I'm going to pick up some tube sleeves and nuts and tees before the weekend and see what I can cobble together, I have 25' of 1/4 x 0.035" stainless tube to play with. At the same time I also need to sort out all the boost reference lines between the wastegates, compressor housings and boost solenoid, while all that stuff is easy to access before I start putting the radiator and intercooler in for core support fab work.

 

This was a pretty hectic weekend for me, it was a 3 day weekend for us up in Canadia.. so I had to do some much-needed maintenance on the daily driver... ball joints, wheel bearings, rotors, pads, axle seals, diff oil... holy crap, 14 hours over two days on the street.. I need a bigger garage!









However I did get a bit of meaningful progress done on the car, started and accomplished maybe 80% of the heater-core-delete cover plate, just need to grind the edges smooth and paint it black...





My wonky-*** trimming job, as well as decades of previous owners drilling random holes in the firewall...



Getting closer to a final shape...



Marked the hole I trimmed as well as the existing holes, so that I don't end up putting a rivnut in a place that there's no sheetmetal!...



Two of the mounting holes were right next to the head, which meant I couldn't use the rivnut gun. Sure I could've done this before I put the engine in, but that would've made things too easy. A vicegrip on the rivnut and an allen key on a screw compressed the rivnut easily enough....



Rivnut pattern all laid out, now just to paint the panel and re-install.... then start making exhaust!

 

Do you have access to a bead roller? Stiffening that panel would keep it from oil canning and making noise, plus it would look cooler with some beads rolled into it.

Why did you have the pull the carrier on the Dodge?

 

The panel is 1/8".. it's plennnnnnty stiff, I don't envision it vibrating at all.. I plan to put sticky foam tape on its backside to seal the panel off to the firewall for noise and vibration.

I was replacing the inner axle seals on the truck.. they're just outboard of the carrier bearings, and have to be removed from the outside pounding inboard, and new ones installed from the inside pounded outboard.

 

Thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize it had inner seals like that. Also I agree regarding the 1/8" sheet. For some reason I though it was thinner. Carry on!

 

 

Wrapped up the heater firewall blockoff panel...



Made a manifold air pressure distribution block so that the boost gauge, FPR, and BOV all get their pressure from one tidy location. The second (right) sensor is actually the Holley wastegate dome pressure sensor, I just threw it on there as an extra future-proofing port to make sure the spacing is okay.



The boost manifold pressure distribution block will be fed by a single (10mm?) hose barb on the back of the L76 intake manifold.



Not sure where exactly I'll put the distribution block, need to install fuel lines and coil brackets and then I'll figure out its final location...



Also found a location for the Holley wastegate solenoid. Since my P/S pump bracketry is 3/8" plate, that was enough thickness to tap some M4 threads into and mount the solenoid in a convenient and open position...

 

After a long week and writing off last weekend with truck maintenance, I wanted to bang out a bit of "quiet" work in the garage Friday night.. aka stuff I don't want to be doing during the daytime which I would otherwise need to be doing loud things like cutting exhaust piping. Well I ended up going 7hrs straight and practically finishing the wastegate & solenoid hardlines by 1am.

This Eastwood flaring tool is super awesome.. I could have a mint looking flare in under 10seconds. One of the best tool investments I've made in a long time...





I started off trying to get pretty fancy with prefectly bending welding wire as a guide, but I ended up scrapping that pretty quickly and just going freehand and eyeballing it..and nailed most of the pieces on first attempt. Below is the first piece I bent and flared, the wastegate supply pressure (bottom side of wastegate diaphragm) connected directly to the compressor housing, on the passenger side...





Wraps around the backside of the turbo drain to access the compressor housing port, the way the housing needs to be clocked...



This is the start of the boost solenoid to the driver side wasgate bottom. For the boost control, I'm running the solenoid off the driver side turbo for supply pressure. Technically this is lobsided as well as unequal length, but in the real world for a street application that isn't on the ragged edge searching for that last 0.2psi boost, it should be fine controlling the passenger side off what the driver side is doing.





I wanted a super tight bend to make things more compact around the solenoid.. such a tight bend that my bender wouldn't fit it.. so I added some fittings on each end for extra leverage and just worked the tube around the bender's die by hand. Worked pretty well for a stubby little 90 degree bend...





Using one side as the length/angle guide for the other side.. gotta nail that symmetry!



Also bent 1/4" tube as the turbo oil feeds, to keep the feed line hugging the backside of the compressor housings. I'll terminate each hard line at its closest respective compressor housing bolt, add a P clamp to secure the hard line to the housing bolt, then run braided line from there to the junction block I'll make...



Driver side boost lines have one segment that I didn't finish, as I've still yet to decide on the exact compressor clocking for the best charge pipe routing.





