Da Groj

It's no fancy TIG work, but it'll do.

So, I ordered a 1.75 ID v-band clamp. Price seemed about the same as a traditional flange set, and they are a little more compact.

Will weld one side of the v-band flange to the end of the down-pipe (I'll have to trim the cone adapter to get to 1.75", that's easy). The other side, I got a 1.75 OD to 2.0 ID adapter pipe. That should fit the band clamp flange, and the other end... I decided that since this is likely temporary (might be a while, but at some point, I will replace the back half of the exhaust), rather than futz with a bunch of fittings and making things just right... I just got an 18" piece of 1.75 ID flex pipe than I can snake around to make the connection.

The 1.75 ID flex pipe should have an OD that's somewhere around 2" and slide into the 2.0 ID adapter and weld-up neatly.

The other end of the flex pipe, 1.75 ID... has to connect to the stock 1.5 ID exhaust pipe. I'm too lazy to go measure what the OD of that exhaust pipe is... but, maybe it will be close enough to 1.75 that I can use the exhaust clamp (U-bolt) that came with the flex pipe to attach that? If not, then I'll slit the end of the flex pipe, take a little bit out, and weld it back up such that it DOES fit. Then, use the clamp.

It'll work! Then, when the time comes, I can just tie into the 1.75" pipe coming out of the v-band and run 1.75" back from there.

The only other thing I'll have to do is fab some kind of a bracket to go from the bracket on the downpipe to connect to the bell housing to support it. Otherwise, all the weight is hanging on the manifold studs on the head, which probably won't hold torsional load all that well. When you see how that goes together, you'll understand... the intake and exhaust manifolds are on the same side with alternating ports. The manifold studs on the top don't go through the manifolds at all, they go between the flanges of the intake and exhaust manifolds with a spacer (they're called "footballs" due to their shape) that overlaps the two flanges.

This isn't my car, and a different intake manifold, but something like this:
Oh, and the reason the pipe crosses over from right to left on its way to the back of the car is that the fuel tank is offset to the right for tailpipe and muffler clearance. Stock exhaust is (I guess) a resonator next to the fuel tank and a big round muffler across the back behind the fuel tank. If I tried to go straight back on the right side, the fuel tank would be in the way.

The long flex pipe is coming from Nevada, probably won't be here until Monday.

The other bits arrived today! And so did my new air filter.

The air filter is as-expected. 5.5" diameter, 2" tall. But, I neglected to consider that ALL of that 2" is not usable. The rubber end caps overlap by nearly 1/4" on each side... so, it's really about a 1.5" breathable area. The math still works out, just without as much headroom. If I ever try to make "max power" (optimized exhaust, cam, etc), then I might want either a taller filter, or a larger diameter. (or, realistically, a custom cold-air intake from the grille opening with either a cone filter or some kind of panel filter setup) This will at least eliminate my current restriction. Minor fab required to fit it. Rather than just tightening the screws against the flat steel cover (and risking bending it, plus risking the fasteners easily coming loose with vibration), I'm using a steel spacer inside so that the fastener has something to tighten against. I bought 1" spacers... will need to weld some together to get to 2". And I bought some nice 1/4" knob-looking wing nut thingies that I'll need to affix a stud to the spacer to allow that to fit. Whee!

But, this V-band clamp! Wow, for $20, it's a work of art! Very sturdy and nicely made. Fits nicely to the adapter that will fit the flex pipe. And will fit the adapter at the back of the header after I trim that to the proper size.

I like how this is coming together. I'll be able to do most of the welding before I start taking anything off of the car. All I'll have to do on install day is remove the stock manifold/cat/downpipe, cut the stock exhaust pipe and clean it a bit. (not planning to weld that, it will be clamped to), then install the header with the pre-welded band-clamp and flex pipe assembly. Bend stuff, maybe trim some length. Clamp that stock exhaust pipe. Fab a bracket to support the header. Done! Seems like a good afternoon (or weekend) project that won't keep the car off the road. And that's always the goal. Keeping the car on the road!

Have a look. The clamp has two halves inside, each one welds to the exhaust pipe. It's got a nice 1.75" OD recess in it to fit very neatly, and it's BEEFY, so it's not going to get overheated and warped when it's welded.



Here are the two halves with the pipes they'll be welded to. What you can't see is that where the two pipe flanges mate. One side has a ridge, the other side has a recess, so they fit together tightly and precisely. Excellent flow (not that I care, the pipe is still oversized), and no leaks!

