mapleridge

amazing build.

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Spent the weekend doing more wire wheeling and more welding. Got the trailing arm reinforcements in, did some seam welding in other areas of the rear end, and also started working on the shock tower reinforcements. I spent some time cleaning up the trunk floor area to prep for replacing it but didn't get any pics of that.

Got the other side cleaned up



More seam welding



Masked off approx 1/8" inside the weld area to keep weld thru primer off of it. I found out from welding in the first one that it makes getting clean welds almost impossible if its too close



Sprayed with weld-thru primer



Before starting to weld, I gave the plates a generous chamfer on the side to be welded to help me get better penetration since I'm only using a 115v welder. This along with a little preheat from a propane torch helped things to burn in ok. If I had my choice I would have rather used a 230v welder, but gotta use what you have.



Plate tacked up



Welded



After this I ground it flush / filled with weld metal / ground flush until the RTA bracket slid freely across the surface. Due to variations in how things line up, you could run into a situation where the reinforcement plate stands proud of the 3 mounting bushings, which was the case for me. This could cause the bracket to bind up and ultimately limit the range of your toe adjustment. Took some time but it wasn't a big deal, just figured I'd mention it. Finished, it ended up looking like this before a shot of primer.



Cleaned up and welded the seams of the subframe reinforcement plates



Also worked on the shock towers some



Ground the front bead flat. I am going to be slapping an 1/8" reinforcement plate across here to serve as a foundation to weld my DOM crossbrace into and didn't want that sticking up in my way.



After making templates with painters tape, I transferred them to steel



Cut out in 1/8" steel. Still need to work on fitment a bit but they're almost there. Hope to get them welded in this week.



This coming week I hope to get those plates welded in along with a start on my replacement floor. Might even start to layout the tubing for the subframe mount reinforcements, we'll see. Thanks for looking.

SS-TEN

Looks Amazing. Keep up the good work! My brother and I just finished his e30. We swapped in a m52b28 and 6262. So its definitely interesting to see the differences and similarities between the two platforms.

dirtbag

iTrader: (2)

Any updates?

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Yep, quite a few actually. Been really busy lately and keep forgetting to update the thread.

I've been making small progress on numerous fronts

First - some new tools:

Hole cutters / spot weld cutters from Blair. These things are incredible. I will never use a hole saw or a standard spot weld cutter in sheet metal again.



My favorite thing about the spotweld cutter is that the pilot doesn't dig into the 2nd layer - it's a spring loaded pin that retracts as you drill in - so no risk or drilling through both layers, leaving you nothing to weld to.



I also got the 4-pc dimple die set from mittler brothers. Heat treated and good in up to 1/8" thick steel



Some time ago, I also decided to rebuild my engine harness from scratch to mil-spec, pin to pin. Spec 55 / tefzel wire, raychem dr-25 heat shrink, and fire resistant braiding. I've been researching parts / supplies for that and have also started depinning all the connectors. Nice thing about metri-packs is that most of the pins are easily removed with a safety pin - a good Saturday morning activity with a cup of coffee. Here's a nice primer on that subject for anyone interested: https://www.rbracing-rsr.com/wiring_ecu.html



Finished up reinforcement on one of the rear strut towers, still need to finish the other one.







From there I moved on to some work on the trunk floor replacement. Since the spare tire well provided a good amount of support for the subframe mount tubular section, I decided to throw a piece of 1"x1" in there to help support it. Probably not really necessary but neither is anything I'm doing.



Next I welded in this floor extension piece to bring it flush with the rear-most portion of the subrame mount channel. I welded this in from the bottom side of the car, grinding it flush as I went to help ensure everything will be watertight



I then started laying out my first few patch panels to box this section in again. Putting my dimple dies to work in some 16 ga sheet



Then broke out the bead roller and made this guy



Laid out here with the rear subframe stubs also tacked in place



First piece tacked



Welded up



Top panel welded in.



Gotta figure out where to go from here. I plan on keeping the charcoal canister so I need to make room for it without taking up too much trunk space.

Other than that, spent some time this week trying to figure out tube notching. Since I have a drill press, I didn't bother with getting a tubing notcher. A hole saw, a vice, some big c-clamps, and careful alignment got the job done.



Fit-up after some deburring



Need to make up a couple practice joints to dial in the welding settings for this prior to doing the real thing. The plan is to get everything fit-up and tacked in the car, then remove the stubs so I can weld all the way around the cope joints.

Worked on the tubular subframe reinforcement this weekend.

After I got everything cut and fit, I tacked it all up.



Once that was done I tacked in some 1x1 to the verticals to prevent anything from moving around until I could get it welded out more.



Then I cut the whole thing out of the car to weld it out



I did a couple test pieces to dial in settings before welding the real thing - for anyone interested I ended up using 140 amps with a 33hz pulse, 60% duration. Really helps to manage heat input for a noob like me that can't weld with a fast travel speed yet. Excuse my sloppy tie-in



And here's the cross brace welded up. This ended up being a nice practice piece because oil from cutting the tubes ran to the joints when everything got hot and caused all kinds of porosity issues that I tried to grind out and weld over, but it didn't really work. So I ordered two more sticks of DOM.