The passenger dome control line is tee'd from the solenoid and crosses under the throttlebody, and has the Holley dome pressure sensor tee'd into it behind the belt tensioner. Like the exhaust gas pressure sensor, I P-clamped the sensor to the belt tensioner bolt to keep things from vibrating...

 

Finally got started on the exhaust today. Wasn't really sure what to expect, other than I need to run 3.5" duals and make whatever fit compromises I need to in order to make it work.

Here's some new and some previous leftover piping. Up top is 3.5" oval tube (2.5"x4.125") from Vibrant, upper left is 2.5" tube to make compound oval bends with vs expensive mandrel bent oval tube. Bottom left is some 3" tube to finish off the downpipes to the subframe rails, and right is a bunch of 3.5" round tube for the rest of the dual exhaust...



I wanted to see how bad it would be to make my own 3.5" oval-to-round transitions, since the formed as-bought ones are hella expensive. It was a bit annoying but okay. An additional reason I decided to make my own at least for one pair of them, is right round the driveshaft loop cross-member I wanted the underside of the tubing to be flush to give the most crossmember clearance...



Got the sliced 2.5" straight tube formed to be close to the respective 2.5" and 3.5" diameters, then slowly tack welded around the perimeter as I hammered it to fit...





Sometimes needed a bit more persuasion so out came the adjustable wrench...



Close enough to trim and weld some sheet on there to close it off.. I'm sure I'll bottom it out on speedbumps and scratch it up anyways...









The moment of truth.. how low was 3.5" round and oval tubing gonna hang below the floorpan and driveshaft crossmember??!!??.......



Apparently not that low! I'm SO GLAD I raised the driveshaft tunnel up a handful of inches way back when.. it allowed me to jam the 3.5" round tube close together and underneath the driveshaft...





There's a 1/2" gap all around the 3.5" round tubing to the floorpan. I have an idea to pin the two dual pipes together and have flex joints at the firewall, to keep the exhaust movement under the floor at a minimum...





This shot shows the muffler outlet aimed a bit too much to the center section, I since tweaked it a bit more outboard. Hard to get a pic directly in line with the muffler/routing but idea is to have the exhaust not touching the axle tube at full suspension droop.... JUST barely "not touching" haha.



Duals ready for sub-assembly welding at work, while I figure out the oval tube routing from inboard under the driveshaft to outboard around the transmission and the trans cross-member...







Again hard to take a pic in line with the tubing, but the bottom of all the tubing shouldn't be hanging more than 1/2" below the subframe rails.. closer to 1/4" below ideally.. while there is 1/4" vertical clearance to the trans crossmember and minimum 1/2" clearance laterally to everything else (trans cross-member, floorpan, seat bolt anchor plates, etc)...

 

Awesome job. I'm really impressed with how tight you got it. I would save the tails for after it's running; just throw a pair of turn downs on it for now or leave it as is. I imagine the tails will be the hardest part.

 

That's kinda what I'm thinking. Before I cut into my bumper to notch it, I want to look at the tailpipe tip mockup from further back than 18" which is the current room between my rear bumper and TIG/MIG cart and bandsaw. So would like to get it fired up and iron out any bigger issues before I drive it out of the, and can turn it around under it's own power.

I actually think the tailpipes will be pretty darn easy.. it's just a bunch of straights and 45's, and there's more access room under the quarters and beside the gas tank.. just need to perfect the tip location and then fill in the blanks between the rear bumper and mufflers.

 

Made really good progress on the exhaust this weekend. Friday night I started making the 3.5" oval S bends based off of a CAD drawing I made to figure out the lengths/angles required to achieve the overall length and offset that I measured needing out of the bend...



First step was to split the 90* bends down the bend centerline, to create inside and outside bends. I did this by clamping the bend horizontally on the table, and using a jigsaw (with a trimmed blade to not bottom out on the inside of the tube), and a lot of patience...



Once I trimmed the first bisected bend to the correct angle, I used that cutoff bit to be the guide for scribing a line on the remaining bends to follow on the bandsaw...







First angle-cut pair of inside & outside bends...



Center straight filler tube...



The four outside bend sub-weldments which will make up the two S bends...





Using the drawing I created, cut out a paper template and trimmed to fit the actual as-cut tube shapes...



Template then transferred to 16ga 304SS...

 

The fixturing table was SUPER helpful making sure that everything was flat and the underside of all the pip sections is flush on the underside.

Here is the uncut S bend being aligned to the Vibrant oval tube...



After a little grinding, both ends of the S bend are flat and ready to butt up against tubing for welding...



Flip the weldment over to fit the underside with some tack welds...



Aligning with the rest of the tubing (passenger side)...



Shimming the muffler up, they have a slight upsweep.. not intentional but okay.. important thing is that the tubing itself from oval to round is all in plane...



Passenger side...





Driver side...



