Fire Rescue Turbo 95' Street Car
 

Hi all, name is Taylor Prohaska. From the greater Indianapolis area and am a Support Engineer for Cosworth Electronics, supporting IndyCar full time, and IMSA part time.

This car started life as an optioned out 95' from an older family, where it was then bought by my good friend. He had intentions of tracking the car, so it didn't stay in stock form for too long. He stripped it, put seats in it, Did the bilstein/QA1 spring combo, and enjoyed a season of NA track days. THEN, it all went down hill. Acquiring a used turbo kit, it went on the car with an MS2PNP ECU. Some VEAnalyze autotuning was done, it hit the street for some time, and then hit it's first track day. Two laps in, the car suddenly starts smoking, where the owner realizes the oil return line has completely melted through, and is pissing oil everywhere, having started a small fire under the turbo. Back home it went, where the line was replaced with an AN unit. Back to the track some months later, only for after a short time to catch on fire AGAIN, this time in more dramatic fashion. Some sort of power steering rupture shot fluid all over the manifold, starting a decent sized fire, burning essentially everything on the top of the bay. The car was towed home, parked in the garage, and sat for a year... Until I decided to buy it.

This is the state of the car when I bought it. Essentially everything susceptible to heat on the top end of the bay was toast. Oil feed line, harnesses, gaskets, rubber hoses, everything. Got it back to Indiana, and started stripping it immediately to get a clean slate to start from.

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Overall, it was a mess. I started basically stripping the car down to nothing. Sold the seats (were too small for my fluffy self), extra wheels, and stripped the engine down to a long block and started ordering parts.

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And there it sat for a few weeks. More to follow...

Next thing for me was to assess what I had hard part wise, what needed to be replaced, and try to execute a work plan that was efficient given my time, budget, and logistics (was winter at the time).

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I first started by getting the turbo manifold and exhaust housing ready to go to ceramic coating. Given this thing saw fire TWICE in its life already, heat management would become a priority of mine from here out.

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My whole goal with this car was to spend as LITTLE AS POSSIBLE to get it back up and running again, but doing things THE RIGHT WAY execution wise. Alot of "it'll do's" were done on the car the first go round, and I wanted to take my time making sure the car was as nice as it could be with the hardware that came with it FIRST, before divulging into a path of aftermarket parts. This meant reusing the intercooler, downpipe, etc. were all priorities given they were mechanically acceptable.

While I worked on getting all of the engine bits ordered and back together, I wanted to turn to the interior of the car, as it needed... help. To say the least. A less than ideal flat white rattle can job left the car in a relatively ugly state after a few years. Again, sticking with the "work with what I have" theme, I set out to make it as nice as possible, given how little interior the car had. This is where is started.

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And where it ended up, after a few solid days of labor...

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This wrapped up "Stage 1" of the interior cleanup and refresh.
Silver paint, clear coat, and clear vinyl on the roll bar. Black Herculiner on the entire floor. A new Corbeau FX1 seat. A slick new Anti-Vibration mounting plate for the ECU. And a fully cleaned up, and Tesa tape wrapped interior dash harness.

Good work.

We've got some other active members here from Indy.

Welcome! As six said, there are several of us on here in the Indy area. We get together to stuff wangs and other things in our mouths occasionally.

Indy crew checking in!