I knew, before I paid for or even saw 195 in person, that the engine was all locked up. Would it be salvageable? Only taking delivery and tearing into things would tell for sure. Just as there were a couple months between when I paid Kelly for the car before I managed to collect it, it was a couple months after I got 195 back to the fort before I was able to start taking things apart. I scored a sweet deal on a 90 Eclipse GS-T with a “good” motor in it and got to work. Below is the scene at that time, Daisy sneaking into the foreground.
You might notice the caption on this picture says, “Engine No.2 on the right.” There’s an engine on the stand on the left as well. A quick visit to Carfax.com revealed that the engine that came in 195 had begun life in a 92 Eclipse GSX. So, this poor car had already seen it’s second engine destroyed by dimwitted, mouth-breathing idiot owners long before either Kelly or I bought it. So while this installment is titled “Engine No.2,” we’re really going to talk about Engine No.3.
Engine No.3 actually came out of the Eclipse in the picture above. It was used in every sense of the way. All original with over 200,000 miles on the clock, the reason I was able to get the entire car so cheaply was because it had caught fire a couple minutes after being shut off earlier in the year. I knew the owner and he assured me the engine was still strong. With no reason to doubt him, I pulled the charred, filthy mill from the wreckage and began swapping over parts from the seized engine that were usable. I took a little time to clean it up and throw some paint at it. There were many broken exhaust studs (it’s always the last stud that snaps on you, ya know?) , but the engine came out pretty nice and was soon ready for installation.
The engine was installed and 195 returned to the road just about a year after I took delivery. After having sat for something like three years before I took delivery, 195 sat for another year before I was able to take my first test drive. It was pretty darn cool, especially since the Kansas tags on Daisy were going to expire in April of 07 and I had no idea at the time how to get her past emissions here in Arizona. I now had another car to drive while I worked on getting Daisy legal.
By June, however…
Next in the series: What happened? (And engine No.3.5)
