This episode of Carnage sees us tearing into our Lexcen wagon project a bit earlier than planned, after the wannabe Toyota left Telfo stranded in the middle of nowhere during Drag Challenge Weekend Victoria.

The Lexcen lost drive after the transmission let go in a big way on the DCW road route, halfway between Mildura and Heathcote. The car had to be tilt-trayed to Bendigo, and later that week Telfo grabbed the D-Max to tow the big white beast back down to the Carnage workshop in Melbourne.

Rather than replace the transmission with another stock unit, we decided this was the perfect sign to start the Lexcen build properly and get it ready for the 1UZ V8 swap we’d been planning.

The easiest way to do that was to remove the engine and ’box as one, so Scotty threw the car up onto the hoist and started pulling all the Holden hardware out for the last time.

As part of the swap, we’re also putting a V8 front subframe in the car, in order to use the Castlemaine Rod Shop engine mounts that’ll allow us to bolt the 1UZ straight in and save a bunch of time.

But before we can slap the 1UZ in the car, we’ve first got to put it back together with go-fast bits, so get ready for a bunch of Lexcen content to hit your screens really soon!