eagle talon TSi AWD, advice on purchase please!
 

My brother is looking at a 91 eagle talon tsi AWD tomarrow. Car has 91k . In general, any first hand experiance on reliability? he will be getting it checked out, and the only advice i could offer him was the very vague "if it doesn't look right it probably isn't" line, which really doesnt do much good. Problem areas of this car? strong points? thanks in advance!
Ryan

Does He Need AWD?
 

The Eagle series of vehicles was the zenith of accomplishment for AMC. They had taken years of vehicle aquisitions like Studebaker, Hudson, Nash, Rambler, and Jeep and brought them together to make Eagle a success. It was so well done that Chrysler directly adopted the Eagle cab-forward designs for the Chrysler Concorde, Dodge Intrepid, and Plymouth Stratus.

The Eagle Talon tsi was a very good car from that standpoint. Eagle made a coupe, sedan, and wagon under that marquee. Here's a couple of Talon sites for reference:

http://hometown.aol.com/kenokazaki/ken.htm

http://www.geocities.com/turbotalon2001/

http://www.hotrideornot.com/cgi-bin/showride.cgi?sid=1515

The real issue is the AWD, You'll pay a higher insurance premium for it, and it will cost more to repair and maintain.

Is this the corporate cousin to Mitsubishi's Eclipse?

Kuan

Yeah, the car in question is 100% Mitsubishi, has nothing to do with AMC. It's a twin of the Eclipse.

I too have noticed that Mitsus tend to have a trail of blue smoke following them around. Mitsubishi made 3liter v6 engines for a lot of Chrysler minivans and these too are notorious oil burners.

The Eclipse/Talon were well known for premature failure of the timing belt. They very often broke well before the milage at which they required service was reached. There used to be about one post per week in rec.autos.tech where someone had this problem. A friend of mine owned a pedestrian model Eclipse and the belt failed 10K miles before change was spedified. An then engine is an interference engine - it bent valves. What I don't know is if all the engine variants used in the Eclipse/Talon suffered this malady, or if it was limited to specific engines.

I personally believe Mitsu to be a second rate automaker not nearly on par with the better brands. That said, there isn't much else out there like an AWD Eclipse/Talon. A late model Audi might be a better choice, but certainly more money.

Ohhh this brings back memories.

I had a '92 TSI AWD with lots of mods and it was flawless for me. The only repair (out of warranty) was a broken power window track.

Bang for the buck in the early 90s it was one of the best. Easy to mod (increase turbo pressure), all wheel drive, and nice cockpit for a very good price. The 5 speed shifter was not good (cable shift) but a short shift kit helps greatly. I had a set of Pirelli high speed snow tires and it was AWESOME in the snow (4 wheel drifts).

The '91 was the first generation of the DSM cars (Diamond Star Motors - Eagle Talon, Chrsyler Laser, Mitsubishi Eclispe). Do a search for DSM forums (there are many).

I highly recommend the AWD over the front wheel drive model. It gets the power down and is great in the rain.

When I sold my car in '97, the new owner took it to be inspected and everything was great except my drive shaft was starting to bend (hehe :D). I often wish I had kept the car. I know if I did it would be running 12-13 secs since the import market has made mods so affordable compared to the early 90s.

Leather sport seats are great with the lumbar and side bolster (manually adjustable). I could keep going on and on.

Have the car checked very thoroughly by a mechanical. The other DSM owners I knew, all drove their cars hard just like me. :)

Good luck.

I think you'd have to have a hole in your head to consider purchasing a used Chrysler / Dodge / Plymouth / Eagle vehicle.

They have been at or near the bottom of all the quality ratings for sooo long they've lost all credibility.

Talk to any former owner (including me) of any Chrysler car, and you'll hear stories that are laughable. Everything goes wrong, paint peels off, at higher mileage the car feels like every bolt that holds the car together is vibrating loose.

Pass on the Eagle and find a car that has a reputation for quality, durability and longevity, i.e. Toyoya, Honda, Nissan, Infinity, Lexus, Mercedes, Subaru, Volvo, etc.

There are so many used cars flooding the market since the 0% financing that was offered last year, that many cars have depreciated 15-20% in the last 3-4 months alone. There was a nice write-up in the L.A. Times a couple of weeks ago.

excuse me but the talon is not a chrysler it's a mitsu! huge difference between the american and japanese models of that partership. i had a couple of mitsu's many years ago and they were great cars. the engines were pretty solid and they had a really good handle on turbo 4's. those mitsu lancers don't have a rep in racing and rallying for nothing...

The major problem with the Mitsubishi engine is the valve stem seals. They tend to fail a bit early, lending to the blue smoke. Once addressed, these engines easily exceed 150K miles. At 91K, I would highly recommend having the engine checked thoroughly, and if the timing belt issue is as common as mentioned, then have it replaced just for the peace of mind.

You want advice,run away ASAP. These cars are junk. They never make it past 90,000 without giving off a nice blue cloud, they are cheaply made. How do I know? I have a bunch of friends in my area that mod thiers out to 400+ horse. Fast yes but they buy new engines about every month. Basically these are just like the rest of the econo car market. No matter how many mods you put on them they will always be econo cars and like contact lenses once they have passed thier usefulness you throw them out and get a new one. You may be able to improve performance but you cant improve origional engineering and quality.

Let me get this straight. Mitsubishi engines are junk because they cannot handle your friends modifications, which, coincidentally, are way beyond the design limits of their engines. The problem, while unsightly, is a cheap and relatively easy repair.

I guess that the manufacturers are supposed to assume that every buyer out there is going to build their economy car up to mimick a 60's era musclecar, and are supposed to design their products accordingly? While doing this, they must keep their prices the same as well right?

You are asking WAY too much. I've had many Mitsubishi engine powered vehicles, some with well over 100K on the odometer. Mitsubishi engines are as solid as any other with proper maintenance. One only needs to look into the valve stem seals on a higher mileage engine. :rolleyes:

thanks for the opinions/thoughts everyone, he saw that it was an automatic and ran away :(, hes really wanting standard tranny. Now to talk him into a 190E 5spd, that is down here, so i get to drive it as well :D. What does a decent on of those go for?
Ryan

Diesel Power,
I am sorry if I was unclear about this. The ones that left a cloud at 90,000 were driven by women who took them to work and the grocery store. The ones that needed new engines every week were the modified ones. Normally manufactures should "underpower" an engine relative to its full potential not be at the limit. A good example of this is Audi and its ability to get 1600 horsepower out of an engine that was made for 240(5 cylinder) in the 80's and still last a whole race. Thats quite a larger gap than going from around 200 to 400. Jap cars are typically made like this with the "enough to get by" attitude but once asked for more usually fail. At least he ran from it anyhow.

I think everyone has raised valid points.

Like I said before, bang for the buck (when it was new in the early 90s) it was a good car.

A 10 year old car (especially a domestic) is always a dubious purchase unless you know the exact history and get a thorough inspection. Every manufacturer (model) has the odd lemon because it's just statistics. It's how many and if your car is the lemon of the group.

I don't think it's fair to compare a Chyrsler / Mitsu engine to an Audi as the original prices are quite different.

Happy hunting.

I'm not disagreeing with you in regards to the oil burning issue in stock form. I simply believe that the problem is being blown out of porportion. As stated before, this problem is due to the valve stem seals getting brittle and failing. The fix is to replace the seals. With Mitsubishi engines, this is a very cheap (under $10 in parts), and relatively easy fix. All you need is a valve spring compressor, ($20 tool), and either an air compressor, or length of light duty rope to shove into the spark plug hole, so you can hold the pistons in place. Slip off the timing belt and unbolt the camshaft bearings. The job can be done in one afternoon for a novice just by following the instruction in a Haynes manual.

Upon finding it to be an automatic, I would have done the same thing - left. I don't personally like automatic transmissions. Even my MB is a 4 speed manual. I would not have bought it if it was an automatic.