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Thread: TM's Car of the Year - 2008!!!!!

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    Bad Mother Flecker Turbo Mopar Staff fleckster's Avatar
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    TM's Car of the Year - 2008!!!!!

    Turbo Mopar's Car of the Month - April 2008
    Dave Tekampe's (Turbodave) 1985 Direct Connection Dodge Omni GLH Turbo!

    As stated by the Nominator, "This car is exceptionally well done and there is nothing else out there like it!" I think you'll agree!


    Bought the car in 2002 from a friend of a guy my brother worked with. Car was sitting next to their garage for years. I went to go look at it and figured for $300 it would be a good parts car, the DC stuff was all on it and that alone was worth the asking price. The car came home and sat behind the shed for a while until I got a chance to pull it in the garage and look it over. I was expecting the thing to be a total rot-box, the doors were rusty, the fenders were bent up and the rear hatch was rusted through. However underneath was still pretty solid, not perfect, but for an L-body in the midwest it looked pretty good.

    That started the change of heart and plans to restore it. I quickly found an 88 Horizon that a buddy had, it was a rust free car from MO, I pulled all the sheetmetal off this car and cut the floors out of it for my 86 GLHS.

    I stripped the Omni down, pulled out the locked up engine and got to talking with a co-workers husband who just happens to own a body shop. Since they had owned a 90 VNT Shadow ES for over 200k miles of it's life they had an appreciation for turbo Mopars. I dropped the omni off along with all it's new body parts and left it there for the winter. In August of 2003 I got the call that everything was ready to come home. I loaded the fully disassembled car onto the trailer towed it home and started the slow re-assembly process.



    Since the engine in the car was trashed when I got a low mileage 85 TI engine was swapped in, this engine features a ported MP head and roller cam and has about 70k on the lower end. The stock 525 was rebuilt not long before I bought the car so that was retained.



    Since the car has never been my daily transportation it's always gotten the lowest priority when it comes to working on it. So it wasn't until spring of 2006 that if finally moved under it's own power again. I put all the DC parts back on it, trying to keep it period correct for an 80's cruiser. There is still some interior work needed and some fine tuning required. But, maybe I'll actually get some miles on it this year.



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    John M. Fleck

    '83 Dodge Rampage 2.2 w/ 2.5L Turbo 14.79@94
    '87 Shelby Lancer #213 14.99@94
    '89 Chrysler LeBaron GT Turbo 'vert 15.88@92
    '92 Dodge Spirit R/T 13.50@104 ; 13.34@102 on slicks
    '98 Dodge Neon R/T 15.66@89
    '03 Dodge SRT-4 13.91@98

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