EagleTalon.net - Building a RWD Eagle Talon Drag Car
Nine Months of Dust

Removing Old Components


There was a lot of stuff in the car that needed to be removed. Most of it was originally permanent. Back in 2001, my father and I installed a mild steel roll cage - it was a five-point, and was pretty beastly. The cage rested on top of the stock factory equivalent to what you'd consider to be the crossmember on a car with a frame. In the Talon, it's the front most part of the rear seat. In any case, this part (and the rollcage, because it was mounted there) had to be removed in order to install the new rear frame. The other thing that had to be removed was the floorpan - I don't know about you, but I had never removed a floorpan from a unibody car before. So, how would I go about doing that? Saw-zall. :-) It worked great. I purchased a saw-zall a few years ago for various Talon projects, and it totally fit the bill. I also had an angle grinder and some cutting discs for it that worked where I couldn't put the Saw-zall. In any case, I went to town tearing both the rollcage, and the floorpan out of the rear part of the car.

It was a very good learning experience. Now I know why these cars weigh what they do from the factory (they're 3100-ish pounds) - there are layers upon layers of steel in the car that I didn't know about. Everything was spot welded - everywhere. It took a long time to really get the ass end of the car cleaned up to the point where it was just down to some framerail, and a little bit of floorpan welded to the framerails. When that happened, though, then it hit me. This frame is holding *everthing* up. Cutting the frame out would severely compromise the rest of the rear end of the car. So, how would I support the ass end in multiple locations while this thing was being disassembled?

Well, that roll cage really came in handy. I took the cage, welded it back in the car about a foot forward of the location it was in, and then triangulated everything in the back of the car to the cage to support everything. Yes, it sounds ghetto. Yes, it worked very well, so shaddup ;-) I don't see *you* building a rear drive :-o Once I was sufficiently satisfied with the bracing in the back of the Talon, I cut the frame out from under the new angle iron jungle gym. The frame came out easily, and without incident. Cake, right?