When I first bought the car, nearly 9 years ago, it was a bone stock N/A 4 lug car. I bought it from a neighbor when I was 15 and was given a decent deal on it. Originally the car was a pile-it was not very well taken care of, rust was starting in the rear quarters, and there was a dent that a basketball would fit in the rear driver's quarter. Because I wanted a car that was built not bought, I did the majority of the body work and repainted it in a makeshift booth. The car looked pretty good especially for some high school kid doing the work-me. A picture of which can be seen below.
The next thing was to address the horsepower. When I was 17, I did a TII engine and tranny swap. I did multiple mods to the car and it was pretty quick, but not quick enough. I pulled the engine and tranny to do a complete build-full bridge, B.W. S462, Tial 40mm, custom SS exhaust manifold, N20 progressive injection, meth/h20 injection, etc. etc. etc. When I got the car running and going I was going to get it tuned. What I quickly found is that not many people wanted to tune the car because of all the mods done to it. I was always told it was a ticking timebomb that would most likely not make it past dyno tuning. So, instead of traveling to a reputable tuner, I said piss on it and parted it out. The picture of the engine bay can be seen below before the part out.
I decided to go with the Lsx platform because of the reliability and $$-lets face it, they're cheap. I bought the 5.3 for $250 from a local salvage yard with just under 100k on the odo. I got it home cleaned it up and decided to carb it rather than EFI. I was looking to mix the old school with new school technology. I just did a couple of mods to it, I just want to drive the car and next winter I plan to go all out and turbocharge, maybe N20, and valvetrain upgrade. As for mods now, I have an MSD 6010 ignition control, holley street avenger, edlebrock single plane intake, holley blue fuel pump, f-body exhaust manifolds and a couple of other small things. This past weekend I finally got to work on it a little bit and started it up for the first time. I will tell you what, it is like this engine just wanted to run. I pushed the start button once for maybe 1-2 seconds. The car fired right up and was driveable right then and there. I didn't have to do some dance, talke nice to the engine, crank for 20-30 seconds, etc. like I would with the rotary. As of now, the car needs new paint, I have 5 spoke sportmaxes, I have to clean the interior, build and exhaust, and hide some wires. With open manifold, this thing sounds like a beast.
