LQ4 into a 3rd Gen/1972 Nova by frojoe

3 minute(s) of a 891 minute read

I sourced some nickel plated steel JIC tube sleeves and tube nuts locally, found a place that has stainless tube in a variety of diameters and wall thicknesses, and ordered the Ridgid 377 last night.

On the topic of multitasking, since the dealership parts desk wasn't open on Sundays, I made a bunch of progress on stuff in my work's shop yesterday. Phewph.. I think I've put in about 15 hours of wrenching/fabricating this weekend.

I'm going to pick up new rocker pedestals from the dealership today, and pick up the exhaust manifolds from the ceramic coater tomorrow, as well as some new engine mount bolts.

I'm still unsure if I'm going to reuse my pushrods, but wanted to check them anyways. It'd be good to know if any were bent, just as a data point.. luckily all were arrow straight! Also helps to have a nice expensively-flat surface table at work...

Next up I wanted to chip away a bit more progress on the intercooler.. this thing has been sitting in the back at work for what feels like 2 months already. Got the bottom tanks all welded up, will now wait till the engine and turbos are back on to final-fit the upper outlet and then figure out the upper tank geometry.

It was super tricky trying to manage the heat going into it, since the end tanks were 0.100" wall and the intercooler core is so much thicker. Also avoiding melting back the fins was a tricky situation. I normally ball up the tungsten to help with heat dispensing, however I got best results with having the tungsten an un-balled slightly blunt tip, with about 1/8" stickout from a #6 cup to really be able to laser-beam direct the heat, favouring the core however not soaking the core to the point of melting fins. I needed to use an 1/8" tungsten to help with the 210-230A heat, since I actually tried using a 3/32" tungsten but the heat melted the tungsten itself twice.