Flatisfaction And Other Tangents.

As mentioned the fan needed moving to the backside of the rad.
I picked up a 12” Revotec to replace the 14” one I already had. It was also from their slimline range as I trying to claw back as much space as possible.
There are laser/water cut mounting bracket kits available for these fans which are well worth money but they are aluminium and I needed steel ones as I was planning on mounting off the original steel radiator frame.

I bought a set anyway as they would make a great template to copy from in steel.



After cutting them out I was left with this.
The legs have been left at different lengths on purpose as I knew I would have to offset the fan position on the rad to again claw back extra space for the charge pipes that were to come.



I had the same problem with fitting the new fan as fitting the intercooler in that the front end would need to come off for access, which would require a second pair of hands again.
Luckily for me, my sister’s significant other was at a lose end and he got roped in to help for a day!

After positioning the fan on the rad the brackets were marked for trimming.
Not much left of the short side!



The fan was bolted to the brackets and the brackets tacked onto the frame.



There was nothing stopping it being fully welded but something didn’t sit right with me but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
At this point it was decided to break for lunch.

On our return I spotted it straight away… it was impossible to unbolt the fan from the brackets! 😆

A quick rethink led to the short side being slotted to allow the fan to slide onto the fixed bracket and a second disassembly point on the long side.
Handily, the offcut from the previously cut short side bracket was used as the fixed mounting with some captive nuts welded to the backside.



The fan now being on the opposite side of the rad would mean a rejig of the wiring.
The first fan was originally switched by a control box.
This crapped out as they always evidently do so I pulled it all out and just had a toggle switch switching a 5-pin relay.
When I was last on the rolling road the tuner said the car was getting hot so I replied to just flick the fan switch on.
He looked at me like I had two heads and just said “why isn’t it running off the ECU?”.
Yeh, why isn’t it, I thought.

I dug out another spare digital output wire (DPO) from the bundle that I’d previously de-pinned from the ECU loom.



Awhile back I had stripped sections of the cars loom to remove and add wires.
One of the wires I added was the earth for the fan which was now on the wrong side of the engine bay.
I had no choice but to cut the loom open again to remove the single wire. 🤦‍♂️



And remove the redundant toggle switch and associated wiring.



The fan is wired in that it has a permanent live from the fuse box direct to the fan and the ground is switched via the relay.
This arrangement I kept and added a permanent live to the low amp side of the relay and the DPO, which is a switched ground direct from the ECU, goes to the ground of the low amp side of the relay.
The orange and black wire seen on the right are for the fan.
I managed to pull them back from the wrapped loom which gave me longer tails to work with.



The Revotec fans come with a pre-terminated ‘T style’ multi plug which is nice but you don’t get supplied the male half!
You have to buy the plug set just to get the male one. They’re cheap but still seems a little wasteful?



Setting up the on/off settings for the fan now was of matter of going into the software, allocate the DPO wire to the cooling fan which then brings up a menu where you select the temperature, to the exact degree, that the fan switches on and the exact degree it turns off at and that’s just scratching the surface.
Multiple fan switching, soft starts, variable speed control etc etc. It’s all possible.

Moving ahead, the button head fan fixings had started to contact the rad fins.



It was only cosmetic damage at this point.



This gave me the opportunity to bring out this quirky tool I’ve had for a long time.



It’s a radiator comb and works really well for straightening out damaged fins.
I’ve revived some really battered rads with this tool.

The fins straightened back out even though the missing paint makes them look more damaged than before and the photo showing up all the other imperfections!



These were the problem.



Having the fan assembly on the bench showed up another issue.
The bracket didn’t sit square when bolted up.
This angle caused the fan and fixings to be pushed towards the fins.



I got out my hokey folder to put a small tweak in the bracket lugs.



Which straightened things out.



And the fan cage got countersunk with matching hardware to make it all flush on the backside.



Mounted back up the fan sits nice and level now with added clearance and the bracket is also under a little tension wanting to push away from the rad rather than flop into it.

