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I've made a little more progress on the turbo manifold after work over the past few days - I ground out the flange-pipe transition in the merge to make it a little smoother.



Mocked up the manifold and marked where to cut the main tube



Plasma cut



Then I clamped the whole thing together to tack the stubby tubes to the log



This was then fully welded before finally welding it to the flange



Doing it this way minimises warpage on the flange, as the log is already one rigid piece.



To attach the merge I roughly positioned the turbo where I wanted it and measured the location of the flange out in space. Then I used a piece of round bar to attach the merge to the log manifold.



Once it was tacked I was able to adjust the angle to make it square



Finally the support bar is welded a bit more securely and the manifold/merge piece can be removed



And that's where I'm up to. Hopefully I'll have some time over the Easter/ANZAC weekends to make some more progress, but I'm happy with how it's going.

I've done some more turbo manifold work on the car.



The turbo looks pretty high, but this allows the intake to clear the top of the engine.



I'll need a small cutout in the lower edge of the bonnet to clear the exhaust, but other than that it clears everything. The wastegate is going to go roughly here:



The passenger side manifold is slightly different. It has to start aiming down roughly where the back cylinder outlet is, so there was a complex cope to do on one of the runners.







Grind - check - grind - check...





Some more welding and...





Finally a check on the car





Nearly perfect alignment with the gap between the sump and bellhousing. Once I remove the automatic transmission cooler lines I should be able to snake the crossover pipe through there, where the original front subframe went.



Crossover pipe up next, then the wastegate arrangement and the hot side of the exhaust is all done.

Big update as I've had 3 days off work to tick off a few jobs on the build. First up I ground off the welded pipe that someone had put on the outlet of the turbo.



Then I marked out the cutout I'd need in the bonnet to clear the exhaust.









Next up was brake line clips. These are a combination of welded tabs with 9mm holes (for M6 rivnuts), and 7mm/9mm drilled holes in existing members for either through bolts or rivnuts.





Nothing too exciting there but it's ticked off the list. Then cleco'd on the dash and firewall, the latter of which involved lots of grinding smooth of welds on the front of the body frame.





Attached the side panels and folded down this tab.



Another job was finishing off the scuttle and attaching it to the frame.



My aluminium TIG welding skills have just about completely gone, but after grinding it looks alright.







Unfortunately the piece did crack in a couple of places when I reinstalled it, but for the moment I'm going to leave it as-is. These welds are basically cosmetic anyway, as the piece will have a foam tape seal underneath to weatherproof it.



I retrimmed the rear seat frame into a full seat, then adjusted and fixed the two rear side pods.





Tick!

Weld up the front guards - Tick!



The last big job I finished was to attach the windscreen panel to the frame and round over the edges.





I don't have a proper panel beating hammer but the standard claw hammer did an OK job



After doing the 3 edges there was just the corners left





I think I might try heat shrinking it slightly to get it a little closer, but even as-is it's a pretty good fit.



Spent a little time trying to figure out how to get the wiper arrangement to work, but I'm going to resort to CAD to confirm the wipers clear each other and clear enough of the screen to pass engineering.



Finally a quick progress shot.



I'm going to the engineer on the 27th, so before that I want to have the front swaybar installed, hopefully make the front bumper, and generally get it as assembled as possible. We're also expecting a new baby next month, so I'd like to get as much done as possible before then!

This weekend was a time of wins and fails, but ultimately the car has ended up ready to go to the engineer for it's initial inspection.

I TIG'd my 36-1 crank pulley together



I made a start on the exhaust, first by cutting down the catalytic converter to do double duty as a 3.5" to 3" reducer.





Next up the muffler build - I chopped a slice off the end of the truck stack that I'm using



This slice then had a small cut taken out of it so it would fit inside the stack, to provide a surface to seal and attach to the muffler body.



This pic is a bit out of order, but basically the perforated pipe core had a ring welded to both ends.



The one at the far end just sits in the muffler body, but the one at the muffler entry has the sealing/attaching ring on it, so it can be disassembled for re-packing.



The perforated core ended up at 600mm long and the muffler body is ~152mm diameter, which I'm hoping with the turbo and cat will get me under the noise limit. I also have the option of adding a spiral down the centre which should help significantly with the noise.



Now we come to a series of fails in getting the car onto the truck.



The first setup looked promising, but the wooden ramps ended up sliding forward slightly under the pressure of the winch, which caused the folding ramps to fold upwards... I abandoned the attempt before things got really dicey.



Next attempt I had some 200x50 sleepers lying around, so I tried doubling them up... about 1/3rd of the way across the bowing of the beams looked pretty alarming, so I gave up on this as well and called a friend with a car trailer.



Ready to go on Tuesday.

The trip to the engineer went well, though there's quite a few items that will need modifying/redoing there are no showstoppers, and he's confident the car can be made legal and registered.

