CARNAGE: TURBO TAXI PART SIX

In this episode of Carnage, we rebuild the Turbo Taxi after its meeting with a tree and take it to Street Machine Summernats 31 for some fun!

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ON THE last episode of Carnage, we finished up with the Turbo Taxi in a pretty bad way. On Day Three of Street Machine Drag Challenge 2017, the car was involved in an accident between Swan Hill and Portland during a crazy rain storm, which saw it aquaplane off the road and into a tree while Scott Taylor was driving. Fortunately no one was injured, but that was the end of the Taxi for the foreseeable future.

 However, when we got back we found the car wasn’t in as bad a shape as it could have been. The chassis rails were dead straight, and aside from two broken engine mounts and a wounded intercooler and radiator, the damage was cosmetic.

 We already had a set of Tuff Mounts that we had been meaning to install, so that solved the engine mount issue, and the radiator and intercooler were easy fixes. Would you believe we even managed to find another FG Falcon taxi at the wreckers that we could pull panels off?

The hard bit was finding a car we could source a front bumper support bar and headlight bracketry from. Just about every FG Falcon we came across had been hit in the front end, rendering it useless for our needs, but eventually we found one and hacked off the bits we needed. Scotty then learnt how to weld, and stuck them back into place before bolting on our ‘new’ panels.

 From there it was off to Street Machine Summernats 31, along with our other Carnage project car, the MX5.7 twin-turbo LS-powered Mazda MX-5. Editor Telfo drove the Taxi up to Canberra, where it was greeted with a warm welcome – and the occasional holler from people actually trying to hail it as a taxi. It was unreal just how many people recognised the car and yelled out: “Turbo Taxi!” when it was on the cruise route.

 While we were there, we stuck the Taxi on the MPW dyno, where it churned out a cool 382rwhp, despite the massive heat. Then we did the Go-to-Whoa and the grass driving events, where Scotty couldn’t quite beat Aiden on the stopwatch or on style points (heh heh).

After Summernats, Scotty had the itch to get back on track and chase an 11-second quarter-mile, so we headed out to Calder Park one Friday, which also happened to be a 40-degree day. A cool change was forecast for the evening, so that’d be our chance to run a quick number.

 Unfortunately by the time the track closed it was still a balmy 26 degrees, and the Taxi just would not go quicker than a 12.49 – it needed more boost! Thankfully, it’s getting it: The second set of LPG injectors are due to be plumbed up at Tunnel Vision in a few weeks, and then the quest for 10s can really begin.

Stay tuned.

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