REAR MOUNT TURBUENOS.
I keed, i keed.
REAR MOUNT TURBUENOS.
I keed, i keed.
Boxes from Jegs and Summit showed up today. No turbuenos to be found but a spicy new bumpstick and a Holley Terminator Max ECU did show up along with new seals, lifters, oil pump and timing chain. I started tearing the engine down to the short block and cleaned up the heads and the deck surface. I have studs, new headgaskets and dual valve springs ready to go on this engine later tonight.
This thing is pretty clean, almost no sludge with just a little bit of carbon on the pistons and combustion chambers.
Doing a very similar engine build in my mightymax my dad got me for christmas starting this spring break as im finishing up highschool its gonna be pretty bitchin.
In reply to boostedmm1320 :
The world needs more bitchin minitrucks.
Awesome build just read it through can't wait for more updates
I had a fairly productive weekend. Lots of progress with the printers and some decent progress on the truck as well. Heads are off the L33 and cleaned up, I'm still waiting on a couple parts before I throw the engine back together. I discovered that the oil seal on the cam retainer plate was completely flat. It likely wasn't sealing and contributed to the low oil pressure the previous owner observed.
I also played around with some plastic press brake dies. I've been reading up on press die design and I drew a few profiles up in solidworks and sent them to the big delta printer. These are all printed with cheap PLA, for you guys with machines at home my settings for these are:
0.8mm nozzle, 0.4mm layer height, 35mm/s print speed, 5 outlines, 5 top/bottom layers, 75% honeycomb infill.
I bent a 2" wide piece of .125" steel plate with the black gooseneck die and my lower die insert which tightens up the bend radius. I didn't think this would work, I was full expecting this to blow up in my face and was a bit flabbergasted when it actually worked. I don't imagine it will have the same life expectancy of a steel die. But for $7 in material I can bend 1/8" plate any way I please, that's pretty damn cool.
One of my college buddies came over on Sunday to help me start laying out the trans tunnel. We built 3 Baja Chassis together and a couple complicated exhaust pieces for his 924 Turbo. He has a good eye for how things are going to look when they are done and I know how to make metal look like what he envisions. We decided last weekend that it would be easier for fabrication and for service in the future if we had a skeleton frame and covered said skeleton in sheet metal. I got some c-channel steel it seemed like a better choice for adding strength to the floor than round bar or complicated sheet metal shapes. There is going to be at least one more c-channel bar where you see bent welding rod in the below picture. Going to get that framed out and box in the tunnel with sheet and then work on tying the firewall into that.
I also acquired a harbor freight Titanium MIG140 on a long term lease from my best friend. He's trying to downsize and get a smaller apartment, he wanted a place where he could leave it for a couple years where it will be loved and he can use it as he needs to. This actually works out perfectly I was going to see if I could borrow it from him for a while since I sold my Lincoln MIG a few months ago to help pay off and get the Fiesta gone.
It just has flux core wire for now but it has provisions for gas if I want to add a bottle later on. This thing runs smooth as butter, flux core takes a little bit of adapting to but it welds great, way better than my Lincoln Weldpak ever did.
The V8 sound thread has given me some ideas on exhaust routing. I think I am going to Y-pipe the headers into a single muffler and send the exhaust out the side of the bed in front of the right rear tire. Seems like the easy button to save myself a lot of time trying to get duals set up perfectly snaked around the fuel tank behind the driver and the rear axle. What's DusterBD13 say? "Hit the easy button like a fat kid in dodgeball"
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Correct!!!!
And done right, it sounds GOOD.
Make sure to make the tip big enough to put a baffle in for sound regs at tight courses.
My wedding is 6 months from last Saturday, the truck has to be driven to my wedding. Time to make a list of what needs to happen.
That's a hefty list!
Wedding burnouts are the best burnouts. Even if mine weren't that great. lol
Tried to make the most of the warm weather we had this weekend. Friday night I was down in the printer lab drawing up a couple more pieces of the shifter relocation assembly. Need to make some prints and send them to my new friend in Shenzhen. I was going to make the piece that connects the Alibaba lever to the CD009 shifter lever myself out of steel and I was going to make it adjustable. Going to scratch that idea for now and have the new fancy tie bar cut from billet. I am also going to have the Nissan lever remade, mine is beat up and scored on the pivot ball and a new one from Nissan online is almost $300 for the whole assembly.
I installed some new hardware on one of my larger printers lately to make it more capable of reliably printing glass fiber/carbon fiber reinforced Nylon filaments. I printed a shift knob I designed for the truck to test out the new hardware. I thought about having this knob made out of aluminum but the Nylon seems less likely to try and brand my palm on a hot summer day. I really love these fiber reinforced polymers and how they make layer lines seems almost nonexistent. This was printed in Matterhackers NylonX and turned out awesome. I have some PA6-GF30 filament sitting on the shelf that might come in handy for some prints that are going to live under the hood.
Saturday I started putting the engine back together. Slid the new cam in along with new lifters, lifter trays, cam retainer plate, oil pump and timing chain. I even torqued everything to spec. Studs are threaded into the block, I want to get the heads on sometime this week so I can measure pushrod length. Hopefully we will start to have some more of these nice days so I can open the garage door and yank the 4.8L out of the truck and finish swapping parts over to the L33.
