Reprepping the Rally Tal[hoon]

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racerboy000
what about converting it to running grp5

Me? Naw, the Tal[hoon] will be kicking ass overall in the WCRC next year. We also already have two ridiculously overpowered 4G63T Mitsu's running around with TOO MUCH POWA to the front wheels, no need to have another

So, to continue on with my story telling, the Kananaskis Rally was last weekend, 5th round of the 6 event Western Canada Rally Championship (well, this year 4th round since Mountain Trials was cancelled, but I digress). NO I DIDN'T COMPETE (just to clarify). But I did do recce in the Tal[hoon] with my co-driver to be Jeff Canavan (if he is a member of this site, his name is rockasilly).

Besides having a ridiculous garage done alignment (Keith pointed out nicely that I had wonky positive camber on the front driver's side) and driving on snow and ice on half bald medium compound gravel pirelli's, life was good. Car was making decent power, handling was good (alignment not withstanding, the car was very controllable). Talon's are MUCH more toss-able than Subaru's, and considering my preference for loose, twitchy cars I think it will suit me well. After finishing one pass of Powderface South and North (25km each way!) a 1/4" coolant line hose popped and promptly drained all of the coolant out of the Tal[hoon]. I think this may have happened to me after Keith gave me a stern warning for doing a handbrake turn while turning around for our second pass and the car's feelings were hurt.



Since my main goal was to get Jeff more familiar with notes (he's watched me rally for 6 years, and his job requires him to talk all day and give directions so it came quite naturally to him), I wasn't upset at all. I've personally said time and time again, it's not how hard you shake a rally car down, but how many miles you put on it. Good thing the weekend only cost $300 including trailer rental, hotel, and gratuitous amounts of alcohol rather than $1500 if I had competed! Free towing fuel is fantastic.

So overall, success. The car is getting silicone coolant lines and vacuum lines installed shortly, and tomorrow (after watching Rally GB of course) we are going to install the Sparco seats. The car will be sitting for some time after that as I want to make sure the war chest is stashed appropriately and all the bits and pieces needed for Cochrane are bought.

And this is what I thought of JC's (an up and comer in the WCRC, bought Matt Johnson's old open class Hankook car) commitment running on only three cylinders:

Mind. Blown.

Which coolant line did you lose? The one from the "oil cooler ring/sandwich plate"?

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PotatoFlakeSTi
Which coolant line did you lose? The one from the "oil cooler ring/sandwich plate"?

Hmm, don't know, that doesn't really sound like it though. It simply split open and comes off (or around the thermostat housing). A picture will be up in a bit

It is so nice to see that car out of a garage finally on on gravel !! ATTABOY a hundred times over.

Good to hear another DSM is back on the stages!

Coolant line near the tstat sounds like it might be one of the lines to the FIAV on the TB. I'd say delete them. It's a failure prone system. I'm actually deleting the FIAV and ISC on my Galant today. Not worth the hassle, really.

Also, if you've got a 90 DSM, you should have the external/remote oil cooler. Much more better and resilient than that sandwich plate c'mon. If not, keep an eye out when you're at the jyard in the future. They are interchangable. You need the filter housing (minimum), lines and cooler (which you could source aftermarket if you wanted). Easy job during tbelt jobs and cheap insurance on the engine.

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Brian Driggs | KG7KCA | PHX, AZ | 89 Pajero
alterius non sit qui suus esse potest

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DR1665
Coolant line near the tstat sounds like it might be one of the lines to the FIAV on the TB. I'd say delete them. It's a failure prone system. I'm actually deleting the FIAV and ISC on my Galant today. Not worth the hassle, really.

Also, if you've got a 90 DSM, you should have the external/remote oil cooler. Much more better and resilient than that sandwich plate c'mon. If not, keep an eye out when you're at the jyard in the future. They are interchangable. You need the filter housing (minimum), lines and cooler (which you could source aftermarket if you wanted). Easy job during tbelt jobs and cheap insurance on the engine.

I love it of how the guy from Arizona tells the dude from Alberta (where it can get down to almost -50*C in the winter) to delete the FIAV :p I\ll start removing stuff when it causes issues lol.

I also do have the external/remote oil cooler, so good to go there!

Lulz. Who do you think advised the guy in Arizona there were minimal ill effects to doing so? A bunch of guys up along the Canadian border! That's who! :p

It's a wax pellet that melts at operating temp to drop idle once warm. That's it. Crack the throttle to get it started when it's cold. You don't race when the engine's cold, do you? :nono

Just an idea. Been playing with DSMs since 1996 at this end. (Not always in Arizona.)

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Brian Driggs | KG7KCA | PHX, AZ | 89 Pajero
alterius non sit qui suus esse potest

I know, I'm just giving you a hard time. I've had to deal with similiar issues on turbo fireflies and sprints

i need to get my Galant GSX going...

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Gravity Fed
i need to get my Galant GSX going...

Yes you do!

I'd like to steer this thread away from the actual construction of the car to some thoughts I have about DRIVING the car, specifically;

WHY DOES EVERYONE BITCH ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE OUT OF THE CAR?!

Now, I'm not the tallest dude ever, but I'm not the shortest. As far as I am aware, I am about average for north american males (5' 8" and don't have an abnormally shaped body.

