My Abnormal 944 Build - An American Blitzkrieg

Next up was to work on the final section of my air intake - the snorkel thingy and an adapter fitting between it and the air filter box.

The adapter thingy was fun to fab! There was also yet another quick BRACKET and an M6 buddy.

And some glamour shots.

I spy a spherical coolant tank!

Seeing those bits and bobs repurposed just warms my heart.  It is so cool and I share the excitement of finding a bracket with rubber isolating mounts. 

Care to elaborate on the plastic welding you've done?   I've used an old soldering pencil iron to melt plastic, introduce matching filler plastic and try to shape into a solid joint all with mediocre results.

I'm doing the same on the plastic welding - old soldering iron. Black tie wraps for filler rod on the pipe between the air filter box and the Crammit intake plenum. For the washer fluid tank, (white tie wrap) material didn't mix with the tank material but hot glue gun glue stick, melted and spread over the top of the joint using the glue gun, then back over it with the soldering iron to mix/mash into the joint. (Both times I was welding from the inside only so that I didn't need to worry about making a clean looking weld.)

2 more shots of the adapter I fabbed.

Intentional skew to the duct to mate with the natural twist in the bellows section of the snorkel pipe.

A small project after work last night.

Relieving the diameter of 2 M6 buddies using my poor-man's lathe and a cut disk on the angle grinder.

Then adding a large flat washer and staking the ID to help hold them captive on the M6 buddy.

Installed on the 944.

And something unusual for me... new parts! (Not sure if I like it yet but will see if it grows on me.)

Excellent work on the brackets and scavenging. I LOVE that you're sharing these details - in my own work I get "bracket paralysis" all the time because I want a bracket solution that is simple, elegant, and well made. And wind up stalling because none of my designs satisfy all my demands.

Keep up the great work and sharing all those little details!

Last night I made progress mocking up what will become my coolant return line. I'll also be adding a T fitting to connect up the Sphere of Expansion. And... it will feature a BRACKET! 

I've used 1.5" OD exhaust tubing but I think that was a mistake. I will probably reorder at 1.375" OD so that I can have a crimped hose barb on the ends of the pipe and still get the rubber hoses over the OD of the barb. 

You and those damn brackets man haha!

Let's see you plastic weld that hose together :)

Kroger Personal Lubricant

In reply to AngryCorvair :

We have a Winner!!!!!!!

I haven't used personal lubricant since installing the windshield on my IH crewcab truck. I usually carry a list of "things to do" and "things to buy" in my pocket and on the week that I put in the windshield my list had:

Electrical wire

KY Jelly

written on it. I remember thinking at the time that it was going to be awkward explaining that to anyone. (The wire and KY jelly was for helping seat the windshield rubber - I swear!)

It was a tough week to be a metal cutting device at sparkydog inc. My portable bandsaw broke it's last blade. My angle grinder burned out one of the motor brushes and my little folding hacksaw handle broke while using it in the wrecking yard. So I was down to just my sawzall for cutting metal. It slowed me down and required some creative planning for some of the stuff in the next few pictures. But I've since repaired/replaced everything so I'm back on my game.

Friday's wrecking yard mission was to go in, obtain a power steering cooler off a Ram 1500 pickup and extract. I have the cooler off my donor Mustang but it's just a long, kinky tube and it didn't seem to route well in the nose of the 944. Internet window shopping had turned up the cooler on the Rams and it looked like the perfect thing. However once I was in the yard and saw a real one I didn't like it and started randomly looking at other stuff. I was also collecting hose clamps and came across some kind of Toyota truck/SUV that looked really out of place in the yard. It wasn't wrecked but someone had very cleanly (and politely) removed the engine. Nothing was cut or mangled. All the wires and hoses had been properly disconnected and tucked out of the way. Without the engine I could see the firewall easily and it was covered with heater hoses and the most beautiful hose clamp collection evah. This was what beckoned to me and as I was greedily harvesting heater hose clamps I noticed the lines for the power steering cooler heading off into the left front fender. I followed them and found this little gem of a cooler kit.

It was compact, rugged and too compelling to pass up. At the time I thought I might even be able to mount the whole shebang without many mods... (yeah right).

On the way home from the yard I stopped by my work and picked up my 1.375" OD exhaust pipe (for coolant pipe 2.0) and then swung by Napa to try and find a radiator hose with the right bends/twists. By the time I got home I had so much cool stuff to play with that I had to take a picture of it all.

The pile of hose clamps next to the J pipe came off of the single Toyota that donated it's oil cooler. And I also found a used Sharpie! (So much win in the yard that day.)

And take a look at how closely the Napa 9049 hose matched my mockup piece!!!

