Finally in my garage!! (lots of pics, long post)

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PTAaron

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Okay, I'm sure no one here knows the story - so I'll tell it as briefly as possible, then we can get on to why I'm all excited :D
About 2 years ago I had a really fun project car - a Merkur XR4Ti that I had done a ton of work to. I have a whole site about it here: http://ptaaron.com/merkur/myxr.html ... but for sake of keeping the story quick it looked like this:
finished2.jpg


ir1.jpg


engine-front.jpg


gauges.jpg


So... it was a pretty fun car, it was fast, and it looked nice. Well 2 years ago I was out driving it and the hood popped open at about 55mph ... thats not a good thing to have happen. Smashed my windshield, bent the roof, wrecked the hood. At that point in time I didn't have the cash to invest in body work - plus the car needed a new clutch and the transmission was in need of some work - it was just too much for my to keep it.
Here are some pics (www.ptaaron.com/hood/):
side2.jpg

bustedxr3.jpg
(this is after removing the gauges and stereo, so it looks kinda bare in there)

All of the people in my car club were disappointed to see it go because the interior was one of the nicest around, and it was just a beautiful car. I sold it to a guy in the club who had a car with a nice body from hawaii, but a bad engine... He swapped in my engine and transmission along with my interior then he offered to sell it back to me for less than he paid me for it at that point - but I had already put the money towards my mortgage, so I couldn't buy it. He ended up selling to someone else... 6 months ago I bought the car from the other owner, but there was something wrong with the transmission - and for the past 6 months we have been messing with it trying to get it right finally. Well - it still isn't right even with a different trans in it (second gear has bad synchros now) - but it is driveable finally! And finally - here are some pics of the car that is now in my garage!
http://www.ptaaron.com/newXR/

P4253320.jpg


P4253325.jpg


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P4253327.jpg


So... as you can see the first thing I need to do is get rid of that giant tachometer on the dash - it looks ridiculous! I am actually going to take the 2 gauges under the tach and make a new panel for them in the center console, so it will look nice and clean. I also need to put the intercooler back on - and strip the yellow paint off the upper intake, because that also looks ridiculous. Also, the trans shop put the exuast back on wrong - so it hangs out about 3" further than it should (it was custom built on my car, so it doesn't fit this one quite the same) so I need to trim off a few inches of pipe. And finally - in the first picture of my old car, notice those nice clean headlights? Those are from the european version of the car - those headlights are in the trunk of this car... so I will need to do a headlight conversion - then the car will be beautiful again!

Long post - but I'm excited... just had to share!
 
PT, are you sure this wasn't something from 1987? I haven't seen one of those cars in years. This brings back memories from school days (and some nasty chic i knew who had one).
 
It is an 85 body, 89 engine, 87 wheels :)
They made them from 85-89 in the US.
 
Obviously everyone is very excited for me, I can tell by the flood of responses! So I thought I would give a little update on the car:
Today I went to install the intercooler - for those who don't know, take a look at the 3rd picture down, those pipes in there take the air from the turbo down to something that is like a radiator to cool the air down before it goes into the engine. Compare that picture to the last picture, and you can see what needs to be done :)
Anyway, I was all excited about it because with the intercooler comes the blow off valve - that is the valve that vents off the extra boost from the turbo when you let off the gas... that is what makes the "PSSSHHHHHH" noise that you hear coming from turbo cars when they shift (like in fast and the furious).
I got started on installing it - and after putting on the first pieces and rerouting some vacuum lines I discovered that one of the big pieces of hose along with 2 clamps were missing! Well I didn't feel like taking things back apart, so I got really creative with my piping and this is what I ended up doing:

inter-not-cooler.jpg


I thought it was pretty funny. If you are familiar with how intercoolers and turbos work - you'll know that this is a completely ridiculous setup, because it is just going to heat the air up as it goes into the engine instead of cooling it down... but at least the car runs, and I can hear my blow off valve!
Ha!
Doesn't really matter too much, because with second gear being messed up the car isn't very much fun to drive... that and I don't have plates on it yet... oops!
 
My first car was a nissan 300zx turbo. That freaking car had everything as far as features go.

Heck all I had to do was block the blow off valve:) put a boost controller on it and a boost guage. Throw a water injection intercooler on there(used to mix some dentured alcohol in to make it even more fun). After that I just made a custom cold air intake and put some 3inch exhaust on it. Upgraded the clutch and that damn thign was amazing.

I love cars like that. One day I will buy one again and fix it all up. That car was so much fun it was unreal
 
300zx is a nice car, always wanted one.
Why would you block the blow off valve?
 
b/c when I would turn the boost up past 10psi the extra boost would go out through it. By blocking it off I could turn the boost up to 15+ psi without wasting any of the turbo
 
Hmm... thats really odd. My BOV is good to 60psi without leaking boost, I guess thats not gonna be a problem for me since I only run it at 20-22psi.
 
that's pretty sweet. The Z's stock boost was only 5psi and that added like 75hp over the non turbo charged model. When I turned it up to 15-20psi it was amazing.
 
well I got rid of that car and drive a z28 now. Not stock of course:), but with gas at 3bux a gallon I wish I had a geo
 
Yeah, no doubt. I'm going to be fixing the rear bumper on my contour svt and selling it... so I can get a saturn.
 
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