i'm REALLY not into racing at all,

Loren, after looking at the pictures and studying the specs, and after reading your replies to other posts in this thread, I don't think you will be happy in the long run with that car.

Just as an aside, referencing posts further down the list than this one, sorry... that car is the exact opposite of a rice-boy car. It is what would be better called a "sleeper", a car that looks stock but is considerably performance enhanced. Like I am going to do when I put the SHO powertrain into my Taurus station wagon. :-)

Anyway... that will not be an inexpensive car to drive and maintain. Unless you are religious about keeping your foot out of the gas, and thus keeping that turbocharger operating minimally, you will have to run high test gas, even with those 8.5:1 pistons. The first time you get hard on the accelerator for any length of time with regular gas, you will have at least one of your cylinders with a 0.0:1 compression ratio, and enough metal from the hole melted in your piston spread throughout the inside of the engine that you will be looking at a minimum $2500 repair bill.

I suspect you will have a hard time keeping license plates on the car, as it is very unlikely that it will pass California emissions standards -- the toughest in the world -- with modifications like a "custom flex pipe cat bypass." In my part of the country, the inspector doing the emissions check wouldn't even hook the car up to the gas analyzer if he saw that -- he'd just send you out the door with no certificate.

I don't see anything in the specs about a camshaft change, and with a turbocharger you really don't need a high lift cam. But that "JG Big Bore Throttle Body" may make the car very unpleasant to drive in low speed traffic -- you are liable to find that there isn't any usable power below about 3,000 RPM.

Very likely you will find that you are burning about 50% more fuel per mile than you are accustomed to, even if you are not utilizing all the high-end performance potential of that engine. Unless you really enjoy and participate in high performance driving, you probably will not enjoy filling your gas tank every 180 miles.

Those 45-series tires look really wicked, and they will give you very sharp handling with a slip angle approaching zero degrees... and unless you keep them pumped up to about 40 pounds pressure, the first time you hit a good sharp-edged pot hole, you will have damaged a $200 alloy wheel and possibly ruined a $125 tire.

I wonder just how stiff the pedal action is on that "Clutch Master Stage III Clutch." You may end up walking around in circles after a few months working that clutch because your left leg will be bigger than your right leg. :-)

"H&R Intega Springs w/ Tokico Illumina 5 ways Adjustable shocks, Ingrall Engineering Camber Front Camber Kit, Eibach Sway bars 26mm Front / 22 mm Rear"
This car is going to rattle your fillings as a daily driver.

Those "Zspeed Aluminum lugnuts" are really neat, until the first time you get a lug wrench on one of them just a little bit crooked when you are on the side of the road in the rain, and suddenly instead of a hex-shaped lug nut holding your wheel on you have this nice smooth cylinder that nothing short of a hammer and chisel will remove. My Porsche uses magnesium alloy lug nuts -- great for reducing unsprung weight, not so good for practicality.

"2-Brand New Rota Circuit 8 15x6.5 [wheels] w/ MT 22x8x15 Slicks."
This is really scary. That tells me that this car has spent a serious amount of quality time being drag raced. There are very few activities more destructive to an automobile than drag racing. I would stay from this car as a daily driver for that reason alone.

This is not to say that this is not an excellent automobile. From the specs and from the pictures, it looks like it has been superbly prepared as a labor of love by somebody who knows what he's doing. It's a great car -- but not for you. This is not a car meant to be transportation -- it is a motorhead toy designed and built to be a weekend fun machine for someone who doesn't mind spending serious money on his hobby.

You wouldn't be happy with this car for very long.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"