02-01-04, 04:03 GMT+10#1
Grants VL Calais Turbo
The story begins back when Grant was in Year 10 at school which was 1994. He was 15 and nearly old enough to drive a car which at that time everyone gets excitied about. Tat the time, he didn't know the difference between a VK commodore and a VL. Grant knew they had different headlights and look similar from behind. He looks back now and thinks how stupid that sounds, but its all part of the learning curve that everyone goes through at some stage.
Well Grant really like the shape of the VL and he heard that it had a way better motor and more powerful motor than the VK so he was keen to save up some cash and try to get his hands on one.
In the mean time Grant cruised around on his L plates in a worn out VH auto 2.8 litre which was powerful enough to learn in. He saved up the cash for a VL and ended up buying a stock executive for $6500. He bought some 16 inch wheels for it and a loud exhaust and put cold air induction on it too.
It was an auto and his mates who had manuals would fly by him. Grant was starting to wish he had a manual or even better a VL Turbo with a manual. Well in no time the car was up for sale and once it was sold he had enough cash to pick his dream car out.
Grant was off to sydney to find a calais turbo that had to be a manual. If you have ever tried this, you find out that this was a lot harder task than he had first thought as there were not many around! A lot of auto's were found but no manuals. Grant finally found one and the guy wanted $13'800 for it and he thought that was way too much since it was stock as a rock. He bargained him down to $11'300 with chaser wheels on it and he threw in some statesman trims to get it looking respectable for the drive back home.
So now Grant had his dream car but it wasn't quick at all! He put a boost gauge put on it and it was only showing about 3 psi. Grant knew that they came out with around 6psi or even 7psi but why 3psi ? Well whatever the reason for this low boost, he bought himself an adjustable boost tap and a autometer boost gauge was installed into the cabin. Boost was set to around 7psi.
Next Grant found out that the standard exhaust was too small for any kind of performance so he got rid of it and bought a 3 inch mandrel bent exhaust, at at the same time fitted an adjustable pan hard rod. Now it could breath and it seemed to run smoother. A cold air induction setup was also made.
One night doing a the timing belt decided to snap and the car just stopped. Grant was fearing the worst but there ended up being no damage to the motor so all was good and once replaced the car felt like it went 25% more harder. Next Grant wanted more boost so a trip to Blacktown resulted in a stage 2 AVO intercooler and a turbosmart type 3 blow off valve being installed and boost wound up to 14psi. Now he was getting the ride he always wanted plus scaring the **** outta anyone with the blow off valve. On a cold night they took the VL out to a nice flat straight road to run it down the 1/4 mile. After a few runs the best Grant could manage was a 13.5 sec with a G-tech. He was reasonably happy with that.
The car also has a Kenwood headunit , Jaycar Response 6 inch, 12 inch Rubicon sub , Kenwood 7x10" speakers, 4 channel Boss amp and 2 channel Kicker amp... which is more than enough to wake the neightbours.
(c) 2003 www.calaisturbo.com (http://www.calaisturbo.com) Written and pics by Grant, edited by sin
Some original photos have not been recovered yet.
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