Rookie Tuner’s 1989 Ford Laser

After having been used by in Japan from the day it was purchased from the showroom, the car was carefully maintained by the new owner. However like most Japanese people the owner didn't keep the car for long so the car got traded up for three different owners. However the story of this car truly begins in the summer of 1992 when this car arrived in the port of Colombo, Sri Lanka on board the vessel Franconia after getting recondition to factory specifications. Soon after arrival in Sri Lanka due to unavoidable circumstances the car ended up getting withheld by the customs until the car finally gets registered and driven out from the customs in late 1996. Sadly though due to the overstay at customs the car had shown prominent signs of urgent repairs. The car was eventually sold from the owner whom had brought the car down to a local Ford enthusiast whom had painfully restored all the body work, interior work and even gone into the trouble of purchasing and installing a set of 15" Wedsport SA-55M light weight alloys for the car. During in the summer of 2011 the current owner had decided to let go of the ride, this immediately caught my attention. The very next day I purchased the car immediately for the price that the owner was asking. Even though I noticed a few issues in the engine, the lovely curves of the car kept reminding me of the FC3S. :)

Mind you the car had not been used for such a long period of time, the odometer read that the car had just done only 66856 Km which was too low for a car which was around 15-20 years old. The initial drive back to my city which was 120 Km away was simply fantastic, I kept turning heads all the way back home. The car was kept as a second car and again was not run for quite some time until I noticed that the engine was starting to struggle. Finally a day arrived when the car did not start or respond this gave me a choice which was either to repair the engine or to replace it. Since I've been more traditional with cars I decided that I'd be happy to repair the original engine. During October 2012 the three month long hefty repair on the engine began. Luckily though I managed to easily find all the necessary spares. Some shops too were helpful in bringing down some parts as well. It was not an easy job but after the repair the car passed the emission controls test perfectly, ran much smoother. Tuning the car was the most difficult since finding a proper tuner was a nightmare . . in the end I ended up tuning the e.c.u, introducing a high pressure fuel pump and fitting a Stage I clutch kit. :) This saved me the labor costs and to be frank made me fall in love with this car even more.