By XR4Tim - Sat Aug 06, 2022 1:00 am
- Sat Aug 06, 2022 1:00 am
#164638
Some time in 1996, I saw a GMC Typhoon for sale in duPont Registry, and thought it was the coolest thing ever. The more I read about it, the more I liked it. A turbocharged, AWD Jimmy that was quicker than most exotic cars! I already liked the Taurus SHO, but this was a whole new level of sleeper. I was only 13 at the time, so buying one was not a possibility.
When I was 19 and had a job, I saw a Forest Green/Argent Grey '93 Typhoon with 36k miles for sale on eBay, and as luck would have it, the vehicle was located in Anchorage, Alaska, only about 15 miles from me. I went to look at it, and decided that I had to have it. Unfortunately, I didn't have much savings and had absolutely no credit. It wasn't meant to be. But it instilled in me a (foolish) sense of urgency to get a Typhoon as quickly as possible, while there were still low-mileage trucks to be had. Someone on the Syclone & Typhoon forum counseled me to not purchase a Typhoon until I could pay for it with cash, and said that there would always be low-mileage Typhoons available. I ignored this counsel.
Two years later, I had good enough credit to get a loan for a Typhoon, provided I could sell the Saab that I was driving. I found a couple that wanted to buy my Saab, so I asked them to give me ten days to find my next vehicle before we did the transaction and they agreed. I found a Gloss Black/Argent Grey '92 Typhoon with 44k miles, and agreed with the seller on $12,000.00. I arranged the financing, and then the seller called me to say that someone else offered $14k, but if I'd match that, he'd still sell it to me. I got a bad feeling about the whole deal and told him I'd pass. I found out later that there was no other buyer.
I knew of another Typhoon that was for sale locally. It was a heavily-modified one, which actually held the record for quickest Typhoon in the 1/4 mile at the time (11.19 @ 120.59 MPH). It was originally Royal Blue/Argent Grey, but had been repainted Radar Blue (a GM test colour that appeared on two factory Typhoons, but later went on to be used on the '94 Jimmy, and '96 Corvette Indy pace car). This Typhoon only had 43k miles, but obviously they weren't all gentle miles. I met with the owner, and he agreed to sell me the truck. It was a little more than the other Typhoon I was looking at, but he agreed to owner-finance the remaining $2,000.00 above what the credit union approved.
I called the couple who was buying my Saab, and they informed me that due to a job loss, they could no longer buy my car.
Now I had around $700.00/month in car payments, $900.00/month in insurance, and was making $9.50 an hour. It was rough, but I was 21 and had a 660 horsepower Typhoon.
It turns out that heavily modified vehicles often need special attention. It was tuned for race gas, but with the boost turned all the way down, it did fine on 92 octane. And then Chevron stopped selling 92 in Alaska. I ended up carrying a 5 gallon can of Xylene and a funnel everywhere so I could blend it with 90 octane gas when I filled up. Something broke about every thousand miles, but thankfully nothing too expensive at first. Eventually, I totalled the Saab, and my insurance took care of that loan. It gave me a little financial breathing room, but now the Typhoon was my daily driver. In Alaska. And it was Winter. And then I lost my job. I had already swapped the drag radials out for all-season tires, so that was something.
When I moved to Michigan that December, the plan was to drive the Typhoon down with my roommate. On the Alaska highway, about 30 miles short of the Canadan border, I caught a faint smell of something burning followed by the engine shutting off. It wouldn't restart. I swapped the distributor cap & rotor on the side of the road in the dark, but it didn't help.
I was able to get it towed 60 miles back to the village of Tok, where we got a hotel room for the night. The next morning, I tried to do some troubleshooting. Unfortunately, it was -20°F, and windy. I mean 80 MPH gusts of wind. I have never been so cold in my life. I would spend about three minutes testing something, and then run back into the tow truck driver's shop to warm up. At one point the wind blew the hood shut on my hand. I pulled the ECM and figured that maybe the injector drivers overheated and failed. I had some spares, so I made my way to the Napa Auto Parts and bought a $5.00 soldering iron, and swapped in the new injector drivers. It still wouldn't start, and I was out of ideas (and money). We got a motel room across the street and my roommate made arrangements for his dad to pick us up the next day, which was Christmas Eve.
