Never ending quest of badassery

[mrkrinkle]

Got the tanks and water traps from the powdercoater today.

Not really happy with one of the traps. Looks like it was dropped..

[mikey G]

How did any shop let that leave? That's a bummer man. Hopefully you get it resolved as im sure you will.

I love the paint on it though. The gold flake is a nice touch to match all the other gold.

[superturbodiesel.com]

Looks great!

[mrkrinkle]

Dude said his father in law packed them up. He must have dropped it. Who knows if that's the truth, but I'm going to bring it back to him tomorrow and he's gonna strip and re do it for me.

[mikey G]

At least it's getting fixed. Fuckin' father in laws

[mrkrinkle]

Lol, yeaaaah.

[lamsv]

This is slowly becoming my favorite build on this site. I hit this thread every time I log on. And I'm never disappointed! Looks most excellent.

[mrkrinkle]

Thanks dude!

Was concerned about the gold tarnishing over time as just touching it with my bare hands darkened the gold unless it was buffed off immediately. I was recommended this stuff called "Shine Seal" that it looks like some dude makes in his basement. Its really fucking expensive but oh so worth it.. Three step process, clean, seal, buff. Super easy and simple and I'm amazed with the results. I immediately did the lips on my wheels. Not only did it shine everything up but water runs off it like crazy. Super hydrophobic! I would recommend it to anybody that wants to keep polished things looking polished.

During the process I found out just how thin the gold plating is. I definitely do NOT want to polish this stuff again. If I do I need to be really, really careful. On a couple of the fittings the very edges got a little thin, so much so that you can see some of the nickel under it.. Oh well.

This is turning out wayyy better than the picture I had in my head.





Chuck will be melting some metal for me tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully we can get all the boost piping finished so I can then yank the motor on out, pull the trans off, and have everything off to the right places to get things really rolling..

[mikey G]

Will the hardlines be gold?

[mrkrinkle]

Nope. Gonna be brushed aluminum, but I may polish them.

[mrkrinkle]

Today was a good fucking day. Started off nice and early at the shop where I met Chuck, the guy who is making all my boost piping. He brought a damn mobile machine shop with him. Band saw, welding table, tubing bender, drill press and of course his welder. I only have 110V at the shop so that meant welding the piping to the turbo housing was a little difficult, but he got it done. That guy can weld. Holy shit. If you've ever seen any GrimmSpeed products he's the guy who makes them all.. Pretty damn quick at doing it all too. We didn't quite finish up, but we'll be back at it tomorrow. Have to finish up the diverter valve tubing and the tubing coming off the turbo to the inlet of the intercooler.

I'll let the pictures do the talking..



Since my car has a custom United Motorsports tune on it I have to run a ProMAF. It's ugly as hell, so I had him machine a 3.5" to 4" piece that presses onto the plastic housing of the ProMAF. Anybody who has ran one knows just how ugly they are.. This is probably the best solution to eliminating a need for a silicone coupler IMO. I could have had the whole housing made out of billet at my work and I may do that in the future as they have rapid prototyping capabilities, but it's hard to get time on the CNC machine as they're always using it.. Also, I don't know how sensitive the ProMAF is to changes in the materials used. I don't want to fuss about with that, so this was the next best thing. Little ears need to be welded onto the piece so it can physically be bolted to the housing, but that's easy enough. He may be willing to make more of them, so if you're interested LMK.. I'm sure the more he can make, the more motivated he'll be to actually do it. The piece was turned on a lathe, and came out wonderfully!



The reason I put a v-band on the inlet was for this. At show's I'll be able to pop the ProMAF off and run this velocity stack. Yes that velocity stack will be gold plated :laugh:













Then this little bitch ass v-band clamp decided to seize on me. Had to cut it off. Vibrant v-bands it is.. Can't have this shit do this on me once its all gold plated...



I'll post the finished pictures tomorrow. Hopefully have the motor out of it late tomorrow evening too..

[mrkrinkle]

Well, this past weekend was a huge success! I'm finding it hard to find time to work on the car with my new job.. The hours I work are basically the same as all shops that I need to get to in order to drop off parts. So that sucks cause sometimes I have to haul ass on my lunch break over to places.

Anyways I finished everything I wanted to get done. Boost piping is done and I dropped the motor out last night.







Got my sweet ass alternator in. Got to bring this to work so I can pull the pulley off and get the billet housing off to powdercoating. I'm gonna need a pretty large set of pass-through's to get this puppy off. Oh i also ground off all the casting marks on the tensioner and polished it. Does anybody know how these come apart? I'd like to powdercoat it if at all possible.



Took about an hour to pull everything apart and get the motor out.





Got a line on a brand new built AEB head with no cams that I'll probably be picking up and throwing the IE street cams in it. Should have less than 2K into it when its all done. Wayyyyy cheaper than I can build it for.

Hopefully I'll be able to get the transmission off tonight and get that loaded up so it can go to the transmission shop to get split and then all the stuff that needs powder can make its way over to the shop. I'll also be able to get all the remaining hardware over to the gold plater. Then its just a waiting game until I can put it all together!

[smiles]

Amazing work! This is the type of build that motivates me to get working on my car once I'm done with school this spring. Maybe I'll get to see it at some meets this summer if you venture to WI.

[mrkrinkle]

I'm sure it'll be at Dubs in the Valley in July!

One of my favorite shows of the year!

[mrkrinkle]

Well, got the transmission off the motor tonight, finalized all the hardware for it too.. I think I'll be able to get all the stainless off to the plater this week.. welp. I'm scared for that bill..


My good buddy is going to run my trans to a local shop to get it split and gutted so I can get the case off to the powdercoater along with everything else. With the schedule I work its nearly impossible to get to some shops during the week unless I take my hour long lunch break to do so. Driving 45 minutes one way on an hour long break isn't going to happen, so yeah. I love my friends. I wanna shoot for late next week to get everything back from their respective places and back into my possession. I doubt that's going to happen though. At the absolute LATEST I need everything by the 18th to keep this on schedule. Would really like to start bolting everything back into the car by the end of the month.. I feel like that's an obtainable goal.

Anyways, I bought a Mishimoto radiator tonight, along with some Derale two speed fans. That wasn't cheap. This project is going wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over budget once again haha. Can't say that doesn't surprise me in the least. Tomorrow after work I'm hopefully going to pull all the nasty, sticky, oily OEM tape off the entire engine harness along with the electrical tape under that. To anybody who's thinking about wrapping their harness in the OEM tape, save yourself the trouble. It was a constant battle all year long to get the tape to keep looking good. Almost immediately it got dirty, and it was an uphill battle all year long. My buddy is going to be up at the shop on Saturday where we're going to extend a few things such as the throttle body plug and intake air temp plug as I've flipped my intake plenum from last year. Also need to wire in the new alternator and hopefully the fans too. Then the entire harness will get wrapped in some tech flex !!!

Stay tuned! this shit is moving fast.