Hi,
I bought that truck in '07. It is really a well engineered piece. Unfortunately, it is also in almost unrestorable condition,body wise. It came from suburban Detroit,was very poorly maintained, and the owners let it go. The story I got was that a GM engineer put it together,and that he used a last remaining GNX crate motor to do the job. That is almost certainly not true. It looks to me as if the builder used a salvage GN as the base, because it shares so many parts. The truck retains stock drivetrain locations,keeping the 700R4/with transfer case and front and rear axles,driveshafts, etc.. in their stock locations.To mate the LC2 to the trans, an adaptor was used. Custom engine mount brackets were fabricated,and to fit the stock intercooler in,the radiator and condenser were moved forward 4-6 inches. This required a custom nose for the truck, which is really a work of art. I forgot to mention that the engine was equipped with FWD heads, like the TTA has, to allow header clearance. It also uses a TTA style oil cooler. All the under hood wiring is GM,and it is very professionally melded into the Jeep harness in the truck to make it all work.By the way, at least the passenger side header looks stock GN to me. The driver side header, I'm not sure of.The crossover is modified. The downpipe is a custom 2 piece, thermally wrapped. From what appears to be a stock GN Turbo,all the way back to the tailpipe,it is single and 3 inch,with a Flowmaster under the passenger seat.
Lots of other things were done to make this truck a fun toy.I believe HP is pretty close to stock,as the intercooler,injectors and turbo appear to be stock.Still, it runs strong;as soon as the boost builds,the tires will light,and instability maintains into 2nd gear.It is very rusty, so probably weighs lots less than stock.I have never tried the quadra trak,but it should launch as good as a Syclone would. I love the feel of the 700R4. Oh,and there is a big Bosch external fuel pump supplying the motor,never felt any starvation.
My current plans for this vehicle are to transfer the wonderful engineering here into a Texas Cherokee,and make this fine vehicle live again the way it once was.It just takes time and effort,and money, of course.
As a last note, I drove this vehicle home to Texas from Michigan,though it took a lot of sweat and money to get it ready for the trip. My family is still a little peeved at this,and I would never put them out like that again...
There was a little fun in Mississippi,when the rumbling pile of rust shut down an errant Acura Integra when the light turned green. Oops!
