Flatisfaction And Other Tangents.

Before running the new wires I thought I should deal with the old ones first.
These are obviously part of the original loom which is still present. Some would need to stay like the sender wire but others could be removed like the coil and rev counter wire.



These were pulled back through and coiled up behind the dash for possible future use or reinstatement.



Starting off easy, main feed and ground run straight to the battery.



I dug out all the various plugs for all the various sensors and injectors.



All these plugs take terminals that need the heart shape crimp. As I had so many to do I bought myself some new crimps.
I tried them on some bigger terminals I had spare as practice and everything was good.



Starting with water sender I crimped the first terminal and completely bongo’d it beyond any usable state.
Tried a second one and had the same outcome. 🤬



Came to the conclusion that my new crimps were absolute dog s**t on the smallest crimp jaws. Annoyed and frustrated I tried some multi crimps that were in the electrical box and they actually gave a half decent crimp, so continued with those.



I went to clip them into the plug housing and they didn’t want to go.
When in doubt consult the instructions.
Doh!
On this style of plug the wire goes through and the terminal is pulled back into the housing!



Second or is it third attempt?



Success!
My first completed weatherproof plug.



Throttle position and air temp completed easily.



And the trigger wheel pickup.



Injectors next.
These would need the single live split to each injector and the individual signal (grounds) wires.



I only needed two of the supplied signal wires so the unused ones were pulled through and de-pinned in the name of neatness.
You might notice there is actually 4 wires here?
The loom covers 2 levels of ECU so actually has 6 injector wires pinned and run in the loom, even though the wiring diagram only shows 4.



Completed.



There was an ignition live that needed connecting.
I remembered that I had just removed the old coil ignition live from the engine bay so this got repurposed already with a change of terminal.

Thanks.

Nothing special, just loom tape or wrap.

Well done !

Thanks!



Soon... Very soon

Doing the initial exhaust down pipe was only really the start.

I needed to connect up the wastegate which now sits under the down pipe.



When I fitted the wastegate to the feed side it used 2” exhaust tube. Digging out that same tube to make the exit side it didn’t fit the v-band, being too big. I had a quick scan of the instructions and yep, 2” in, 1 3/4” out. Annoying as I had to pick up a length of 1 3/4” just for that short stub.
It was a tricky piece to get an idea of what was needed as I was pretty much working blind.
After a couple of rough measurements as a starting point I gradually crept up on the fit after many, many mock ups.



When I was happy with the fit and final mock up I marked its position.



I could then open up the pipe.



Mocked up again everything got tacked in position.



And the final blending of the transition.



Since the front clip had gone on and finalised how much space I had to work with it became very apparent that an air to air intercooler and associated plumbing setup was out of the question.
I think an air to water charge cooler is going to be the future route but that is more than I want to be getting involved with at the moment. A theme that’s going to appear more as I race to get everything finished!
What has this got to do with the exhaust?
Well, not having a means to cool the intake charge means I’ve had to rein in the the potential boost levels.
The wastegate came with 2 springs, a 5 lbs and a 10lbs.
Using them individually or in combination gives 5, 10, or 15psi boost ratings on the wastegate.
My hope was to start with the 10lbs spring and maybe step up to the full 15psi if everything went well.
Running just the 5psi is a bit pointless and the 10psi may be too much.
GFB have available a 7lbs spring so I went with this for the moment as a happy compromise.
While I was messing with the wastegate it was a good time to swap springs.



Another add on to the exhaust down pipe was the boss for the lambda sensor.
I had the Haltech wide-band lambda add on kit.



I kinda shot myself in the foot with this as I needed to mount the control box which I should have incorporated it into the ECU mount when I did that.
Luckily, I could still squeeze it in with the cables being plenty long enough.



The tray and glove box door were all unbolted again (joy) and the same mounting procedure of drilling and tapping for 10/32 “ UNF screws.



There was some deliberation over the actual lambda placement.
I wanted it tucked away on the underside but it meant the lambda would be running downhill which is a no, no as condensation can collect and run back into the sensor.
It was relocated to the topside and actually got moved again last minute from the when the picture was taken.



That completed the down pipe so it got removed again for final welding.



And painted in high temp.



Fitted back on. Everything still fitted.





I needed an exhaust mount to support the weight of the silencer.
Handily the end of the silencer lined up where the flanges of the front wing and running board meet.
Using the hardware already there a CAD template was made to support a rubber cotton reel.



This was copied to 2mm steel with an added support brace.



A braced arm was made and welded directly to the silencer.



This short length of exhaust and silencer is another rush job.
I think eventually it be run all the way to rear of the car as side exit exhausts generally suck and their novelty wears off quite quickly.

