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What did I do?  I swapped out my Koni Race shock absorbers for the original KYB gas shocks I had on for the first seven years on the road.  And how did that work out?

WOW!   Do these KYBs ever ride nice!  I got out this morning just before the deluge hit and did both back roads and a stretch of highway at 70-ish and it was like it had become a Cadillac CTS.  And yet, especially on bumpy back roads on washboard-y turns and pretty poor pavement, it hung right in there and never wanted to break loose, even for a light car.  I was really pleased.

I haven’t been on a track in five years.  I still wonder why it took this long to go from a teeth-jiggling ride to something much nicer.  The madness is less strong in this one tonight........

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Ray's Scirocco was scary in it's day - Remember this was in the days way before massively turbo-charging engines of 2 liters and under and Callaway in Old Lyme, Connecticut was about the only shop doing it right around here.  It was strong right out of the hole and never, ever seemed to stop building power.  Besides a turbo that could put out 40 lbs. of boost, it had a sensor-activated anti-knock water injection from what was once a windshield washer bottle, adjustable cam advance/delay:

Electronic spark retard and had an MSB ignition that no one on the VW Scirocco forums had ever seen that seems to have been made to Callaway's specs:

Of course, running that kind of boost on almost anything sacrifices the head gasket or stretches head bolts or both.  It had a blown head gasket when Ray died and I replaced it and got a new set of special, high-rated ARP headbolts for around $200 bucks and a new gasket from some place in California that should be able to handle the pressure.  The new owner replaced the stage III turbo with a stage II (max boost 21 pounds, IIRC) and he's happy with it.  

Now Lane might guess where my son got his ideas for his 680hp Turbo Eclipse - "Well, RAY did it, so I'm doin' it!"  My brother and son was/is a couple of crazy dudes......

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I had to change those bolts out for ARP head studs and nuts on my Corrado that put out 17 pounds of boost or so. Basically same engine, 1.8 SOHC that was in the Callaway your brother had, except his had CIS-E injection and Corrados had Digifant and an easily swapped ECU chip.

I had an Autothority stage2 kit in that car, and a Tectonics tuning exhaust, by Darrell Vittone, son of Joe Vittone of EMPI fame. You know, way back when EMPI was actually good.

That car was a Mustang/Camaro/Vette killer. MASSIVE roll-on torque, the G-lader supercharger never had to spool up, it was always ready with boost.

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