The Beginning
My car was originally purchased from ebay (click the link to see the original auction page). I bought it and flew to Oregon to pick it up in January 2001 with my friend. After picking it up sight unseen we drove the car home to AZ (~1300 miles) with only one major problem (broken water pump). After some roadside repairs in California we made it home safely (less than 24 hours from leaving the Portland airport).
Here are a few pictures of the car as it looked when I brought it home:
The car came with a custom hybrid LZ22 engine mated to a 5-speed truck transmission. The clutch went out shortly after I got the car home, so I cleaned, polished and painted the engine while it was out. The alternator and all gaskets/seals were also replaced and the ignition was upgraded using an Accel 300+ ignition module and plug wires:
When I brought the car home it had a very small and poorly built exhaust. I decided that I needed to upgrade to a better flowing 2.5" mandrel bent custom exhaust with a Supertrapp muffler (in hindsight the 2.5" exhaust was too big and I lost a lot of low end torque because of this):
I also added a few gauges, Sunpro tach in the stock location, Sunpro water temp, oil pressure and volt meter in the radio slot and white faces for the Speedo, fuel and water temp:
Here's a dyno chart from the car with the LZ22:
You can really tell that the engine couldn't breath well enough above 4000 RPM. The torque curve drops off rather quickly. I gained another 4 hp by pulling off the air filters (I can't find that dyno sheet though).