Sorry this is so long, but I feel like I left many details out. It could easily be twice as long. I was never really into cars. I knew that I liked driving them, fast. I guess I started working on cars when I changed the CV shafts on my 97 accord. One day my friend James, who owns a 91 3000gt vr4, was discussing dream cars with me one day. I told him I wanted a rear-wheel turbo. He told me my options were somewhat limited, that I should get a DSM because rx-7s are a pain to work on, and he and another friend knew DSMs really well. My options were a starquest or an eagle talon, or an eclipse or some other stuff. Obviously, I chose the Conquest because it had style. I love the lines on it. Oh, here's the only pic I have of it so far: http://dailybooth.com/t3hBattleToad/1077131 So after looking for them on and off for about 3 months, I found one in Massachusetts , 755 miles away for 3700. We drove to Boston on a time schedule (James and I) in my 97 accord. We needed to get to Boston with enough time to test drive, buy and get to a BMV for temp tags to drive it home. We got to town at about 4:00pm. I had to play hookie at work most of the night. I had to drive from Columbus to Cincinnati and back to get my social security card from my parents house to get the registration. Left work for Boston a little after 3am. The drive was long, hit a little NYC traffic, but made it there on time. This part is a list of things not to do. First, the kid wouldn't let me test drive it. I should have walked right there. His excuse was that he didn't get test drive it when he bought it. He drove us around in it, knowing exactly how to drive it so it didn't give away the problems with it. Like a little kid in a candy shop, with enough money to buy the biggest jaw-breaker in the store, I handed him $3700 cash, more worried about getting to the BMV than the shape of the car. Once it was all said and done, he pointed us in the direction of the nearest BMV. We got there at 4:50... This location had been closed for a month now. The kid may or may not have know. Wouldn't surprise me either way. But now the car was mine and nothing would stop me from getting it home. I took my front vanity plate off my accord and put it on the Quest for the drive home. After getting to know my baby a little, I found the turbo was smoking. We determined it was an external oil leak. No problem, we'll just buy 8qt of oil for the journey back. The clutch was completely gone. Kid said he had the engine rebuilt, which I don't doubt - the block was green. Now it had an 8.5:1 compression ratio, without any supporting mods or ecu adjustment. Leaky turbo, minus a clutch, but it was still drivable, so I drove it. We left Boston probably around 8 or 9pm. I'll tell you what, I railed on the Quest for the next 620 miles. I was doing 4th and 3rd gear pulls every few miles, but it was ok because I kept putting oil in it. It was a blast, as I'm sure you all know. Three (3) miles from the PA / WV border, I shifted from 4th to 5th and my revs stayed at zero. Great. So I pulled over, James in the accord in front of me saw this and went to the next exit to turn around. I popped the hood, saw oil everywhere. Opened the oil cap and a bit of smoke came out. Maybe more than a bit, but I thought the car still might run, so I dumped the remaining oil I had into it. I tried starting, turned over really slow a couple times, then I stopped. After awhile, James showed up and determined the clutch fluid res was empty. Had some brake fluid in the honda, so we put it in, and finally got the car started. Let me preface this by telling you there were rumble strips on the side of the road with me. With the car started, I beat it into first gear, thinking this whole time that my clutch had exploded. Once in first, I tried accelerating, thinking the horrible noise my car was making was due to the rumble strips. I got enough speed to shift to second, but that didn't work. The noise became quite obviously more than just rumble strips so I turned the car off. When I opened my hood again, I saw something resting on the battery. As I went to pick it up, James was irritated that I was being ADHD when there were more pressing matters than a neat looking thing on my battery. I picked it up and immediately dropped it between my radiator and oil cooler. Thing was really hot. I grabbed my oil rag from the trunk and managed to free the hot lump of metal from the radiator. James looked like he saw a ghost when I showed it to him. It was my rod cap. It sheared the bolts right off, exploded out the side of my block, and landed on my battery, as if to say "Hello! Welcome to DSMs!" So neither of us have AAA, and it would cost something like a million dollars to have it towed the remaining 120 miles. At this point James and I have had maybe 8 hours of sleep between us since the journey began, most of it coming a few hours before the car died. So we leave the car on the side of the road, sort of tucked behind a guard rail, so the cops can't see my illegal plates on it, in the grass, safe from other motorists. At this point I'm pretty out of funds. I've bought something like 80 gallons of fuel, plus food and drink and everything else you need on a road trip. Luckily, my uncle was gracious enough to let me borrow his beefy F-150 with triton v8 in it. We waited in Columbus for a few hours until a vehicle transport was available at the one UHaul location that actually had one. Did I mention it was move-in week for Ohio State students? Naturally, there was a shortage of vehicle transports. 30 minutes before the 7pm close, we got the trailer. Well now, we sort of have another problem: how to get a dead car on a transport? We decided to go to Home Depot and buy some steel cable and use the trailer's strap wench to pull the car up. We decided to do a test-run on the accord in Home Depot's parking lot. As the employees were leaving for the night, we got some strange looks, haha. Once the cables were at full tension, we feared for our lives and abandoned the idea, opting instead to have a wrecker meet us at the car. So 2am rolls around and we meet the tow truck man at my car. He pulls it onto the flatbed and drives to a safe area to load the car. He wants $75, so I give him 100, as he just saved our lives, most likely. We get into Columbus at about 5 or 6am, needing to get the trailer and the truck back to their owners. I took a small nap on the tile floor of the new house we're storing the car at (no furniture yet). James tried to get the keys to the truck from me. Still asleep, I looked at him and said "I don't have a truck" and went back to sleep. Shortly thereafter, I woke up and backed the trailer up to the garage somehow. We push/drove the car into the garage, I returned the equipment and slept for 21 hours. Moral of the story: Have no regrets. I went on an adventure and I don't regret a bit of it. Now I have the car of my dreams, though I had to work for it. PS: Thanks to scottreallyknows for hooking me up with the new motor!