I recently finished up another project car and it was put into service to replace my son’s 82 GLT. The 82 was still running fine but the leather interior was very shabby, the body had rust, and then a deer ran into the side of it. He still drove it for another year but it had obtained a beater status through no fault of his own.

I occasionally go to the local Goodwill auto auctions. This particular Saturday event included an 88 744Ti with M46od. It was showing 162,000 miles and a beautiful rustfree silver body with black leather. I assumed it would not reach a very high price as the head and both manifolds were resting in the trunk.

I was the second bidder at $75 and evidently people were ready to move on as no additional interest was shown. I attached my tow bar and dragged it home.

The head showed that a clean up cut had been taken on it and it was plane. It did not show any evidence of being disassembled. The turbo had only a very slight amount of shaft play. I decided to go for it.

I disassembled the head and cleaned up the valves. The guides were fine and I lapped the valves in. New stem seals were installed as well as hushers. I replaced the exhaust manifold studs. I changed out the injector seals and installed the head using a FelPro headgasket.

I cleaned out the oil separator. The heater control valve was replaced along with the heater hoses. New motor mounts were installed. I soldered in new alternator brushes. I resealed the distributor and installed a new cap and rotor.

I installed new front seals, timing belt, tensioner, waterpump, thermostat and radiator hoses; new drive belts along with new air and fuel filters. The radiator was cleaned externally and flushed.

It needed new pads on the front calipers and I flushed the brake system. The intank pump was bad so it was replaced it along with the sock.

After resoldering the fuel injection, radio suppression and overdrive relay. I cranked it with the plugs out to bring the oil pressure up. I figured I was ready for the initial startup. While it would crank fine it would not fire. The injectors were not pulsing so I swapped out the radio suppression relay but still no fire. Luckily I had a spare ECU on the shelf for this car and that solved the problem. Later I sent the original ECU to a fellow Brickboarder who after opening it up suggested that it showed evidence of water damage.

The car seemed to run fine and the overdrive worked on the short test drives I took. After the car had a chance to warm up, however, the overdrive would not engage. I pulled the Laycock overdrive and removed the pistons. I had read in the FAQ’s about the troublesome Teflon seals on some cars. Other than the piston seals being blue I thought they were not the Teflon type. When I emailed Duane Oberg to check on getting a complete seal kit for the overdrive I attached a photo of the pistons and old seals. He quickly informed me that ones I had were in fact the Teflon type. Luckily he was able to provide a set of replacement pistons as well as the seal kit. The rebuild was very straight forward while following the information in the FAQ’s. I reinstalled the overdrive unit along with a new transmission mount.

A rattle/looseness in the front end when driving on gravel surfaces was not cured by replacing the balljoints and cone bushings. One balljoint was pretty bad but evidently I am experiencing some tie rod play.

Cosmetically the car was very nice other than a sagging headliner. I made numerous applications of Leatherique after redyeing the black leather. One small cut on the driver’s seat required the removal of the seat bottom cover so I could reinforce the area from behind. An open seam on the rear seat was stitched up after pulling the cover off enough to reach the area from behind.

I had never done a headliner before and would be happy not to have to do one again. It came out looking fine but it was a lot of work and the old headliner “goo” makes a real mess. I had the seats out of the car and it was still very difficult getting the board out and then back in the car. I honestly would rather replace the headgasket on a turbo car than to do a 740 sedan headliner.

I did not keep good records of my costs on this project, but the total investment at this point is extremely low due to the unbelievable purchase price of $75. The car runs and drives great and the manual transmission makes for a fun drive. The car has not been on any interstate road trips yet but gets over 25mpg in combination driving.