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So I've had this car sitting around for ten years in various states of disrepair... it's a 1986 Ford Laser TX3 front wheel drive turbo. It's the black and grey one closest to the camera, if you couldn't tell Used it as a thrash hack for the first couple of years, then my old man drove it daily to work and back for another couple of years, then it blew the headgasket and sat outside my house as parts storage until 2007 when I got the stupid idea of turning it into a fun trackday car after buying an Infini parts car from The Alien Probe (Paul) which came with a bunch of go-faster goodies. Unfortunately I kept blowing up engines, whether through sheer bad luck (distributor advance mechanism snapping mid-race, resulting in SUPREME MAX ADVANCE and two melted pistons) or plain maliciousness (a "prank" involving grinding swarf in the head), so the car has actually spent more time off the road than on it. Still had enough power to do this to one of my semi slicks though But the few times I've managed to take it for a strop around the track or on the street without dying, it's never failed to leave me grinning with a massive adrenaline rush every time After the last engine blew up (the swarf incident) I had the car towed back to Auckland and it has sat in the back of various sheds and lockups and the garage at my new place for the last three years more or less as a bare rolling shell while I pissed around with other projects. But finally after buying another B6T engine and a host of other bits last year I decided to get it running again (this year's OS Nats trackday served as inspiration), and the perfect opportunity to set myself a firm deadline to get the car running arose when my mate decided to book Taupo for a private event on the 25th of July (this week!) So over the last five or so weeks I've managed to transform the car from a shell back into a running beast once again, and being able to work in my own shed at my own house at my own pace has been the best part of the exercise so far. A quick rundown of specs for anyone who's interested: Engine is a standard B6T 1600 DOHC turbo. Previous engines have had mild cams and a nicer flowing head courtesy of the parts car I bought, but I have my suspicions that the swarf incident has since rendered both the head and cams useless Gearbox is a factory Mazdaspeed viscous LSD (one of the reasons I bought Paul's Infini), with a heavy duty Exedy clutch. Steering is an Infini non-powered "quick-rack" - this was something I actually bought and installed recently after months of searching. Bolt on upgrades: VF10 hybrid turbo with a custom downpipe, a larger throttle body, Lancer GSR 390cc injectors, Walbro in-tank pump, a BA Falcon bar and plate intercooler, and Sentradave's old PWR race radiator from his BFMR. Engine management is handled by an old Link G1 ECU. It's like the early 2000s all over again! It was running a set of coilovers from a guy in Christchurch who used to race one around Ruapuna, but due to WOF constraints I took them out and reinstalled standard struts with added camber adjust. There's also some strut braces, an upgraded swaybar, a couple of lower chassis braces that contact the road any chance they get... and 265mm slotted front rotors fitted with later model GT-X calipers help to slow it down. Interior has been stripped out, there's a dashboard, a centre console and a pair of factory bucket seats up front but that's more or less it. I got rid of the TX3 door cards that weighed 3kg each and put in some flat vinyl poverty spec ones instead. There are plans to remove all the sound deadening but I first need to get super drunk and/or super motivated before that happens. Also have some gauges that are probably worth more than the shell: Managed to get it all assembled, WOF'd and running by the start of this month, and by coincidence I'd been informed by Uterus/Simon that Paul had started tuning cars again, so I gave him a call and we set about fixing the base tune the Link had been loaded with. I guess you could say he was surprised that I still had most of his old gear and hadn't thrown it all away (yeah, I'm a hoarder...) This weekend just been we completed the final tune on JP's dyno in Hamilton, another old acquaintance of mine whom Paul also knows (small world!) Final result - 143kW at 20psi. There is definitely room for improvement - some larger injectors (550cc) and a larger diameter exhaust (3") will see numbers up around 160kW, and if I upgrade the turbo perhaps even more. ...but I think I should really call it a day at this point, enjoy whatever power I have on tap, and save the upgrades for a later stage once I've had a chance to work on the little grey Skyline that silently mocks me every time I'm working on something else in the shed... For the lols: