Patch Panel

In between the header fabrication I made a little patch panel for the front core support and some tension rod bracket re-inforcements.  I had a little fun with a dimple die while I was at it.  I made the panels out of 16ga steel so they would be strong since the front core ties the two frame/unibody rails together.  When welding in the panel I decided to try a product I hadn't before.  I got a weld through primer, I was a little reluctant to paint where I was about to weld, but that's how its advertised to work.  I sprayed the back side of the panel and anywhere I thought I might have trouble spraying after it was welded together.  My reluctance seemed to be correct, where ever the primer was my weld didn't want to penetrate until I had it all burnt away.

Really happy with how the dimple die worked

This part goes in the bottom of the tension rod bracket as a gusset.  I also made a cross bar like the Nismo power brace

I had to add a couple dimpled holes where they might be visible, when the car is together.

I tried out weld through primer, it was more of a burn it away with the mig, then weld process.  I wasn't impressed.

Also I received a call from Lingenfelter's this week, my valve springs finally came in.  I'm pumped, that means I get to take the drive to Decatur, IN and pick up my GT 2-3 cam, valve springs, and Cometic .040 head gaskets.  The remainder of parts for the final assembly of the engine.

Long Time No Posts

I haven't posted anything for quite some time now.  I had professional help lined up to help mock up the passenger side but he ended up being too busy, so that was a minor set back.  I guess the plus side to that is that I still can say that I made them to my design, with lots of helping hands, literally, its nearly impossible to hold all of those tubes into position alone.  I wanted to run all the tubes to one side or the other of the steering shaft, but the collectors wouldn't fit through and it wasn't working for the equal length thing either.  I ended up running the front two cylinders inboard, and the rear two outboard kind of like the passenger side.

This picture makes me wish I would have taken a picture of the headers outside of the car, the front two cylinders looked like snakes.

Both sides outside of the car.

See the steering gap, I'm hoping its enough, but if I have any problems I'm just going to stiffer motor mounts.

I still need to check the fit one last time on the car before the final weld on the flanges, everything should be good, but once its tig welded all the way around its a lot harder to go back.