I could have got a kit with a set of flat stamped steel pipe flanges with a gasket and a couple bolts for about $15-18. This V-band kit was $21. WAY nicer! No gasket to blow out, and simpler to install.

Had some time and motivation this afternoon. Welded up the V-band clamp.

Came out pretty good. The one on the right was done first. I did it as before, a series of spot welds, and then going back and filling in between them with more spot welds. Unless you have just the right equipment and WAY more skill than I have, that's the "correct" way to weld thin sheet metal or tubing.

The one on the left, I decided to try to lay some 3/4 to 1" long beads. It worked pretty well except for my beads were often at a bit of an angle. And, the whole reason for doing spot welds is to not overheat the metal and blow through it... so, of course, I blew a hole that I had to fill in. I managed that repair pretty well, too.

Not gonna quit my day job.

Loren wrote: Not gonna quit my day job.

I'm glad to hear that.

Looks like the plan is coming together nicely.

Spent way too much time Saturday working up the mounting spacers for my new air filter. I'm feeling like once I'm done doing everything else (like that will ever happen), I may redo the intake, run a tube to the front of the car and probably just fit a cone filter. But, for now, this wo

rks.

And it DID make a significant difference. It would barely rev past 4000 in first and second before. The air restriction we evident. Now, it pulls nicely past 5k in first and second... at least when it's warmed up. Still feels like it's lean up there, but that's where I was before. Trying to fit an AFR gauge to fully understand what the mixture is doing.

Flex pipe will be here tomorrow. That should be the last piece I need to fit the header and then the O2 sensor.

Meanwhile... the fucking turn signals quit working today. Dammit.

Turn signals were easy. Fuse was good. Next likely culprit: flasher module. I reseated the connections on it, and things came back to life. So, either a bad connection, or the ancient flasher module has gone flaky. But, I already had a replacement electronic flasher module (with the extra output to run a noise maker if I need it... remember that?). Swapped that in, good to go!

Flex pipe arrived. I need to do some fitting to get it welded to the adapter at the flange. Then, I need to verify the slip fit over the stock exhaust pipe, and probably do some fitting to get that just so.

Once all that is done, I can think about actually putting the header on the car!

Sooooo...

I put the O2 sensor bung in where I thought I wanted it to be, and figured I'd make it work. But, the more I think about it, the more I think it's going to be significantly easier to plug that hold (or cut out the bung and patch it) and place the bung in a different location. To use the bung as I've installed it requires me to change the angle of the downpipe such that the bracket that bolts to the bell housing doesn't go where it should. I was just going to make an extended bracket. Now I'm thinking better of it.

Gonna order another O2 sensor bung. Meanwhile, I've still got some welding to do on that flex pipe. Will try to get that done tomorrow, and get a good look under the car.

Getting closer!

Geez, it's been a month. What have I accomplished? Nothing! I've been driving the car a couple times per week, and it's behaving well enough. Since I put the new tires on, I've been trusting the car a little more. I don't push it hard, but it's proving to corner nicely. With the crappy shocks, you have to be smooth and not do anything that's going to require correction. But, if you get it right, it's very rewarding.

I did lower the idle speed one evening. It's at about 1100 now and seems to be behaving. I might go for about 900 at some point. I feel like I could maybe go slightly leaner with the jet, possibly richer with idle mixture. That's why I want to get the AFR gauge working!

It's been cold, and I've been extremely lazy. I do have a new O2 bung and even bought a hole saw to make it easier to punch a hole for it. Just need a nice warm and long weekend to play with it. Meanwhile, the whole header is sitting on a table in my living room.

In other news, the fan belt has always been a little loose with no more adjustment left on the alternator bracket. I never thought much about it, but it could be slipping, as the alternator never seems to charge more than about 12.9V. But, as it's gotten colder, I get belt squeal on cold starts. Seems to go away as things warm up.

Finally got around to looking at that and researching. Amazon lists the belt as a 44 inch belt. In metric sizes, it's usually listed as 1110 or 1113 mm, which is about 43.5-43.8". I found some forum info indicating that 43" is a good fit, along with a lot of 43.5" recommendations.

I checked the car, and sure enough, it's got a 44" belt. If it's a 44, and it's stretched even a little bit, it's probably 44.25, which is at least a half-inch too long. Makes sense.

