My old shop truck...
it started life as an 88' 4dr VW Jetta, in grey paint with small bumpers, with some unholy amount of kms on it.
The engine that was in it, lost oil pressure after my 2nd year of driving it. The odo read 800,000ish...so yeah..out it came...
In it's place went another 4cyl...but from a car 10 yrs newer, with a larger bore and stroke. For whatever reason, VW was building these 2.0's with forged cranks and oil squirters...I had a machine shop (RIP Scottie) do the head work, and I took care of cleaning up and refreshing the bottom end...I put a good camshaft in it, with an adjustable sprocket to compensate for the 30 thou of material Scott took off the head...a multi layer head gasket was sandwiched between, and with that combination, I had cylinder pressures over 200 psi...so running it on anything but 91 or better was pointless...it'd knock like a Perkins on a cold winters day
I managed to rip the guts out of 2 factory equivalent clutch discs before relenting and putting a solid disc in ... murder on my left leg... but then the transmission input left the chat one day launching the car at 4300 rpms...
I'd just finished doing a slew of suspension updates over a winter, and literally on my way to work on it's first day out...I got cut off by someone in a Ford Explorer. She pulled out onto the road making a left, crossing my lane, while looking the other way...
I just had time to hit the binders...but the front of the car struck her front left wheel, effectively wrecking both vehicles...
She was shaken up, but unhurt...I had braced myself, like an idiot, and straight armed the steering wheel to the dash...snapped my collar bone like a twig...
Car ended up in a Pick n Pull yard, without my knowledge or consent...and it was savagely pillaged by staff or thieves...
all my instrumentation, my Recaro seats, the wheels, the stereo...lost...
ICBC admitted to the foul up, but would only pay out a % of the modifications because I'd done 90% of the work myself...
I still miss this car...I just never worked up the drive to build another one.
sorry for the TLDR...