Never ending quest of badassery

[t.han]

this is beautiful

[mrkrinkle]

Hooray! New wheels. CCW D240

18x9.5 ET19 2" lips
18x10 ET32. 2.5" lips

I forgot to get fitment pictures. But it's f ucking SPOT on. :thumbup: to Dehate and CCW.









Aaaaand in my possession for less than 5 hours, already apart.. Going to Powderkeg Powdercoating tomorrow to get a quote. I wasn't really happy with how he did my old wheels. He powdercoated the mounting surface (hub and face to lip) and the extremely precise center bore even after telling him not to. So yeah, that's not going to happen again. I'm going to do some shopping around on the powdercoating since I'll have it all off and able to be powdered at once rather than a couple peices every other week like last year. I'm hoping I'll be able to get a better deal then. I want a high quality coat too. I really want to eliminate the Orange peel look. Espo's quoted me at $1200 + shipping for everything including the trans case. Blasting, prep, 2 stage powder. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

Going to visit Twin City Plating to get some quotes on gold plating tomorrow too.

Swoops and I are planning another air setup. He's sending me 83 fragola fittings that I'll have to strip of the anodizing and then polish every single one before they go off to the plater. I'm really not looking forward to that..

[Markus]

1200$ for Pdercoating some centers? Or what is included there?

I paid 650$ for my wheels last year. Center powder coated, inner barrels powder coatet, outer barrels polished an everything mounted with new stainless screws included tire mounting.

So is powdercoating in your place very expensive or you just have many other things to do.

[mikey G]

Wheels look great. Sucks to hear about the centerbores. But I agree, 1200 is a lot to just powdercoat the centers. What color are you going with?

[mrkrinkle]

I should have specified. $1200 to powder the wheel centers, two air tanks (4 gal and 2.5 gal) valve cover, intake manifold, motor mounts, transmission case, turbo cold side and all boost piping.

[mrkrinkle]

All a 2 stage powder too. So it's essentally all going to get powdercoated twice.

[Markus]

Ok sounds better then i think the price is ok

[mikey G]

Haha that does make way more sense. Really excited to see the end result. Love the Tarox's peeking out from behind the mesh.

[Earl]

Can't wait to see them in the new colorway. Nice e30 m3 peeking there in the back=)

[mrkrinkle]

There's actually another one on the other side of my car too. Both don't run. Ones awaiting a built S14, the other one will be an S52. They haven't been worked on in years, though.

[MrViicc]

beautiful car, beautiful build.

Looking forward to what 2015 brings!

[mrkrinkle]

Thanks!

[mrkrinkle]

Started to rip it all apart today. Pulled all the boost piping so I'd have better access to the starter and a ton of wiring. Don't know if I've mentioned it, but ever since H2oi I've had a rather large draw on something in the car. I fucking **** anything electrical, and frankly I'm a bit lost when it comes to all of that. The problem may have existed before h2oi but I didn't notice it. After trailering the car home and letting the car sit for a couple days the battery went flat. Just thought I may have left an interior light on or something. Didn't worry too much about it until I started digging a bit. With my sub-par electrical skills I needed the help of a buddy who basically did all the electrical last season when I did the shave. He's been a busy dude since he got married in November and the holidays came, he went on his honeymoon blah blah. Finally was able to get a free afternoon and came down to the shop. Well, I finally figured it out. As far as we could tell it was the air setup in some shape or form. Most likely a sticky relay or something. It could be the E-Level ECU aswell, but I have no idea how to test that so I'll be trying to get a hold of Accuair to see if they can test it or whatever.

So I hooked everything back up except the air setup since the new owner came to get it today, hooked some alligator clips up to some wire and rigged up a multimeter so I can test the battery and not have to open a door, causing the fuel pump to prime, draining off a tiny bit of battery in the process. Anyways, battery read 12.62V at about 5pm, and it didn't drop at all from then until when I left, about an hour ago. I'll run up there tomorrow afternoon and test it again, hopefully it still reads 12.62V or very close to that.

