1dirtyZ's Conversion by 1dirtyZ

4 minute(s) of a 304 minute read

made some more progress last night ,

I finished welding the transmission cross member and welded its tabs to the subframes .

cross member with mount pad and bracing :




I then moved on to the exhaust side of the build , like I mentioned earlier the exhaust will be a dual 3" setup with an x pipe and two magna flow mufflers. the driver side header comes too close to the trans and shift linkage , so I decided to cut part of the collector off and re route it to fit my needs .

here is a the driver side header tacked into place :



and here is how the whole exhaust up to the x pipe looks like , you can also see how the trans cross member attaches to the frame too:





on a side note , as I was cleaning the mess of old parts , I stumbled on what I believe was the cause on the low boost issue I was having 



apparently this has been going on for more than a year now and explains why boost dropped from 17 psi to about 13-14 psi - I just thought the blower was getting old 


and finally I remembered that the accessory belt on my setup does not have a tensioner between the balancer and transfer pulley, so I decided to make me one
I just used a stock tensioner and pulley and bolted it to on e of the unused holes on the front pass. side of the block , I then added a small tab with a slight "s" bend in it to mount the upper hole in the tensioner , while the lower one bolts directly to the block:



so now I need to finish welding the exhaust pipes from the headers tot he x pipe and install some O2 bungs , after that I can start mocking the mufflers and pipes from the x pipe to the mufflers. I was thinking of dumping the exhaust right after the mufflers using a pair of turn downs ,,,, but then I thought why not install a flange on the back side of the mufflerand have the option of running some turn downs or some pipes that run to the back of the car - reason being there might be a local racing class here that requires full exhaust that exits the rear of the car .

after all that is done I can install the cooler , fab up the heat shield for it , run the coolantlines to the trunk , weld charge pipes and BOV flange , install radiator and plumb it , and finally drop the car on the ground and off the lift and have a shaft made for it


so to summarize the next few steps ( and so I don't forget what to do next ) :

- finish exhaust
- finish intercooler stuff
- radiator , fans , heat exchanger
- driveshaft
- I/C tank in trunk
- bunch of other stuff I can't remember now