Day 1: 05/05/05 (Yes I happened to buy the car on a cool date)
Car didn't run, needed a timing belt. After some talking the price came down from $1200 to $500 and I proceeded to tow it home.
Engine swaps, round 1 & 2: 05/10/05, put the first motor in, turned out that one was bad. Rounded up some more money and about a month later I swapped the engine for the second time in 30 days to what became a very good performing ZE making 193whp on motor.
The last half of 2005 was hell with the car. One thing after another, I came very close to just giving it away it broke down so much. Coming in to 2006 it finally started to improve. Got a good deal on some rims, installed tokicos, strut bars, springs, filled the motor mounts, started to get the MS dialed in, and got an exhaust made for it.
In the begining of 2006 things really improved in Goldmember land. I was daily driving it everywhere, got the whiteline swaybar, and snagged a set of pacesetters at the junkyard of all places. After some sandpaper and paint they were looking brand new.
Way back in 2004 when I still had my probe I got in on the famed CZT IM bulk buy. Being one of the more persistent participants I eventually got mine in Feb 2006 when I happened to go to Indy on a work trip and got in touch with Rob while I was there. I went to his house and picked it up since we all know shipping things out on time was not his strong point. It was not a bolt on affair, but with some work I got it on and it was safe for all motor. Netted just about zero gains on motor, but was a great gain on boost, which came a little later.
Mid 2006 I moved to a tiny town in Georgia for work, but before I moved I managed to finish turboing westpalmgt's probe and my mx3 before I left. As a result of the rush both setups were pretty rough, especially mine. But it began the age of boost in Goldmemberland. The best thing about Georgia was the cool license plate I had.
Enter 2007, moved back to SFL and the projects got going again, put in a built motor, had the turbo piping redone (by a professional this time) and started another round with the CZT IM. To make it boost friendly required extensive work on the rail tie downs, but I came up with a solution that worked quite well. On boost the CZT shined showing gains of up to 40whp over the stock IM on 14psi. Unfortunately, the built motor eventually spun a rod bearing leaving me in a bit of a bind to get the car running so I sold the CZT, went back to stock motors and haven't looked back. And I run a lot faster now than I did on the built motor.
2008 was rather uneventful with the track being closed for renovations so a crazy idea of making the car pretty and fast infected my mind. In November 2008 I stripped the car down and took it to the paintshop. I had him paint it a genuine gold color to honor the car's nickname as well as shave quite a few things to give the car a very clean look. This is also when the idea of tucking the wires became a reality.
After it came out of paint in early 2009 it was nice, but not quite the polished look I wanted. After some searching and some very good fortune I acquired a set of the very rare OEM side skirts for the car and put on a new set of rims with some beefy tires. I also decided to redo the powder coating in the engine bay. This time I went to town on it and did all the basic stuff plus tons of small details to make the engine color scheme tie into the car. The finished result was unveiled at Flyrtle 2009 in September.
And finally that brings us to now, since the car is nice and pretty and the track reopened the focus has gone back to racing. Somehow in the process of this long journey I've managed to come out with a satisfying finished product. It turns quite a few heads and gets a lot of respect at the track. Couldn't ask for much more out of the car. If you're interested in the full modlist for the car it can be found here: http://www.iceyrecords.com/drew/mx3/Mem ... st-web.jpg