Picked up an Imperial 400F flaring tool - I did a couple sample flares with it and it works great. Also got a ridgid deburring tool to clean up the tubing after it's cut. I'm converting all the hardlines on the build over to -AN so I can use stainless hardlines.



After some more research and thought, I decided to remake my subframe brace. The first time I made it, there was still some residual oil inside the tubes from cutting, and when things started to heat up during welding, the oil ran to the joints and was causing all kinds of porosity issues.

So I ordered two more sticks of DOM and rough cut it



Then turned some caps for the vertical stubs



Then turned some bushing inserts for the front vertical uprights. These will be my new front subframe mounts. The ones in the car are welded-in studs with gussets that kind of interfere with the ID of the tubing and prevent a flush joint with the floor - so they will be getting removed. Will probably make more sense once I have pictures of it done.



Bushings cut and tapped. I made them out of 1045 steel - I don't have carbide parting tools so that part of the process was extremely sketchy.



Fitment prior to welding



Welded





The other part that I turned above was the collector manifold for my cylinder head steam vents. I will be venting all 4 corners of the block to help prevent the formation of hotspots. The hole is drilled almost the entire length of the part - started like this:



Then tightened it up and made marks where my others fittings needed to be clocked. Then drilled / tapped for the other fittings. The end result looks like this



A shot from further away to show placement



Now just need to figure out how I'm going to make hardlines to connect everything

Aside from that, an important piece of the puzzle finally showed up:





T56 magnum 2.66 box. It is one hefty SOB. Once I finish with everything in the rear of the car that I'm doing I'll start laying out the driveline.

Hope to have another update this weekend. Thanks for looking.

-Chuck

THE VEIN

How much time and money u have in this?

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

A lot more than I care to tally up.

Coonass350

iTrader: (19)

**** yeah brother! Looking sick man been waiting on an update. Glad to see this.

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Figured I'd throw up a couple pics from this weekend..

First things first, I cut out the front mounts for the rear subframe and cleaned up the mounting surface





Front mounts will be situated like this



Bolted in the subframe from the bottom to set the front mount position



Cut and fit all the tubes (again)



Tacked them up in the car then removed it to weld it out



More crappy welding



So all of the above was about a 12 hour day for me after I got everything cut, fit, tacked, and welded out completely. Apparently the heat from welding it pulled the front stubs together enough that I couldn't bolt the subframe in anymore - I was off about 3/16" total. Given the time I had invested into this thing, the bottle jack came out to remedy the situation.



A couple pumps and the subframe bolted up again.

Aside from that, I welded in the reinforcements for the other shock tower in preparation for cutting / fitting the crossmember that will go between them. Hope to get that done this week.

truckdoug

iTrader: (25)

lookin good man. your welds are coming along great. well thought out build.

side note from fire-marshall bill:

please don't use brake cleaner as a pre-weld metal cleaner. I'm not saying you are, just one of the pics in the latest build sequence makes it looks like it.
the vapors will turn your lungs to leather.
acetone is a safe(ish) alternative.

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

thanks.

and I just used brake cleaner as a first step for cleaning. I wiped everything off with isopropyl alcohol (inside and out) afterwards and allowed it to air dry for about 10 minutes before I lit up on it.

DW SD

Great project! Love the fab skills and attention to detail.

Doug

straightpipez

For the rotabroaches have you seen these? Use them all the time and you can easily buy only one cutter, spring, pilot, etc.

http://www.trick-tools.com/Slugger_S...9#.VCm4neczDtQ

Noahf

ck,

do you have a shopping list for your wire harness? I bought a harness very close to what you are trying to do but would like to do it myself for the chassis harness.

and your welds look purdy in the last post

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Thanks for the kind words, Doug

I have not. The common arbor is nice

I've done some prelim research on materials and pins, but I don't have a defined list yet unfortunately....something about other projects getting in the way lol.

KFeez

This should be titled, 'Project Massive Amazing Overkill' and makes my E36 M3 LS1 build look like Legos. You have the skills and tools of myself, my dad, and three friends combined. Awesome

SS-TEN

Good to see you are making some progress. Keep up the good work!

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Thanks man I appreciate that. Trying my best but I still have a lot to learn too - there's plenty of people that make me feel the same way you do. Keep working at it, you'll get there

Thanks!

Well guys, took a break from the chassis to work on finishing up the rest of the details on the engine - PCV, steam vent system, along with some other items.

I'm using a lokar throttle cable bracket and cable, and it didn't align with the fast throttle body. The cable clamping ferrule also didn't fit the blade, so I machined a couple simple spacers to line things up and a new ferrule to clamp the cable.