With the breather/catch can located it meant I could now put in another order for fittings and Teflon hose.
Not only for the breather lines but also the oil feed line for the turbo, turbo drain back and catch can drain back.



Straight away there was a problem!
Some idiot had mounted the turbo so close to the top of the manifold that there wasn’t enough clearance to screw a fitting on the drain back outlet.



A little thought later it might just fit if the bend was mounted direct to the flange.
That was sent off and this is what I got back.



It’s bloody close but it all clears. A lucky escape.



The Teflon hose goes straight onto the turbo fitting and is permanently fixed, loops around the front corner of the block and down to a 90 degree elbow connected to the threaded bung on passenger side of the sump.



The oil feed line was straight forward made in -4 hose. The oil feed is taken from an unused port at the rear of the block that feeds straight from the main oil gallery.



I mentioned previous that I didn’t want the faff of potentially having to drain the catch can of oil.
Having located the catch can to the drivers side of the engine bay gave me a straight shot to the second threaded bung on the drivers side of the sump so I could create a recirculating breather system.
I simply replaced the supplied NPT drain tap in the bottom of the catch can with a NPT to -4 adapter and a line back to the sump.





The breather pipe from the up stand was simple enough being a straight run across the engine bay.
I didn’t feel that a single -10 was enough breathing capacity so I looked into running a second -10 line.
A prime candidate was a threaded boss on the manifold at the front of the valve chest that had a blanking plate over it.
But, we’ve been here before…



Using the same trick as before I could just squeeze in a second fitting.
A standard 90 degree fitting was dismantled.



Removing the hex left a nice round stepped lip.
The original blanking plate was drilled for the fitting.
It hasn’t been drilled curse word, honest!
The original cast hole in the manifold is considerably off centre but that did me a big favour as following the position of that original cast hole moved the fitting down and over giving me some much needed clearance.





Again that was sent off for welding and returned and fitted up.



To finish the plumbing was a vacuum line from the common plenum of the inlet manifold to the MAP sensor built into the ECU.
I already had a blanked off 1/4” NPT port drilled and tapped into the plenum portion of the manifold.
I eventually found a 90 degree 1/4” NPT to 4mm barb fitting, a weird collection of features I guess.



Which then wouldn’t fit as there wasn’t enough space to swing the fitting. 🤦‍♂️



I wasn’t too sad about this as it wasn’t in the best location.
A new hole was drilled and tapped in the carb/throttle body spacer on an alternate face instead for a neater installation.

Nice work as usual, but I see a possible issue with the return pipe running so close to the hot side, I would guess its a teflon lined pipe, and very close to heat, they never get on well together, the outer sheath is nylon inner is teflon, with a bit of ss braid in between. I can see that melting, would it be possible to extend the stem away from the heat in steel pipe before going with the braid? or something like thermo-tec heat proofing for spark plug wires?

what about having a looksy at PAS fittings, often ridiculously tight steel bends and use JIC fittings,

This brung me up to pretty much the last job before attempting to start the engine for the first time, connecting the turbo outlet to the carb hat.
I’ve been dreading this job as I knew it would be a nightmare and it didn’t disappoint.
I mentioned previous that I had abandoned the idea of fitting an intercooler setup. Firstly I don’t think it was even possible with the space available and secondly I’ve lost patience now and just want the thing running.
Running no form of intake cooling is certainly not idea and also quite limiting in how far I can take things.
A job for the future that has me now looking at charge cooling (air to water) but that’s a story for another day.

This is where I was at with the two components.



I roughly worked out a 30 degree angle from turbo outlet to the horizontal, which had me ordering a length of 63mm beaded aluminium tube to match the turbo outlet and a 63mm silicone bend to join the two.



To hopefully look something like this.



This is when it all started going downhill rather fast.
Every surface was a curve or an angle. There was nothing to work from so it just became an educated guess of where to put a hole in the dome…. And I don’t even think that was right.



That is where the pictures dry up because…

I spent 2 days stomping round the garage making the tube fit worse and worse and even struggling to squeeze it all together on the motor as everything was so close together.
It took all my self control to not stamp the hateful thing flat and frisbee it out the door.

In the end and out of sheer desperation I passed it on to people better than me who managed to actually salvage something from the steaming turd I’d handed over.



I could finally bolt down the base plate for good.



This was all that was left of the joiner hose. I had to scallop the hose to get more hose surface area on the hat for the hose clip to grip onto.



All fitted up. Notice the rad hoses are now in place as well.
These stainless water tubes with rubber joiners are my old setup. I changed over to one piece rubber hoses some time ago but space is so tight over the the top of the turbo that the smaller diameter stainless tubes compared to the thick rubber hose gained clearance and the fact they are metal with water coolant inside means there shouldn’t be any melty issues.