92 Typhoon #2057

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Going to start a build thread here to keep track of the progress of this little truck. This is my first SyTy but my buddy had nice little modded truck back in 2003 so I was familiar with them. I purchased this truck from a dealer lot in Scottsdale Arizona in March of 2010. Mileage was about 118k, shiny paint, good tires, clean interior, and had records of being in a transmission shop recently for a rebuild. I installed some new plug wires, cap, silicone vacuum lines and a nice set of Edelbrock shocks since the stock shocks were shot.




The truck was a fast little cruiser. It was about 2 weeks after I had it a piece of the intake tube came apart and chewed up the turbo fins pretty good. The turbo wouldn't spool past 10psi and was pretty noisy. The turbo was removed and sent to Waller to be rebuilt and modified. I requested that the hot side be ported as well as all the other upgrades he offered like larger wheel and wastegate porting. It was bolted back to the stock downpipe after a short turnaround time.


When I got the truck back running again it was a night and day difference. I went out and did a nice boost launch and this little box fell out of the dash. I did a bit of research and it turned out to be a 10 in 1 chip. I sold this one and ended up buying a gauge style Ultimate chip and installed it in a 3 gauge pillar pod, along with a water temperature gauge. Also installed a adjustable fuel pressure regulator to bump up the fuel pressure as recommended by the chip manufacturer. Yay more boost!

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January 2011
The truck runs great for a while, but after a bunch of driving and boosting it gets laggy and pulls timing. I am able to see that the intake air temperatures are exceedingly high even tho its 50-60 degrees during the day in the Arizona winter. Even tho there is nice green coolant in the intercooler I decide to pull it apart and inspect the system. Coked up lower cooler and a kinked hose will definitely cause some issues. Well as long as its apart its time to upgrade right? DutchTy lower cooler, Johnson pump and a nice ATR upper cooler just happened to be around at the time. Both the cooler cores are larger and adds quite a bit of capacity to the system. The stock metal lines were done away with in the process.

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April 2011
Found a nice JSM style 3" downpipe. It was already ceramic coated. I went ahead and heat wrapped it as well. I cut out the back of the turbo for better boost control. I added a PTP heat blanket to the hot side of the turbo. This made a huge difference in underhood temperatures. I also relocated the battery under the front fender and fabbed up a cold air box, using part of an ATR cold air box I was able to find. I switched out to a Code $59/Ostrich setup and 60lb injectors shortly after installing the exhaust as I was maxing out the duty cycle of the stock injectors.

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December 2011
Was changing the oil and doing a once over inspection on the truck and noticed the motor mounts were bad. I used the 2.8 mounts from JTR. Changing the motor mounts while the engine is still in the truck sucks. It took me and a buddy about 10 hours to do the job. I would never attempt it again with the motor in the chassis.



I also decided it was time to lower the suspension a bit. I ordered up some Belltech lowering leafs for the rear as well as their rear sway bar. The torsion keys were cranked out for the front to match. Both torsion bar crossmember mounts were replaced. This fixed a creaking I was hearing inside the cab.

Before:



October 2013
The brakes were getting pretty low on pad life as well. Front and rear discs using the Renz brake brackets and e brake cables were installed on the truck as well as new hub bearings and ball joints. ABS was also deleted and removed the guts from the rear portion of the brake valve just below the master cylinder. I had a buddy polish up the calipers a bit. The discs are about an inch larger in diameter and the surface area of the pad is quite a bit larger as well. Truck now stops on a dime.

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February 2014
Tires were dry cracking pretty bad. I didn't want to run the risk of a blowout and losing a piece of cladding or worse, wreck the truck. Well there's not a whole lot of options for performance tires in a 16" that are affordable. I stepped up to a 17" period correct corvette wheel and wrapped them up in a set of Nitto NT555 in a 245/40. These tires like to grip! I spent some time removing the cloudy clear coat from the wheels and then dropped them off to be polished.




June 2014
The paint on this truck was due for some love. It had sat out for a year during a move and was showing sings of heavy oxidation. My father and I spent about 6 hours doing a 3 stage machine polish followed by a nice coat of wax.

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August 2014
Finally got down to the bottom of transmission fluid ending up on the rear of the truck. Fluid had been leaking from the transfer case and was burning on the catalytic converter as well as everywhere else. The tcase was removed, pressure washed and had a new seal kit installed. I also figured it was a good time to replace the leaking pinion seal on the front diff and replace the fluid. Propshaft bolts were replaced with grade 8 cap head bolts since they didn't match. I had a driveline vibration disappear after this. I suspect it was the mismatched bolts.

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January 2015
Kept getting a knock sensor code, even with mild driving out of boost. I suspected the sensor had gone bad. Its a PITA to get to so I left the original in place and located a new one on the front of the intake by the water neck. I ran a complete wire to the ECM so I didn't have to cut the factory harness.


May 2015
I planned on installing some audio gear and eventually upgrade to some electric radiator fans. The stock alternator just wasn't going to handle what I had in store. This is an AD244 alternator from a 6.0 LS motor. With the smaller diameter pulley its rated at 250 amps. I installed a 1/2 watt 470 ohm resistor as the exciter in the charge circuit.




0 gauge cable was ran to the rear thru the frame rail on the drivers side. Circuit breakers were installed in the front and rear to protect against shorts. 1500 watt RMS mono and a 500 watt RMS 4 channel amplifier were installed in a custom enclosure with 10" woofers. Added a second battery for good measure.

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Mid 2015 I installed a Turbotweak chip, Scanmaster G and replaced a bad ECM. My truck drove the best it had ever had after setting up the tune. I was actually able to enjoy it! I took it to cars shows and my truck clubs BBQs. There were no modifications this year other than a billet distributor since the factory one quit on me. I also lost my job.

So consider this the interlude: