Tiny bubbles have come to make their home in my coolant overflow bottle.

More information tomorrow.

Well, cylinder compression goes something like this:

1-4: 150, 148, 149, 151

I'm planning on doing a leakdown test next weekend.

The car is overheating after driving on the highway for about 25 miles. It seems to be pushing coolant out of the overflow and then overheating due to lack of coolant, but I'm not sure. I tried taking out the thermostat and saw almost no improvement. Putting in the radiator I got from Travis improved the situation enough such that I could drive 50 miles before it started overheating.

I figured I'd try taking out the thermostat again, since the temperature guage kind of kept bouncing around after I swapped radiators. I also tried to drive her a little harder than just running down the highway at a constant speed. About 3/4 of a mile from my house, smoke started billowing out of the back of the car NASCAR-style. I pulled over to see what I blew up, and was somewhat scared to see the turbo covered in oil and some tiny flames that quickly went out on their own.

Not really wanting to touch the hot turbo, I had a certain Chevy Celebrity stop by and give the Talon some 'assistance' in getting home. While waiting for the Talon to cool off, my dad and I did the one productive thing of the day. We fixed the A/C on the Buick. MMM, comfort.

As soon as I yanked the top heat shield off of the exhaust manifold, I saw that the stud that holds the manifold on that goes through the oil passage was missing. Guess that's what I get for holding off on replacing my exhaust studs. I yanked the exhaust manifold off to replace the stud and found a little prize waiting for me inside. There was a twisted piece of metal inside the manifold, picture a twisted-up 1-piece rod bearing. This thing(perhaps a gasket that goes in between the manifold and turbo?) was sitting in my turbo's exhaust housing restricting the crap out of the flow, possibly even causing the overheating issue. I didn't have enough time to drive it 50 miles and find out though.

Yes, that twisted ring you found is the manifold to turbo housing alignment ring that the factory used. Hopefully the removal of that debris will cure your problems. It should definitely run faster!

If you wanna read the whole thread it has some interesting trouble shooting ideas but in my case when it was doing this it WAS the hhttp://www.dsmtalk.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=87626ead gasket
Good luck Eric

Well, I borrowed my Uncle's electronic SnapOn 'Techwrench' and retorqued my headbolts last night. Some of them were as low as 54 ft-lbs. I torqued them to 74 ft-lbs, dumped in some Moroso Ceramic sealer. It seems to be fine now. I drove about 60 miles without any overheating problems. A couple of the manifold to turbo bolts broke loose and caused a bunch of noise, but those are better now

Anyway, I noticed an oil leak when I got back. Ummm, why is the drain plug to the transfer case missing?

So, does anyone know the size and thread-pitch of this puppy?

Or, does anyone have one handy off of a locked up transfer case or bad tranny?

no clue on size, but pitch is mos def 1.5 ALL mitsu threads that I've seen are 1.5 . I believe that a new one from the dealership is not expensive.

Yeah, I found out its an M18 1.50 pitch. CarQuest in Quincy had one in stock, put it on the car, and now the Talon is here in Urbana again.