I only had most of Sunday to work on the car this weekend, so I didn't get too much done, but I did get the engine/transmission in the car and a few things hooked up, plus a bunch of other things cleaned up. This is where it'll sit for a week or two, though, as I have a few other things that have to happen around the house that will require my attention. I may get a few things done in the meantime, so I'll post back what I can.

The EP manifolds are looking very tempting right now, but I think that realistically I want to do this once and, in this case anyway, I want to do it right. I want a bit more experience making headers, and though there will be a small challenge in getting these to fit and to be removable while being equal length, there are only 3 per side and that's not terribly difficult to get packaged and equal. If, however, the basement & kitchen projects take too long, I may decide to modify & install the manifolds now & see how that goes, 'cause I've got a lot of other things to do to this car before I can drive it again.

Oh, and on other topics, 200 and 700 sway bars are not interchangeable. The difference isn't major, basically it's that the lever arms are too long, and a 260 bar could be adapted to my 780 by chopping off the arms and welding on a new mounting tab (this is how IPD built it in the first place) but I'm not yet ready to chop up my unobtanium 28mm 260 sway bar. The 780 bar went back in after getting cleaned up, and with the 960 rear bar it should feel a bit better balanced.

Okey doke, been a while and I still don't have much to report.

This thread that went through Tbrix a couple weeks back got me worried that I'd gone too far with my cavalier attitude towards putting this engine together, and I was concerned about this engine holding coolant. Couldn't fill it up until I made a decision about the rad fan, so with a few issues in my way and no time to deal with them, I put the mechanical fan & shroud back in and filled it with coolant... no leaks and the oil level seems to have not moved, so until I pressure it up that'll have to do.

Knowing that it's probably not coming out again, I filled the tranny and the PS pump, built a bushing for the gear selector 'cause it was rattling around, and bolted all that together.

I fixed up the glovebox, as the hinges broke free again (were like that when I got the car). We'll see how long these last - things might have to get drastic if these fail. I bolted the interior back together, lined up the shifter, and installed most of the stereo. I need to get a DIN plug that fits the factory amp cables and make an adapter to go from the back of my Pioneer deck's RCA inputs (plus power signal and ground) to the amp cable, and then the deck can go in.

Then I had another decision to make: stock seats (heavy, and none of the power adjustments work, plus rattles & creaks) or install the Acura seats I have (charcoal grey in a blue interior, needs bracketry and seatbelt anchor). In the interest of time savings and looks, I bolted in the stockers again. In doing so I found the source of the worst of the rattles & creaks, and fixed them up. Maybe a bit more fine-tuning is in order, but for now the interior is just about complete.

I guess I'm pretty much stuck until I get these headers built, so I have no choice but to sh!t or get off the pot. I just need to figure out what approach I'm taking while I build the collectors and flanges.

Sounds like progress to me. Nice work Matt!
I'm stoked to hear you put the stock seats back in. Something about having non-matching seats in that sweet Bertone interior seems wrong to me. Looking forward to hearing more updates.

What I don't know about machine tools could fill several books, but I muddled through fabbing up a couple of header flanges on my mill this weekend. They are pretty rough - I messed up on the surface speed and the depth of cut, and it took me longer than I ever imagined it would take me, but they're done. Not much progress other than that.

Now I've got to decide which way is the best for me to fab up some collectors - cone of steel hammered into shape over a form, or weld up a bunch of pipe sections? I'm leaning towards the hammer form one.

Can't frickin' find 1.375" exhaust tubing anywhere, though. One guy went so far as to say that it didn't exist... I didn't tell him that I had a bunch of elbows made up from said material, but it probably wouldn't have mattered. Even getting 18ga 1.375" OD ERW pipe was tough enough that I just ordered 5x 24" sections from the place I got the bends.

I also need to measure up the engine and the engine bay to make sure I can get 3 tubes per side fit in and all the same length. I will have to hope that I can get them in and out once they're all welded up: if I need to loosen motor mounts to shift the engine a little I'll deal with it then.

Ring a ding ding...have plasma could do flanges. Anyway, just for giggles, the old rule of thumb for an end mill is half the diameter of the cutter for depth of cut in mild steel and half that for stainless. The only thing I look up faithfully when machining stainless is the speeds.

I think hammer forming them is the way to do it for what you're doing. Doesn't CT have that small diameter tube? No exhaust shops have it? That's odd (but it is very small).

Regarding the flanges: You've got enough to do, and I have all these tools & need practice with them. I'd bought this spanky new boring head this summer and I still hadn't used it...

Half the diameter and half again, good to know. What about the boring head, though? I think I was going waaaay too deep by cutting .020" per pass (.040" on the diameter) and I was spinning too fast at first for the SA-36 material. I slowed it down with better results, but should have done more research 'cause I'm seeing literature suggesting .005-.007", not .020". I was going on some faint memory that a machine shop can get a .040" overbore done in one pass, ignoring their vastly better equipment...

I've also changed my mind on the collectors, at least for now. I've figured out how to cut the pieces for a welded collector, and after doing a test piece I think it'll work well. I'll start them tomorrow.

I never thought of CT for exhaust tube, or the place Dale got the 4" stuff for his truck. I'd tried Napa, Auto Value, Gregg's Distributing, and a few muffler shops. Nobody had heard of 1.375" pipe. Metal Supermarkets sounded somewhat promising, if pricey, but After getting 10' of 1.5" for $27 from Napa, I'm not sure I'm not getting robbed at ~$7/foot shipped.

Depends on what you're boring and with what. We could do some pretty beefy cuts if required, then take a cleaning pass at 5 thou. I'd say 20 thou with a slow speed is fine.