No pictures of progress this weekend. The heads are torqued on the new engine. I need to hurry up and finish the firewall so I can pull the engine and swap the oil pan, pickup tube, intake and valley cover onto the L33.
Made a little bit of progress on the trans tunnel but ran out of welding wire before any more sheets could be tacked in. I have a 10lb spool on the way along with some hardened pushrods. Aiming to get the firewall finished up within a couple weeks so seats can get mounted and we can get a start on wiring. Shooting to have it fired up by Memorial Day.
Amazon man dropped off a 10lb spool of flux core yesterday so I decided I should make a little bit of progress tonight on at least the mockup of the tin work. I noticed that the front c-channel rib was lower than the middle rib. Upon further inspection with the fancy light projector the middle rib is higher than the other two ribs by roughly 5/8"... Derp.
I cut the sheet for the top of the bellhousing area. That is an 8" deep piece of steel. I often forget how dumb of an idea it was putting that engine so far back and so low. Cylinder #1 is bisected by the axis of front wheels. Going to do some more welding this weekend, it's supposed to be almost 60° on Sunday. Feels good seeing this start to come together.
She's coming together alright. Weather was absolutely gorgeous this weekend for March in Wisconsin so I was able to get a lot done in the garage. My friend Tyler came over to help with the firewall again today. Added 2 ribs to connect the c-channel to the top of the new firewall. I was initially going to take the path of least resistance and just start boxing the bellhousing in until Tyler reminded me that this truck once had a real dashboard. So we fished that out of storage test fit it and bent up some welding rod to use as a template to snake those supports around the dashboard.
Enter Dashboard... and a seat to show my fiance that she will have plenty of room to sit in the truck. She often asks me how she's going to fit in the truck with the big hole in the floor and the exhaust right there. Details my love, details.
Had to move the seat over to the other side to do a little measuring and make racetruck noises. This is starting to look like a real truck. I had to go back through my Google Photos to see when was the last time the interior was still in the truck. April of 2017 is the first picture I have of the interior stripped out. Holy hell that's a long time, life really gets in the way.
"The shifter is roughly here"
Visions of tire smoke and grandeur intensify
Just gotta keep chipping away, making progress like this feels sooooo good. Tyler and i came up with a pretty solid game plan for the rest of the firewall, I need to call the metal store tomorrow and order a little bit more material. With that I should be able to finish up the rest of the mockup at least in the next week or two. Wire and fire the engine by Memorial Day is still the first big goal. Also, if anyone has any suggestions on what to use for seam sealer I am all ears.
RacetruckRon said:My wedding is 6 months from last Saturday, the truck has to be driven to my wedding. Time to make a list of what needs to happen.
- Finish firewall and trans tunnel
- Finish shifter linkage
- Mount pedals and master cylinders
- Steering column and wheel
- Mount seats
- Install radiator and plumb coolant lines
- Fuel lines and regulator
- Finish exhaust system
- Run brake lines
- Power steering lines
- Bolt bed to frame
- Wire Chassis
- Mount battery
- Pull and replace engine
- Wrap headers
- Install Holley ECU and wiring harness
- Tune ECU
- Gauges and dashboard install
- TRUCK NEEDS ALIGNMENT
- Shakedown truck replace pads, rotors and bushings as needed
- Drive it to work, terrorize Corporate America
- Do wedding burnouts
Wedding is now 5 months from yesterday. I have not crossed anything off the list yet, but big moves have been to cross off the first 5 items on this list. This is totally doable.
You've got this. 5 months is plenty of time. As you get closer it'll feel like less and less time, though, as the wedding/planning will (probably) take up more of it!
Nice progress!
I like 3M brush on seam sealer. Your results may vary.
I like thte SEM stuff in the 10oz "caulk" tubes
For my challenge car I used the cheapest brush on quart of seam sealer I can find on Amazon. I would strongly recommend you find something that is sandable. Mine was not. Looks like Fidos ass crack.
Thanks for the suggestions guys. That SEM sealer in the 10oz caulk tubes looks promising. I'm trying to get a game plan together for sound/thermal insulation of the cab once the firewall is done. I might give a DIY lizard skin coating a go. It seems like a cocktail of heavy duty paint, glass microspheres and some silica powder is the basic recipe.
Redneck lizard skin didn't work for me.
However, McMaster carr mastic sheets and lowes bubble wrap insulation and a bit of strategically placed foil backed just should do you reallh well. Done it to A LOT of cars with great success
I'd do a metal heat shield with an air gap to the floor boards in the header area.
Dusterbd13-michael said:Redneck lizard skin didn't work for me.
However, McMaster carr mastic sheets and lowes bubble wrap insulation and a bit of strategically placed foil backed just should do you reallh well. Done it to A LOT of cars with great success
Was that on the Duster build or another thread documented on here?
Spent a good part of this afternoon and evening out in the garage with the flux core and the cordless shears. Trying to get the fire patched together this weekend so I can pull the engine next week, swap the oil pan and accessories, and completely weld/seal the new firewall. I made some decent progress today.
The passenger side is mostly done, I exceeded Future Mrs. Racetruck's expectations for foot room so we are gonna chalk that one up as a win. She was going to have the same space regardless of what she said so it's kind of a mute point I guess. Tomorrow I need to start working on the driver's side so I can figure out how big of a space I need to leave for the pedals. I can already tell though that this will not be a truck I drive with my steel toe boots.
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