-law gave me for Christmas. He had it engraved with my name and the phrase “War Eagle,” referring to my alma mater and lifelong favorite team. Then I thought for a second. The car is an Eagle Talon. The cheer is “War Eagle” or “War Damn Eagle” depending on your age and your mood at the time. “War Damn Eagle Talon” has a nice ring to it. And so it was. This is Project WDE Talon.
The day after getting the car home I began cleaning it out. The interior was in good shape but it was filthy from dirt and it had a lot of stuff thrown inside of it such as the center console, an extra set of wrap-around wings, a/c vents, a glovebox, vicegrips, pliers, CDs from Linkin Park, Insane Clown Posse, and Metallica’s “…And Justice For All,” 48 cents in change, an old pack of cigarettes, a lighter…all sorts of goodies. The only thing I didn’t find was an ECU, which meant I’d have to add it to the list of parts needed to get the car running.

Life got pretty busy for me for the following month so I just took my time removing some of the body parts to investigate the overall shape of the car. By the middle of March I had removed the radiator, front bumper (which had a Craftsman ratchet wrench with an extension and 10mm socket dropped down it in the past), headlights, front wipers and trim, wrap-around wing, rear wiper, antenna, and rear trim pieces.

A little dirty…okay, VERY dirty. But only a few small rust spots were found and they were all thankfully only on the surface. Most notable was that the front driver’s side fender was a little misaligned. It appeared it was once removed and then put back on improperly since it popped every time I opened the driver door. As a result, some of the paint around this area had cracked and surface rust began to form. It shouldn’t be a big deal to fix this though.

**BigTyla** · 04-07-2011, 09:59 PM

Now that I had found that the body really wasn’t in bad shape, I decided to move along to the engine to see exactly what I’d need to try to get it to run. I started by attempting to mount the 16G on the exhaust manifold and O2 housing. The turbo did not come with the exhaust housing studs, so I had to improvise. I remembered that I had a spare 9b that I was going to swap into my 3000GT to replace an old leaky one, but I ended up selling the car before I swapped it in. I removed the studs and bolts from the 9b exhaust housing and put them on the 16G, then slid the 16G onto the O2 housing. Now all I needed was some bolts to hook the turbo up to the exhaust manifold. This requires REALLY long bolts, so I took a trip to Lowe’s and tracked down some lengthy metric bolts with the same size and pitch and threw them on. Perfect fit!

Afterward, I hooked up the intake and stepped back to see what else was missing. I noticed a missing pipe for the BOV outlet to route air to the intake. I also noticed missing banjo bolts for the coolant feed and return lines. One coolant feed line and an oil feed line was missing completely. There was no j-pipe to mate the intercooler pipe to the turbo compressor outlet. There was also a bung in the downpipe that did not have a plug. It must have been for a wideband or EGT since the stock O2 sensor was already in the O2 housing. Other than that everything appeared to be in order, so I started doing some research on thread and pitch specs for the hardware I needed. In the mean time, I searched for deals on an ECU. I ended up winning an eBay auction for a 91 non-EPROM ECU for cheap. Ideally I would have went with EPROM, but eventually I will go with DSMLink and they will convert your ECU to EPROM for under $100, so after factoring that in with the good deal I got I will actually break even compared to just buying an EPROM ECU at typical market price. I also bought a j-pipe from DEJON Powerhouse with a bung for a boost controller. They offer a reasonable price for a stock replacement, so it’s not worth cheaping out and buying an eBay one for $5 or $10 less.

After figuring that out, I thought up a plan of attack on how to route my lines and bought the hardware I needed to get the job done. I ended up ordering some Earl’s AN to Metric adapters along with some Swivel-Seal fittings. I knew I’d need some stainless steel lines to handle the hot temperatures around the turbo but put off purchasing them for the time being. I’m almost positive I have some extra -6 AN lines lying around my parent’s garage so next time I visit them I’ll have to rummage around. For now I’ll just use some 3/8” super stock hose I have for mock-up purposes.

Here's an engine shot:

JBWelded bolt blocking off an oil passage. WTF?!?!

Trunk shocks are shot, so here is my ghetto solution:

I set up my old computer in here for internet and music.

My wife got me a compressor for Christmas, but I have not yet fired it up.