Yep, that's my beater.

Yikes, Darren - that thing got moist! What year is that one?

Metal gets thicker.

Here's today's progress. The wind was howling, so welding outside was a challenge. First up I had to rebuild the inner fender and the butt cheek section. Here's the finished product.


Then the replacement outer panel was fitted.


Welded all the way around. I'll grind down the welds etc when I pull the car into the shop - it's too cold out to worry about it for now.

It was too windy to work outside...and I actually had real work that had to get done to day, so tonight I finally got the 405 porting finished. It took a lot longer than it takes me to do a B20 head - aluminum is not only softer, but there was more work with curves and stuff tossed in for fun.

Here's the photo's. Feel free to comment - this is basically what I think will work well based on a few discussions with Matt and thinking like a fuel charge or exhaust gas. In other words, no real science (flow bench etc). The combustion chamber is fine, it just needed some blending and a light polish.



In this image I was trying to show the sharpening of the intake fin. I did a fair bit of hogging out around the fin up to the valve guide and tried to lessen the shelf on the exhaust side of the intake port. There is quite a restriction on that side.



Here's the view from the other side. You can see how much material was removed from the fin area. I didn't get a decent picture of the other side, but I tried not to remove the port bias, just lessen the restriction a little.


Exhaust ports are straight forward. Most of the work (well, actually all of the work) is in the valve bowl, not much you can do with this port. I hogged out the bowl area - basically straighten it from the valve seat back to the port ceiling. Then I gave it some room around the valve (not much - but a little). Oh, and I cut off the gratuitous little nub of a valve stem.


The intakes are finished at 180 grit and the exhaust and combustion chambers are 320.

Fire away...

Sweet! No idea how it will work, but it looks pretty rad.

That makes two of us - I've got no idea either. I'm just praying this was the right thing to do. On balance, I can't see how I've hurt anything and with the 46/37.5 mm valves going in, most of the flow gains will be from a decent valve job. Finding reasonable information on the 405 head flow and what to do is difficult. Lots of holy wars over BCP/SCP and what works best for turbo applications. Lots of "I can make a 530 better than a 531" stuff...but I need pictures from people that have DONE it. Oh well, no loss.

More or less what I did with my 405. Less work on the intakes though, I mostly just cleaned them up and smoothed them out a bit. Not sure how much difference it made, but i'm sure that head flows alot nicer than any stock turbo head!

More progress - first up, I built a toolbox to hold all the TIG stuff, not really car related, but I thought you guys would like to see it.


Room on the side for welding rods and aluminum stock.


Drawers for everything...


Back to the project. I've got a set of later bumpers that are a nicer than the Commando's but I don't like the later trim, so I decided to shorten the sides of the bumpers to Commando length. Here's how I did it.

First up, measure the length of the trim and mark it on the bumpers when installed (Yellow marks).
Rear (going to have to shorten it about 6"):

Note the rather poor condition of this set of bumpers.

Front (better, only 2" to loose out front):


Then cut the ends of the bumpers off - a jig saw worked best.


Then take the cap (this is the rear bumper) and position it to get the correct length relative to the trim line. Then cut back to this point.


In preparation for epoxy, I roughened up the back side and V'd out the cut line (fitting was completed first) on both parts. I found that my carbide burr left a pretty decent finish for the epoxy.


Apply the reinforcing mesh. On the front bumpers I used my soldering iron to melt the mesh into the bumper - I hadn't thought of it for the rear bumper.


I used foil tape on the back side to keep the epoxy in place.


The material to stick it back together. Norton Speed Grip Epoxy, reinforcing mesh and applicator.


Finished - set it aside to cure.


I then used some flexible filler to make the bumpers look a little better. I used this where the bumpers were gouged, or dented. I also filled the license plate screw holes in the front bumper.


The product says it's fast and it is - open time is about 4 minutes. I counted it down using songs on my radio - only one song's worth of working time from squeezing it out of the tube to application - you have to move.
I then sanded out the rest of the bumpers to ensure good adhesion of the bumper paint. Areas that were not damaged were prepared with a burgundy 3M pad.



Then on with the bumper paint. The first few coats revealed a bit of plastic fuzz in the repair areas - so I sanded it off with 400 wet and dry and shot it again.

Here's the finished product. They aren't perfect as there are many little dings etc - but they sure are better than before.


Close ups:

Cool...you really should consider teaching as a career...

I agree, you are a natural
Looks awesome Craig

Nice! Looks great.
Although you didn't post pictures of your OTHER new tool box...

That bumper work is amazing...

Thanks for the belly laugh...

More progress. I've got to get the 242 into the garage this weekend, so there is much to do between now and then. Tonight it was suspension time. I started by wasting 100 lbs of blast media cleaning up Greg's old strut tubes (Santa, bring Craig a blast cabinet for Christmas). The tubes were fine, but lower spring perches were another story. One had already been replaced, but the hack that did the job didn't weld the perch on, it was just loose and they also didn't check the install height of the perch, it was about 1/2" higher than stock.

The other side had finally given up the battle, and I cut through it while blasting. I had a spare set of galvanized replacements, so I cut the old ones off and got to work. Now for the scary part. Almost 1/2 of the tube thickness had rusted away right around the perch. This was pretty scary - so I cleaned it all up and welded it up.

Here's the start: not much left (maybe 50 thou).


Put in a root pass.


Then a cap.


Ground everything down and installed the new perches. I cleaned off the galvanizing the best I could in the weld area, but there is always some left to make smoke and screw up your welds.

Here they are done. I just have to polish out the insides so the strut tube will go back in (penetration is good). Then on to paint. Should have them in epoxy primer tomorrow night.