The main things he picked up on:

• Welding on the chassis not up to scratch, absolutely fair enough, I am not particularly good at MIG welding and I wasn't able to run my 200A mig on full power, due to it drawing ~20 amps and the shed/garage I was working out of only having 16A breakers. Excuses, excuses, but basically when I did the chassis boxing I didn't do a good enough job.
  - The solution he suggested was to grind the welds down a bit and then go over them with the TIG to get full penetration. A lengthy process but definitely one I'm comfortable with doing. Once this is done I can call the chassis done, take a million pics and then I'm good to have it painted/powdercoated/galvanized/whatever.

• No rear seat

• Front guards need to be extended or moved forward to give more coverage in front of the axle, I think I'll just move them to avoid having to make new panels

• Roll bar needs to move back ~50mm for head clearance, and be covered in foam or something. It's only tacked at the moment and I can see how I can get it pretty far back without any serious modifications.

• He's pretty sure the dual diaphragm booster won't pass the brake test, said he'd had a lot of experience with them and they're not great, so he suggested I look into a hydroboost setup and use an Astra electric P/S pump to provide the pressure - something I'd never thought to do!

• Exhaust has to exit 300mm past the seat plane, and can't exit under the car, so basically I need to direct it out the rear. No problem, and allows more space for a second muffler to pass the noise test.

• I need to sheet the open sides of the engine bay or make a cover for the timing belt

• Heat shield exhaust all down the side

• Indicators on guards so they're closer to the edge of the car

• Interestingly, I don't need to have a front bumper, but if I do it needs to be the full width of the car... I think I might leave it off

• Front guards will need some sort of plastic edge protection on the leading edge, and leading edge of the rear guards too

• Foam of some sort along the top edge of the dash

• Electric demister is fine, as long as it's permanently mounted and wired

Overall it was a very worthwhile visit and has given me renewed motivation to get the car done, because it's been confirmed that I'll be able to get it on the road!

Hydroboost - I've sourced a hydroboost unit from something and confirmed that the Soarer P/S pump still fits in the original location. Also, luckily, the adapter bracket I made to go from the dual diaphragm booster to the master cylinder also works with the hydroboost, so that was a nice surprise.





I still need to make an internal piston as the hydroboost doesn't reach the master cylinder piston, but that's a simple lathe job. I'll also need to modify the firewall and pedal slightly to work with the new spacing of everything.

I've made some good progress on the fuel tank, adding the pump mounting bolts:



Then I added a couple of threaded bungs for breathers and the fuel return



Under the fuel return I added a tube to direct fuel back towards the fuel pump basket, hopefully helping to keep it full.



Then I fully welded the tank and test fitted it in place to figure out the fuel filler neck location.





Finally I've sourced a 3" in - twin 2.5" out muffler for the rear of the car and mocked up how it would look with a couple of 4" tips that I have leftover from a previous project.





I like it! I'm pretty confident that between the turbo, cat, 3" round muffler down the side, 3"-2.5" muffler at the back, and all the bends to get the exhaust out the back, that it'll be under the 96db required...

I made a little more progress on the fuel filler:







It has a join down near the tank because otherwise it would be impossible to install. I'm planning on making a mount towards the top of the filler neck to the chassis to stiffen it up.

Next some lathe work to seal up the steering shaft against the firewall





The small ring goes between the 17mm steering shaft and the bearing, and the outer ring goes between the bearing and a 2.5" silicone coupler, which will also connect to the tube on the firewall to seal it all up.



I'm waiting on some NPT-barb fittings to do the leak test on the tank, so next up I might try and flatten the exhaust manifolds in the milling machine so I can make the crossover pipe and exhaust.

A minor update over the weekend - I leak tested the fuel tank. Here's the setup:



The balloon stops the tank exploding and supplies a constant pressure to find leaks, then I sprayed masses of soapy water over every weld to find any leaks. I did find one pinhole on the long seam weld, but also worryingly there seems to be a leak in the flange welds.



I'm going to cut a different, smaller clamp flange that allows me to see all around the perimeter to confirm just where it's leaking from. Still, it's a good result with no other leaks anywhere on the tank.



Next up I added a stiffener to the windscreen frame, as well as the side and interior rear view mirror mounts.







The side mirrors are actually aftermarket ones for a Jeep, so I won't be able to say that it doesn't have a single Jeep part anymore

Don't forget to fit a large, separate, fuel filling vent (around 15mm tube). Connect it to the filler neck near the mounting flange, above where the end of the pump nozzle will be to prevent fuel from entering, blocking the air release that allows the fuel to go in.

Oems have use separate vents even when there appears to be just a single tube. Dodge used a divider inside the filler. Ford has used inner and outer hoses. Both extend the wet tube to the inside of the tank, ensuring the vent is not obstructed by fuel entering.

You might wet the o ring with fuel and recheck sealing. They can swell.