Ok guys, sorry about not giving any details on that quick post last week, but I was headed out the door and didn't want to make you guys wait any longer. I deleted that post, and I'm going to add all the details I left out in this one.
My main goal is to get this chassis into powdercoat as soon as possible, preferably by early next year. Obviously, when life happens that makes it difficult, but that's still the goal. Before it can go to powder a few things have to happen, everything that gets welded to the car needs to be welded to the car and the body has to be removed so the entire chassis can be finish welded. So I'm trying to wrap up adding any additional bars, brackets, mounts, etc that will need to be welded because once it goes to powder, the fabrication stops.
Todays project is installing the turbo mounts. Often you'll see guys with the turbo just sitting on the hot side of the exhaust, this lets the turbo move around quite a bit (especially when you come down from a sick power wheelie) and eventually it will cause the hot side to fail. My solution to that is to solid mount the turbo to the chassis so the turbo can't move at all, ever, period. I also want the turbos to be forward facing so that we can take advantage of the fresh air coming through the grill and maybe some of that ram air effect above 150 MPH.
The first thing I had to do was to figure out where the grill would even be. That means installing and aligning the doors so that I can mock up and align the front end. I'm kind of annoyed that this font end fits as poorly as it does, when I installed it based on the fender gap the body line did not flow AT ALL. I'm going to have to raise the nose up substantially and rebuild the entire fender portion of this front end to get it right. You can clearly see the difference in the body line between the two angles (follow the green line).
I'll have to deal with that whole mess when I get to paint and body, at least I know where the grill will be and I can install it so I can get everything in place. I just cut a rough hole and used some clecos to hold the grill in place, This will get addressed in body work as well.
I know I want the turbos to be evenly spaced in the grill, one on each side, so I whipped up this spacer and tacked the mounts to it. Once I had the distance between the turbos set I hung them from my cherry picker with a sling so I could start taking some measurements to see where I want them to be with the front end removed.
You can also see in the last picture with no front end, the front crossmember that I made. The plan is to hang the radiator below that in the future, but the turbos will sit on top of it so that everything is mounted solid. I just had to tack it all in place and reinstall the turbos.
That's all for now. The turbos do sit a little low because I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with this front end alignment. I can install a billet spacer between the mount and the turbo to get it to the height I need once body work is finished, I just have to make sure that we lock that height in BEFORE I build the turbo kit. As always, I have a video that summarizes this entire process as well for your enjoyment.
My main goal is to get this chassis into powdercoat as soon as possible, preferably by early next year. Obviously, when life happens that makes it difficult, but that's still the goal. Before it can go to powder a few things have to happen, everything that gets welded to the car needs to be welded to the car and the body has to be removed so the entire chassis can be finish welded. So I'm trying to wrap up adding any additional bars, brackets, mounts, etc that will need to be welded because once it goes to powder, the fabrication stops.
Todays project is installing the turbo mounts. Often you'll see guys with the turbo just sitting on the hot side of the exhaust, this lets the turbo move around quite a bit (especially when you come down from a sick power wheelie) and eventually it will cause the hot side to fail. My solution to that is to solid mount the turbo to the chassis so the turbo can't move at all, ever, period. I also want the turbos to be forward facing so that we can take advantage of the fresh air coming through the grill and maybe some of that ram air effect above 150 MPH.
The first thing I had to do was to figure out where the grill would even be. That means installing and aligning the doors so that I can mock up and align the front end. I'm kind of annoyed that this font end fits as poorly as it does, when I installed it based on the fender gap the body line did not flow AT ALL. I'm going to have to raise the nose up substantially and rebuild the entire fender portion of this front end to get it right. You can clearly see the difference in the body line between the two angles (follow the green line).
I'll have to deal with that whole mess when I get to paint and body, at least I know where the grill will be and I can install it so I can get everything in place. I just cut a rough hole and used some clecos to hold the grill in place, This will get addressed in body work as well.
I know I want the turbos to be evenly spaced in the grill, one on each side, so I whipped up this spacer and tacked the mounts to it. Once I had the distance between the turbos set I hung them from my cherry picker with a sling so I could start taking some measurements to see where I want them to be with the front end removed.
You can also see in the last picture with no front end, the front crossmember that I made. The plan is to hang the radiator below that in the future, but the turbos will sit on top of it so that everything is mounted solid. I just had to tack it all in place and reinstall the turbos.
That's all for now. The turbos do sit a little low because I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with this front end alignment. I can install a billet spacer between the mount and the turbo to get it to the height I need once body work is finished, I just have to make sure that we lock that height in BEFORE I build the turbo kit. As always, I have a video that summarizes this entire process as well for your enjoyment.