One thing I don't quite understand, and will have to dig a little more is the Turbosmart dual stage boost controller got pretty warm after having power go to it for only a couple of minutes. Left it hooked up for about 20 minutes and it was pretty hot. Almost too hot to hold in my hand, so I chopped the power wire going to it for the time being. Let me add that I don't believe that could have been the draw as I have a circut breaker about a foot after the main 2ga wire heading to the starter. Larry did some testing with that, and there was litterally no voltage drop from the battery to the starter so that eliminates basically everything. Only things the draw could have been were my fuel pump, one of my amplifiers, one of my compressors, or the E-Level ECU.

Anyhoo, I'll be starting to build the new boost piping this coming week, so I better order the Vanjen or wiggins clamps soon. Does anybody have experience with either? The wiggins clamps seem to have a LOT more movement in them VS. the Vanjen clamps. They are also a bit more expensive. I'll add that I'm not completely eliminating silicone couplers from the piping, just at the turbo outlet, and at the throttle body. Going to be welding a cast 90* elbow on the cold side. I need to order them soon, so yeah.. Any insight on that would be lovely. A plus side to the wiggins clamps is they make them small enough to be able to use them on my diverter valve. Was planning on just using small v-bands for that, but having everything match is appealing.

[mrkrinkle]

Hokay.

Got the front end torn apart in preparation for the fab work. Pulled the compressor housing off so I can get it chemically stripped of the powdercoat. Hoping the same place will be able to strip the anodize off all the air setup fittings. I would strip those mysef, but a buddy who works with metal for a living suggested that I get it professionally stripped to insure the plating will have the best chance to adhere.

Anyways, when I got the compressor housing off I noticed this:





Pitted all the way around. Very, very light pitting. I believe this was caused by powdercoat as I had some really tiny, almost powder looking gold residue stuck to the inside of some intercooler piping.

This supports that theory:



I chipped a lot of the flaking powder off before I took this picture. It appeared to have melted under the silicone 90* coupler. All the more reason to switch to V-bands. I was however, really happy to see no oil at all in the compressor housing and I have no abnormal shaft play as well.

Then I noticed the compressor wheel itself had some pitting too:



I need to find a different way to run a filler neck. Swoops was making these nice aluminum "4 Y" splits that I could probably get a cap integrated into that. Looks like I'll even be able to raise it up slightly. I would really like a sight glass put in there too. Seemed like whenever I remembered to check my level last year the car was hot and I would forget to check it again once it cooled down. Happened to me in OCMD and the car started to overheat in the retarded traffic on the strip when it was a parking lot. Took advantage of the lovely bus/motorcycle lane when that happened.



Also, if anybody has an upper radiator hose they want to get rid of LMK.

Oh, so I also figured out that running fender liners would be a good idea, took this right after I pulled the fender off. Otherside was just as bad.




That's about it for tonight, should be back at it tomorrow. :beer:

[mrkrinkle]

Maybe I should stop posting updates at 2AM. Nobody sees the epic shit that's happening to this car.


Finally drilled out the upper frame rail fender bolt holes out and replaced them with some nutserts in preparation for some fancy hardware. Nutserts are the coolest damn things ever and I have no idea why I haven't used them in the past. Makes complicated mounting relatively easy, but they're damn near impossible to get aligned at a perfect 90* to the surface substrate.

I also ordered this Metric bolt measuring tool, in hopes of simplifying the task of figuring out the size/pitch of the OEM stuff.

http://www.nutsandbolts.com/8mm14mm-metric-screw-thread-pitch-metal-gauge-qty-1-p-484.html

Hopefully I'll have it by the weekend so I can get a solid idea of the hardware I need to order. Regardless, this weekend will consist of making new boost piping, so that doesn't suck. I'm dropping all the fragola hardware swoops sent me to get stripped of anodizing aswell as my compressor housing and some other odds and ends that need a chemical strip. Guy said I'll have it back by the weekend if I can get it to him tomorrow.

Also need to finalize the powdercoat color. You would think it'd be easy to find a white you like.. F uck no. Such a hard color to decide on.

Oh, and I bought a shit ton of tools today I've been meaning to buy for about a year now. Also got a shitty craftsman rolling tool cart. Hooray.