A few hours later and coolant pipe 2.0 was fabbed up (except for creating a flare on the ends). That's my "mockup" laying next to it.

And here it is inside the 944.

Then came the power steering oil cooler and I hit a snag. I discovered that the washer fluid bottle was interfering with the fog lights (because I had neglected to bolt up the lower valance when I mocked up the washer bottle mounting). Nothing that making mods to the 3 washer bottle BRACKETS didn't fix.

And then it was on to making 3 more new BRACKETS for the oil cooler. I wasn't able to just transplant the donor oil cooler's mounting brackets directly into the 944.  So I used the donor bracket as raw material for the new BRACKETS.

Here it is inside the 944.

I think I'm going to change my mind about where to stick my snorkel. 

Now I like this:

Which is similar to where the factory ducting obtains air for the 944. I can't decide if I need to devise a more sophisticated "scoop" or just stub it out like in the picture. With the bumper filling most of that opening I think that the air flow around and over it at driving speeds is going to quickly go crazy back behind the bumper and pretty much decelerate (according to my imaginary CFD analysis). So if I'm right the air flow in that area isn't really going to care how sexy my snorkel shape and intake look. Thoughts anyone? 

All of us are getting weary of all the BRACKETS - especially me. I'm doing them all in a wave because I want to fab as much as possible in and around the engine bay and then pull the motor out and switch over to prep and painting of the engine bay. There are about 2-4 more items that need BRACKETS: Horns, engine bay fuse/relay block, future home of A/C accumulator, future home of A/C condenser.  The most challenging of these items is the fuse/relay block. There are only 3 locations left.

#1 - Right front area ahead of strut tower.

#2 - Right side of cowl (where OG battery was located).

#3 Behind drivers seat next to my other fuse/relay block.

#1 location is small and squarish and might be a better fit for an A/C accumulator. I would have to source a different fuse block than the one I show in the photo #2 in order to fit in that area.

#2 location is big enough to fit the GM Lesabre fuse block - which is a sister to the one behind my drivers seat. Together these two blocks have enough fuses and relays to power most/all of a 4 door, options-heavy Lesabre. So they are overkill for the 944. Another problem with #2 location is a lot of water comes off the windshield and dumps down into this pocket and then drains out between the A pillar and the outer fender. I struggle with sticking lots of amps directly in the path of flowing water.

#3 location has enough room, normally doesn't have water flowing through it and would look cool with twin blocks. But I would have to remake some BRACKETS and run a lot of higher amp circuits all the way up to the engine bay.

#3A  do enough research to figure out that I don't really need a 2nd fuse/relay block and get by with just the one bigger unit (with perhaps a small under-dash block for all the interior circuits).

I'm down to one last engine bay BRACKET!!! And when it's finished I will not need to fab BRACKETS for a while. 

On Friday afternoon I had the 944 on the ground for 30 min while I climbed up in the attic and eventually found the 944's horns and mounting bracket. Then I put the car back up in the air and fabbed a quick BRACKET for the horns/horn bracket to mount to.

With the horn location taken care of I was down to 3 remaining items: Fuse block, A/C accumulator and A/C condenser. For the accumulator I decided to just weld in 2-3 nuts for mounting a yet to be designed future BRACKET. For the condenser I decided not to worry about it now because adding it later will not require that I weld anywhere in the engine bay. And for the fuse block I decided to go with location #2 - where water likes to flow. This location is going to require a fairly involved episode of fabbery, but mocking it up really doesn't need the engine in the car, so...

I started taking all the gear and BRACKETS off the car in preparation for pulling the motor out.

Once the motor is out of the car it means I've reached an important, yet interim milestone - I'll be switching over to paint & resin-based projects! And once the engine bay is prepped, primed, sealed and painted I can start working on getting the motor to run. It will be nice to step away from the welder for a period of time.

This is strikingly peculiar.

Carry on!

The L36 is out of the engine bay. The next time it goes back in we will attempt to make it run!

DIY Tube beader. It works - just not quite how I wanted it to.

And finally some fabbery that did not involve the welder and a cutoff wheel.

Resin-based item #1 - I had to add a bottom to the janky air filter box.

The 3 plastic trees are my attempt to have something for the new surface to grab onto - sort of like rebar in concrete. This shot shows a pour of just resin - starting to wick up into the 3 plastic trees.

Then some woven cloth in the middle and kitty hair around the edges:

Cured.

Oops - wax paper installed with the wrong side toward the sticky stuff.

Resin based item #2 - I had to create a dimple in the Crammit air plenum so it would clear the Mustang cooling fan motor. Here's the mockup prepped for resin. This time the wax paper is waxy side up.