VL Reborn - Making the best from a bad situation

[Beardie]

Hey Guys and Girls
This is my 1987 VL Executive Turbo,
This car is my 2nd VL. before this one i had Another 87 VL exec turbo in the same colour, which had this whole drive line in, but after a altercation with a truck, she was sadly a write off. luckly the whole driveline bar the front mont and intercooler piping and the rear resi was undamaged so the decision was made to re shell the car.

this all happened about 6 months ago, so i started saving some coin and found strangly enough another VL in the same colour as my old one but with the blue interior (old one was gray) in great nick for a great price so thinking it must of been fate (not a lot of VLs in this colour) i snapped her up.

so now i had a completly and i mean completly stock clean 1987 VL executive and a crashed one with all the good gear. so i drove the VL around for a few months while i continued to save up. then after buying a few more performance parts (hey who wouldnt lol) i had everything i needed to swap it all over

first thing i did was aquire a full gray series 2 calais interior (hated the blue) and between using that and all the good bits from my crashed VL i swapped out all the blue stuff for gray, including putting in the calais gray headliner (tuff job not keen to repeat that one anytime soon lol)

after that my mate said we could take the VL into his shop and start doing the swap over after hours. at this point it was 2 months to nats and i had entered the car so we set to work.

it may seem from my post that it was all smooth sailing but it was anything but, after a ingnition booster failing on us we had huge issues with teh car not starting and then missing very bad but after Kit from gentech came and worked his magic on the car she started to run like a dream.

things ended up being so tight that we only finished the car on the wednesday of summernats and my first drive of the car was to scuritenearing that night. anyways the car ran like a dream all weekend and didnt miss a beat and im over the moon with how its come out! Now i cant wait for sydney powercruise where i can really open her up!

I also want to say a Huge thank you to my mate graeme with out him i would of never got the car done, the guy is a genius with cars and im sure u will all hear more about him in the years to come
Also i want to thank all of my other mates for helping out, Brad, Chris, Matt, Dummett my brother Ryan, Dumbrell, Luke, Wog jon and Sally for the part all of you played in helping me get this car done.

Anyways enough chit chat here are the specs!

Name: Beardie

Model: SL

Colour: light Blue

Bodykit: NONE

Engine Type: RB30

Engine Mods: high flow oil pump, ARP head studs, ARP main studs, Spool rods, headwork and turbo cam, romac balancer, Mahle forged pistons, gates racing timing belt, ACL racing gasket kit, new bearings, GT35/40 turbo, ViPec computer, front mount cooler, plus heaps more just CBF writing it all down lol

Power: 235RWKW on very safe tune running only 11psi atm with retune and more boost will have 300rwkw

Exhaust: 3in with a 3in motar cat

Gearbox: Full manual shift Jatco with 2700 stall

Diff: 3.9 gears with 28 spline billet axels and a LSD

Brakes: standed VL Turbo

Suspension: All new noalthane bushes threw out and pedders sport rider springs

Wheels/Tyres: 20in ANZ Five+fives

Interior: Converted from Exec Blue to Full S2 Calais gray including headliner

Stereo: Alpine head unit, Hiphonic splits eclipse rear speakers, pioneer 4 channel amp 2x pioneer 12in champion series subs, eclipse mono block amp (about to be installed)

Cost: dont wanna think about it lol

Contacts: Notdadz Kustoms

Future Mods: white 5 spoke 20s(supersports) , Calais nose cone, install stereo,
retune with more boost!

and here she is sitting on the grass at Summernats 25!



here are all the build pics

Heres the car with the old motor pulled out


My mate Graeme putting on the JD customs plemium i bought for the motor


Graeme and Brad helping drop the motor Turbo motor in


Motor and box in.
mocking up the 3in intercooler piping


intake side of piping


Trans cooler mounted


Completed Engine Bay


Car being run up on the dyno


and heres the finished car Pics

Finished and ready for Summernats!

