Never ending quest of badassery

[mrkrinkle]

Will be picking the tanks and a couple small parts up from the powdercoater during lunch today.. Can't wait to see how they turned out!

I know I say this every time, but I think I'm finally done with ordering hardware.. Waiting for some longer M6's for the intake manifold, and a couple nuts for various things. Hopefully I can get the motor out this weekend, get everything pulled apart to get all the stainless to the plater!

Guy who's doing my boost piping ran this piece on his lathe for my PROmaf. Wont have an ugly silicone coupler to attatch the maf to the intake piping.





should turn out good. Sorry for the ****ty pictures, I'll have more tomorrow.

So here are some other pictures to show you the ridiculousness of what I'm doing.

The bolt in the plenum wasn't tight, they do sit flush. I'll be running some small o-rings to insure it gets a good seal so I wont have any vacuum leaks.



OEM red tops and new red VF mounts.. ECS dropped the ball on this one as they only shipped me one side of the mounts. Hooray, looks like I get to deal with their customer service today.



I've got nordlocks on the way for these.





aaaaaand the current status of my toolbox/cart/bench... I **** having things unorganized.. I'll be cleaning for a while tonight when I go up to the shop.



This will also be in my possession tomorrow. The question is, do I plate the billet piece gold, or powdercoat it white?

[mrkrinkle]

Thanks! Yeah it wont be easy. Making the "velocity" style inlet with the sensor tube isn't the hard part, its the exit for the maf tube that is hard. There is a very precise channel cut into the inlet that leaves about a 1mm gap all around for the air to pass through the sensor. If he can't seem to get it right he still has a way of eliminating a silicone clamp for a mounting device. So worst case scenario is there will be a custom aluminum piece that can be welded to my boost piping. Even if that turns out to be the case I wont be dissapointed.

[mikey G]

That would be a feat of engineering right there...some really cool details going into your car man. I love it.

[mrkrinkle]

Meeting up with the guy fabbing my IC piping after work tonight to give him this. Its a ProMAF housing that he's going to make out of billet for me. I need to run this maf with the United Motorsport tune that's on the car. There is no other option out there to make this piece look better. If i cant get it made in metal, the only way to connect it to the intake tube is with a silicone coupler.. UGLY. So wish me luck on this, cause if he pulls it off it will be the only promaf housing on the planet made from metal..

[mrkrinkle]

Had an issue come up with the buddy that was going to help me make the boost piping. He probably wont be helping me as some personal shit came up..

Anyways I had another dude come up last night and look at what I want to do, and needless to say hopefully we'll have everything together next weekend.

Should have all the stainless hardware and such off to the plater mid-week sometime. I'm waiting on my final order of hardware to come before that happens.. Every time I look at the car I come up with more hardware that needs to be ordered. There are about 4 bolts I cant replace as they're M7 and that shit is nearly impossible to find unless I want to go with shitty wheel hardware haha.

First run of powdercoat should be back mid-week as well.

[mrkrinkle]

Anyways, holy crap what a long day.. Worked from 9am-6:30pm, during my lunch break I hauled ass to the plater to pick all of the gold stuff up (they're about 35 minutes away from my work, I had an hour long lunch break..) After work I drove home as I had two packages of ARP hardware sitting in my mailbox. I live about 30 miles away from where I work and my shop is about 15 miles away from my home. Made it up to the shop and eagerly installed most of the hardware I ordered.. I couldn't be happier with how this idea is coming together! After everything is powdered... Wow is everything going to pop..

I'll just let the pictures do the talking.



Still need to update the hardware on this, but it looks incredible as it. Love how it turned out!





Will be shaving down the casting marks on basically everything before powder or paint.. including the tensioner. Will also be getting gruven's billet pulleys that will be gold plated too.





VVT hardware. Can also see the new washers I got for the valve cover. This is the best picture I got of that tonight, donno why I didn't grab more.







I thought I grabbed more pictures, but I didn't. Towards the end of the night I was working with my brain shutting down... Still will have more hardware to order this weekend.. I'd like to have all the stainless out to the plater mid next week sometime.

Tomorrow, er later today I'll be melting the boost piping together! super pumped for that. If we finish that I'll more than likely pull the motor out too. Gotta get my trans out and stripped so it can go to the powdercoater with other things that I had to wait on until the boost piping was finished.

[mrkrinkle]

Thanks ya'll!

Was beginning to think I was talking to myself in this build thread again haha.

Doubt I'll run a blanket this year, I never really push the car to its absolute limit so it doesnt get cherry hot. The paint thats about 1" above the downpipe right off the turbine hasnt even yellowed or anything. Still looks like the day it was painted. But we'll see. If anything I'll ceramic coat it. I can get smokin' deals at work on ceramic coating or a turbo blanket. Wrote an invoice up for an EVO X today who needed some header wrap and a blanket and the blanket is like $14 my cost lol. Its a nice one too, cant remember the brand off hand..

[AGentry]

Wild!

[DeltaAlpha9]

Are you going to be running a turbo blanket to cover the hot side? Looks awfully close to your cold side piping. Also my god that gold plating is amazing.

[rice4life]

Damn.

Great work going on here. 10/10 would read again.

[Tuck&Poke]

Holy fuck.

[mrkrinkle]

Ran to the plater on my lunch break to grab all this.. Its going to be wayyyy more expensive than I had originally planned.. fuck. $800 for the first of 4 runs.... All 80 -AN fittings were originally quoted at a single run, maybe just over. All this ended up being more than two full runs. 99 pieces total.

[mrkrinkle]

Got a picture from the plater tonight. They were worried that the mirror polished aluminum would get a little hazy after the nickel plate and may have required another round of polishing after the nickel. That didn't happen with anything, so I gave the go ahead to gold plate everything.

Little teaser, hopefully I'll be able to pick everything up tomorrow!

[mrkrinkle]

I picked up the modified compressor housing, diverter valve and throttle body. Everything looks absolutely stellar. The kid who welded this stuff has some serious skills.. You all should have seen his shop at home! He's building some crazy single and twin turbo classic Fords.. Was blown away by his fab work..

However, I gave him the throttle body pretty much bare except for the butterfly valve and its corresponding plastic gear. Now that gear makes an electrical connection with the plastic cap via these tiny little metal brushes that must tell the ECU it's placement. Well some of those "hairs" got a little bent. I tried my best to straighten them but I'm worried they have to be perfect in order to function properly. Has anybody ever had throttle bodies apart before? Is there anyway I can take that gear out and replace it with a new one? Or are those gears interchangeable? I have my stock throttle body laying around I can take apart and use. The TB I'm using is a passat as it doesn't have the vaccum bung on it like the GTI/Jetta ones do. I could probably test it on my roommates car (B6 A4 1.8T) if nobody can confirm one way or the other.

Anyways, onto the pictures









This weld isn't the prettiest, but he told me the TB kept fighting him since the metal was so contaminated with oil. This TBT probably has a good 175K on it, so I didn't complain too much.



This won't look bad gold plated...



Also decided on a color for everything. Really excited for this! Can't really tell the shimmer it has from this picture, so hit up my Instagram for the video where it shows a lot better.


That's all for tonight!

[mrkrinkle]

I'll pass the word on!