I'll go through some pictures in the next few days and come up with a legit update to the threads.

Sean

 

Awesome job. Your thread rocks and that thing moves!

 

Well guys, its update time!!! Man, where to start, it's been too long. I guess I can start with the end of last year. The car ran a best of a 9.44 @ 148 with a pretty horrible 1.5 60'. We were slowly creeping up on the launch, and obviously were still decently far away from really pushing it. Sometime in June (too lazy to check) we had trans problems and had to load it up early. The following weekend we pulled the trans and found that the filter had fallen which starved the trans from fluid somewhat. We decided to try and rebuild it ourselves, and also change the rear gear since we were topped out on that 148mph pass.

We eventually built the trans, and changed the rear gear to better suit our needs. We had some trouble with parts while building the trans, which really delayed getting the car back together. Also once it was back together the trans brake was touchy, but more on that later. Unfortunately because of the delays on parts, the trans not working 100%, and other things going on with life (mainly me getting married) we just were not able to get the car back out last year.

At that point we started planning for the new build up. We knew where we needed to make improvements, things we wanted to see done to the car etc. The basic plan at that point consisted of rebuilding the turbo kit, changing the fuel system, changing to a true stand alone, rewiring the car, and a few other smaller things. So now we can move on to the work!


12-2-11
We started work in December before the holidays. Chris had already started ordering parts and material by then. First things first, he decided early on that he wanted to stay with an air to air intercooler, but it was time for an upgrade. He also wanted to make sure that it would be future proof somewhat. After looking at the options, we decided to get a core and make the end tanks ourselves. He went just a little bigger....





I had also bought him a lightweight steering column and quick release from Mid West Chassis, and also a rear firewall from Wolfe racecraft. For some reason I dont have any pics of the rear firewall, but here is the column



Compared to the stock one with a quick release




And installed, dont worry we have a good amount of work left to do in there


We pulled the trans so we could send it out for a proper rebuild.


We also pulled the motor so we could do some work on the engine bay, and make it easier to go through the motor.






12-16-11
All we really did this weekend was strip the engine bay. I decided to make a time lapse video of this, and here it is!
http://youtu.be/lLcR5pQKseQ?hd=1

Chris also pulled the dash and stripped all of the interior wiring as well. No pics of that though.



We had a bit of a break in there during the holidays. I kept doing things at my work though. This next batch is all cell phone pics, so excuse the quality.

I started by drawing up a design for the intercooler end tanks.




Then we made a set up out of some cold rolled sheet metal to make sure the program worked, and practice the bends.

Blank. No hole for the piping since there is no need.


Fits like a glove


This is starting to get BIG


Now that we knew the program was good, it was time to load up the aluminum and make the real parts. Here is the sheet of 1/8" 5052 aluminum loaded up into our PEGA turret punch press.


Here are the two 4" holes for the intercooler piping


And the final two pieces


Next up came forming






And all done!



Next up came cutting the stock 3 bolt flanges off of the truck manifolds, so I could weld on the new stainless steel V-Bands.

All set up in the band saw


And both cut


Here is how the flanges fit before welding


All prepped for welding, had to get that ceramic coating out of the way


AND welded.




1-7-12
That brings us into the new year. During that "between time" that I was doing the above at work, Chris was going through the motor and fixing little things. We pulled the oil pan, re-tapped the holes for the oil feed above the oil filter since one was stripped, cleaned it all up and gave it coat of paint, and also plugged the hole for the oil level sensor. He also replaced the rear cover and rear main seal since we suspected a small leak back there.

Once we were back to work, I got started on welding the intercooler. I was not able to weld the end tanks to the core though since Chris's welder just didn't have the power. I should be doing that at work this week. Here are a couple of pics of my bald head welding though.

First step was to weld the ends of the intercooler as per the instructions that came with the core.


Then I tacked the end tanks to the core, and welded the seams on the end tanks.


Here is the resulting weld, not bad for self taught and my third time welding aluminum


Then we set the intercooler in place to see if it would actually fit


And bumper on, the cooler is what is holding the IC


Just for the heck of it, here are a couple comparison shots with the old IC now that the end tanks are on the new one.





1-7-12
The following weekend we did some work to the motor. Now that the bottom end was all 100%, Chris got to work on the top side. He changed both head gaskets which were in rough shape after that year of abuse I again decided to make a time lapse of us doing the passenger side head gasket.

http://youtu.be/ckny-AfYUgI?hd=1

After the motor was back to 100% we put it back in the car and called it a weekend.

 

1-21-12
Here is where the real fun begins, the building of the turbo kit! Now, this needs a little explanation first. We are changing a lot of things on the car this year, BUT the same 76mm turbo is staying. This is for two reasons, one of which is of course money. Instead of spending money on a nice new big turbo, it was decided to spend the money on the material for the kit (and other things) instead. The other reason was so that we could really see what this turbo could do!

