Ian F wrote: How long have you had it? I'd give them a call since you're reasonably local to the store and I get the impression they generally stand behind their products.
Roughly one year. I sent an email last night, and will call them on my lunch break today- I was happy with it until this happened, but now I'm wondering if these welders are designed to just last a one year warranty period before crapping out.
...or they're designed for guys who don't do as much welding as you do... 
In reply to Ian F:
They're very much marketed as a "guy who has a day job but builds his own stuff" welder- I feel like I match the description, and a Harbor Freight flux core survived 5 years of the same usage minus any structural stuff.
It looks like the welder is supposed to have a 3 year warranty, so I'm hopeful that it'll either be exchanged or that they'll fix it for me.
In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:
Hopefully. IIRC , I've been planning to buy the same welder.
If the customer service guy is right, I just leave this by my front door and tomorrow the FedEx fairies will put a shipping label on it and whisk it away to be magically made new again.
I hope that works out! Your going to need that thing again soon if you run the rx7 again 
Had a friend TIG the downpipe and some oil cooler fittings- obligatory welding picture:
This guy is king of terrible Mopar stuff- he's built a twin turbo caravan, an SRT4 K-car woody wagon, the closest thing to a factory 1st gen SRT4 Neon, a Plum Crazy Viper, and just to branch out a bit, a megasquirted and supercharged 928. If I can ever get him to put the time in, we have the makings of a glorious Rampage based challenge car ready to go.
Another weekend in the garage- downpipe installed and fits nicely:
Then I plumbed the oil cooler- it's an FC RX7 unit with AN bungs welded to it. I think AN lines are overpriced and kind of silly, but since they're the standard for race car plumbing I figure my chances of being able to borrow fittings during an event are much higher than if I used the metric stuff that RX7 lines normally carry. Annoyingly, I can't actually mount this oil cooler yet since my welder is gone, but this is approximately where it will live.
Then I went to install my new brake master cylinder and... it looks nothing like the picture or either of the master cylinders I have 
So I said berkeley it, took my old one apart, found the problem (crud was clogging one of the ports to bring fluid in from the reservoir), drilled out the problem, pilfered some seals from the other master cylinder, and slapped it all back together. The brakes bled fine and the pedal has some pressure, so hooray? This car has an alarming amount of firewall flex when you push the brakes, I may need to do something about that in the future.
Then I dumped some fresh gas in it, and tried to start it, but it wasn't starting... unplugged the MAF sensor and capped the BOV and it fired up and ran fine- and now it starts nicely with the MAF plugged back in, too. Weird.
The BOV needed to be plugged because it's open at idle- the setup the car came with had it recirculated back into the intake between the MAF and the compressor, but that hose was destroyed and the easy/robust solution was to replace it with a silicone coupler, which doesn't have a place for the BOV to recirculate into. My solution (for now) is a second BOV (from java during the last GRM secret santa game) in series with the normal one. This works great with no load on the engine, and may actually be fine when driving- it will depend on what the spring pressure on the second BOV is. I realized after I did this that I accidentally made a dual piston BOV.
Sara made door panels (and worked on the RX7) while I was doing all this. Still need to figure out door pulls.
We put the driver's seat and harness back in to make sure everything is happy there. This car has way more headroom than the RX7, although the shifter is very far forward which will take some getting used to.
I made a little aluminum skid plate to protect the fuel lines, brake lines, and filter in front of the left rear wheel- they're exposed until they go into a conduit type thing on the bottom of the car. The front of the plate is flush to the floor and bolted, the rear just sort of hangs from the subframe since it can move a long way and still do its' job.
The car basically just needs the exhaust finished, the oil cooler mounted, and interior stuff at this point. I hope my welder comes back soon.
Question for the people familiar with the Ford 2.3- what is considered healthy oil pressure and top end noise? The car has some ticking from the top end, nothing I find alarming but I'm used to bike engines that sound like a bucket of hammers.
