My goal is to have a totally streetable, fast, reliable truck that I can drive daily. I'm not going to go with anything larger than a 16g since I value quick spool and a big power curve over peak power. The tranny will like it better too. The truck I picked up from a buddy is already black and I'm thinking about just repainting it satin black. Here's the truck...

The truck is a 95' with only 120,000 on it. the bad news is it got hit in the rear end so I have to do some body work or just find a new bed since I will be painting it anyway.
The engine I'm working on was out of my 1990 talon tsi awd. I had this car for about seven years and it was begining to feel its age. I just wasn't feeling the love for the DSM chasis anymore. But I did love that motor so I decided to find it a new home and I wanted a unique sleeper with some utility. My daily driver is a 350z and I can't stand the fact that I can't put anything in it like a bike. Anyways, got the truck and now the motor needs to come out of the car. Time for some transplant surgery.

By by car...I was sad to see it go but I knew the motor it will have a better life in the new truck...What you need rolling away is just the shell. I got the engine, AWD tranny, wiring harness, ECU, black leather seats, and exhaust out of it before hand.

Once the engine came out, I noticed just a few things like an oil leak that was so bad for so long that it was forming stalagtites on my engine block...

Getting everything ready for the machine shop was a biatch. I went though a TON of degreaser and once the engine went finally got to the shop, he went though another ton of degreaser. Did I mention it was greasy? I did find some interesting stuff too...

^I have no idea what that originally was but I'm glad there is a screen!
I took the shortblock down to the machine shop for a rebuild. I was curious to what the head looked like so I disassembled it and it wasn't in the best shape...

The machinist told me the head spent 2 days in the solvent tank and he still had to ship out all the crap that was built up in the ports. I also had two bent valves and very leaky valve seals. This starts to explain why the car started to feel slower over the years... I got the engine back and here is what the head looks like now...

Completely rebuilt and just waiting on a few parts to arrive. In the meantime I've been fixing somethings that I don't like...


The CAS sensor wires have been sitting in a oil leak for a long time and the wires are exposed. I want to do this swap right and I don't want to take any half-ass, good enough aproaches so I decided to do some resoldiering because I don't trust the connections anymore... It went from this...
(notice the exposed and corroded wires) to this...
I sealed it up right with some good good quality electronic potting material. Should seal as well as the original.
That's it for now. I'm having a lot of fun driving the truck as it is. Next weekend I plan on either mounting the tranny up to the engine or go junkyard hunting for a new shortbox. Let me know what you guys think.















































