Early Modifications

Time for another write up.  Since I didn’t take a lot of pics of some of the early things I did to my car, I’ll sum up some of the first mods I did. (LOL, did I just say "sum up some"?)  I’m going back in time to the day I bought my car.  Here are some pics of it that were taken before I bought it (note the ricer coffee can exhaust! LOL. I was so glad when I finally got rid of it!):

Damn, I look at these and realize how much I’ve let the exterior go.  It looks like crap now compared to the old pics.  Time to bust out the DA and some Meguiars product!

The first modification I did was the JIC Coilovers.  I already did a write up on those. You can see that here. The next thing I did was replace the stock 14b turbo with an Evo III 16g GT turbo from turbochargers.com that I bought through RRE. It's basically a ported 16g with a bigger flapper. While it may seem that I did the turbo swap too early in the build process, the old 14b was on its last leg, so I had to replace it, and I figured "why not upgrade?". The 16g GT is a pretty darn good turbo, but once you're running it on a 2.3L stroker it really ends up being the bottleneck in the system. It spools up FAST (almost too fast), but falls on its face after 6,500rpm. You can get a good amount of power out of these turbos (300whp+), but at that point you're really pushing the turbo hard and tuning at the limit. My *built* engine doesn't like more than 19psi on this crappy California 91 octaine that we get out here. I certainly have some room for improvement in tuning, but I'll cover that in another entry. Sadly, I didn't really cover the turbo build much. I only have "before" pictures. It serves as a great juxtaposition to how my engine bay looks now, though. It's hard to tell, but you can see the thrashed blades on the close up of the compressor. I added a stainles steel braided oil supply line from RRE that feeds oil to the turbo right of the filtered sided of the oil filter housing, rather than the stock line which feeds dirty, low pressure oil from the head. Oh, one more note: in the pics below you'll see the Fluidine aluminum radiator I have. It was already in the car when I bought it.

 

The next thing I did was put a 3 inch mandrel bent exhaust on it. I picked up a used cat-back from a DSM owner for $20!!! But it didn't fit perfectly so I had to pay GT Fabrications to install it, and later I had RRE put some beefy 2 bolt flanges on it. Oh, btw, the previous owner had already put a 2.5in to 3in down pipe and a 3in cat, so from down pipe back its 3in diameter w/ no press bends. The muffler that came on the exhaust is a Magnaflow straight through design. Very sleeper, very quiet for a 3in, and it FLOWS like crazy. Huge improvement over the previous owner's exhaust, which was a hacked together 2.5in press bent hunk of junk w/ a huge coffee can ricer muffler that was LOUUUDD! Also, I noticed a serious increase in power just with the butt dyno. That usually means at least a 20hp increase...and that's running low boost on the 16g turbo. Oh, I also put a ported Evo III exhaust manifold at some point, but I never took pics of it. You can see it in the pics of the 2.3L stroker build.

 

Well, that covers the early stuff. Next time, it's fixing old motor mounts followed by clutch/transmission replacement.

Update

Well, as you can see I failed at running a consistant blog during the 2008 year. I'll try to start posting more regularly between tech articles. Like I stated before, I have thousands of pics for dozens of VFAQ style posts just waiting for me to take the time to make them. Anyway, in the mean time, here's a bit of an update.



The talon is running well as a daily driver. As you know if you've read my blog I put a 2.3L stroker motor (Built by R///RE in last December). It's a fully built motor w/ an Eagle/Wiseco combo (rods/pistons) and a built top end with SS valves, Crower springs & titanium retainers. I've been using software calle tuner pro which is an open source free tuning solution that works in conjunction with either EPROM chips that you make with a chip burner, or with a chip emmulater like the Moates Ostrich, which is what I'm using. I am not using the full potential of the engine, becasuse I am still learning the art of tuning. I have dynoed the car at around 230hp to the wheels, which is far less than half of the potential power output of the engine. Once I unlock the potential with tuning, the next restriction is the turbo, which will limit me to somewhere between 300 and 350whp.



As for my other project car, the 1978 IH Scout Traveller (which I have made no posts about), it is still in the garage awaiting a new body. I have a parts truck in storage w/ a rust free body tub and fenders/hood. My Scout may fool you, b/c it looks nice on the outside, but there is plenty of rust underneath. In the mean time, it runs, but very poorly b/c the distributor shaft bushings have too much play and the ignition timing is all over the place. Basically that means hardly any power and HORRIBLE gas mileage. Some day I'll dig through some old photographs I have of work that I've done to the Scout and scan them so I can upload them here.

Well, that's about it for now. Here are some pics from the LADSM Dyno Day at Road Race. For the whole album, click here.

Yes, I'm still alive

To anyone who actually reads this blog, I am still here even though I haven't posted since April. I have done a ton of work to the Talon since then. I also have a couple of years worth of photos on projects that I've done on the Talon to organize and upload. Stay tuned, there's more to come!

Fuel pump housing fix

Disclaimer: use extreme care when working on your own car. This is not an official how-to. Its just here to show you a fix I implemented. Do this at your own risk, and KNOW what you're doing!

While putting in a Walbro 190 fuel pump a while back, I accidentally over-torqued the nut for the positive wire of the pump and I ended up shearing off the brass threaded stud that it attaches to on the pump housing (you'll see what I'm talking about in the pics below). This stud sticks off of a brass fitting that is held in place by a grommet and sealed on the top with some sort of sealant. The plastic grommet keeps the connection isolated from the housing and the rest of the chassis so it won't ground out and cause a short. Here's what I did to fix it:

1. I used a dremel tool to get out the sealant on the top side of the wire and drilled through the brass fitting on the inside of the wire terminal. Note the other two wires that still have the sealant over the connection. That's what it looked like before I butchered it.


This view shows the underside where the stud used to be. Again, a proper connection can bee seen next to the one I drilled out.


2. Next, I found a properly sized brass machine screw to insert through the fitting. I made sure that ALL the sealant was ground away over the wire terminal so that the head of the machine screw would make solid contact.


Here you can see the screw coming through on the underside. I think I ended up using a longer one so more threads were exposed


3. I soldered the screw to the wire terminal



4. I got my multi-meter and checked the resistance from the screw to the wire feed from the fuel pump relay. I compared this with the resistance found in the connections that were still OEM. They were the same. Then (VERY CRUCIAL STEP), I checked the resistance from the screw to the housing to make sure the connection was isolated. You do NOT want a short happening here (you know, with how flammable gas is and everything).



5. I then sealed the connection on top of the housing with JB weld. Surprizingly, with the way JB settles in it looks almost OEM. (okay, not quite...but it looks ok and will seal it really good)


That's it! Waayyy cheaper than buying a new pump housing, and it took far less time than hunting a used one down. You can find all the parts necessary at Home Depot or Lowes. I've been running for a few months with no problems after doing this fix.