Project Chronicle

The LX450 was supposed to be my gateway into Porsche ownership. Why? Because if the LX450 proved reliable enough, I would sell my E91 - which, as I've noted, is growing long in the tooth - and use that money to buy a decent but cheap 996-chassis 911. 

The problem is the LX450 has not exactly been, how do you say - daily-ready. I bought it knowing there would be a fair amount of deferred maintenance to deal with. It had been used as a daily by the previous owner, but like most older vehicles, the list of non-essential repairs left for someone else to deal with began to grow. 

We've sealed every leak; changed every fluid; replaced every cooling component; and fixed a variety of issues, from a seized A/C system to blown rear shocks to a spare tire mount so rusty it was deemed a road hazard.

I got to drive it for several weeks without issue, sort of a litmus test for becoming my eventual daily. I was going to have some rust repaired and move it over to a conventional insurance policy. But then last week, the heat became intermittent and my temp gauge began rising and falling, rising and falling. 

The truck was already slated to go back to Lexus for a quick oil change to a heavier-weight oil to see if it helped with some to-be-expected oil consumption, transitioning from synthetic to Shell Rotella 15W-40 diesel oil. Except now, we also get to diagnose whether the heater core needs to come out. 

As you can see, the seemingly most reliable vehicle in my fleet is becoming a bit of a nuisance. 

The paint on the 1995 Audi UrS6 has been a major concern, largely due to it being dull and covered in swirl marks. Some of my buffing efforts have given it some of its shine back, but it still fell well short of where I wanted it to be.

After having Brock's Collision repaint the heavily bumper-bashed bumpers, I asked Mike - the foreman - if they could do anything to help the paint. After putting the car back together, Mike attempted to color-sand the left rear quarter panel before offering an opinion as to whether there was more he could do. 

Amazingly, the quarter panel came back to life. The swirl marks are still there, but the paint is super glossy. This is great news, as the re-finished bumpers stood out like a sore thumb. With Mike tackling every other panel come January in what will likely be a two-day job, the S6 Avant is going to look more like a car that's been loved than a carcass that sat by the sea and had its paint sand-blasted off of it. 

I really have reached my "peak" of how much more work I want done to any one car this year, but I am making an excuse for the S6. The bumpers were awful after years of being bashed around when the owner would leave Martha's Vineyard for his Central Park apartment in New York City. Animals, down there. 

Anyway, my local collision center and friends have taken on a few side projects over the years, and with this being a quiet week for them, they pulled off the bumpers and began the process of fixing them. I say "fixing" because both bumpers had plenty of filler in them, and if you've ever tried to repair bumpers that have already been repaired, it's not easy. 

Making it extra tricky is that the front bumper is specific to the UrS6, owing to its flared front fenders. The only surprise we found (aside from how much filler was already in the bumpers) was the need for a replacement rear bumper shock. We knew this was a possibility as the bumper was pushed in on the left side, and removing it confirmed the shock absorber was completely collapsed. 

The shop may also see if they can sand an obscure part of the paint to determine if there's any chance of bringing it back to life, but I'm not optimistic. 

There comes a time when a project is finally to the point that you can drive it - for an extended period - and you realize it was all worth it. 

More than other efforts, I struggled at times to understand if restoring this rare 1989 Isuzu Trooper RS - code for short wheelbase and 3.77 gears - was worth it. I had to move it multiple times, starting with going from Massachusetts to Maryland, where I thought my brother would hook me up with a shop to work on it (he didn't.) I then decided to haul it back north to a shop that was all of 15 miles from where it was originally found as they promised to work on it (they didn't.) I was about to lose all hope when a chance encounter on Instagram of all places led me to a guy named Jay Gaston who offered to bring the Isuzu back to life as part of a moonlighting gig he had working on Japanese four-wheel-drives. 

Jay did everything he promised and then some, revealing the Trooper was a healthy truck under years of faded paint and gummed-up fuel systems. However, as is often the case, it was not just bad gas that needed resolving. The floors were gone, as were the rockers. There was a heavily compromised control arm assembly on the driver's side. The time in the body shop was far from cheap and made me question my decisions on a very personal level. 

But finally being able to drive it for 30 minutes like any other car and finding out it fits like a warm glove with the perfect door placement so your arm rides on the window sill with your hand gripping the vent window frame - all while it bounds happily down the road like some metaphor involving a labrador puppy - well, that's the stuff, kids. That's what you hope for when it's all done. All the mental anguish caused by small problems that become big and only you alone can solve make owning a restoration project a master's class in project management. 

This Trooper RS is a honey, and we are psyched to finally give it a forever home after sitting in a western Massachusetts junkyard from 2005 to 2020. 

The long-term single owner of the 1995 Audi S6 Avant I bought in September is a well-maintained car. I received a stack of paperwork from the shop that looked after the Audi indicating as such. But like most "special" cars owned by someone who wasn't an enthusiast, the cosmetics clearly weren't a priority. It didn't help that the S6 was basically an "island car," which means it sat for months at a time outside. 

The paint was just bad. Dead. No shine. And a ton of swirl marks, because I'm guessing when it made the annual trip to Manhattan (where the owner lived when not on the Vineyard), it was taken to some God-awful brush-style car wash that roughed up the dead paint even further. 

