First off before I go into any details, I'd like to thank the following companies and people for their support in my current project:
JM Fabrications- For the use of the shop tools, temporary storage of my car, and donated materials and products
JnZ Tuning- For supplying the majority of new & used OEM Mitsubishi and aftermarket parts
Ivey Tune- For Sean making me a start up cal AEM file and getting my car able to fire up
Diamond Star Motorsport- For Nate (now no longer owning DS) getting and giving me new and used parts when I would stop by
Summit Racing - Eh, they're big enough already so they can keep the small font
And my father for use of his truck/trailer, and other friends who've given a hand.
Right now it's been about 1 1/2 to 2 years since I semi-parted my car out in July 2005, and I'm getting closer to finishing the reassembly back up which made me want to post up a diary of sorts of my build. As for why I didn't post many pics of the build in the previous months, I mostly didn't want to jinx myself before the car was up and running but now I feel a bit more comfortable with its running state that any problems in the future I either expect or shouldn't be too difficult to take care of.
First, some history:
It was the night before the ECSO at Englishtown, NJ and I wanted to get some runs in at the local track (Island Dragway) and have the car somewhat tuned for the following day. I was still working with DSMotorsport at the time and was having Nate help me with the AEM tuning in between runs. About my third run of the night, I felt that the car came off the line really well and that I was going to get in a low 11, if not 10 second run. Feeling this in the seat of my pants, I decided to go for the NLTS from 3rd to 4th although I didn't use it between 1-2, or 2-3. I completely missed 4th and BAM, went to 2nd with a ton of noise and smoke from under the hood. :wall: Had the car towed back to the pits where Luke @ DS, and shop-friend Utah and I began tearing into the car to see the damage. First sign was a hole in the valve cover along with two other cracked spots in the spark plug well area. Yanked the VC to see that I had thrown some rockers and damaged one or two lifters too. We next yanked the head off--mind you while still very hot and yet done within 1/2 hour--to see if there was any valve damage which there didn't visually appear to be. The majority of my tools were at my house, so onto the trailer and back home the car went. Luke and Ryan @ DS came back to join me and try to repair the damage so that I could still make the event the following day. Just as we were about to put on the timing belt, Luke noticed my oil pump gear could hardly spin by hand to align the timing marks. Great..... revving to 10.5k on that misshift did its toll, and there weren't any extra front cases at the shop to grab. I believe Nate ended up taking one for the shop Talon to repair that same night too, which is why I was left empty handed.
Fast forward to a few weeks later when I finally had a new front case installed, belt installed, and everything else buttoned up, I started her back up only to have an extremely rough running engine that sounded like it was running on two cylinders. Thinking it was an oil priming issue and the lifters didn't collapse, I held the RPMs steady around 2500 until POP, and a locked up motor. Pulling it apart AGAIN I noticed some new problems, one being that the end exhaust cam cap was installed backwards during the reassembly rush eventually destroying 3 of the cam journals, and now I have some bent valves. I assume the drag on that cam caused the belt to skip now that I look back on it, but I'll never know for sure. Damage at this point was a wrecked HKS 272 exhaust cam, 12+hour self-ported head w/cam journal damage and bent valves, and a car running on 2 cylinders for no apparent reason. This began my semi-part out as I didn't plan to get out of the game entirely, but rather just wanted to take care of some bills at the time by selling off parts I knew I'd replace and upgrade down the road in the next build. That, and I figured with the amount of money being put into the Talon every month I might as well take on some Evo car payments instead so at least I'll have a nice daily driver
Here are some pics from back then:
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
Jump ahead now to September, 2006, and my resurrection begins.
My plans:
-convert current cage over to 10 point cage and fix problems with it that the previous shop who built it created in not following the NHRA rules close enough. Also throw on a chute mount now rather than later just to be safe
-repaint entire car a new color since I was tired of seeing an almost clone of mine at the shootout the past few years
-build and do everything myself, or what I can at least physically do myself that wouldn't screw anything important up (IE final tuning and laying the paint will be done by other people)
-build a setup that's out of the ordinary just because I can and do it MY way
-go faster than 11s finally
-try to do all of the above in a tasteful manner and maybe even keep it a little streetable......maybe.
So with that said, here's what I was left to start with after sitting from the part-out--dirty, rusty, and messy.