Once I slowed it down to 50-60 fps, the cuts got much better. Much less work hardening, much straighter with less taper, better surface finish. I still had a pretty good reverse spiral when drawing out the boring bar, though, and the whole machine was shaking around like crazy during the bore, but it worked out fine.

Photo update time:

Engine ready for installation




It's good to be home!


My header flanges, and the start of a collector


Box o' tubes


Step 1: the template. The circle on the left is for the primary end, the circle on the left is for the collector extension end. The right arc is equivalent to 1/3 of the 2" extension, the left arc is what's needed for the 1 3/8" tube. The collector tubes are 1 1/2". I cut these 6 out of aluminized before I realized they would be a PITA to deal with later.


Step 2: pick a scratch and use it to line up on the middle line. Mark the pipe at the two outer lines. Flip and repeat.


Step 3: draw a line and cut.


After the cut


Step 4: mash it on a heavy wall pipe that's close to the ID of the 2" collector. Fortunately I had such a beast.


Sitting on the collector extension


For real this time, with friends.


On 3 tubes mocked up.


Now that both collectors are done and tacked to the extensions, I'm forced to wait until my straight tubes show up. I'll start working on the rear suspension, locker, and rear sway bar while I wait. The collectors didn't really take much time today, the rest of the time was spent bailing out my garage: The alley side eavestrough fell off the eave, the snow was melting and pouring straight down, and was getting funneled into the garage by the 6" deep ice in the back alley. Roberta and I used some heavy machinery to bust it up.

Not much in the way of pictures from this weekend's progress, but I've got the front two tubes built to give me something to shoot for in CAD. Needed to figure out the route I was going to take and give myself something solid to reference against. I also think I have a plan for routing the exhaust, provided I can get the headers finished! I guess if I can't make them equal length with reasonable access to the flange studs and the space I have available to me, I can just flow them all down to the same spot and call them good. I'm a little nervous about the .049" wall thickness as well, especially once you take the thinning effect into account in the bends. Blew right through while welding a couple of times, without much effort.

After I got the tubes done and did all the measuring I think I need to, I popped them back into the engine compartment to gauge my obstacles. I'll tinker with the model and try to get them close before I make any more cuts.

Then because I didn't want to waste part of a Sunday fiddling with a computer, I started disassembling my rear end. I've got a 960 locker diff and rear sway to install. The only things bothering me about the diff is that: a) it's a 3.31 versus my 3.73, so I've got to swap that over; b) it's a 48 tooth tone ring versus my 96 (one year only, '88, just my luck) and I've surely got some machining going on there, and c) ... well, I had another one yesterday. I'll think of it.

I'm pretty sure one of those 740s at PnP is an '88...

Yeah, but... MY car is an '88. Therefore I have a tone ring. Just need to adapt it to the locker.

You don't think a 3.31 will be suitable for that nice torquey(ish) V6? You're not building a race car (are you?) and if you turdo or something crazy later it can handle some talling gearing no? Plus it would really help the fuel economy...

No, I don't think a 3.31 would be suitable, not for an AW-71. It is torquey, but not torquey enough. I am not building a race car, but it came with a 3.73 and cruises very comfortably at 75mph. I'd rather have a 4.10, but I'm installing shorter tires so I'll live with the 3.73 for now.

I believe the 3.31 would HURT fuel economy by lugging the engine, especially in overdrive. I did a bit of a test in my truck, and got better fuel economy (mostly city driving, what I mostly do anyway) by locking out 4th gear and running around in 3rd for 3 tanks. Made for more pleasant driving too, without the constant shifting & junk. I found that the more time I spent above 110 kph, though, the more my economy equalized, but my truck sucks fuel above 100 kph no matter what gear you're in. I'm going to try this test again in the summer when the weather is more consistent, & get some good honest data. Anyway, ask Dale about his 3.31/AW-70 combination... granted it's a 4-cylinder turbo and had more cam & less compression than my V6, but it's also lighter. Were I also installing an M46 or my T5, the 3.31 would probably stay.

Alrighty then. We've established that I don't want a 3.31 behind the AW-71, so the plan was to pull the two diffs apart and try to adapt the 96 tooth trigger wheel from the open diff to the locker, and install the locker with the 3.73 ring into my old housing. Problem 1: the 96 tooth trigger wheel is smaller in diameter than the one on the locker. Problem 2: the 96 tooth trigger wheel is of a different construction than the one on the locker. Problem 3: the 96 tooth trigger wheel mounts differently than the one on the locker. If I were to cut out the center section and bore it out to slide over the locker, there wouldn't be enough meat there to hold it all together. There's no other way to make it work.

So I put them both back together so that I can keep my eyes open for a pair of 48 tooth front hubs and an appropriate speedometer converter, at which point I can convert the whole mess over to the later style 48 teeth. Presumably the ABS will still work.

So while I'm putting in the diff it's time to look at the rear sway bar. I've got the suspension apart to get the diff out and have to swap over the lower control arms to install the sway, so now would be a good time. After pulling the parking brake cables apart (they use the sway bar brackets as chassis mounts), I tried installing the sway. Bzzt! Hits everything. The brackets hit the subframe, and the sway hits the body. I guess that even though the 960 uses the same suspension as the 760/780, the 780 (at least) uses different spare tire storage well sheetmetal and a different subframe.

I COULD use a big hammer and a torch, but the effect of this sway bar will be minimal at best so I'm not really bent out of shape enough to bother. I COULD build a custom sway, but for this car? Meh. Maybe I'll dig out the tools when/if I ever install the locker.

So another post of fail from me. Is anyone paying attention any more?