A little background info first off. I got this base model 86 FC about 10 years ago for basically free! Did some work for my Uncle who in turn had done some work for someone else who had a lot of cars sitting on his property. Well come to find out he had several FC's and we pulled 3 out. One for myself, one for my cousin and a donor car, all base models. My cousin decided to rebuild and stay N/A just wanted a daily driver. Me on the otherhand always having a "race car" decided that I wanted to build a TII. So backstory completed I bought an 88' TII engine and tranny, rear subframe and front spindles swapped everything into the car and life happened. I was in collage at night working full time, Got married moved 4 times had a kid and finally recently decided it was time to get the project back on track. Car has been sitting for about 7 years untouched. I got it moved from my Uncle's house 2 years ago to my current location 2 hrs away, and it sat at my father in law's shop 15 min away for the rest of the time. OK back on track I said I am moving it to my garage so I can at least make slow progress when I have time.

A little background on myself I am from Ste. Genevieve, MO and I currently live in Chatham, IL, which is near Springfiled, IL. I used to be a DSM owner, had a 90' GSX 25 psi of boost. Worked as a mechanic in a tuner shop and always loved the 7's. Finally got this and never had time to work on it. Bought an 8 and had that for a few years until I moved from MO to IL then got a truck and had a family. Now that I have a decent job, I currently am in IT, and have a little bit of free time I decided it was time to have another sports car to play with and low and behold I already owned one. She needs a lot of work but I will be putting in the time and I am not rushing it. I don't need this car so I can just take my time and do everything right and make it the way I want it. I plan to do some customizing and paint and stuff I have never done before so this should be a fun project!

Finally home after barely seeing her for 7 years!

 

An update. I don't know why I did half the stuff I did when I started the swap in this car. Looking into it I made some poor decisions. 1st off I swapped in a TII EM harness in so now I get the fun of figuring out all of the differences in the wiring which doesnt seem like a bit deal but I still have to fix it all. Also why did I not just fix all the issues and delete all the unnecessary stuff when I had the engine removed from the car. Step 1 now is going to be to pull the turbo and port the waste gate to prevent boost creep and start working on a v-mount IC setup. Also I need to clean everything after sitting this thing is a mess! Emissions and rats nest have been removed originally but I have to go through and make sure I did all that right 7 years ago!

Turbo out!


This thing is a mess! But no play at all super stoked about that!




Starting to pull the exhaust side off!

 

I am used to big boost numbers so it is going to be difficult for me to resist putting that into this car but I am realistically looking to keep it no more than 10 to 12 psi in the long run. I want the car to be fun but not become a money pit like my DSM was. Not that 7's are known for reliability but I just want a mild fun sports car to drive.

 

7's CAN be reliable, its ALL ABOUT THE TUNE

Everyone slapped stuff on them back in the day to MAKE MO POWA and they blew them up quickly because of detonation, so they got a bad rep. I've been driving mine for 3 summers in a row, all I've done is oil changes

 

I know they can be I had an 8 for years as my only car and I just made sure to change the oil and flushed the coolant a few times. Never had any issues with that car and it was a blast to drive. I was just making a point that I was not going to get crazy and try to build a 400 HP car or anything like that. I am not a 20 year old that just wants to go fast anymore. Plus over the years I have learned to enjoy driving not just to make the fastest car possible.

 

Just an update I got the exhaust side off the turbo so it's time for some porting and then cleanup of all the lines and compressor housing after that.

 

Cleaned up the compressor housing while waiting on pay day need to pick up a die grinder to start porting the wastegate and get my power ran for my welder then we will be in business! Oh and digging through my stuff I found the N/A harness so now I can just swap harnesses and lenthen the BAC and TPS wires and I'm in good shape.

 

Should just have sandblasted that housing. Save some time lol.

But if you're going for the polished look then good job.


Anywho, car looks dirty, but should be a good build. I love the manual rack. Cleans up the bay like woah compared to a power rack.


Good luck on the build.


-Nick

 

Actually painted the compressor housing black and getting ready to do the UIM as well. I will post some pics soon.

 

Compressor housing done and a little cleanup! These 30 year old parts can be pretty hard to get rust off of. Porting the wastegate is still in the process I need to get my valve so I can get measurements and determine how much to port out.

 

Not a lot has been going on recently I have been doing some wiring work on the EM harness because I have quite a few plugs that are crumbling apart or missing. I an also working on some solutions for interior parts that are gone or have just desntegraded from age as I have access to a 3D printer I am trying to custom build a few items that I need for my dash. I am also working out how I want to handle the rest of my interior as I am only going to be driving this car for fun. I am thinking of going race style and just having the dash and seats as the only thing in the interior of the car. I am debating about carpet but I don't really see a need for it other than heat and noise reduction but I am not too concerned with that as I don't even have AC in the car any longer. Also I have aquired a few new toys into my arsenal as I needed to do some rust repairs on my truck I bought a new tig welder/plasma cutter and a few new air tools as well so now I can really do some of the cusomization that I really had in mind origianally with this car. I will be fabing up a v-mount setup and I am going to do a custom hood for that setup as well.

 

Shoot, It's been 7 years! Forget about the interior for now and get it running Have you rotated the engine by hand lately?

 

what's your plans for the car - just a fun weekend street machine?

 

I have rotated it by hand and it is giving good pulses so I think the compression is going to be ok and nothing is siezed up. My plans for the car were going to be straight track car but now I want to make it streetable. I don't have to worry about emmissions where I live so for now I just want to get it up and running then start doing the other stuff after that. My dream is to basically have a streetable track car to play with on the weekends.