So now that we knew it was going to stay, we knew it wont be on the car forever. This turbo uses a T4 flange, and really any turbo we would put on the car next would be a T5 or T6. Any other turbo would likely be larger as well. These two things dictated a handful of decisions that you will see as we go along. The most obvious is the location of the turbo, which gave us a LOT of room all around it. The next thing that will see is how we made the T4 flange removable.

We will start with pics showing how we mocked up the turbo location. This is more or less where it ended up, we did change things slightly from these pics though. Also notice that all of the hot side tubing and flanges are stainless steel this time around. The intercooler piping, and the downpipe/exhaust will be in aluminum.








Now that the ground work was laid out, we got to work! This pic is showing my weld of the tubing to the T4 flange.


I got warmed up making that while Chris was working on my daily beater. If I had to guess, he was working on my brakes...

Once he finally decided that it was not going to get fixed that weekend, he came to give me a hand on the TA. We were then able to get started on the tubing. We started on the passenger side figuring it was the easier place to start.

First tube done!


Moving right along




1-28-12
This weekend I (with Chris's help of course) kept plugging away at the turbo kit. Ill just move on with the pictures










While I was working on that, Chris was cutting and forming the pieces that are the base of the intercooler support. He started with some 10ga cold rolled metal that he cut to fit in the ends of the frame rails (since we had cut the horns off long ago). Then he drilled three holes in each plate, and I welded a stainless steel nut to the back side of each hole.





After that I welded the pates to the ends of the frame rails, and Chris ground the welds nice and smooth.


(notice the start of the IC piping sitting on the motor too)

I think he had to touch up my weld at some point, so here he is doing that.


Here is the driver side all finished


Time to move onto the passenger side, and do.... MORE GRINDING!!!!

You can also see the plate that bolts to this on the driver side in this pic



2-11-12
That FINALLY brings us to this weekend! Since we ended with the plates in the frame rail, I will start with the pic showing what they are for.

This is the start of the intercooler support. Its 1/2" molly tubing that Chris bent up, that's welded to the plates on either frame rail.


After that one was done, he kept working on some other tubes for the front end. You will see more pics later, but here is a pic of him welding one of those tubes.


While Chris kept bending tubing, and cutting the car up I started making the merge piece. Because of all of the strange angles this was pretty difficult, but I eventually got it You can now see the separate piece that transitions from 3" round tube (with a V-Band flange) to the T4 flange. This one piece will easily be changed later when we go to a different turbo.


In the next couple of pics you can see that Chris had cut out the upper and lower radiator support. You can also see the start to the upper support which will hold multiple things like the center hood pin, center dzus tab for the bumper, and also the top of the radiator.






All of the uglyness of my welds on the merge will be smoothed down before being coated, so ignore all that mess!


That's all for now! We were not really able to work at our normal pace for the last 3-4 weekends which is why there is not much progress. I had a nightmare of a problem with the brakes on my Civic, and each week the problem moved meaning I had to order parts and work on it the following weekend. Now that the ENTIRE braking system is new (some parts replaced twice even) we wont have to spend half the weekend or more working on that POS first

As always we hope you guys enjoy following along, and I will keep this more up to date now that things should be moving quicker.


Thanks for reading,
Sean

 

Thanks for keeping this up to date sean!

 

Chris this has to be one of my most favorite Trans Ams!! As always you guys do great work!

 

Thank you guys!

 

Hey guys, update time!! Not much to report this weekend, at least it doesn't look like much. Friday we were a little distracted because we got a boat! It's a 1981 Glastron SSV-151 with a Johnson 140HP outboard. It is in pretty good shape, but we are just going to sell it. More money and time for the TA without a boat If anyone is interested PM me. Here is just one quick pic.




Back to the car! We got a lot of things finalized 100%. We started out by getting the trans back in the car so that we were sure the motor was sitting properly. Once we did that we decided to lower the turbo down about 1 inch from where it was last week. Everything was just tacked into place, so it was a simple change. We cut out the tack welds and took off just the merge piece. Chris then got to work smoothing out the inside and outside of the merge. He also cut it down one inch, and reshaped it so that the 3" v-band flange fit.

While he was working on the merge I was welding the 4" v-band flanges to the intercooler. I also welded a 3" - 3.5" transition to the outlet flange of the turbo. Once that was all done it was time to start putting it all back together. First think was putting the merge back on so that we could line up the v-band flange. We got that all tacked into place, and then put the turbo back so we could decide the rest of the piping.

We started with the down pipe, which is made out of 11ga aluminum. Here you can see the turbo temporarily installed, and the start of the down pipe tacked in.







