In 2014, I had acquired this car up for a decent price knowing it needed a bit of love and it had picked up a few quirks from not being driven much. Turbo leaked oil, had a wicked bad misfire once it warmed up and the engine was starting to leak in various places. But all the pieces were there and with a little TLC and a couple long weekends this car would be a sweet runner. I pulled the 2.5 T1 out of it and blew it down to the long block. Replaced the head gasket, yanked out the balance shafts (plugged the feed hole) and replaced the intermediate shaft. The intermediate shaft had broke away at the woodruff key and apparently friction kept it all from slipping. I also added an Ebay special FMIC, rebuilt the blown Mitsu turbo, swapped out injectors to address the misfire issue (injector #3 was reading 60 ohms when warm O.O) and just general clean up.

It was now ready to be my daily... smooth running, fairly reliable, cheap to insure and always made me smile when I put my right foot down. I sent my front bumper to my buddies body shop to be repaired and painted and I picked up the material to redo the sagging headliner, cosmetic touches but worth doing. I put about 500 miles on it commuting to work over the next month or so until January 2015. That is when I thought my time with this PRB Shadow had come to an end. Rear-ended by a lady texting her husband and not paying attention plowing me into the car in front of me. Fortunately, she was only going about 25 so the damage wasn't too bad to the rear, but the front met the steel bumper of a pickup and was mangled.

After weeks of dispute with her insurance co., we finally settled. I had fallen for the little red turbo turd and during the battle with GEICO, determined that I had a fairly rare P-body. I couldn't let them take it to be crushed. It was only a few days after the insurance payment that I heard the most glorious words come from my wife:

"so... it's going to be a race car now, huh?" The angels began singing and the sound of boost began wooooshing in my head!!

The mind was made up, the wife was surprisingly fine with it, and the car went under the knife!



- It has been a busy couple of years, and sadly... not car-related busy.


House was assaulted by a massive pine tree... literally smashing my master bedroom/bathroom. Fortunately, we were all at work and no one was harmed. But after 18 months of insurance shenanigans and contractor problems, the house is finally done and I can move on to the Little Red Shadow project. Two years of pulling out my hair with anticipation led to the purchase of many parts. Stay tuned to see what all is going down!!!!! This thing is going to be SICK (I hope :P)