Tick Tock....

Today I made a little bracket to mount the fuel pressure regulator on. The bracket looks kind of stupid (might make it look a little bit cooler) but the little pressure clock looks very funny. Kind of like the motor is a bomb :D Anyway... just need to buy some fuel lines next to finish the fuel part. And next on the list is the intercooler. That's going to be an interesting project because I'm going to flip the intercooler upside down and I need to make a cowl for cooling hoses. Oh, and a stand and bracket to attach the intercooler to the engine. We'll see.... Here are some pictures. One of the fpr and one of the wheels again, because I think they just look so cool.

I've got Wheeeeeels!!!!!

Yesterday I made a little roadtrip to collect some wheels I bought on the internet. And today, while the sun was shining, I put them on my car. And man, am I happy. :D They are 17 inch Cup 2 7J ET55 on the front and 9J ET55 on the back. They're not very spectacular or anything, just nice neutral big a$$ wheels. The front needs a little skinnier tires but they are mud and snow tires so I need to buy new ones anyway. And they weren't expensive either so all in all a good day. Oh and bought on of those folding spares too. Little downside on today.... I had a good look at what I still need to do on the car. And it's a lot!!! But for now I am enjoying the pictures.

Yes, that's a lot of rubber.

To give you an idea on how big they are.... :D

Pay less get more....?

Bought some stuff on eBay for the engine. Have got a big list for more stuff but for now I'm the proud owner of an underdrive pulley, a fuel pressure regulator and a silicone coupler for the intercooler with some clamps. I'm on a thight budget so it's all on the cheap off course. Well, after taking a good look at the underdrive pulley I was kind of wondering why the grooves looked so strange. In a sense I got more then I payed for :D The grooves weren't finished or something like that so I decided to just put the pulley on the lathe and go to work. Guess it looks a lot better and even with the work the price was still good.

Left how it was and right how it should be....

Some nice stuff to put on the engine, but off course there is something else to do first. (making money that is... :D)

Fuel Rails.... Check!

After searching, with no succes, for some subaru injectors (my engine only came with one rail and 2 injectors...) I decided to buy the cheapest I could find and just make them fit. I bought some new ones on ebay, which where cheaper then second hand subaru ones, and started looking on how to make them fit on my manifold. Hours and hours of looking at pics on the internet made me come up with this design.

Here are the fuel rails for my top feeds.

Bolted on the manifold with some really wierd bosses I am not going to show....

...and bolted to the engine. Looking good. This is another one of those "we'll see if it works" projects so let's hope these really are 440cc injectors and the rails are not going to leek. But at least I made them so that I can switch real easy to other injectors....

From Quick and Easy to AAAARGH!!!

While reading on how to make fuel rails I 'discovered' catch cans. When I pulled my engine apart I was really unhappy with al the dirty oil in the turbo and when I read that a catch can can catch that oil I thought I needed one. Or two actually. Of course you can buy them but I think they are kind of expensive for what they are, so I decided to build my own. A catch can is a very simple device, so I thought that making 2 of them would be quick and easy.... Well, I was wrong. It took me 6 freakin' days to build them. No, they didn't turn out to be complicated and it didn't take me hours and hours, it just didn't go smoothly. The 2 holes for the bracket for instants took (the machine) 4 hours to drill. Going to 7 different shops all across town to get the little fittings and then to find out I bought the wrong ones just after the shop closed, didn't help either. Well I can go on like that but I wont. I still need to finish the fuel rail, coolant tank and swirl tank. So I'll just lie to myself and say it all went super smoothly.... :D

Hmmm...

Fitted the watermanifold. Fits great but after I cleaned some of the coolant lines I found out they kind of don't fit anymore. Doh. Well, if it wasn't that funny I could've gotten upset :D At least now I now why everybody else has the watermanifold kick out in a straight line.... No worries though, I might get the coolant lines to fit and probably I'm not even going to need them seeing as I need to redirect all the cooling and breather lines.
Also fitted the intake manifold for haha's and man, is there way to much red..... Luckily I'm out of red paint. Need to fit the fuelrails on the manifold first before I can install it. So much for the little update. Hope to be able to put some real hours in this project next week.

Paint and Welding

After much deliberation I finally decided to paint the manifold in wrinkle red. I now, kind of rice but in the end it was al about the money. I already had the can of wrinkle red and wasn't going to use it on anything else so... why not.

Anyway, I always feel kind of like an alchemist when painting with the wrinkle paint. As you can see in the pics, it first looks like a thick gloss paint. I just put all the paint on in one go without any primer. Smart thing would be to use an etching primer and start with one thick coat wrinkle and then a few thin layers... but the can doesn't say anything about primer and spraying in one go seems to work to. Ok, there are a few runners, but in the end you can hardly see them. After that I get the hot air gun and blow on the paint until it starts to 'shrink'. You can go all wild and make the wrinkles really big, which I did on the valve covers, but I didn't like that and I ended up sanding the wrinkles down on them. It's really fascinating to see the paint react on the heat. After the entire manifold was lightly wrinkled I put it inside to dry. It takes about 7 days for the paint to really harden up. After that I'll spray it with a little bit of heat resisting clear. Off course I've got no idea how it's going to hold up when the engine runs, we'll just have to wait and see. Next up is finishing the fuel rail and fitting it to the manifold.

And I got the water manifold welded. My old neighbor told me I shouldn't even try and weld it myself (he used to be a professional welder) and took me to a factory where they could do it for me. Well the people at FIB did a fantastic (and really inexpensive) job and I already test fitted it and it fits just perfect. Very happy right now. Picts of it fitted coming soon. That's it for now. I need to draw a comic now......