The oil pressure is as follows:
Cold idle ~60 psi
Warm idle (oil cooler bypassed) ~40 psi
Hot idle (oil flowing through cooler) ~20 psi
It's the 20 psi that concerns me, I just want to make sure I'm not hurting anything by adding this big cooling loop to the oil system without an upgraded pump.
The oil pressure is fine. Sounds just about what my old motor made.
If the car has a lot of firewall flex when you press on the brakes, you are probably missing a bolt that goes from the stock pedal box (if you still are running it) to the steering column. Alot of people either miss it or forget to put it back in. It adds alot of rigidity to there. It will still flex a bit but no where as bad if it is missing.
Is that the bolt on the top of the pedal box rearward of the brake pedal? It has it but that flexes too, looks like a few extra seam welds could stiffen that whole area up.
Yup, that's the bolt. It's alot worse with it missing.
The only issue with venting the BOV to atmosphere like that is your releasing metered air. Thats why it was tied back in after the MAF, its already been measured by the MAF for fuel.
Glad to see my parts getting used tho! Its a stock one out of a 88 porsche 944 turbo, if you need to figure out what pressures it runs.
I ran a dual piston BOV and it really wasn't an issue or at least I never noticed problem.
In reply to java230:
What makes me think I smell bullE36 M3 with the whole "metered air" thing is that the turbo Ford guys drop that argument IF you have a Forge dual piston BOV. I think it's more a matter of not opening at idle, otherwise why would the one magical BOV they all seem to like still work when vented to atmosphere?
EDIT for Gpz beating me to the punch 
I ran Stinger's copy and it worked well. Also only $75 shipped!!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: The BOV needed to be plugged because it's open at idle- the setup the car came with had it recirculated back into the intake between the MAF and the compressor, but that hose was destroyed and the easy/robust solution was to replace it with a silicone coupler, which doesn't have a place for the BOV to recirculate into.
Could you possibly use a fitting like this for your BOV return? If your coupler is long enough you could drill a small hole through the coupler, push it through and seal with window weld/rtv.
In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:
Im not a turbo ford guy so maybe that's the issue, but i know it causes a weird AF bump in the audi/vw world. Probably not a huge deal tho, I never knew they were open at idle, thats just weird.
In reply to java230:
It sort of makes sense, after all there's a bunch of vacuum in the manifold trying to pull the thing open when the throttle is closed, even without boost. The 944 one opens easily by pushing on it with a finger, I'd say a couple of psi at most, so I'm hopeful that this setup will work. Plus, it was free! 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to java230: What makes me think I smell bullE36 M3 with the whole "metered air" thing is that the turbo Ford guys drop that argument IF you have a Forge dual piston BOV. I think it's more a matter of not opening at idle, otherwise why would the one magical BOV they all seem to like still work when vented to atmosphere? EDIT for Gpz beating me to the punch
It also wouldn't be an issue with an HKS style valve since they pull the plunger back instead of push through a piston. I've found the HKS ones seal really well at idle.
Those Bosch/Denso valves tend to wear out under decent boost pressure pretty quickly. I'd look for a metal factory Evo BOV that is pretty much the same design and just run one if you are on a budget.
Here's how to do the mod to keep even a 1g DSM BOV sealed:
My second 2.3t mustang was vented too atmosphere. Was some cheap ebay knock off BOV and it ran fine. Also had about 25psi of hot idle oil pressure. I ran 10w40 in it.
Hey, I just wanted to mention to make sure whatever motor oil you run has zinc in it, such as Brad Penn oil.
Evidently, when they removed the zinc, more of these engines started having issues with stripped distributer gears which also drives the oil pump.
Some folks say it's a wive's tale and other folks swear it happens so YMMV and all that.
They do make additives they add the zinc and such back into the oil, and a lot of subie guys run them with success, you might look into it since your motor is designed to runwith those additives
Chris, I have three bottles of ZDDPlus zinc additive sitting in my garage that is not of any use to me for any of my cars (since I already run Rotella T6, which has high zinc content). Yours free if you want them, just remind me to bring them to BRS when the time comes.
I'm running Rotella t6 in this car as well as nearly everything I own. Thanks for the advice and offer though!
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