A packed rally cross is being held this Saturday and I didn’t want to miss it, so i got on the phone with Greg at Millennium Motorsports and asked him what it would take to get my exhaust leak fixed and get the valves adjusted. He said bring the car by and it would get taken care of. Lminette hooked a brotha up and offered to get his father in law’s truck and trailer to pull the RS 80 miles out to Temecula, so he woke up at the buttcrack of dawn and met me at my apartment, we loaded the car and waited for the Auto Club to open so I could get my temporary registration. We’ll it turns out the AAA didn’t get their story straight, i couldn’t pay for 2009-2010 registration until this current year completely expires (end of April) so I just decided to pay for the 6 weeks of this year that remained so that once the car was fixed I could not only drive it home, but also compete in this weekend’s event and finally give the car a go in the dirt. I got new license plates and tags and we were on our way.

Arrived at Millennium Motorsports but there was another project on the lift so we used Jackson Rally’s lift for the day. Depending on how long you’ve been following the build, this motor is a transplant from the car I bought that came from Illinois. As a result it has quite a bit of rust. These header studs snapped off in the motor and wouldn’t come off with the normal tricks. The driver’s side didn’t have any snapped studs, so new ones were inserted and ready to go rather easily. As you can see the valve cover was also removed. Both covers went into the washer for a good cleaning. Same thing for the other side (well almost). The bitch on this side was the hole for the stud on the lower left side. This hole was completely stripped out and needed to be repaired by Greg’s magical engine healing powers.

While Greg was doing his thing, I wire brushed down the seam welds on the bottom of the car and sprayed some rustoleum on there to offer a bit of protection from the elements until some proper underbody protection can be attached. Greg adjusted all the valves to within OEM specs, we put everything back together and fired the car up. The motor runs like a champ, almost a bit too quiet!

I picked up a used rear diff protector online several months ago and slapped this badboy on the car too. Kyle (JacksonRally) had to fab up some spacers for everything to fit right once i bought some longer bolts to replace the OEM ones on the driveshaft housing.

Thanks to Greg at Millennium Motorsports for not only doing an awesome job getting this motor running like a champ, but for also stopping and answering all of my n00b questions along the way. Louie went above and beyond with the trailering hookup and I can’t forget Kyle at Jackson Rally either, for helping out like always and offering up good advice.