By: Rob Prince

 I purchased this car in 2000 from my boss at the shop where I worked. At the time it was powered by a 2.2L B21 with forged Arias flat top pistons, custom ported cylinder head with larger valves, dual Weber 45DCOEs, and a Stahl header. It came with a set of 17” Volvo Titan wheels. Suspension was decent — cut springs all around with custom revalved bilstein shocks. It also had IPD sway bars, 25mm front and rear. The car was equipped with a Dana clutch-type limited slip differential. It handled well, made decent power, and was quick enough to be fun. In 2002 it was dynoed on a Mustang Dyno at 136hp and 148lb-ft with a broken accelerator spring in the front carburetor. Pretty decent, but I was expecting more.

They always say a project car is never really finished, but I think mine is getting close!

I used the car for a few years for autocrossing and driving on the street occasionally. It sat around a lot, as it would not pass state inspection with the carbs, nor could I afford the insurance at the time. Then in the summer of 2003, I heard about a drift event at a local track, Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia. I decided to register for it and see what I could do. I did pretty well at the event, for having close to the least amount of horsepower. The track was too large for the car with its current power level. The next drift event was a practice held in a parking lot outside of Richmond, VA. This was November of 2003. I went to this event and did a little better, with the car being more suited to the smaller venue. I continued to drive the car occasionally, and then participated in a few more drift events in 2004. At the event at Summit Point, I was driving much better, and made it to the final group of 4, but could not finish my runs as the engine started making some terrible noises. I never investigated what it was, but decided at that time to build the blue car as my drift car. This was a good idea, I believe, but also took quite some time to come to fruition. I spoke with a friend about doing a roll cage for it, and he said it would be no problem. I began working on the car, stripping the interior and getting as much junk out of it as I could. I trailered it up to Hagerstown, MD, where Travis of SVR would be putting the roll cage in.

After dropping it off with Travis, I got to work on ordering parts. I collected quite a bit of stuff, including a Mustang T5 transmission and a bellhousing adapter from VPerformance. I got a clutch from clutchnet.com to fit the swap. I also picked up a Proturbo manifold from the group buy organized by Dave Barton. My biggest purchase was a Garrett GT2871R turbo from ATP Turbo. It is a dual ball bearing with the upgraded 4” compressor inlet. It seemed like the best of the GT series to fit my engine and performance needs. Spool should be decent with the ball bearings and the Proturbo manifold, and peak power should be excellent. While I was busy collecting parts, the roll cage production was moving along very slowly. It obviously takes a long time to build a roll cage, and this one was no exception. While building the cage, Travis was also making the downpipe and exhaust, as well as welding up the piping for the Tial 38mm external wastegate. A lot of work had to be done.

I finally picked the car up from Travis on Dec. 3rd, 2005. I was excited to get it back and start finishing the car up. First on the agenda was supposed to be body work. But I soon heard of the first drift practice event, which was to be held on Feb. 18th at VIR. The goal was changed from getting body work done first, to working on the mechanicals. The engine and transmission came out, and were parted out. The engine bay was cleaned up and painted, and in went the B230FT. This engine was a 94 L block, with the desirable piston oil squirters. I changed nothing with the bottom end, except for a custom oil pan built by Mike Perry. The cylinder head was a 530 casting, with port and polish work done by myself, and stock valves, but using comp cams springs for the extended higher-rpm use this engine was to see. I also purchased an IPD turbo cam and tossed that in as well. The intake manifold was port matched, and it had custom intercooler piping built by Travis (SVR) as well, used to fit to the generic eBay intercooler.

As for suspension, I used the IPD bars that were already on the car, but switched just about everything else. I installed a welded differential and 325-lb rear stock car springs, with adjustable perches. I used the revalved Bilsteins that were on the car already in the rear. For the front, I had picked up a set of ITB-spec struts which had shortened tubes with Koni double-adjustable inserts. I am using 500 lb/in Eibach springs with the Konis. I also got a set of Group-A style camber plates and a SAM strut tower brace which had been on my Bertone, and after performing the alignment, was ready to roll.