There's a good 2-2.5" of adjustment on the bracket, so I figure an inch shorter should put it in a good place. I ordered a 43" belt. It took longer to type this post than it will take to install it!

That's the problem once they get to driving reasonably well...there's more of an excuse to drive it than work on it!

The belt I ordered was completely wrong. I neglected to look closely at the width of the belt. I ordered a 1/2" rather than 3/8". (actually 17/32 vs 15/32) The wider belt doesn't fit down in the pulley as far, thus making the belt effectively shorter. The 43" belt wouldn't fit at all! (because it was too wide)

I said fuck it, went to the parts store. Spent a little more money on a lower quality belt, but it's a 15440. (exact same number as on the belt that was on the car that was too long!) 44" belt of the correct width. And it fits perfectly! It's got about a half-inch left on the alternator adjustment to go tighter. I guess the old belt (which really didn't look old at all) had worn down into the pulleys and/or stretched enough that it was beyond the adjustment range.

Anyway, I've got a tight belt now. No more belt squeal on start-up!

Gonna try to get the header on the car next weekend.

Hmmm... I've not posted in here since Jan 28. It's sort of an echo chamber at this point. But, it also serves as my "build log", and a great substitute for my feeble memory. So, I'm going to keep updating it.

I didn't actually start the header install until March 1. Not sure I did much else in-between.

The header install was an adventure. I'll post another thread detailing that. (I posted it to the MG forum, I'll just copy/paste) Ended up with an intake manifold leak due to poor header fitment, thought I had a carb problem, CREATED a carb problem in the process, and basically spent a month chasing my tail before getting it all sorted. But, now the header is installed, and it's back to running condition. They header does make it feel happier.

I just filled up tonight. First "full tank" (not really... with no working fuel gauge, I don't do full tanks) since getting the header in and the carb back in working order. 22.1 mpg. That's pretty terrible, but... probably okay given that probably half of that tank was running 60-65 mph (which is 3500-4000 rpm on this car), and much of the rest in stop and go traffic. The carb ain't tuned. But, I have an O2 sensor bung in the header, and an AFR gauge ready to go in!

Having a tech session this weekend with no big plans. I just want to inspect and measure some things mainly.

Gonna put the bore scope in the cylinders again, see if there's any change from the last time I looked, and get a better look.

One of my carb problems may have been fuel pressure related. Steve loaned me a pressure guage kit, so I'll check fuel pressure. Would be good to know what it is.

I bought a compression gauge, so I'll check compression.

I guess I'm due for an oil change. Couldn't hurt. Would be good to inspect for any crud in the sump.

I need to check my trans and diff fluids. Should probably change them, but I'll let it ride. I have several partial bottles of gear oil to top up with. I'll just add a bit to make up for whatever's been leaking all over my garage floor.

And, if nothing else is going on, I might adjust the valves. I've not done that since I bought the car. Who knows, I might unlock an extra half HP!

Oh, and that alternator belt. The adjuster is maxed out, and it was fine until it broke in. Now, it squeals every time I hit 4500 rpm. Or earlier if I get on it. Gonna get the next size down and replace it... again.

Plenty of other things on the to-do list. Like properly mounting the fuel pump. I guess I could reinstall the air cleaner that I left off after fiddling with the carb.

I'm adding "cold air intake" to my project list, too. Noticing that the engine runs MUCH better on a cool evening. With the carb and intake manifold being directly above the exhaust header... a CAI would probably make a difference.

Good day of getting some things done and inspected today!

Inspect cylinder bores

Borrowed Steve's bore camera to look down the spark plug holes, gave things a look. Not the best camera, but it gave us a peek. I'd looked once before maybe 6-8 months ago, but didn't have a lot of time that day. Didn't get any pix at that time. Today, I got a better look, and found that things didn't look much different. I guess that's good.

Cyl #1 - I took this photo with the piston up. Partly just to get a better shot of the piston top, and the oil (fuel?) that's present. The car hadn't been started in about 5 days, and we'd just done a compression test (dry), so maybe there was some fuel in there. Or maybe some pooled oil from the breather on the intake manifold got sucked in? This cylinder looked about the same as #2, so I didn't feel the need to spin the engine to get a better photo of the bore.



Cyl #2 - Not bad. Each cylinder seems to have the same ring ridges at the top of the bore. This one has some staining along the bore, but no pitting.



Cyl #3 - This one is the problem child. It's got a nasty rust ring in the middle of the bore. Clearly, this engine sat for a while. No big surprise, right?



Cyl #4 - This one looks pretty great! Some mild vertical wear showing, and the same ridge near the top. Otherwise, looks pretty nice.



Check compression

1 - 136 psi
2 - 128 psi
3 - 122 psi
4 - 139 psi

Wow, doesn't that just jive with what the cylinder bores looked like? Hard to find what the compression PSI "should" be, and who knows how accurate a cheap compression gauge really is, anyway. But, by my logic, atmospheric pressure of 14.7 psi x 9.1:1 compression = about 134 psi. My guess before doing that calculation was about 130-140, so that seems right. And the generally accepted tolerance is that all cylinders be within about 10%.

So, if we take the highest reading of 139, 10% = 14. Lowest reading of 122 is out of spec by 3 psi.

If we look at the median value of 130.5, all values are +/- 6%. Or within about 12% overall.

Not ideal, but not terrible. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Check cylinder head nut torque

I wouldn't normally do this, but it's a new-to-me car and I've no idea what's been done to it. Seems like a good idea. Can't get to all of the head nuts without removing the rocker shaft. Didn't want to do that, so I just checked the ones that I could easily reach. First checked at 46 ft/lbs, then at 50 ft/lbs. Nothing budged. Good enough!

Adjust valve clearance

Again, new-to-me car. Intended to do this the first time I had the valve cover off. That's today! Set them to .010" cold. A few were a tad loose, nothing major. A couple were a little tight. Several of the lock nuts were really tight.

Interestingly, I couldn't find a torque spec for those lock nuts ANYWHERE. Settled on 20 ft/lbs as seeming reasonable. After hand-tightening them all, I hit one with 20#. It seemed to be WAY too eager to move, so I tried 15 ft/lbs. That seemed about right. Barely any movement from my original hand-torque. Fun fact: the torque on the valve cover nuts is 2 ft/lbs! (I didn't torque those)

Clean, gap and reinstall spark plugs

Cleaned and regapped to .028". I settled on that number because I'm not sure what exact coil is in the car, only that it's a 12V coil. Should be good for 30-35 thou. 28 seemed plenty safe. I went ahead and torqued the plugs to 25 ft/lbs, since I had the torque wrench out already. (normally wouldn't)

I'd apparently originally gapped the plugs at .025", as I had to increase the gap on each one.

The plugs looked WAY better than I expected. #4 (the one with best compression, go figure) had the cleanest "ash" color. But, all were pretty even. No sign of richness, oil, or other issues.




Check fuel pressure

I wanted to check this because I had a recent carb problem that I thought might be related to fuel pressure. I was expecting to see something like 5-7 psi, maybe more. Steve also loaned me his pressure gauge kit. Sure enough, it's exactly 5.0 psi. The needle valve in the bowl doesn't seem to mind that, but the Grose Jet did. So, if I ever decide to re-fit the Grose Jet, or if I start experiencing float bowl overflows, I guess it's time for a proper fuel pump. (pressure should be around 2.5-3 psi)

Replace alternator belt

This is turning into an adventure! The belt that was on the car when I bought it looked nearly new. It's a 15440. It started squealing on cold starts, and had no adjustment left in it. So, I ordered another one. Went with a 335, but didn't pay enough attention to the first part of the number, ended up with a WIDER belt that wouldn't fit fully in the pulley grooves, thus was way too small to fit. Ended up getting one from the parts store, which was another 440. It fit, and adjusted with a little room for adjustment. That adjustment was taken up in a few weeks after the belt stretched. And within a month, I started getting belt squeal anytime I revved over 4000, or even earlier if I got on it hard.

So, I ordered ANOTHER belt, this time a 15435. It fits fine with PLENTY of adjustment left.

The frustrating thing? While looking for another part today, I found a proper belt (15435) in a box of parts from BPNW. I totally forgot that I'd ordered it! Guess I have a spare.

Check Crankshaft end float

Absolutely no detectable movement fore or aft. This makes me happy.

Change engine oil and filter

This was my second oil change. The first was shortly after I bought it, just as a baseline. The oil when I bought it was very clean and fresh, but I didn't know what it was or how old. I've been running Mobil 1 0W40 Euro Spec. Some may (will) disagree, but my reasoning is that we always said that 20/40 or 20/50 was the go-to for these old cars, and I get that. But, modern oil gives us the ability to run an oil that is thinner at start-up, which is where most wear occurs. I'll always choose a 0Wxx oil for reduced start-up wear. 0W40 is readily available and not overly expensive. Gives the best of both worlds.