![Image]()
to be continued.......
JM Fabrications- For the use of the shop tools, temporary storage of my car, and donated materials and products
JnZ Tuning- For supplying the majority of new & used OEM Mitsubishi and aftermarket parts
Ivey Tune- For Sean making me a start up cal AEM file and getting my car able to fire up
Diamond Star Motorsport- For Nate (now no longer owning DS) getting and giving me new and used parts when I would stop by
Summit Racing - Eh, they're big enough already so they can keep the small font
And my father for use of his truck/trailer, and other friends who've given a hand.
Right now it's been about 1 1/2 to 2 years since I semi-parted my car out in July 2005, and I'm getting closer to finishing the reassembly back up which made me want to post up a diary of sorts of my build. As for why I didn't post many pics of the build in the previous months, I mostly didn't want to jinx myself before the car was up and running but now I feel a bit more comfortable with its running state that any problems in the future I either expect or shouldn't be too difficult to take care of.
First, some history:
It was the night before the ECSO at Englishtown, NJ and I wanted to get some runs in at the local track (Island Dragway) and have the car somewhat tuned for the following day. I was still working with DSMotorsport at the time and was having Nate help me with the AEM tuning in between runs. About my third run of the night, I felt that the car came off the line really well and that I was going to get in a low 11, if not 10 second run. Feeling this in the seat of my pants, I decided to go for the NLTS from 3rd to 4th although I didn't use it between 1-2, or 2-3. I completely missed 4th and BAM, went to 2nd with a ton of noise and smoke from under the hood. :wall: Had the car towed back to the pits where Luke @ DS, and shop-friend Utah and I began tearing into the car to see the damage. First sign was a hole in the valve cover along with two other cracked spots in the spark plug well area. Yanked the VC to see that I had thrown some rockers and damaged one or two lifters too. We next yanked the head off--mind you while still very hot and yet done within 1/2 hour--to see if there was any valve damage which there didn't visually appear to be. The majority of my tools were at my house, so onto the trailer and back home the car went. Luke and Ryan @ DS came back to join me and try to repair the damage so that I could still make the event the following day. Just as we were about to put on the timing belt, Luke noticed my oil pump gear could hardly spin by hand to align the timing marks. Great..... revving to 10.5k on that misshift did its toll, and there weren't any extra front cases at the shop to grab. I believe Nate ended up taking one for the shop Talon to repair that same night too, which is why I was left empty handed.
Fast forward to a few weeks later when I finally had a new front case installed, belt installed, and everything else buttoned up, I started her back up only to have an extremely rough running engine that sounded like it was running on two cylinders. Thinking it was an oil priming issue and the lifters didn't collapse, I held the RPMs steady around 2500 until POP, and a locked up motor. Pulling it apart AGAIN I noticed some new problems, one being that the end exhaust cam cap was installed backwards during the reassembly rush eventually destroying 3 of the cam journals, and now I have some bent valves. I assume the drag on that cam caused the belt to skip now that I look back on it, but I'll never know for sure. Damage at this point was a wrecked HKS 272 exhaust cam, 12+hour self-ported head w/cam journal damage and bent valves, and a car running on 2 cylinders for no apparent reason. This began my semi-part out as I didn't plan to get out of the game entirely, but rather just wanted to take care of some bills at the time by selling off parts I knew I'd replace and upgrade down the road in the next build. That, and I figured with the amount of money being put into the Talon every month I might as well take on some Evo car payments instead so at least I'll have a nice daily driver
Here are some pics from back then:
Jump ahead now to September, 2006, and my resurrection begins.
My plans:
-convert current cage over to 10 point cage and fix problems with it that the previous shop who built it created in not following the NHRA rules close enough. Also throw on a chute mount now rather than later just to be safe
-repaint entire car a new color since I was tired of seeing an almost clone of mine at the shootout the past few years
-build and do everything myself, or what I can at least physically do myself that wouldn't screw anything important up (IE final tuning and laying the paint will be done by other people)
-build a setup that's out of the ordinary just because I can and do it MY way
-go faster than 11s finally
-try to do all of the above in a tasteful manner and maybe even keep it a little streetable......maybe.
So with that said, here's what I was left to start with after sitting from the part-out--dirty, rusty, and messy.
to be continued.......