I had a couple of very similar tools at work that I used for repairing HVAC/Refrigeration Evaporators and Condensers. Great tools beats sitting for hours with a fine screwdriver straightening bent/damaged fins, hands down

Ah, the charge pipes. The thought of these making these filled me with utter dread.
The new position of the carb hat inlet and the offset fan position was a clue to the proposed routes for them.
To be honest I was never going to be running anything on the passenger side as that was already completely filled with the hot side piping for the turbo.

By coincidence all the inlet and outlets had ended up 2.5”.
I had an off cut of 2.5” aluminium intake tubing which I positioned in various places around the engine bay checking for possible routes and clearances.
2.5” tubing is awfully big when trying to squeeze it between rads, water pumps and crossmembers but surprisingly it did fit but it was on the absolute limit.
It was suggested that 2” piping between components was more than adequate for my power levels but stepping down 1/2” from the outlets and stepping back up again on the inlets just didn’t seem right.
I found that 2 1/4” intake tube was readily available so went with that as a happy medium between the two. This got me a little more breathing space with the tube diameter and also not having too much of a step down in size.

The rough plan of attack was to route both charge pipes either side of the lower rad hose on the drivers side.
Just one problem. The crossmember wing was in the way!



You may remember that right at the beginning of the rebuild I had repaired these where someone had previously hacked chunks out of them and now I was going to do the same but needs must.



I was going to use the pre-made bends of aluminium tube with stepped silicone hose joiners and I wanted to try an to make the two runs in one piece as I didn’t want a multitude of joiners and hose clamps.
I made guessimations with angles and ordered a selection of tubes and joiners.

I made an initial start with pipe layouts but quickly run out of talent.





The problem was I wasn’t able to weld the ally tube which made the issue of how to hold the various sections together for mockup, fitment and travel.
I had a couple of options but in reality none were realistic or workable.
Then I spoke to Harley at Imperial Speed who said he’d come over with his TIG. Deal!

It all went so well and quickly that we knocked out both pipes in an afternoon!
Because of this, here is the finished articles.



Not only do they fit, are one piece as I wanted but I can also comfortably get them in and out of the engine bay with only the removal of the alternator, which is one nut.

I did have a couple of contact points and to save the pipes rattling or worse wearing holes through the ally tube I put some dimples in strategic positions.





The big one was clearance for the anti-roll bar.



After assembling the charge pipes an end on each one had a smooth finish with no rolled bead.
I also had lost the rolled beads from radiator tubes when I had shortened them.
I needed to roll at least five beads and thought this would be a good opportunity to buy a new tool.

Welcome to £45 of the finest bead roller direct from Wuhan.



The first problem, it didn’t fit in my 6” vice jaws. 😆



A jaunty angle allowed me to do a practice run with an off cut of aluminium tube.



The top bead is my first go. Went a little too far and started to overstretch it but came out good.
I think a better bead than the factory one that comes on the tube seen on the bottom.



This all worked for small or straight sections.
Not so much for what I had to swing in it. It was hitting the cabinet on the wall before it even got to hitting the bench top!



After a bit of thought I cobbled this fixture together from some angle.



Which gained me the clearance to swing the charge pipes.



The finished beads. Really happy with that.



The next challenge for the bead roller was the rad tubes which are… stainless.
The roller complained all the way through the process but managed it not once but four times.
I had hit the ends of the stainless with a little heat, as seen by the discolouration, to help things along.
Not sure adding heat is the right thing to do with stainless?



I could now drop the charge pipes in for the final time and after much giggling, joiner positioning and clamp cloaking everything was in and connected up.

Have been back on the rollers already. It wasn’t great…

That's a bummer have you got a plan for a way forward ?

Put bigger injectors in!

With everything finally back together it was time to give it a test run.
It drove great, dare I say better with the intercooler now fitted but it’s hard to say with a self imposed rpm limit of 3.5k due to the lack of mapping beyond this point.
I was now seeing inlet temps of -1*c (!) but it was in the middle of the recent cold snap.

Returning back home and checking things over I heard the distinct sound of a bearing death rattle coming from the front of the engine.
Looking around I spotted it, due to a lack of air filter, the impeller of the turbo rattling around in the inlet housing. 😔
I know it’s a Chinese turbo but I’d expect it to last a little longer than this!
Switching off, I could rattle the shaft considerably.