Oil pressure is fine and didn't change at all after my first oil change. It's 60+ when cold. Settles down to 30-40 at idle as it warms up. If I get it good and hot (takes a good 45 minutes of driving on a warm day), it might get down as low as 15-20 psi at idle (900-1100 rpm) when the oil is fully warm, and is always well above the standard 10 psi per 1000 rpm. I'm happy with that.

I did see some shimmer in the oil. Not thrilled about that, but it was a very fine shimmer, not "glitter", no chunks, and not a lot of it. I could chalk it up to a lot of things. Wear from the cylinder bore rust scars? Wear from "bore wash", because I did drive the car absurdly rich for a month or so? I'm just going to keep an eye on it. See if it gets worse or better moving forward. There's no bottom end noise or anything to indicate major bearing wear.

Check trans and diff fluid

Diff has some seepage, but no significant leaks. Trans has some leaks. I've never had to add fluid to either, and both were sufficiently full. Not running out of the fill hole, but at least within about 1/8" of it. I need to change these fluids, though. It's on the list.

Set up grease gun and lube suspension

Ran out of motivation to do this. I did spot 3 grease fittings on each side of the front suspension. Is that all of them, or are there more?


And that was about it. Good day of checking some things off of the list and getting some things measured. Went for a drive after, and the car seemed to drive smoother. Probably placebo effect. But, maybe having more evenly adjusted valves? Maybe having slightly more spark plug gap? Didn't really change anything else.

I find that the car seems happier when I'm not driving in traffic. Not that I drive slow, but just being able to drive the car at the pace it wants to be driven at, rather than the random pace of traffic that makes the car sometimes feel inadequate. Trying to match the timing of other drivers is annoying! They'll act like they're going to accelerate slowly, and right about the time you short-shift to 3rd, they get on it and walk away from you, making you look like a chump!

I find that the car seems happier when I'm not driving in traffic.

Pretty much everything is happier when not driving in traffic. Especially in cars lower than most people's windows.

Got off ma butt and did a couple little things on the car this afternoon.

Replaced that radiator hose that Ben had pointed out to me. Easy peasy. But, of course, no good deed goes unpunished. That hose goes to a water neck with a couple other hoses and the temp sensor and whatever. It's a steel pipe press-fit into an aluminum housing. And, of course, being 49 years old, the end of that pipe is pretty rusty and is missing a chunk. There was enough pipe to reassemble and properly tighten the clamp. But, it ain't gonna last forever! I think I'll try to source a used replacement (can't get them new) and refurb it, making the steel parts thread-in so that they can be replaced.

The other thing I did, since I finally got some 1/4" fuel line and a 1.5" mounting clamp, was to mount my fuel pump and run a new fuel line from it to the carb. That's only been on my list of things to do since I bought the car! It was initially zip-tied to something. I cut the zip ties when I was working on the carb, and it's been hanging by the hoses ever since! So, that's done.

In addition to everything else that's on the to-do list. I'm trying to track down some noises. I think one of the bigger vibration issues is surely the fact that the transmission is resting on a cross-member because the trans mounts are shot. I bought replacements, but it's physically impossible to replace those without removing the transmission... which comes out the front, along with the engine. So, it's a bit of a hassle. I'm gonna have to suck it up and do it.

Other noise that's been bugging me since day one is a little noise from the cooling fan clutch. There's a trick where you can lock that fan in place (saps a little power and economy, but will be quieter) I'm going to try that and see how it does. Then I can decide if I want to just rock that for a while, or explore the other fixes. Those would be: replace the fan clutch ($240!!!), convert to an earlier Spitfire fixed fan (old timers swear this is the way to go), or fit an electric fan. E-fan is best for performance and economy. But, I'm more going for simple and reliable with this car, so I'll probably opt to switch to a fixed fan. That requires changing to an earlier style water pump. It's always something.

I noticed a rust hole in my muffler. I guess that bumps doing the back half of the exhaust further up the list.

More little stuff...