[detox_nath83]

Nice work man. Gr8 looking Vl well done to everybody involved in the build

[calais24/7]

seen this cruising at the nats mate, looked sik

[Beardie]

Thanks for the replys guys, she really was a hell of a lot of work but it was worth it, i love the way it drives

[Beardie]

well guys and girls i have found a few pics of my VL at Summernats on the internet so i thought i would post them up here, still waiting on my mate to give me the video of one of my burnouts but i have a couple of teaser pics of 2 skids ill throw up now

let me know what you all think.
Cheers





Skid pics!

[Sik_Cordz]

hey bud where is the boot strip and corner moulds ?

[vn_v6]

HAHA i thought the same thing but their just same colour as the car

[*uwishn*]

nice and neat mate,great vl.

[danbotten]

the build is looking good definatly somthing ide drive.

[Beardie]

Thanks for the kind words guys
im on the look out for a new set of 20s i have had five+fives on nearly all my cars at some point lol and im ready for a change.

car has been entered in Sydney Powercruise so im really looking forward to that. its also going to be getting a retune and more boost for powercruise i cant wait

[kory]

sweet vl mate.nice work.theres nothing compared to driving a vlt.i just wrote mine of.worst day of my life.i have owned nothing but vls .4 all up,but have now gone over to the darkside.owner of a 5l that is.fuel guzzler.lol

[Beardie]

haha i had owned nothing but 5 liter v8s (and one 355 lol) untill to got my vl. i just love the 304 noise. in fact im looking at one for a new daily as we speak

[Beardie]

well im not sure if anyone even looks at this thread lol but i thought i would update it with some pics i took the other day. my mate brought around his VK commodore so we thought we would go out for a few quick pics, i know the pics arnt the best but there off my iphone. turns out that the 2 cars turn a lot of heads was a nice little ego boost driving them side by side and watching heads snap back for a second look lol

also got a small vid of a small skid i did at powercruise the other week.

Enjoy all










and here is the Video

IMG_1058.mp4 video by GavBeard - Photobucket

[Shrimpy]

wasn't your vl on ebay mate ?

[Beardie]

i would want to hope not mate, this car will NEVER be for sale. if it is its someone using my pictures got a link to this add?

[sweefu]

Good looking car mate. When do you see full boost with that turbo setup? An a/r .70 front housing is quite large!!

[Beardie]

Thanks mate, car starts coming on boost about 2800rpm full boost is around 4000, its a bit hard to tell as the car dosent run a boost gauge atm, its just running off the wastegate spring. but the car is good to drive. as you can keep it off boost if the need be.

[Sasha_85]

duude this is saweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet ..

i misss my old VLT's VLCT's ..

after reading and looking over the pics i think
i will just go buy another one within the next month or so

[Bazza]

Whats the interior like?

Just curious if its as sweet as the outside.

[Beardie]

Thanks for the kind words guys

And Bazza the interior is pretty neat Full Series 2 Calais in gray including the calais headliner and rear lights, I spent a lot of time making sure every nut.bolt and screw that came out when i changed everything from blue to gray went back in and was done up tight as i hate rattles lol plus custom door pods and rear parcel shelf. and tweeters mounted in the stock 4in holes under the standed grills for a neater look.
still manual windows but, i couldnt see the point in putting electric windows in. to much work for not enough gain imo and they fail all the time also

so i guess its stock looking but neat. i have always like factory interiors (esp calais) so thats what i stuck with.

I also just the other day bought a genuine calais front end so i will be getting that painted up and installed as well as some new headlights, and then the outside of the car will pretty much be complete.

[[ - 5LCOMMY - ]]

mannn thats sick much work put into the car but its payed of
congrats

[HERONVY]

looks heaps good mate, love that engine bay

Al

[Beardie]

Thanks for all the kind words guys, its great to hear that other people like what i have done to the car.

in other news ill be dropping my calais front off this week to get sprayed and im ordering new headlights and indicators tonight

[Beardie]

well update time
car now has a genuine calais front end and brand new headlights and indicators
also decided to leave the standed exec grill in there for a different look, i think it looks great and have had nothing but compliments about the new look.

let me know what u all think

[some_guy]

Looks nice mate.

The exec grill is a nice twist.