I use Griot's Garage products for dealing purposes, mainly because they are easy to use and allow you to build a system pretty efficiently. I also finally got adventurous with the different orbital buffer pads, using the orange correcting pad for the first time in tandem with Griot's "Complete Compound." The result? The paint is much improved. There's still a ton of swirls - those will likely always be there - but the S6 now looks far more presentable, and as you can see here, the paint still pops nicely from 10 feet away.

There's a little thing called "service position" on Audis of a certain age. You see, as cool as old Audis are, they did this kind of dumb thing where they jammed the engine bay so full of motor that there was no room left to actually work on the car, save for changing spark plugs and the valve cover gasket. Anything on the front of the engine necessitated removing the entire front end. 

So, as my cheap-as-chips S6 Avant went into the bay for a long overdue timing belt job, I got to see just how much labor happens before the actual labor happens. And realize that while all this labor is happening, there will be more labor happening when the front end is put back on. It's insane. 

Bumper, grills, lights, radiator, rad support - all off the car before you even touch the timing belt. When this work was started, it was also realized the main pulley for the timing belt was junk and the tensioner was squealing with glee. I found a pulley in Germany, new in the box (and otherwise obsolete); the tensioner is seriously NLA but someone fortunately figured out that a bearing from a Volvo is the same part as originally supplied in the Audi, so that will be swapped in as well. 

I'm looking forward to actually driving this turbocharged five-cylinder wagon, and still very glad it was as cheap as it was. 

As we know by now, I've had some unfortunate surprises related to rust on the '89 Trooper RS. The first was the driver's side floor, which was effectively, gone. What I thought was floor turned out to be a very robust carpet pad and when lifted away, there was daylight everywhere. 

While this was a monumental job in and of itself, we weren't out of the woods. Jay - my mechanic - noted that the driver's side control arm assembly was compromised by rust. Not the arm itself, mind you, but what it bolted to. There had been, at one time, a little housing that held the brake line and likely also provided some reinforcement to the shims that were used to align the front end. That housing was effectively gone on the driver's side, along with the plate that lent support to the motor mount. Needless to say, there was no avoiding this work given how deep I am into the truck. Not going to roll the dice on life safety. 

Take a look at the pictures and you can see the night and day difference. After grabbing a panel cut from a Trooper frame with the housing intact, we learned that Isuzu overhauled the front suspension in 1988, so the cut we got didn't line up with my suspension geometry. I called a friend who had a pretty rusty truck in his yard, and he managed to carve out enough of that section of the frame to give us a useful amount of metal to repair the bad areas on mine.

The work is done; the before and after is hugely satisfying, even if it means this second phase of bodywork isn't going to be much cheaper than the first. 

Every now and again, I'm reminded that you never know how and when a contact or friend will chime in with a great idea. 

I've known Dave, the owner of Auto Europa on Martha's Vineyard, for as long as we've been making an annual trip for our anniversary. I stopped in years ago because he was the only European shop on the island; later, it was because he owned a few Eurovans and given I owned one, his advice into the model's durability was invaluable. 

Dave and I hadn't talked since our trip in September of '21, so when he pinged me out of the blue in June, I figured it was for good reason. Turns out he has a customer who has owned an Audi S6 Avant since new and was going to donate the car. See, people who live on the Island tend to be of some means, so the prospect of trying to eek out $5,000 for a tired wagon that would then have to be transported off the island didn't hold much appeal. 

The S6 is a pretty special car. Two years of production, with the wagon accounting for under 500 total units sold stateside. The AAN engine is a legendary motor, a turbocharged five-cylinder with 227 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque. It also responds to modifications quite well, with the ability to put down 300 b.h.p. or better with minor tweaks. 

Now, we won't be modifying this example. It's bone stock. It needs cosmetic help and is long overdue for a timing belt job. There's a bit of a stumble, too, which I suspect is due to a bad coil. The S6 has always been in the back of my mind as a car to buy, especially in fast wagon form. With this car falling in my lap for mere peanuts, I am looking forward to giving it the refresh it deserves and enjoying it for years to come. 

One of my favorite things about old-school cars is single-stage paint. It's a shame the industry moved away from this (though I understand why) as there are few things more rewarding than scrubbing off some chalky, faded paint and seeing original luster come back to life in front of you. 

As we near the end of the bodywork phase on the Trooper RS, my body man Nelson started to buff some small areas. He sent me these photos as they capture what the rest of the truck will eventually look like. It's absolutely incredible and probably one of the most rewarding moments of this journey; when I laid eyes on the Trooper in a salvage yard in Western Massachusetts, I was pretty confident the paint would come back to life. Now I have near infallible proof that it will. 

Before I picked the truck up, I had never looked at the odometer. It wasn't until it was being loaded I peered in and saw it had just 55K miles. From the lack of wear on the pedals to the cleanliness of the interior to the perfect compression numbers, we had all the evidence we needed that this mileage was genuine - but buffing ou that small corner of the fender leaves no doubt this is one of the lowest mileage short wheelbase Troopers in existence.