My roommate's dad showed up with a car trailer, and we pushed the Typhoon from the tow driver's trailer to the other trailer (quite precariously), and he drove us the 350 miles back to his house. Christmas morning, we unloaded the Typhoon at my parents' house and made our way to the airport to fly to Michigan.
In Michigan, with very little income, struggling to pay rent, I fell behind on payments to the previous owner of the truck, and to the credit union. We got evicted from our apartment for late rent payments, and I ended up moving back to Alaska after a brief stint of homelessness.
Back at my parents' house, I was able to look at the Typhoon in more accommodating conditions than the windstorm in Tok, and confirmed that the injector drivers had failed, but they burned the board on the ECM when they went. I got a replacement ECM from a local Syclone owner, and then had someone more talented than me solder new low-impedence injector drivers in. The Typhoon was back to running great!
Not too long after, I decided to take the Typhoon out to where the Anchorage delinquents meet to street race. I had been away for a year, and didn't really know anybody in the scene. I was following a group of cars on a four-lane section of road, and then noticed everybody slowing down and getting behind me. In the lane to my left, a BMW M5 (E60) pulled up next to me and floored it. I hit the gas, too, but the truck started misfiring, and the M5 began inching away. We got to a stop light, and when the light turned green, I did a boost launch at about 10 psi. I left the M5 a few lengths behind me, but the truck was still misfiring and getting worse. I pulled off to a gas station and could see a cloud of white smoke behind me. The left head gasket was blown and the #3 cylinder was just burning coolant.
It took me a long time to get both the time and money to start repairing it. I reprioritized some things, tracked down the previous owner, with whom I had lost contact, and paid him everything I still owed him. Bought a daily driver or six, started a business, got married, moved to Ohio, bought a house, and in general kept the Typhoon on the back burner. Occasionally I'd get the motivation to put some time into it, and inevitably I would find several more things that had failed due to the truck just sitting. I didn't have enough garage space, so the Typhoon sat outside. The paint took a beating.
Now I have plenty of garage space, the Typhoon sits inside, has new Cometic head gaskets, rebuilt heads, a fully rebuilt turbo, new braided steel fuel lines, and when I get the time to finish the valvetrain, it should be mechanically back to its prime. At that point I will sell it. I've owned it for 18 years, and it now has 49k miles on it. The Typhoon is still my fourth favorite vehicle ever made, but it was also a hard object lesson in bad decisions. At least I bought it when they were cheap!
When I was 19 and had a job, I saw a Forest Green/Argent Grey '93 Typhoon with 36k miles for sale on eBay, and as luck would have it, the vehicle was located in Anchorage, Alaska, only about 15 miles from me. I went to look at it, and decided that I had to have it. Unfortunately, I didn't have much savings and had absolutely no credit. It wasn't meant to be. But it instilled in me a (foolish) sense of urgency to get a Typhoon as quickly as possible, while there were still low-mileage trucks to be had. Someone on the Syclone & Typhoon forum counseled me to not purchase a Typhoon until I could pay for it with cash, and said that there would always be low-mileage Typhoons available. I ignored this counsel.
Two years later, I had good enough credit to get a loan for a Typhoon, provided I could sell the Saab that I was driving. I found a couple that wanted to buy my Saab, so I asked them to give me ten days to find my next vehicle before we did the transaction and they agreed. I found a Gloss Black/Argent Grey '92 Typhoon with 44k miles, and agreed with the seller on $12,000.00. I arranged the financing, and then the seller called me to say that someone else offered $14k, but if I'd match that, he'd still sell it to me. I got a bad feeling about the whole deal and told him I'd pass. I found out later that there was no other buyer.
I knew of another Typhoon that was for sale locally. It was a heavily-modified one, which actually held the record for quickest Typhoon in the 1/4 mile at the time (11.19 @ 120.59 MPH). It was originally Royal Blue/Argent Grey, but had been repainted Radar Blue (a GM test colour that appeared on two factory Typhoons, but later went on to be used on the '94 Jimmy, and '96 Corvette Indy pace car). This Typhoon only had 43k miles, but obviously they weren't all gentle miles. I met with the owner, and he agreed to sell me the truck. It was a little more than the other Typhoon I was looking at, but he agreed to owner-finance the remaining $2,000.00 above what the credit union approved.
I called the couple who was buying my Saab, and they informed me that due to a job loss, they could no longer buy my car.