I've made a couple trips across the bridges lately, putting the car up at 70-75 mph. It's pretty happy going there with the current setup, and feels like it's got plenty more. (I'm sure anything over 80 would take a long, long time... but, it's supposed to be able to reach 100) I noticed going over the Causeway last week that while cruising at about 72, when I went up the hump and added throttle... the car responded fine and kept its speed... but, it blew a cloud of smoke. All was back to normal on the other side of the hump, and no ill effects.

That got me thinking about PCV. With my new (pre-emissions, actually OLD) carb, I lost all of the connection points for PCV and evap stuff. I did intend to install a PCV straight to a threaded hole in the intake manifold. Bought one to fit said threaded hole... but, it ended up being backwards. It flowed the wrong direction. I opted to just put it together with no PCV valve and run it. Actually, I first tried to run it with the breather hose plugged... never do that! Blow-by creates a lot of pressure in the crankcase and blows oil out of ever imaginable orifice!

Anyway, I've been running with no PCV valve. That's likely got something to do with the smoke under high load at high RPM. So, over the weekend, I found an in-line PCV valve (CV2004C) from a 1.6 Corolla. It fit perfectly where it needed to. And... the car runs better! Starts much easier. Idles better. Off-idle and low RPM performance is better. More responsive all-around. My guess is that with no PCV valve, the vacuum hose going straight to the valve cover was essentially dampening any change in engine vacuum seen by the vacuum advance on the distributor. With the PCV valve in place, the vacuum advance is now working properly! I had to make an adjustment to my idle speed, but the thing idles WAY better than before. I couldn't get it to idle below about 900 before. Now it's rock solid at 650-700 where it's supposed to be.

While I was under there, I also fit a hose clamp to the fan clutch. It didn't stop my squeal, but at least now I know it's the belt. Made the belt a bunch tighter... no squeal. I hear cooling fan noise constantly, but the whole engine seems quieter and revs more happily up close to 5k... which is about all I ever take it to usually.

And now... I'm noticing more oil than normal dripping under the car. So, I looked at that yesterday. There's a flex hose from the engine block that goes to the oil pressure gauge. It's leaking. Of course, nobody sells that specific hose with the fittings on each end. But, I can essentially rebuild the hose. Got some proper 1/8" nylon-braided oil pressure hose and clamps. Looks like it should come together easily. That appears to be my only significant oil leak. Some seeping from the valve cover and other places... but, that's the only "spew".

And it's remotely possible that the leak is what caused the smoke. Spraying more oil at higher RPM/pressure. Getting the engine good and hot running at 4200. Could have just been oil burning off of the back half of the header downpipe. It is oil soaked back there and looks a little cooked. Who knows? I'll just fix all of the possible problems... then see if the problem persists at some point.

I've got two 3-day weekends this month. Gonna try to do some rework on the header installation to get the exhaust to tuck up a little closer to the floor pan, it's really low right now. And I might try to do the back half of the exhaust. I should probably look at my to-do list and see if anything more important beckons.

Oh, and I've come full-circle on how I want to do my airbox/cold-air intake.

Initially, I wanted to keep it simple, and just put a pancake filter on it. But, those all cost like $120 to fit the CD175, I don't know why. So, I bought a cheap one for a CD150 and modded it to fit. Quickly learned that the filter thickness was too thin and greatly restricted airflow... so, I modded it further to fit a 2" tall filter and ran that for a bit. (I should probably put it back on rather than running open as I am)

Been noticing that the car runs a LOT better in the evening with cool air. That means that it should respond well to a CAI. The carb is sitting right on top of the exhaust header, so that makes sense.

I bought some silicone hoses and doo-dads, and even a 2.5" ID cone filter to hook up to the carb and was trying to work out just how all that was going to fit. It's tight, but it CAN be done. Lots of fab to get an adapter to fit the hose to the carb. Then probably a hole in the core support next to the radiator and mounting the cone filter somewhere up there... tight.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought about doing something different. I was down to thinking about how to make my own airbox to put a panel filter there so that I just have to run a hose for the CAI. Then it dawned on me... I could do that with the stock airbox!

I never wanted to use the stock airbox because it's sized to fit the CD150 carb and would take significant modification to get it to fit. But, if I'm looking at fucking significant modification, anyway... why not??? It's a nice little box, all steel and has a 2" inlet pipe that I can VERY easily connect a hose to. It is by far the simplest solution. I just have to do a little work on the carb side to get it to fit the carb and adjust the fitment just a little bit.

