Kim Schuenman – 1995 Eagle Talon TSi AWD

23 November 2009 in Featured View Comments

For the final week of ladies month here on Mitsubishi Gearbox Magazine, Kim’s sharing some of her DSM stories.  Her sinister black Talon is solid track weapon.  Check it out and let us know what you think! 

What’s your real name? (What’s your screen name?)
Kim Schuenman (Secongendsm)

Where do you live?
Roy, Utah

What do you do for a living?
New Media/Public Relations

What Mitsubishi do you drive?
1995 Eagle Talon TSI AWD

How long have you had your Mitsubishi(s)?
Current one – A year and a half

What got you into Mitsubishi?
I was in high school when the first gens (1990-1994) came out and I remember driving around with my sister in her crappy car dreaming of the day one of us could afford a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse. My boyfriend at the time (now husband) turned his nose up at them. It was V8’s or nothing for him.

Fast-forward to 2001, one of our friends bought a 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS-T and another had a 1995 Eagle Talon TSI. I fell in love with the second gens, went home and started my search. I found a 1997 Eagle Talon TSI AWD with 17,000 original miles just around the corner from us. I dragged my husband over to look at it. We popped open the hood and both said, “We could never work on this; we’d have to pay a shop to do everything!” At that time we thought the world revolved around carbureted V8’s. We took the Talon for a drive, my husband was convinced and we bought it the next day. I’m proud to say we’ve done the work ourselves on all our DSM’s (30+ since 2001). Engine swaps, installing a roll bar in my 1997 Talon to a ground-up build on my current 1995 Talon.

Got a favorite story to tell about your Mitsubishi?
My favorite story has to be about my Mom and my 1997 Talon. After we bought the Talon I took it over to show her. When I was little my parents would always point out nice cars when we were driving around. My mom was a car girl at heart and wanted to go for a ride, so I took her around the block. During the drive we happened to run into a bright yellow 2000’ish GT Mustang. He stayed right next to me as we drove and she kept telling me she wanted to run them. As embarrassing as this is – I really wasn’t that comfortable with a manual transmission so I chickened out on the race. I’ll always regret that because she passed away nine months later and never got to see me race at the drag strip.

What are your goals for the car and how close are you to achieving them?
The goal for my current 1995 Talon is to run a 10 second quarter mile with as many stock parts as possible. I recently ran an 11.2 at 130 mph in Las Vegas. That was only my eighth pass in that car since we finished the build so I’m very happy so far. The drag strip in Utah is closed until next April so my goal will have to wait until next year.

What was your favorite modification?  Why?
Turbos. I love them, I love trying new ones and I love big boost.

What’s next for your Mitsubishi?  Why?
To keep pushing my 1995 Talon as fast as I can in the ¼ mile. Why? Because I’m too dumb to put my money into smarter things like retirement.

Who has helped you the most along the way?
Number one person would have to be my husband. He’s ALWAYS been there for me; he enjoys watching me race and keeps pushing me forward. I love the countless hours we’ve spent in our shop together.

Second would be the guys from www.utdsm.org. Some of those guys I’ve known since 2001 and they feel like the brothers I never had.

I have to give a shout out to the recent addition to my racing world, Jet. She’s been great helping me get girlintheblackcar.com out into the social media world, scouting and setting up a photo shoot with the car and keeping me company in the staging lanes at the track.

Who do you look up to in the Mitsubishi community?
No question about it – John Shepherd. Not only has he been influential in showing what a four-cylinder can do, he’s also a very genuine person. We met him at a race in Colorado and he’s done work on my transmissions.

Is there a particular shop you’d like to recommend?
Couldn’t say, we do all our own work.

Do you spend time on any Mitsubishi sites?  Which ones?
There haven’t been many days since 2001 that I haven’t visited at least one DSM site during the day. Besides my local DSM site, next on the list would be the ECM Tuning forums, NABR and Mitsu-Media.com

You just went to Vegas to run the car, right?  What was the event and how did you do?
Just hit Vegas and it was a Friday Night Midnight Mayhem (open track to all racers). Best time of the night was a 11.2 @ 130. Videos can be seen here – http://www.youtube.com/girlintheblackcar

When you say you’d like to run 10s using as many stock parts as possible, isn’t just about everything on the Talon upgraded?  The turbo, manifold, BOV, etc.?
Sorry, you’re correct with most upgrades. I should have said with as many stock’ish parts as possible. On my previous ’97 Talon I thought everything had to be purchased NEW from a big name company and everything needed to be upgraded – sheet metal intake, over sized valves, upgraded valve train, etc.. I ended up putting over $30k into that car before I sold it. With the current ’95 Talon I went with more of a budget build to see how fast I could go on the least amount of money. I’ve purchased most of my parts used and we even painted it ourselves.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve splurged on things just to “have” (I wanted all my fuel line/fittings black and silver so I went all out on that). I can’t be totally ghetto, I need some flare in there! I’m seriously addicted to powder coating too. If I could powder coat myself flat black I would.

The bottom end of my ’95 consists of 1g rods, 2g pistons and ARP hardware. Head has a stock valve train with FP 2 cams. Stock 1g intake and stock tranny. Compared to my ’97 with Wiesco pistons, Eagle rods, over sized valves, upgraded valve train, Magnus sheet metal [intake manifold], Shep trans. (I do plan on having him build me one for the ’95 though.)

I plan on pushing the ’95 as far as I can go with what I have, then going crazy and making it an all out drag car. Full cage, etc, etc.
Speaking of mods, a lot of the readers have expressed that they would like to hear about specific modifications.  Care to share your mod list?  Any dyno numbers to share?

No dyno numbers yet.

Mods:
2g pistons/1g rods with ARP hardware
Fidanza Flywheel
Act 2600 w/6 puck unsprung
Stock head with FP2 cams
1000cc FIC injectors
255 Walbro
Mallory FPR
Evo MAF
Ebay FMIC
HKS BOV
Full 3″ exhaust
Turbonetics exhaust manifold
38mm Tial wastegate
PTE Billet 6262 @ 30 psi
DSMLink V2
Tein Coilovers
Rota Slipstreams with Hoosier QTP’s

You can follow Kim on Twitter! http://twitter.com/girlinblackcar

Salt Lake City, Talon