Back in the early 00’s I started tinkering with cars. Dumping all of my money into my shitboxes over and over again. I loved every moment of it. Well… nothing has changed.
My wife and I were dating back when I was in highschool, separated for almost 20 years and yet here we are now married. I was driving a 1992 Plymouth Laser RS awd back then. It was red and honestly I didn’t really care for the car due to it having a welded center differential. Imagine driving a truck in 4×4 mode all the time, for those that dont know it meant that slow speed turns into say… a parking lot caused screeching and lurching as tires bound up in the drive line.
I ended up picking up another DSM after that, a 1991 Eagle Talon Tsi Awd. I loved this car.
I built it with 2.3 stroker, big turbo, cams, basically name it, if it was available in 2002 i had most of it. I even had the car repainted in factory style.
Life moved on, Navy, California, and now Georgia. I’ve owned a total of now 7 DSM’s, an evo, a Genesis coupe, 3 mustangs, F150 and a few others over the last 20 years. I had been looking for a project car to tinker with and rebuild over the last 5-6 months and started looking for 280zx’s, 240s and 300zx’s since they were all pretty common LS motor swap platforms. I could easily buy parts almost off the shelf and toss them in the car.
Then… as fate typically does i see a 92 Talon awd on Facebook marketplace… Doesn’t run ( but should ), came with a bunch of extra parts ( as most these days do ), and a cylinder head that already has oversized valves upgraded springs and retainers along with all new valve seals. The post had been up for 42 weeks but I took a chance anyway… 2 days go by and nothing… until about half an hour after work I see the notification. The guy asks me to call him because he’d had people trying to buy it and wanted to drive it away but this literally wasn’t possible so I do. I explain that I’m planning on doing a restoration project, gutting the car, repainting, you know… the whole 9 yards. He obviously doesn’t care about my life story so we get down to business and plan the pickup.
Thats that. I rented a trailer drove 430 miles and picked it up.
The wife and I got home around 1:30 in the morning and just left it on the trailer. The next morning I needed to return said trailer so she hopped in and I tried pushing it off but rusty rotors and probably bad wheel bearings are making the car even harder to push over the tire strap bars. Luckily a neighbor saw my pathetic struggle and gave me a much needed hand!
She’s a looker alright. So without lying the car is in bad shape. It trys to start but putters to death soon after if it even gets that far. This car has had a rough life and it’s obvious that previous owners havn’t taken care of it ( more on that to come ). But she’s here and this is where the car sits for around a month and a half as i wait for some parts to come in to get it running.
Going into this kind of a build I had to be very real with myself. I could not start stripping the car before I got it running. I needed a known good base to go from so that I wasn’t trying to get a car running that never did in the first place. This was agonizing because personally hate doing re-work.
So… I bought an ecu. waited a week and finally it arrives, I toss it in and Huzzah! the car… didn’t start or at least, not even close to well enough to where I could call it idling. It was at this point I chalked this experience up to possibly the injectors being busted since they’d been sitting there for 6 years ( yes… the previous owner that i got this car left it sitting in his back yard for 6 years ).
Now on order, 1220cc FIC injectors. Wait a week and they arrive. I slap them in the car and prime the pump with excitement… and then defeat as the battery is dead. Boosted it off and while it trys to turn over and idle it just doesn’t go well. Ok… Well… possibly the spark plugs? Head to O’Rileys and pick up a set of crappy copper plugs for cheap just to try getting it running. To my amazement it turns over, spitting and sputtering but its running and idling on its own. Any touch of the throttle though at this point kills it.
I dug a little deeper and played around with the injectors some to the point that it ran well enough to move on its own power for the first time since I had it ( around a month at this point ). I moved it to over where the fence is and that was where the car sat for another couple weeks. During that time I read up on poor idle and what could cause it, after not having one of these cars for that many years I forgot just about every thing I knew.
Iac… checked that… doesn’t exist has been removed
EGR… also… doesn’t exist
Throttle stop? nope thats good
Ok possibly the mass air flow sensor is bad. Order up 3 bar map sensor and wait. Once it arrives I hack it into the harness and connect it. Car still idles poorly.
Previous owner said he poured 5 gallons of gas into the car to that way we could try and get it started before I bought it. I took a gamble and took the car anyway obviously. I decide well… i have big injectors, car already has a Walbro 255 fuel pump So i drain the tank of possibly questionable fuel and toss in 5 gallons of fresh E-85. Adjust the ecu to compensate for the 30% extra required fuel aaaaaaaand…. it idles poorly..
Defeated I head in side for 10 minutes and cool off. I’m pissed at this point. Lightbulb moment… injector deadtime is probably way off! Grab the FIC datasheet and compare that to the ecu, oh yea… only around 40% off. Slap the correct values into the table. grab the key turn it over and BOOM she starts. she idles, she revs!
From this point its time make a decision. Do I try to make it drivable as it is? I mean I took it for a spin around the block and hear a bit of rotating noise but this is probably just the rust on the rotors slowly being ground away…
I decided instead to just park the car in the garage and prep for the tear down. I figured that the car idles, revs and moves on its own power even with the most basic tune I could possibly give it ( Nearly all defaults and some sensors shut off that would have helped it idle a little better ). Goal Achieved! if it doesn’t run after I put it all back together at this point it’s my fault.
The time has come to tell myself that the car will not move again on its own power as of 5/23/2021.
GufiDev.Net 