Twin-charged LX Torana Street Car

Tim Morton’s self-built Torana hides an impressive Japanese combo!

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TIM Morton has owned his LX Torana for five years, and it has seen almost as many configurations in that time. The car came into the mechanic’s life as a sad-looking rolling shell, which he soon fitted with a blown and turbocharged 1JZ. Tim eventually moved to a single-turbo 2JZ, but a capable twin-charged donk now lies between the rails.

The Toyota-sourced, pump 98-drinking powerplant wears a pair of Camtech bumpsticks, with inputs controlled by a MicroTech ECU. Boost from a water/meth-injected M90 blower is compounded by a 68mm turbo, producing about 24psi in total. Power is fed to the rears via an A340 auto and nine-inch diff.

Tim says the hardest part of the whole conversion was fitting the sump, which required some modification. “It’s super-reliable,” Tim says of the combo. “You can drive it anywhere!”

Weighing in at 1450kg and running a 10.5-second quarter-mile, the LX is making somewhere between 550 and 600 horses in its current guise.

The combination of bottom-end torque and higher-range punch from the eBay snail has proven handy in Tim’s efforts at Willowbank Raceway’s Street Series, which doesn’t allow competitors the use of a transbrake or two-step limiter. “I need something that takes off quickly, so twin-charging just made sense,” he says. “It’s mainly turbo towards the end, so it still makes good power.”

Tim is already running at the limit of the Street Series cut-off, so he doesn’t have any grand changes planned. “I can’t make it any quicker, but I’ll be changing the twin-charging set-up to make it a bit more aggressive out of the hole.”

After we caught up with Tim at the recent Six-Banger Nats at Warwick Dragway, he hit the strip, won his bracket, and cruised home without batting an eyelid.

He thanks his wife and family, Morton’s Brake and Mechanical, and Kev from KPM Performance for all their help and support so far.

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