Current cars...

I have got too many car projects at the moment! It is a good problem to have (keeping busy), but I'm running out of driveway space...

2017 Bmw X3 Xdrive28i

What a find!! This Beemer was a native from Minnetonka whose owners had it serviced regularly. I'm currently the third owner of this vehicle, but the service records on this beauty are all dealer done and as long as my arm. 

This was a fun car to pickup by the way... if you look at the pictures below you can see there wan't much of a windshield, and it was subzero temps when I picked it up... On the flip side this thing has heated seats, heated steering, and a great heater that I put to good use on the slow drive home :)

With the dark tint on the windows and the smoked out tail lights it's got a good look to it. This was my daily driver for the winter while the 'Stang was stored. The AWD XDrive system made easy work of the ridiculous amount of snow we had. Now it's time to open up the panoramic sunroof and crank up some tunes!

When I first met this beauty someone had gone head to head with a sign post. It left a near perfect 3" circle in the bumper rebar and something took out the windshield (I'm guessing the street sign coming down)...

Before...

I had the windshield replaced (Safelite Auto Glass)... installed a replacement intercooler, replaced one of the headlights, bumper cover, hood, and rebar. Nothing mechanical was touched so I just changed the oil and gave it a good scrubbing down. With less than 70k miles this compact SUV is ready to go!

2007 Dodge Ram 1500 SLT Big Horn Edition

I'll be the first to admit... this was an oops purchase...

Recently I've collected a lot of pieces and parts that were too big to go in the recycling bins and they were an eyesore that I was tired of looking at. I sold my beloved Ford Edge, which was the only vehicle I had with a trailer hitch. Even so, the Ford Edge was an 2.0-liter inline 4 cylinder turbo so it just wasn't going to pull anything more than some bikes, or a trailer full of leaves to the compost yard. This is all justification to say, "I wanted a truck". I was tired of renting vehicles to haul my projects home, and I wanted to know what it was like to have a real truck. Enter the 5.7-liter HEMI V8!

Everything is wrong with this truck :) It was rear ended, which is why it ended up at Copart, but before that this truck lived it's life as a work truck... by work truck I mean it was listed as a biohazard because you couldn't see the floor through all the wrappers and cans of Rockstar. This thing was (and to be fair it still needs a deep scrubbing) a pit. There were no keys, a flat tire, and it wouldn't turn over when I first met this vehicle... I'll be honest... I went back into the Copart office and asked if I could just put it back through the auction :) Since I'm not a dealer we had to wait for the title to get processed, and that's a slow going process at the moment.

Step One... get this beast home so I don't have to pay Copart storage fees... I spent a day cleaning out the vehicle, getting the tire inflated (still holding air!!), and getting a key made. Did you know you can get a key made for a car based on the vin number (assuming you have proof of purchase). On day two I tried to get it started... put several jump packs on, and nada... pulled the started and had it tested over at Autozone and it was fine... I was pretty sure that the machine at Autozone was biased against showing that starters were good so when we ran it a second time and it still showed good then I believed it!

After a couple more hours watching YouTube videos about Ram 1500s it was back to Copart. Time to get this beast running! Turns out it was just looking for attention... once I put it in neutral and tried to start it, it fired right up! And boy oh boy did it roar... Turns out two of the three mufflers (is that right??) were disconnected in the crash so this bertha was letting you know it was alive! I topped her off with coolant and made the drive home (not taking any highways so it took a minute).

To date... I've gotten a replacement box on the back (doesn't actually look better, but it's straight!! Replaced the passenger seat with one that actually works, replaced the passenger door panel trim, which was broken, got a bumper and some rear frame rail ends to have welded on, and replaced the EGR valve because it was throwing a CEL on the dashboard. It's going to need a lot more love, paint, and soap, but I think I can bring this ole workhorse back to life! If not... at least I got to use it to get my pile of scrap over to the recycling station (they even paid me!!) :)

2005 Nissan 350z

This is Owen's (and my) introduction to both the JDM world and the world of tracking a car :) I remember Owen getting so excited when he found this on CoPart and I'm such a sucker! All that concern flew out the window when we went and picked this masterpiece up. CoPart hauled it out on their forklift as they do and it was looking pretty rough...

But from the right angle it looked really good :)

After taking a sawzall to the rear fender to get it off the tires... yup... sawzall!! We were able to fire it up, and oohhh did it sound good... the 350z is known for it's unexciting exhaust noise when stock... this was not stock :)

I drove it home (it's a manual and although Owen has that skill now he didn't then)... and it drove straight as an arrow! And it was fun!! We put a new stereo in it, cleaned it up a bit and had Rick put a new rear quarter panel on... He did a great job!!!

From there we took it out to the track a couple times and started to figure out what this car could become! With only 60k miles on it there are options galore!

2019 Jeep Cherokee Limited

After... This was my first time having to replace the entire dashboard! The passenger side airbag deployed and when that happened it blows through the top of the dashboard so there's no real fixing it... you just replace the whole dash with the new airbag attached.

Before...

Previous cars...

2016 Audi A4 Quattro Premium (S-Line)

This is probably my second favorite car to date... I was looking for an AWD car for Owen to drive  for the winter. His 350z is rear wheel drive and can't make it to the end of the street when there's snow on the ground :) When I came across this Audi A4 I thought to myself, "Troy... there are tons of Audi A4s on the road... there are going to be great quality parts available left and right!"