Once I got the car running on Megasquirt and Spark with the extra code(MSnS-e), it was time for some tuning. The hardest part is getting the car started and idling the first time, but since I had experience with that from my Bertone, it was much easier on this car. I did a bunch of driving around and tuning on the street to get it dialed in. The car was really fun to drive, and I was pleased that the turbo did spool very quickly. Using the spring that came in the Tial wastegate, I was running just under 10psi of boost. It felt very quick, and full boost was achieved under 3000 rpms. After a week of driving like this, I upped the boost to 15 psi, and did some more tuning runs. Fortunately, I had guesstimated the map on the rich side, so it was safe at that boost level, with no pinging. As we adjusted the maps and watched the air/fuel ratio move from 10:1 towards 12:1, the car got faster and faster. We were both amazed at the difference that 2 points of AFR could make. After settling on a safe tune, I felt the car was ready for the track. I installed the 2 sparco seats, and both harnesses, and cleaned up some of the wiring mess.

I purchased a set of Kodiak Racing wheels for the car — 17×8” front, and 17×9.5” rear. I also picked up a set of SVR adapters to mount the S60R calipers on the front. This is a nice setup, as the wheels are very light, and the new brakes slow the car down nicely. They work well with the grippy Falken tires and stiff suspension.

I had painted the car flat black so the car would look halfway decent for some drift events, but of course all that had to come off when it was time for the real paint job. That was a lot of work, doing all the sanding and filler. Not something I enjoyed very much, to say the least. I spent quite a bit of time on that aspect, but the results aren’t so great. Guess I should stick to mechanical stuff and driving! The paint was mixed and sprayed by Mike Perry, and he also helped wet sand it after it had been on the car for a few months. I wanted to keep the car blue, and I was very pleased with the way the paint job came out. I added a trunk lid from a later model 240 so I could fit the 850R spoiler that I had purchased. I’m still torn whether the car looks better with or without the spoiler.

At the SE 5.0 meet in Alabama, the engine dynoed 255 whp and 280 wtq. Later that day I spun a rod bearing in the B230FT bottom end. We patched it back up, but I was ready to make the engine more stout! A built bottom end went in the car over the Winter 06-07 which had been built by John VanLandingham. Forged CP pistons, with forged rods from an AMC eagle. I upped the boost to 25psi at SE 6.0 in the fall of 2007, and dynoed 280whp and 305 wtq, in a dyno room that was 114 degrees F!!! It felt much faster, of course, but I had to wait for cooler weather back home to find out what it could really do. On 255 width street tires, I ran a 12.5 @ 116 in the quarter mile. Once I installed a set of Mickey Thompson ET Drag slicks, that dropped to a 11.8 @ 114 mph! It was so much fun to drive at that point, and kind of hairy to drive on the street.

In 2008, the car got the R spoiler installed, as well as a new engine wiring harness for the Megasquirt. The old one had some issues, as it was recycled from another car and installed on mine. I also installed a factory Dana clutch-type LSD in the rear diff, as the welded diff had caused an axle to break. I figured the clutch-type would be easier on the rest of the car, even though they are known to be pretty weak. It hasn’t exploded yet though! The biggest addition for 2008 was a new 531 cylinder head from Erland Cox, which has larger valves, a bunch of port work, and a crazy camshaft installed. I got the head just in time for SE 7.0 in October, and got it installed and street-tuned just before the meet. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to have it dynoed down there, so I am not sure how much the new head and cam have helped. It’s nice being able to rev the engine out to 7500 rpms though! And then the first week of this year I had a bottom end failure that took out pretty much everything! So now I am in the process of gathering new parts to build a new bottom end. It seems the cylinder head made it out ok, as did the turbo. So hopefully it will be back together and running soon, so I can get back to the drag strip, and more importantly, back out drifting! It has been a while since I have done any events, and hopefully that will change this year.

All in all, it has been a ton of work, and I’ve had a lot of help from many turbobricks members throughout the years. They always say a project car is never really finished, but I think mine is getting close!

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 9:05 am and is filed under CAR FEATURE, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.