I later tapped this for an m5 set screw to clamp the cable. I'm also going to crimp a bicycle cable end cap on the end of the cable as a secondary retainer in case the ferrule fails / slips.



I don't want to use any rubber hose and clamps on the engine, so I knocked out the barbed fittings from the valve covers for the PCV system. They are just a press fit and come out easily.



I'll be replacing them with some stainless adapters that I'm going to turn on the lathe and weld to a stainless -AN plug. This entire thing will then get press fit into the stock fitting port in the valve cover. I didn't want to weld a fitting onto the vc in case I need to play with orifice sizes to change the flow rates and get the PCV system happy. Towards that end, I tapped the bottom of the adapter for 1/8 NPT for use with a filtered breather vent. The filter media is porous stainless steel - this along with the baffling I'm installing in that area will hopefully keep oil from coming up the line (I'm using both the valley cover and rear valve cover as dirty side vents). Clear as mud?





For the throttle body and valley cover connections, I cut off the barbed ends and deburred the tube for use with hardline-to-AN compression fittings





Finally powdercoated the valve covers, wrinkle black here







I've also been trying to figure out a steam vent system that looks clean - no hoses or excessive fittings everywhere - and I've got to say that it is a challenge working around the 102 manifold. I don't have a finished solution yet but figured I'd share a couple pics of what I'm doing anyway

I settled upon a routing I thought would work and ordered fittings to test it out

Tight here



Throttle blade clearance at wot



Driver's side intake clearance



More work to do, but I'm getting there (slowly)

Thanks for looking

BudRacing

iTrader: (3)

Your attention to detail is stellar. Great work.

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Thanks!

Couple updates, been trying to bang the rest of the details out on the engine since they've been lingering on for a long time.

For the PCV system, I'm going to be supplying clean air to both valve covers and venting out through the ls6 valley cover. My valley is the earlier version and does not have a restrictor orifice. Flows pretty freely so I'm not concerned about using that as a singular vent. From there it will go into a mightymouse catch can and back into the intake. The catch can has a pressure relief valve and blows off any excess crankcase pressure through a breather, so hopefully that means I won't have problems with leaking / blowing main seals.

I finished turning the valve cover adapters to size and welded them up.

This is an "exploded view" of the driver's side valve cover fitting. I added some stainless screen baffling and drilled an npt plug to replace the factory orifice. The screen is captured in the counterbore between the two pieces to be welded together. In my mind both of these things kind of help to keep oil from coming up the line and also helps to direct air into the passenger side valve cover since the air's momentum is going to want to keep it from making the 90 degree bend into the port. My hope is that this helps distribute the clean air more evenly side to side, but if I need to replace it with a different size then it's a simple matter of drilling a new plug and screwing it in.



both fittings welded up



I ended up needing to get another set of valve covers, so I scored another set on ebay for 30 bucks. I hosed the first set trying to add baffling back in for the pcv fittings after powdercoating. Drilled one of the holes too deep and tried to weld it back up. Turns out cast aluminum that's been exposed to oil for a while doesn't weld too nice - or at least I'm not capable of it. After all of that the rockers still hit the baffling even with the YT thicker gaskets lol

Anyway, I debaffled the new set and ground down anything on the underside that could lead to interference problems with my rocker arms. Couple of thrilling hours with a carbide burr later, and it seems as though I won't have any problems. Since I knocked the coil bosses off, the mounting threads pass thru the casting. I'll need to seal all these bolts up with ptfe sealer.



Once that was done, I powdercoated them and then installed the fittings. Tried to protect the backside and sealing surfaces from overspray the best I could.





From here, I made a couple hoses to connect the valve covers to the tb clean air inlet. Routing looks something like this





This is all Russell Proclassic II hose / fittings. I clamped it to the back of the intake with some 5/8" hose clamps.

The unused map sensor is a convenient mounting point for the second clamp



You'll notice that I also started running hose for the steam vent system - got hit with a little common sense and bailed on the hardline idea....it is just unreasonably difficult to tuck it in tight on a 102 intake. I still need to drill and tap the manifold block for fittings, then cut and terminate the hoses - but aside from that it is almost finished. I ended up finding an alternative fitting for the front driver's side to give me clearance - ended up getting ones with a side exit from IC Billet. I still ended up having to chamfer the edge of the deck casting there since the AFR's are thicker than stock and the fitting was just barely touching when bolted down. A minute or two with a file though and we're in business.



Aside from that stuff, I also tapped my water pump for -10AN heater core fittings.

Barbs knocked out



Tapped with 3/8 and 1/2 NPT respectively



I tapped as deep as I could on each of them, and this was the result



Turns out that there is a shoulder on the inside of the port on the right that prevents the tap from going deep enough. I took that shoulder down with a burr and then ran the tap in until the fitting was seated as deep as the other one. Here's the end result. (And no, the fittings aren't in contact with the casting. They are very close though)



More soon guys. Thanks for looking

-Chuck