We’re full steam ahead with Carnage for 2024, and we’re kicking off the year back in the workshop as Scotty prepares our 700hp, 1UZ V8 Lexcen wagon for its first crack down the strip.

In the last episode, you would’ve seen us have a whale of a time with the freshly completed wagon at Street Machine Summernats 36 in Canberra. Scotty cut laps all weekend, amazed us with 712hp on the dyno and even had a few attempts at Skid Row.

With such a new build, a few issues did creep up during that weekend that need attending to. The biggest was when one of the old trans line fittings let go while Scotty was doing some two-step testing in a Repco car park.

He managed to patch it up as you can see, but in this episode he fixes it properly. Some Proflow PTFE 200 series teflon lines an AN fittings did the job nicely, and Scotty also upgraded to a bigger Proflow trans cooler to help this thing manage heat for street duties.

Another biggie for the street car side of this thing is having a working dash. The beautiful Haltech iC-7 in the Lexcen displays the engines vitals with ease, but a bit of extra work is required to get more complex inputs like indicators, high beam and fuel level to display.

Luckily the wiring on these old Holdens – I mean, er, Toyota – is easy to decode, so Scotty was able to get it sorted.

We’ll be taking the Lexcen to Calder Park tonight to see what it can do down the strip, so if you’re in the area make sure you pop down and say g’day!