So, that's on my agenda. Probably after the exhaust, thought. I need to get the exhaust up off of the pavement!

So, here's that leaky oil pressure gauge hose:



Got some hose and clamps to replace the rubber hose part. Should be easy, right? Well, it was, but...



Those stupid brass nuts. At a glance, they should be 7/16". They're bigger than that. They are also WAY smaller than 1/2". WTF? I don't own any 32" wrench sizes, maybe that's what it is. I ended up using an adjustable wrench to get them loose and remove the fittings. But, it's all cramped in there and I didn't want to tighten with the adjustable wrench.

The size was also not metric. 11mm doesn't fit, and 12mm is way too loose. The nut measures just under .45", almost exactly 11.5mm. So, I took an 11mm wrench from a set of super-cheap wrenches and widened it out to fit. (man, it's handy to have junk wrenches laying around!) Also shortened the wrench so that I could work in the available space.



Hose all rebuilt and installed.

Did a separate thread for the Airbox project:
http://dagroj.com/viewtopic.php?t=3949

It's nearly done. New filter is on order.

Dig my fancy fab work to make the stock airbox fit the larger carb!



And most of my exhaust parts have arrived. Just waiting on the band clamp to go on the header collector. I figured if I'm gonna make a cut there to fix the angle, I might as well put a band clamp in there to make it easier to work with in the future. Plus, I figure that once I've messed with it, that slip-fit collector is not likely to ever want to slip back together!

Putting the band clamp in there basically lets me do two "pie cuts". One angle on the top pipe, and one on the bottom. If I need that much angle. Will find out!

Airbox is complete and installed.

Working on the exhaust now. I did some pre-work by welding the straight tubes to the resonator piece that's going under the driver's seat area. That'll speed things along by a few minutes when I get to that part.

Today, I started work on fixing the header, and I feel like that went VERY well.

I was able to measure what I needed to do before I took the header off, and I did all of the required angle adjustment on the top of the band clamp flange that I welded to the collector pipe. I was ready to custom-fit the angle of the down-pipe flange, but ended up just making that one perfectly straight!

The header flange fell right into place with ample clearance where there was almost none before, and the angle is pretty much straight down.



The downpipe fit quite well, too, as did the O2 sensor. All that remains here is to fabricate a bracket to attach the downpipe to the transmission for stability.



After that, I'll do up the back half of the exhaust. That'll be easy. Hardest part will probably be doing up the hangers.

I'm also going to put a little skid-plate ramp thingy on the front edge of the resonator. It hangs about 3/4" lower than the stock exhaust pipe did. (1.5" pipe vs. 3" diameter resonator) The other low point of the exhaust will be the crossover just under the transmission. Pretty much can't hit that without first hitting the swaybar ends and/or lower control arms... but, speed bumps might get it. If I can come up with a way to protect or armor that, I might. I'm usually pretty good about not bottoming out the car, but the combination of slightly larger pipe and some band clamp hanging down could be a factor. (as it was, my "temporary exhaust" was REALLY low, and I scrapped part of the flex pipe flat)

Finished up the rest of the exhaust!

So, here's the stock exhaust that was removed:



And here's the replacement (except for the header, which is already installed on the car!):



That's all mostly stainless. The band clamp flange at the front is SS, the pipe to the resonator and the resonator itself is SS. The flex pipe at the front is not, and will probably be replaced with a proper mandrel bend at some point, I just used the flex pipe for ease of fitment (and because my initial fitment was temporary, connected to the stock exhaust). The main muffler and everything after that resonator is aluminized steel painted black.

It's not TIG welded and the welds aren't artistic. But, I still like my sloppy MIG welds better than a bunch of clamps!

I was able to weld some standard exhaust hanger rods to the stock bolt-on mounting points ahead of the axle and at the back of the muffler and use standard rubber hangers. It seems to have a bit of "swing" to it, but it is well-supported and doesn't bounce up and down a lot and I've not heard the slightest sound from it in driving.

Here's what it all looks like on the car:



As mentioned, the center exit on the muffler is a touch low. It would probably look better if the angle of the tail pipe matched the chrome accent line on the rear fender. Maybe I'll fix that someday. As it is... it's all flat black and I doubt anybody other than me will give it a second glance. And, no, I don't want a chrome pipe.

The muffler itself is also a tad more exposed than the stock muffler, hangs down a couple inches. That's why I painted it black!