One of the biggest complaints I've heard about racing DSM's is that you can't see over the hood. Why does this matter? Considering I am looking a good 100 feet in front of the car when driving/racing, why does it matter that I can't see the ground directly in front of the bumper? I better have a good idea of what is in that ditch I am cutting wellllll before I get there, or else I shouldn't cut and shouldn't be trying to see 10 feet in front of the car to see if there is something in the ditch when I am setting up for the next corner.

So, is it really an issue?

Not till you load it on the trailer

How far can you see?

I've only had trouble with limited sightlines when dealing with crests.

Well, that was a fun four days!

I took Thursday/Friday off, and combined with the Sat/Sun of the weekend made for a good chance to really tackle working on the Tal[hoon]. Considering we'd already "shaken down" the car, this period was to get better acquainted with it, pull stuff apart, put it back together, do general maintanence, and decide whether or not it was fit to rally.

The Grabby Villa:


We started off with the hardest thing we could think to do: mounting the seats in a FIA legal manner. What a nightmare! Obviously it's tight in a talon, but this is further compounded by the way the FIA rules call for the seat to be mounted. Also, buying steel as a regular joe-schmoe is prohibitively expensive here it would seem, as I basically wasted $50 on metal and we didn't even get one mount made.

After much humming, hawing, and scratching our heads, we came to the conclusion that it would be well worth the money to have someone properly build a low profile mounting setup for us. After all of the welding wire and steel we would have went through to get things right, it seems much more reasonable to just pay someone to do it. Slightly disheartening, but we easily could have done it if it was a Subaru Our prep work will simply involve cutting out the factory seat mounts and pounding the shit out of the trans tunnel with a BFH to give the fabricator as much room as possible to work with.

After that, we spent a couple hours screwing around trying to find the right oil filter (nobody had them in stock, NAPA's listing was waaaay wrong, finally they got us the right one by cross referencing the factory Mitsu filter's part number with theirs). Filled 'er up with Shell Rotella T6 5w40, my oil of choice. Proceeded to drain the tranny fluid as 2nd gear synchro was grinding. Out came what appeared to be RedLine Heavyweight Shockproof oil That stuff isn't meant for use in synchro boxes. So, I filled it up with 10w30 cheapo oil and drove the Tal[hoon] around for a bit, then brought it back in and redrained the tranny. There was enough leftover redline in it to turn the motor oil completely red and quite a bit thicker.

Finally, for good measure, I put in GM syncroSMASH. Shifts smooth as butter now, makes me happy Left the rear diff and t-case alone, presumably they have RedLine shockproof in them which is its correct application. Will probably drain those after the Feb 28th test day before Cochrane and refill accordingly.

What else did we do? The car rode fairly rough, so I went about sorting that out. Lots of preload on the springs even at full droop, so I backed the perches off until there was 0 preload (but no play) on the springs at full droop. Didn't lose much if any height but the car rides a teenie bit better. Might have to play with the damping next time I'm with the car, as I'd like a softer suspension for s00per icey Cochrane.

Final touches included removal of all the feminist power stickers, as well as fixing the skid plate mounts. The bolts were frozen solid in the mounts, so we had initially cut the bolts some time ago. We finally got the remaining "studs" out, and now I have to find some 9/16 bolts (these are impossible to find in canuckland btw, I'll have to go to an actual nut and bolt shop). Ziptied the bumpers/mudflaps a bit more securely. Fixed the terror trip which had a nast habit of stopping counting when hitting bumps. Loose wiring/the connector doesn't clip into the back of the terror trip was the culprit.

Aaaaaaannnndddd that about covers it. The cage is grandfathered in, so I don't have to do anything with it. I'd LIKE to get an extra crossbrace and roof bar installed before Cochrane, but we'll see how time and money goes. Really important is getting the seats mounted low enough for Jeff and I so we aren't banging our heads on the cage.

So before the test day, this is what needs to get done:

-skid plates remounted with new hardware and puckboard remounted with bolts rather than metal screws through the floorpan
-seats mounted
-peltor FMT120 installed (terrorphone currently hardwired in)
-alignment
-make headlight/foglight setup work better
-install new hatch struts (bloody f*&kin things!)
-install silicone vacuum and coolant lines
-mount coolant expansion tank which is currently hanging out

Pretty simple if you ask me

sounds easier than my fiasco i come home too.

That would be odd not finding a 9/16" anything. I always need metric and can never find what i need. But sure as hell if i need something silly like an 11/32, it will be there.

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First Rally: 2010 First RallyX: 2004 (a bunch)
Driver (0), Co-Driver (7)
Organizer (3), Volunteer (3)
Cars Built (2.5), Engines Blown (2) Cages Built (0) # of rotations (3.5)
Last Updated, Apr 9, 2023

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HiTempguy

-install silicone vacuum and coolant lines

FWIW, i personally would not, especially for the vacuum lines.

In my experience, the silicone stuff looks great, but is junk on a car that ends up being worked on. If you look at silicone the wrong way it rips/tears and you end up with vacuum leaks. Assuming you are still using a MAF on the car, that means car runs like junk, if you have MAP it doesn't much matter.

I have had WAY better luck with cheapo rubber vacuum hose. It's thicker and much more durable.

As for coolant lines, If you are talking about heater hoses and you can deal with using straight stuff, go to a Diesel truck place and get their heater hose, it's tough durable stuff, and cheap. Silicone Rad hoses are ok, as long as they are of decent quality.

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Chris