31-10-11, 11:33 GMT+10#1
Hey guys. Been on Calais Turbo for a while now and props have to go out to everyone on here, the tech articles and advice have been critical in my build, giving me lots of inspiration. I�ve been in the process of building my VL turbo for over 2 years now, put way too much money into it as we all do, but it�s my pride and joy, and I love it. This is the second VL I have owned, should have never sold the first one, but it�s in good hands and I still see it kicking around my area looking shmick.
Anyway...
My VL started out its life as a Executive with a Berlina interior.
The exterior was a partially faded Asteroid silver with MX grey bumpers and trim. It was tidy for what it was (not that I have any photos... grrr) cause I never expected thing to change so quickly. The car has an original 179000kms. The boot lid was completely faded, bent and rusty so that was replaced and the plan was to respray the new door trims, bumpers and bootlid, making the car asteroid silver all over, but plans always change and evolve, getting you into more trouble with the other half!
The first thing I did was pull out the gross interior, it was Berlina spec but all different shades of saddletan, some had been resprayed by previous owner, to say the least, it looked like baby s**t yellow.
I decided i wanted the whole interior black, so the whole interior was stripped, replaced all the sound deadening, black carpet, black autotechnica bucket seats, black rear venetian and I remade the door trims and painted the whole dash. Long process, but well worth it, although I still haven�t put the passenger side front seat in, need to replace the hood lining, and have the rear seat retrimmed.
The paint had been put on hold while I searched ebay and CT for a turbo kit to suit, deluding myself into thinking it�d be a cheap, easy mod! HAHAHA!
As if. Bought a turbo set up off ebay, high mount manifold, T4 turbo with huge rear housing, big skyline intercooler, dumpy, turbosmart wastegate, etc, then began looking for VLT ecu and VLT injectors.
I had decided to keep the engine high comp early on and this is still the case, figured I�d rebuild the engine once it shat itself. Once I had all my gear i began putting it on. I mounted the manifold, turbo and cooler myself then I took it to my local exhaust shop to get them to make up the pipe work for it. They assured me they could do the job well and I trusted these guys, but at the end of the day, the work they did looked like a home job with creases and squeezes in the pipes and after a bill of just under a grand, I was pretty annoyed but it did the job for now. At the same time I got a 3inch system from the dumpy back with high flow cat etc, all the good stuff to make sure she flows nice.
Now began the respray, I sourced someone locally who was willing to do the whole car, body work etc for a grand, which I was very happy with and he seemed to have great knowledge and loved VL�s.
Found a set of AME replicas, were in **** condition so for now i have just painted them black.
He started the body work and came on weekends, some week nights etc. Fixing up all the little dints, any rust etc, It all started out really well and he seemed motivated. Now after deciding to paint the whole car asteroid silver, I changed my mind and we settled on a custom metallic purple with asteroid silver lower half. The body work continued at a snail�s pace I was starting to get the s**ts with the guy working on my car, he�d turn up for an hour, accomplish nothing and disappear then after like 6 months of working on it, he somehow decided that to finish the job he�d need an extra $1000. Still a cheap paint job, but he was giving me such a headache with not turning up etc that i told him to forget about the job, I�d already paid him the full price we first agreed on, so he walked away with that and I was left with a strange partly painted, primered shell.
We began the process of moving house, so the car got towed out of my shed and taken to my brothers workshop (he�s a mechanic) as I wasn�t happy with the intercooler piping, so that was remade and a forward facing plenum was purchased. I first bought a modified standard plenum off ebay, polished etc, i received it and it was far from what it was described to be, wasn�t even decked off square, nor was it polished, so i posted it back for this to be rectified, it was much better once it returned, but decided against it and purchased another along with 550cc injectors. Also got a new greedy intercooler to go along with the other bling.
With the pipe work looking 1000x better, new intercooler mounted the car then came home to my dad�s home workshop. He organised a painter to spray the car, he charged $200 a day and I was happy with that. So after taking off the random patches of paint that the previous guy put on, we blocked it back and began spraying, this was the most progress I�d seen on the car in over a year so I was soo excited, falling in love with my VL again! Now at this time the engine bay has not been painted, I haven�t decided what will be happening in there yet, so it�s still silver.
How she is sitting today, on Calais Wheels that need to be polished, paint is straight off the gun.
And a pic of my VLT and my bro's Datto 1600 ca18 turbo beast
She�s not running at the moment, have just got my nistune back and am waiting for a mate to come base tune it so that i can get her onto the dyno. Done alot of stuff along the way, replaced the drum brakes with discs, new shocks and springs all round. But still lots more to do.
Very keen to go on some cruises once she's ready to roll!
Let me know what you guys think and thanks again to everyone on CT.
Cheers, Kim
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