Wrong... It was really hard to find salvage parts for this car! But, there were plenty of new replacement parts available. Good news is that I have a paint guy that does great work. So after replacing the entire front clip including fenders, hood, and radiator, this car has a brand new showroom quality front end :)

This was also the first time I replace the transmission filter & refilled the transmission... super easy to do, but a little nerve wracking the first time I do anything. Also the first time I used a manifold gauge set to recharge the AC system... had to learn how to pull a vacuum and get the right amount of cold juice back into the system. I learned more about the Venturi effect than I ever thought I would know (like the fact that there is a thing called the Venturi effect).

With just over 70k miles, after a transmission oil and engine oil change, and two sets of headlights (why are headlights so freaking expensive???) this car is fully sorted!

Here's what it looked like when I first picked it up!! It drove great, but it had a little something on its face :)

2008 Ford Mustang GT Deluxe

I picked up this project back in mid July. It only has 37k miles on it!!

'Stang (as his friends call him) started his life down in Arizona. In 2010 it moved to Minnesota with a new owner where it was stored and only driven on sunny days. After looking into the history on this vehicle it appears that Luther Honda of Saint Cloud performed a full service on the vehicle and detailed  it back in June of 2022. It rolled off the showroom floor looking like a million bucks and went right into a fender bender :...(

I'll admit it... with 320 hrsprs, a 5.7s 0-60 time, and an exhaust that roars,  this car is fun as heck to drive. It handles like it's on rails, but it has creature comforts like heated seats, cruise control, auto everything, and a banging sound system.

Even though it's spent the past several years in the salt belt you wouldn't know it. It has been stored over the winter and I'm just bringing it back out to finish up the body work. Mechanically this thing is mint. Serviced religiously, and with the low, low miles it's just now past the break-in stage.  Likewise, the interior is immaculate. Here are some pictures of where it's currently at...

On the to do list there's a spot on the passenger side quarter panel that needs to be flattened out and block sanded. The rear trunk needs a tug to get the lines back to perfect, and then the hood & rear bumper need to be painted. Once that's done I'll reapply the matte black vinyl stripe, and blacked out hood scoop. Here's some pictures of what the 'Stang look liked when I picked it up...

2018 Ford Edge SEL

This is my favorite car thus far... I replaced the front grille with a "Raptor" style grille that included some amber lights that I wired into the daytime running lights. The panoramic sunroof and 2.0-liter turbo'd ecoboost engine was super zippy. It also had a trailer hitch for hauling light loads around. All in all this was a great car. I still check in with the new owners from time to time and they're loving it. It has AWD, Carplay, blacked out windows and wheels... I think the only thing it didn't have that I would have wanted would be remote start and a heated steering wheel... I don't even remember if it had heated seats, but it was a great little SUV and I would totally get another one. I'd just be sure to get the Titanium trim level next time :)

2016 Jeep Cherokee Limited

This was the first car I fixed up for Jackie! Probably one of the easier fixes since I just had to replace the driver's side door. I never did figure out how to get the keyless entry system to work on the driver's side door, but we replaced it with the 2019 above :) I did like the green though!

Before...

2012 Nissan Leaf

2015 Chevy Equinox LTZ

2011 VW Jetta

Before...

After...

2010 Mini Cooper S

This is the one that got away... well beat us and then we kicked it out, but same thing... I bet we pulled the engine on this thing a half dozen times trying to get it up and running again.

This is a manual transmission turbo'd convertible mini cooper and when we did first get it running on three out of four cylinders it was a blast! Problem was these buggers tend to grenade themselves... as in when the timing chain goes, which it will, then it has what I learned is a interference motor... which means if the timing is off then the pistons will hit the valves and your engine will quickly become a paperweight. 

My long term dream for this car was to do an EV swap on it, but until EV powertrains start costing less than brand new cars that's going to have to be a dream for another car. So, we pulled the engine... took it to a local engine shop to have it worked on, and waited... and called... and waited... repeat... repeat... repeat... Eventually I went over and picked up the 1/2 finished motor and paid way to much money for way too little work... Then I installed a new timing chain... new plugs... new seals... new high pressure fuel pump... new piston... new starter... and on and on and on... but it never ran again :(

I will pickup another one of these someday... one with a newer version of the engine (F-series), cuz the first and second gen (2002-2013) aren't going to break my heart again.

2014 Ford Escape

Strangely enough... this was the car that started it all! A few years back my Escape needed a new battery... I did what I do and headed over to CostCo... they hooked me up with a new battery, but didn't install it. I thought it was kind of weird, but that's fine. I can unbolt a couple screws and swap out a battery... Nope... The battery lives under the cowl in the engine bay... I didn't know what a cowl was much less how to remove one to get to the battery... turns out there's an air intake in there as well which I was unaware of, and it needed to come out as well... As is the case often times, my 15 minute pull out the old and pop in the new battery project turned into about four hours of watching videos and trying to find wrenches to do a simple battery swap.

But I did it! I was overwhelmed, and under tooled, and getting very stressed, but in the end it all worked out great and I felt a sense of accomplishment that I hadn't felt in a long time. Understand that I work on computers all day... it's cool... I get to solve problems and stuff, but I don't get to sweat or bleed when I work :) It was a physical and mental feeling of accomplishment and I was hooked.