Now I had around $700.00/month in car payments, $900.00/month in insurance, and was making $9.50 an hour. It was rough, but I was 21 and had a 660 horsepower Typhoon.
It turns out that heavily modified vehicles often need special attention. It was tuned for race gas, but with the boost turned all the way down, it did fine on 92 octane. And then Chevron stopped selling 92 in Alaska. I ended up carrying a 5 gallon can of Xylene and a funnel everywhere so I could blend it with 90 octane gas when I filled up. Something broke about every thousand miles, but thankfully nothing too expensive at first. Eventually, I totalled the Saab, and my insurance took care of that loan. It gave me a little financial breathing room, but now the Typhoon was my daily driver. In Alaska. And it was Winter. And then I lost my job. I had already swapped the drag radials out for all-season tires, so that was something.
When I moved to Michigan that December, the plan was to drive the Typhoon down with my roommate. On the Alaska highway, about 30 miles short of the Canadan border, I caught a faint smell of something burning followed by the engine shutting off. It wouldn't restart. I swapped the distributor cap & rotor on the side of the road in the dark, but it didn't help.
I was able to get it towed 60 miles back to the village of Tok, where we got a hotel room for the night. The next morning, I tried to do some troubleshooting. Unfortunately, it was -20°F, and windy. I mean 80 MPH gusts of wind. I have never been so cold in my life. I would spend about three minutes testing something, and then run back into the tow truck driver's shop to warm up. At one point the wind blew the hood shut on my hand. I pulled the ECM and figured that maybe the injector drivers overheated and failed. I had some spares, so I made my way to the Napa Auto Parts and bought a $5.00 soldering iron, and swapped in the new injector drivers. It still wouldn't start, and I was out of ideas (and money). We got a motel room across the street and my roommate made arrangements for his dad to pick us up the next day, which was Christmas Eve.
My roommate's dad showed up with a car trailer, and we pushed the Typhoon from the tow driver's trailer to the other trailer (quite precariously), and he drove us the 350 miles back to his house. Christmas morning, we unloaded the Typhoon at my parents' house and made our way to the airport to fly to Michigan.
In Michigan, with very little income, struggling to pay rent, I fell behind on payments to the previous owner of the truck, and to the credit union. We got evicted from our apartment for late rent payments, and I ended up moving back to Alaska after a brief stint of homelessness.
Back at my parents' house, I was able to look at the Typhoon in more accommodating conditions than the windstorm in Tok, and confirmed that the injector drivers had failed, but they burned the board on the ECM when they went. I got a replacement ECM from a local Syclone owner, and then had someone more talented than me solder new low-impedence injector drivers in. The Typhoon was back to running great!
Not too long after, I decided to take the Typhoon out to where the Anchorage delinquents meet to street race. I had been away for a year, and didn't really know anybody in the scene. I was following a group of cars on a four-lane section of road, and then noticed everybody slowing down and getting behind me. In the lane to my left, a BMW M5 (E60) pulled up next to me and floored it. I hit the gas, too, but the truck started misfiring, and the M5 began inching away. We got to a stop light, and when the light turned green, I did a boost launch at about 10 psi. I left the M5 a few lengths behind me, but the truck was still misfiring and getting worse. I pulled off to a gas station and could see a cloud of white smoke behind me. The left head gasket was blown and the #3 cylinder was just burning coolant.
It took me a long time to get both the time and money to start repairing it. I reprioritized some things, tracked down the previous owner, with whom I had lost contact, and paid him everything I still owed him. Bought a daily driver or six, started a business, got married, moved to Ohio, bought a house, and in general kept the Typhoon on the back burner. Occasionally I'd get the motivation to put some time into it, and inevitably I would find several more things that had failed due to the truck just sitting. I didn't have enough garage space, so the Typhoon sat outside. The paint took a beating.
Now I have plenty of garage space, the Typhoon sits inside, has new Cometic head gaskets, rebuilt heads, a fully rebuilt turbo, new braided steel fuel lines, and when I get the time to finish the valvetrain, it should be mechanically back to its prime. At that point I will sell it. I've owned it for 18 years, and it now has 49k miles on it. The Typhoon is still my fourth favorite vehicle ever made, but it was also a hard object lesson in bad decisions. At least I bought it when they were cheap!