Here is a side shot that shows how high up the turbo really sits.


Here you can see the 3" - 3.5" aluminum transition on the outlet of the turbo


You can get an idea of how the upper intercooler pipe clears the down pipe. Chances are we will build a heat shield on the down pipe in addition to some ceramic coating.


Some shots of the intercooler, which only needs the mounting bungs welded on to be 100% now.






Next weekend we will have a lot more time to dedicate to the TA. We should have the hot side welded up 100%, as well as the turbo support. The intercooler should be mounted finally, and I would guess that all of the intercooler piping will at least be tacked up. I would like to have that all welded 100%, but we will see how it goes.


That's all for now, thanks for following along!

Sean

 

sigh... gonnna have to wait till i get back from afgan to see these pictures

 

Where can they be hosted so that you can see them? We could always e-mail them to you too. Let me know what I can do.

Sean

 

can you post them up on facebook? i go through Chris's album when ever he uploads new stuff. i'm having to live my modding sickness through you guys until i get back to the states

 

All of the pictures are on my facebook already. I'm not sure if I am friends with you already or not though.

Sean

 

...i dont think we are... strange, we are always battling it out and never got around to friending!

 

It's more of a love/hate relationship

Sean

 

haha

 

What a long weekend! We were back at it again starting Friday and kept going till early Sunday morning! I have been a zombie all day just trying to recover, but enough of that lets get to the pics!!!

We will of course start out on Friday, where we started by hanging the intercooler. I had some aluminum bungs made up during the week for mounting. I also made up some tabs, and gussets for the tube side. After a long time of measuring and checking, and measuring again we marked it all up and went for it.

Here is a close up of the mounts


And the whole shebang





We threw the bumper on to check the clearances, as you can see it's BIG!!!




After that we stared making the main loop for the turbo support. This ended up being harder than we anticipated since we did not have a bender with the right radius. We ended up making a temporary tool to make the bend. Here it is tacked in, and ready to be pulled out for final welding




We pulled out the crossover, and called it a night. Saturday morning I woke up and welded the crossover and support 100% You can see I also added in a small piece to catch the back side of the tubing.



One of these days we really need to clean up the work bench area...




Next up came making the car side of the turbo support. Chris had made the bulk of it the night before, I just needed to weld the nuts to the back side. Then we got the idea to lighten it up some. That meant drilling holes in it which probably took years off our life.




While we on a drilling kick, we decided it was time to put a big hole in the bumper! Always have to start with a mark



Then a small pilot hole, and removal of the dzus fastener that is in the way



Then the long tedious process of hole sawing a 4-1/2" hole. The hole saw I borrowed apparently was as dull as could be.



I got bored it was taking so long, and I left to do something else. Here is the end result after hours of work



While he was laboring on that, I welded in the plate for the turbo support on the car. Once I welded it in, we bolted the crossover back in and Chris got to work making the diagonal supports for the turbo. Here you can see it all welded 100% and back in the car.





Just to show how strong it is, here is Chris standing on just the v-band flange!




After that we bolted the turbo back into place, and got started on the IC piping. We knew working with such large tubing was going to be a challenge, but it was more difficult than we thought. The radius take up such a large amount of space. We ended up making a few changes to the planned routing, but here is the result.











Chris had to trim the bumper to clear the 4" tube coming out of the IC. Then while I was welding up the transition he got to work making up the lower IC support. He came up with a way to make it removable just like the rest of the front tubes. We are always trying to plan on every contingency for working on the car and so on. Opening up the front of the car, and making everything removable will make that much easier. Here is a pic of the lower support, which is all I have right now.



Next week after the other IC pipe is made up we will pull off the intercooler and get the lower support all welded up 100%.


Thats all we have for this week. I know Chris already ordered up the last of the material to finish the turbo kit 100%, and also the material for starting on the electrical panels. We will have another full weekend next weekend trying to catch up. As always thanks for following along!


Sean

 

I'm sure you've answered this before but what tig are you using.

 

W-O-W! Man, I only wish I was as good a welder as you guys are! You guys are doing great work! Keep it up!

Also a huge fan of a turbocharged Pro-Flo build!

 

Thanks guys! My welds are getting better, but IMO I still have a long way to go. We have a Hobart EZ-TIG 165i, and a Hobart Handler 140 MIG. Between the two welders there is very little we cannot handle on a project like this. The only thing I can think of that we were not able to weld was the end tanks to the core on the intercooler. Chris's TIG has about 165 amps, and I think we welded the tanks at 185 amps. For those welds I brought it to work and we used our Miller Dynasty 200 DX welder.


Sean

 

What an awesome job 23 pages and hundreds of pictures this will be helping me with my build!! Great work