My goal is to build a fun street car, and I recently had a completely new/upgraded drive train installed in my 2002. I set things in motion in August 2020, when I bought a used 1972 2002 motor from Kim in Herdon, VA.

In September 2020 I dropped the motor off with Bruce Shelton (Automotive Enterprises in Winchester, VA) and asked him to rebuild it. I was in no hurry, and Bruce worked on the motor over the next year. He had the block machined, provided an E12 cylinder head, installed JE 9.5:1 pistons, a 292 cam, dual Weber 40 DCOEs, a Carter electric fuel pump, and a long-tube street and track step header from Rogers Tii. 

In September 2021, Bruce called and said the motor was done. I decided to have him install the engine along with a 185K-mile Getrag 245 5-speed that I had bought from ClayW in Silver Spring, MD.

I installed an E21 3.91 Limited Slip Differential I bought from Al Taylor in 2020, put my car on a trailer, and towed it Bruce's shop.

Bruce sent me some pictures as he was installing the rebuilt motor.

Outside Bruce's shop.

Automotive Enterprises is something of a time capsule, as it was an imported car parts business many years ago. Bruce races a Pinto in SCCA and supports the racing community at Summit Point Raceway. In April 2022, Bruce was done installing the fresh engine and doing a 5-speed conversion. I bought a driveshaft from Steve at Blunt. I brought my "new" car home. (The front air dam had to be removed to go on the trailer.)

Once I got my car home, it needed some sorting. The header was hitting a castle nut on the drag link. I had to file the corner off the castle nut until it cleared.

Note my washers on my drag link (or whatever it's called) have come apart almost immediately as mentioned on this site.

I also had a sticking throttle, the result of rust in the tube that the gas pedal passes through. I cleaned out the gunk and installed new bushings and a new return spring...problem solved.

I had to properly secure the console to the transmission tunnel as it was flopping around. The Blunt 5-speed conversion kit includes a BMW Z3 shifter.

I had a list of little things that had been waiting. I installed a brand new pair of flag mirrors that I bought from W&N a couple of years ago.

I made a template a drilled the door for the passenger-side mirror. I used riv-nuts to mount it, of course!

I installed new door buffers and replaced some missing door handle gaskets.

I put new webbing under my Recaro driver's seat. The old webbing was shot.

I painted the supports behind the grille the current body color and replaced the grille "hooks" which were missing.

I bought a set of underhood decals. All my original decals were painted over.

My license plate light lenses and taillight lenses were old and cracked, so I installed new ones.

I was doing all this work as the run-up to the Carlisle Import Show in May, but on the day of the show, the car wouldn't run right. It wouldn't idle and would eventually stall unless I kept my foot on the gas. When I tried to drive it, it stumbled and wouldn't accelerate. I guessed the problem was the old Crane XR700 ignition, so I order a new one (now FAST XR700.) Of course, once I installed it, it took a couple days of fiddling with the optical sensor before I could get it to run, but now it runs good, so the ignition was the problem. 

My SiennaBraun paint is showing where the old Crane unit was mounted.

Well, I missed the Carlisle show, but I'll be at the Hunt Valley Cars and Coffee this summer!