Way back in 1993 when I was in year 4 at school my parents purchased a brand spanking new 1.6L carby powered Ford Laser KH GL. It came equipped with features such as tennis ball stickers on the front doors, 13" steelies, natural air conditioning, and hand operated side vision mirrors. Amazingly it did come with a double din cd player/tape deck head unit. The engine produced a neck jolting 64kw and was good for a sub 25 second 1/4 mile pass.
Now, I've always been a fan of the under dog. When I was due to finish year 12 and had acquired my provisional license I decided that mum and dads Ford Laser was just the car I wanted to take on as a challenge. I purchased the car from mum and dad in 2001 in my final year of school.
How ever while I had big dreams and plans for this car I soon decided to take on a couple of other projects with 2 other 4WD turbo variants of the Ford Laser. The TX3. By 2008 whilst I had done a couple of things along the way with this car such as a basic exhaust system, bit of color coding and seat upgrades, clear indicators etc... it was realistically looking very sad and sorry. It was falling apart mechanically and the paint was supposed to be red but had almost turned matte orange. I decided it was time to throw some love at it.
Out came basically every component of the engine bay, brakes, and fuel tank. In went a freshly rebuilt 1.8 efi BPT DOHC turbo charged engine and custom built G series gearbox.
The engine was complete with a ported and polished head as well as port matched Mazda GTR inlet manifold and exhaust manifold. The factory turbo was sent to GCG for an overhaul it was recod'd and hi flowed and then polished up.
Gearbox was sand blasted and shotpeened then rebuilt with straight cut gears and dual synchros, as well as Mazdaspeed LSD and bearing cups as a fix for the common bearing problems these boxes had. This modified box required customised driveshafts which needed to be resplined and shortened. It used the slightly larger 4wd variant flywheel and Excedy heavy duty clutch option.
A completely cleaned out efi TX3 fuel tank was installed with a Bosch 044 internal fuel pump to feed it. Ecu and wiring loom was courtesy of a Mazda GTX. I used a dual speed TX3 turbo radiator and kept the factory TX3 intercooler setup, piping and all. Air intake and factory airbox using a K&N panel filter were all kept factory to keep the police nice to me. 3" exhuast and dump were installed. Hubs and brakes were upgraded to 4 wheel disc brakes from a TX3 with brand new slotted rotors and braides brake lines. 15" alloys were installed to fit over the larger brake calipers. Front and rear swaybars were replaced with Whiteline options and the factory TX3 strut brace was added. Suspension was freshened up with lowered King springs and new KYB shocks and brand new bushes every where. Last but not least the instrument cluster was replaced with the turbo tx3 variant cluster which differed with higher reading speedo, tacho, boost light, overboost warning, and a couple of other little things. After some minor issues I had to iron out and a bit of a detail to try and bring the paintwork back to life tit was finally sent off to by dynod and it made 140kw at the front wheels which I was over the moon with on a factory ecu and basic mods.
Following this I made some further adjustments to the interior. Boost guage was added, along with power windows and door trims from a GHIA. New Sony head deck replaced the original Sony head deck I had put in not long after I acquired it along with upgraded front and rear speakers. Windows were re tinted.
From there the car still needed freshening up visually. Most of this came in 2012 when the car was completely resprayed, KF TX3 rear wing added. TX3 power mirrors added. Fixed up the TX3 front bar and lip extension which had been on there since about 2002 and copped a bit of a flogging. New set of clear indicators added, ( old set got damaged in an acco).
Unfortunately in 2016 came one of the saddest days of my life. It had become apparent that I had to get rid of it. I was no longer driving it due to mostly driving my work van during the week and my Evo 9 on weekends. The car had been apart of me and my family's lives for over 23 years. Fortunately for me it was sold to a person I know and I know will look after it and appreciate it for what it is. I have seen countless updates he has shown me since buying it and he has since done more work with it and still showing it the love.
