Well I've had this thing for a while now and haven't made a project thread on it yet so I figured maybe now would be a good time.
While in Iraq in 2006, I had some money saved up and I wanted a fast car. I had searched around Ebay, Carsoup, you know the usual, and I narrowed down my search to either a DSM or a 240SX. While after much thinking, I decided AWD was better and went with the DSM. I bought the car on Ebay in September of 2006 with 101,000 miles on it.
I came home on leave in October ready to have fun with the car, drove it about 80 miles and it had a coolant leak, so we towed it about 10 miles to my parents house. What we discovered when we got it home was not what I wanted to see, not only had it blew a hole in the lower radiator hose, it also had a bad head gasket, and something caused the timing belt to jump a few teeth, destroying most of the timing belt cover, and bending all but one valve in the head. It was obviously not drivable, so after I left to go back to Iraq I talked to a few guys and heard about DB Performance. I had my Dad bring the car there and had everything rebuilt, had the head gone through, bottom end, 6 bolt swap, Mahle pistons, Eagle Rods, balance shaft delete, etc, etc.
When I came home from Iraq, I picked up the car from DB and slowly started breaking it in, after a few months I brought it in to get tuned, they were having issues with the tranny on the dyno, and after not being able to find a decent used one, I had them send it out to get rebuilt. When they got it back, they checked for play in the crank, and dicovered it had crankwalk after only 1,500 miles!!! Sooooo, here we go again, it was bad enough that the block could not be reused, new block, new crank, etc, etc. Got it all back a few months later, broke it in all over again and finally got it tuned in August of 2008. and it made a best of 247 WHP, 250 WTQ at 23psi on shitty 91 Octane pump gas.
I daily drove it from August until December and couldn't have been happier with the car. Until on night shortly before christmas while on my way home from my parents house I passed somebody in 3rd gear about half throttle and when I made the shift to 4th, all I got was a loud bang. I tried again for 4th...wasn't there, I tried for 3rd...wasn't there either. So I limped it home in 1st and 2nd, got it trailered back to parents house a few days later and started using my Avenger as my DD. I drove that for about a month before I decided I needed a nicer DD and got my WRX.
*Also huge thanks to Danny, Shane and the rest of the guys at DB, for all the labor, tuning, advice, and everything else!!
Anyways, the last few weeks Myself and 95tsi, swapped out the tranny from one I picked up from MAP, and the outlook is good now, just a few more things to straighten up with the tranny and it should be back on the road in a few short weeks. So now on the 3rd engine and 3rd transmission in 6,000 miles, here is my talon. I will post pics in a few minutes, just be patient.
Plans are for now to get it back on the road, and in the near future put some bigger injectors on and go E85, then crank up the boost.
Here are some pics of when I first got the car, sorry for the size, its all I got.
EDIT: Just found the old dyno sheets from the Hahn Super 16G, 23psi spike at about 4k on the street, tapering to 17psi. Not bad for 91 octane pump gas. (The Hahn Super 16g is a really weird combination of parts, it uses a small 16g compressor wheel, a TD06 compressor housing, and a 10cm^2 exhaust housing, it is a liquid cooled journal bearing turbo. Probably the laggiest 16g out there, but definitely the most top-end of any "small" 16g I have ever seen)
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