Warning. What you are about to read is ridiculous. I wrote it a few years ago. It is mostly true, but I may have misremembered a few things due to brain damage from getting knocked out several times as a kid. I blame Jackie Chan and Dragon Ball Z. I may have already said this somewhere before. Whatever.
January 2015 | 116,900 miles
Well, I could not afford to have parts overnighted from Japan, but when the trans-Pacific container ship arrived bearing all of the billet steel, India rubber, and dinosaur juice required to revivify our new MPV, you best believe that it was on.
After an intense family meeting we all laid out what needed to happen next:
The van had a terrible idle, and after consulting Wikipedia and WebMD we concluded it must be engine-related. Some new spark plugs and a massive turbo would fix that.
The van only had three functional tires, and they were all different ages, different brands, and different sizes. Looks like we needed a fourth tire to complete the rubber cacophony.
The interior provided a home to several rodents, a colony of ants, and a Syrian guy named Larry. They would all be swiftly evicted or killed (sorry Larry).
The mechanic said it needed sway bar end links to pass inspection…of all the things he could have said were wrong with the van, he highlighted these. What a putz. Besides, if we just deleted the sways we’d get heaps more articulation off-road. Huzzah!
…and brakes. It needed new brakes.
So anyways, I got to it. You know how sometimes you go into a project with a pessimistic outlook, but then you pop the hood and are pleasantly surprised. And wouldn’t you know this thing had a red topped battery (of some sort). Wasn’t expecting to see this gem under the hood. Everybody knows that the red top battery means instant torque, extreme shockage, and Star Trek Enterprise-level fuel economy, and boy o boy if that wasn’t what was staring up at me beneath that rusty tie down.
But, upon closer inspection I found it a bit cracked. I can’t have nice things.
Crap! And according to the reading on my Geiger counter all of the radiation had already leaked out of this baby. No Tesla-level zoom, zoom for me I guess. Gonna have to add some red gaffer tape to the parts list.
Hmm… well, I cheaped out and got some painters tape and a washable red marker, but when I popped the hood this lot fell out. Bullocks! It probably would have still ran in this state, but my newborn son made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t be caught dead being driven around in anything less than amazing. Time to get the funk out!1
First item to sort out would be this airbox. A quick hack I learned back in my time with the British Special Forces training Bear Grills would quickly turn this boring old air conditioner filter into something far more powerful. By sticking the filter in the back of the freezer for as long as possible (usually until your wife notices and asks “Just why!?”), you’ll be able to recharge any cold air intake without having to spend lots of the Queen’s sterling on those fancy K&N spray paint kits.
Next on the agenda…FORCED INDUCTION!
Some nincompoop thought it would be a good idea to saddle this raging stallion of an engine with this puny little turbo charger yanked off a backpack leaf blower. Ford didn’t enlist the astrophysicists at Cosworth to steal these top secret engine plans from Porsche, only to then strangle it to death with this thing.
If you can’t tell by the scorch marks, this raging engine has been spitting flames of frustration beneath this cork for over a decade. Time to unleash the beast, and let the Aston Martin innards breath a sigh of relief.
I’d also need to replace almost every piece of rubber pipe connected to this blast furnace, as the boost levels were capable of sucking stuff inside-out.
I also went ahead and changed all the sparky parts with extra sparky (I’m pretty sure that’s what Denso means when you say it with a Japanese accent). Ba-da-boom!
But I saved the best surprise for last. Not only was this engine designed by Porsche and fine-tuned by Cosworth, Not only was it deployed for service in the Aston Martin fleet and test-driven by Christian Bale. Not only was it given a Ford badge, but also a few Mazda ones for good measure. But it also had one of these diamond star thingies that I’ve seen on toasters, curling irons, and Group A, B, 4, and Dakar Rally car championship winning machines…
I have no idea what this doohickey is, but I’m pretty confident that when I push that button, Jackie Chan himself will pop out of the passenger-side airbag ready to rumble. With that I dropped the hood and called this resurrection complete.
About time to get daily’in…