75 2002 Sleeper - M20B32, ITB, LSD

[justinevert]

You sir are the "Larry Flint" of car porn. Looking forward to he next installment.

Justin

[justinevert]

Mr. Tink,

Hope the complement was not taken negatively, just wish I had the skills.

I do know Eastwood have a paint specifically for radiators/coolers, it's viscosity is very high to prevent it from clogging the fins.

As for the oil cooler fittings, to make sure that they can't be seen, they do have black ones that would be covered easily by the grill, so they won't tip off what you really have in the car.

Regards,

Justin

[tinkwithanr]

No worries Justin, I was quite flattered lol. I was just waiting to reply until I had some more updates to post along with it.

Thanks for the tip on the paint, I'll have to look into it. My only fear is that unlike the radiator, which is bare aluminum, the oil cooler already has silver paint. The two separate coatings might be so thick that they reduce it's cooling efficiency.

I have seen those fittings before, I almost ordered them instead but I decided on the classic red and blue. While it's not exactly discreet, I just love the look of the red/blue anodizing with the stainless lines. Something to this effect:

[tinkwithanr]

Happy to say my TIG work is starting to look better. I've decided that I'm going to TIG everything that I reasonably can (assuming the welding position isn't crazy or that the material is to thick for my welder). While it does take more prep and time compared to MIG, the welds themselves just look much nicer. There is also much less clean up work, with no splatter and less warping in most cases. These are from the front bracing I did this weekend:

So with the front clip as gutted as it is, it obviously won't be able to support the weight of the hood like it used to. And the front hinged hood was one of the original parts of the car that I didn't want to loose, so next up was figuring out how to fab up new hinge mounts. First I made two plates that mimicked the stock nut locations.

Front:

Back:

With those done, I mounted each side and tacked them in place with the hood in the down position:

Then I checked to make sure the axis of both hinges are still in line so the hood would open properly:

View of the hinges from the engine bay. I still need to add a lot of bracing/gussets to add strength, but they can support the hood fine even though they are just tacked in place.

And here's what the hood looks like mounted in place without front fenders or front clip. Because I can.

Now that I have the hinges in place I can work on mounting the radiator and oil cooler. I wanted the hinges in there first since they have to be in a certain position, while the radiator and oil cooler can go anywhere so long as they fit and don't interfere.

Oh, and these came in today:

Any guesses??

[Barrosco]

That's an easy one, wheels of course. And from the looks of it they're from a private party, not any distributor. I assume you're going to be running 16+ right? (I'm hoping some kind of old school mesh)

[Mike_B]

Possibly some wheels in those HD boxes?

[creede]

I think I know exactly what's in those 4 boxes. Very jealous...

[tinkwithanr]

Thanks guys!

After a couple of weeks waiting, these finally showed up today:

They are HRE 504's in 16x8. I maybe end up building them up to 8.5 or 9 depending on how the offsets work out with the 5-lug conversion. I need to source some new center caps and repaint/polish, but they are pretty clean with no curb rash. Some more pics:

Test fitting, can't bolt them up to the subframe yet but this is roughly what they should look like:

I also got a new TIG torch, with a flexible head. Very handy for getting into tight spots or just making a more comfortable welding position.

And with it I finished gusseting the hood mounts.

Then to finish off the night I fabricated the mounts for the oil cooler and radiator:

The upper OC mounts are just tabs that come off the front support bar:

The radiator mounts to the tie bar, one on each end. I will also be making an upper support bracket to hold the top in place.

Nose panel bolted back up with everything else in place:

Here you can see the oil cooler behind the kidney grills. Worked out well with the cooler on it's side, the slates are vertical and match the lines of the grill.

Next up is the fab the lower oil cooler mount (it's only bolted in by the top right now) and the other radiator support. Then I will brace the mounting points on the front frame assembly and strip the nose panel for metal repair and some bracing.

[Meintii]

Oh, and these came in today:

Any guesses??

Im going to say wheels... and HOLY SH!*$&@*#*@(*$ this project is amazing. Havent been one here in awhile.. my poor tii is still trying to get paint laid on the engine bay before re-assembly

[potentialm20]

Lol, I had a guess but you gave it away.

[tinkwithanr]

I've been second guessing myself for a couple of months as to whether or not the S54 ITB's are really a good fit for the engine, or more directly the 885 head. While they do give an easy solution for certain aspects of an itb setup (common vacuum rail, fuel injectors and fuel rail, proper spacing) I still couldn't ignore their overall size, and how that would effect the power curve of the engine. So long story short, I bit the bullet and ordered some new parts. Then I started machining the old 'i' manifold from my donor engine. When I got done it looked something like this:

The throttle bodies I will be using are from a late model BMW (keeping it in family of course) 1200RS. They are 38mm in diameter, and while some may argue they are to small for the engine, they will have no trouble out flowing the intake ports of the 885 head. This will help to keep charge velocities up, something that would have been lost with the monsterous S54 bits. Another plus of these throttle bodies is that they are mounted with 2 bolts on the top and bottom, so re-spacing them to fit the 91mm center distance for the M20 was as easy as drilling some holes in a piece of aluminum. Finally, because I'm using the stock M20 intake to interface with the head, I'm able to keep the stock fuel injector/rail location as well as the oil vent tube that runs down into the block.

Since they come in sets of four, I had to purchase two sets. Seeing as how I had two left over, I gutted one so that I could see how it would line up with everything without the throttle plate in the way.

Here I'm holding the TB in place roughly where it will be. It looks fairly far away from the head in the picture, but it's actually only ~0.5" from the edge of the manifold. That will leave me enough room to weld the aluminum tubes in place that I will be mating to the throttle bodies. As you can see from the picture the port leading to the head will need to be opened up slightly and rounded out. However it should be a very direct and smooth path into the head.

Then I took some aluminum angle and drilled the new mounting holes to properly space the rest of the throttle bodies. Then I bolted them onto the angle and held it in place.

I still need to weld on the new tubes onto the manifold, as well as extend the throttle tabs that translate the rotation from the center of the assembly to the outer throttle bodies. Overall I'm very happy with how they will look. The assembly will take up much less space than the S54 castings and throttle bodies, mostly because it doesn't have to open up the port from stock to 50mm diameter. This will leave me a lot more room for a proper plenum, which will either be aluminum or composite. It also puts the throttle bodies themselves much closer to the head, which will lead to better throttle response.

Thanks for looking.

[Soulboy]

hooooooooly crap, what an awesome build! enjoying the read, keep it up!

[mossyboy6]

I'm interested to see how you're going to make the throttle linkages.

Any plans drawn up yet?

[tinkwithanr]

The throttle bodies are already sync'd together from 'tabs' and adjustment screws that sit between the bodies. So to link them back together I just need to extend the 'tabs' to account for the extra 18mm spacing between the throttle bodies. Then I should be able to just use a standard cable throttle setup.

[mossyboy6]

Gotcha, I saw all of the individual cable linkages and thought that was going to be interesting.

The tabs make far more sense.