Before getting too excited some investigation was needed.
First port of call all the pressure oil feed. I knew this was flowing as I’d checked it when I initially primed the engine before the first fire.
Undoing the banjo bolt had the oil line spring off and catapult the copper sealing washers across the garage… Cue 20 mins of NOT finding one of them making me twice as curse word off now.

Anyway, the oil port in the housing wasn’t dry but wasn’t over flowing with oil either.
Kind of stuck now I went to bolt the oil line back on with the banjo bolt when I thought I’d blow it through, nothing.
Some prodding produced this, the smoking gun.



The banjo bolt was for a turbo with a restrictor built in but it was so small it had blocked up with something, maybe debris from when the original crank and thrust face got destroyed, remember that drama?!

The restrictor did seem a little on the small side for a journal style bearing, it was under 1mm.
Stepping down to the pin drills found it to be 0.95mm!



Question now is, what size should it be?
There doesn’t seem a magic number but general consensus is as big as the seals will tolerate but a journal bearing turbo like I have should be 2mm upwards at least.
I drilled it out to 2mm and then later 2.5mm with no ill effects but now I’ve been told I should be starting at 3mm and going up from there!



Bolted back up the death rattle had gone and the turbo was running true again, maybe I’d got away with it?
Yeh, right…

I slept on it and had a better look at things with a fresh head the next day and straight away I could see the impeller fins were damaged from hitting the housing.

Off it came…



Removing the housing showed the true extend of the damage as all the fins were worn and burred over.



The housing was scarred.



The exhaust was even worse.
All the fins were rolled over from making contact with the housing and the wetness showed the seals were finished as well.



Quite simply it was scrap and a miracle it hadn’t self destructed in use.

The only silver lining to all this was it was only a £140 turbo and not a proper £1k Garret Jobbie.
I dug up the original Ebay listing to order another and apart from a small price increase there was now an uprated version available for a little more outlay again which included a billet wheel among other ‘upgrades’.
I put my order in late Sunday afternoon and it arrived 10am the next morning! 🤯



I had to re-cloak the new turbo and when I went to bolt the down pipe back on nothing lined up. I couldn’t get the bolts in the flange and it wouldn’t line up with the v-band on the wastegate.



I eventually decided to take it off again and compare the new exhaust housing to the old one.



It was obvious to see that the flange drillings were off on the housing.
The quick fix to this was to swap out the new exhaust housing with the old one as they are the same.
The old one wasn’t perfect because it had the scaring from the knackered bearing causing the fin contact but I’ve given up caring at this point.
I cleaned it up as best I could with emory cloth and bolted it all back together.



I quick check that I hadn’t lost the clearances and back on it went.



I now have my suspicions the oil feed may have been blocked or severely restricted for some time.

A job to address was the turbo oil return line which was leaking at the sump connection.



I had noticed that the leaking oil had accumulated behind the swivel end of the -10 and after stripping it down i found it was completely dry around the olive where the hose seals to the fitting.
I wondered if it could just be a faulty fitting? Luckily I had a new one in stock as mall the spare -10’s I’d sent back as they were so expensive to have them sitting in a draw. I just swapped out the barbed/swivel part rather than remake the whole line and so far it has stayed dry.



Attempt number two for the rolling road.
Strapped down and hooked up ready to go I just wanted to double check wether the injectors were sized correctly and as I covered earlier, they weren’t.
Four hours later not a wheel had turned and I drove back home with yet more hurdles to overcome.

I hope so…

Yes, I had no luck finding anyone in the UK that stocked anything over 600cc and I needed more like 800cc.
That had me looking to the US and after finally realising that they measure injector flow in lbs not cc I started looking for 80lbs (870ish cc) injectors.
I found a seller on EBay based out of California that had 2 remaining genuine Pico/Deka injectors listed, £50 each, arrived in 3 days and dropped straight in.

I think the LS engine or one of the LS versions uses Pico style injectors which is why the US is more geared up for the larger sized injectors.