After previously fabricating the oval-to-round transitions, I decided to try just squishing some 3.5" round for the transition from oval back to round at the firewall. It was tough and required a lot of fine-tuning with the vice and a BFH, but it turned out well enough...

 

Here's what the passenger side looks like in daylight, minus the 3" v-band flange which I welded to the 3.0"-3.5" reducer taper after this pic.



Here's the passenger downpipe tacked together. The idea I was going for is to have lots of the vibration isolation between the downpipes and the under-floor exhaust tubing, located in the firewall area.

The piping goes like this:

Turbo turbine housing -> 3.0" downpipe (~24") -> 3.0" flex bellow -> 3.0" v-band -> 3.0"-to-3.5" taper -> 3.5" flex bellow -> 3.5" bend -> firewall -> 3.5" round-to-oval -> etc etc

There is REALLY good flex between the two bellows.. I can misalign the piping maybe 5 degrees, and very easily too. So I will be using stiff rubber hangers to semi-rigidly secure/bolt the exhaust tubing to the car, from the firewall-rearwards.. I'll show that progress in an update very soon.



These pictures are very deceiving.. it looks like the bottom 3.5" bellow is super close to the bellhousing starter hump, but it actually has 3/8" clearance; it looks super close because the bellhousing hump is closest to the exhaust between the v-band and the bellow, which isn't very visible from any camera direction. Also looks like the top 3.0" bellow is super close to the subframe rail, but it has over 1/2" clearance...

 

That's a work of art my man. It's a shame you can't just hang the whole thing over the couch in your livingroom wall. Nice job routing that through some really tight spaces and achieving great ground clearance to boot. All those little fitups take time and skill to get done, but you seem to be knocking it out relatively fast. Looks like it's just about ready to weld out.

 

Fantastic work!

Andrew

 

 

Evenually he will have to sleep. When he does, We should go mess it up. LOL GREAT work

 

That's not very nice..... I thought you guys liked me and my work???!!?

Got the passenger side downpipe welded up the other night, including an O2 bung as well as a secondary 1/8" NPT bung in case I want to measure exhaust backpressure in the future...






Got started experimenting with rubber exhaust hangers. Because my design intent was to isolate the majority of vibration/flex between the firewall and the turbo's, I wanted to mostly-rigidly mount the rest of the exhaust pipes to the floorplan. I didn't want solid mounts, but wanted to have minimal flex that still allows for heat expansion, movement if the exhaust bottoms out on the ground.. general wiggle room.

My design thinking is that the tailpipes are going to be in a very specific location side-to-side (frenched into the rear bumper), however the system can expand/move front-to-back if needed. So I decided to try rubber strap that's about 3/8" thick, oriented side-to-side so that it allows minimal movement side-to-side when there are two mounting bolts on one end (vs one hole on either end allowing the strap to freely pivot side-to-side easily.

I ordered a couple examples, but the below Walker 35261 was the right stiffness.. other similar looking or thicker "heavy duty" rubber straps could elongate and stretch surprisingly easy just by hand.



One hanger strap produced two hangers..



I didn't like the idea of a bolt compressing the rubber and the rubber being the "soft stop" for the bolt's tightness, so I wanted to make some steel sleeves that the bolt will tighten to, preloading the rubber a bit to keep it tight, but also allowing a "hard stop" for the bolt tightening. I used some 3/8" coated steel tube from old S10 tranny cooler lines. Cut a small chunk of the tubing off to turn into a punch, to make clean holes...



Used a countersinking/deburring tool to sharpen the edge of the tube, for punching...



Punch it!



So punched...



This is the core that was punched out, can see the composite layer of rubber and some other fibers to give it stiffness. Not sure what materials it was, but doesn't really matter since it just seems to be the right feel...



The far hole is the punch hole, as clean of a hole as it really needs to be. The nearest hole was a test-drilled hole, was super unclean...



Hole location for the hanger on my fabricated driveshaft loop crossmember...



Hanger mockup.. I'll weld a mounting bracket to the exhaust that will be flush or above the bottom of the exhaust...



Similar setup in the rear, I'll use two mounting points on the top and bottom of the strap just to keep movement to a minimum the further rearward we go on the exhaust...





Here are the straps all punched with trimmed sleeves installed...



Front hanger with top bolt installed. More to follow as I make the exhaust-side brackets later this week and weld them onto the exhaust this weekend....

 

That style of strap is what held my old exhaust up for 15years. No issues with it at all. Not sure I like the anti-crush sleeves though - I think you might actually want it clamped between the washers to distribute the load over a larger area than just hanging down on the holes. May not ever be an issue either way though.

Love all the progress you're making. It's just about time to register for an event and set a due date! Looking at Motorsportsreg it appears you've got a good chance of finding a local event break her in (btw you should bookmark the site - it's a good one!)