Weekend progress

[cisco]

My battery is now relocated to under the front seat minus a couple of important finishing touches that I will fix up tomorrow. I need some huge leverage crimper to crimp the massive 2Gauge terminals that I'm using around the 2G copper cable.

New head unit is installed and working. Speakers/amp and crossovers are still not installed. So you can't hear anything yet. Will finish all that stuff later tonight, but its looking good. Very breezy to install.

Boost controller is properly installed now but the low setting is only 11psi which is a bit too high. Will attend to that later on when everything else is finished.

I also found a hump in my floor where the car must have bottomed out on something pokey at one stage, so I belted it out back to perfect with a rubber mallet. haha.

Also found my old Japanese luck charm thing under the front floor carpet - I was looking for that for months!

I'll resume later on tonight..

 

[cisco]

Got it firing now.

Amp works. Got the rear speakers playing - sounds terrible when you don't have them mounted in any kind of enclosure - heh almost zero bass. Next project is to fix up the rear of the car and make some tidy speaker enclosures for them that will look just like part of the car.

Tomorrow I am mounting the crossovers and hooking up the front splits. Getting there.

Pulling the leaking radiator out tomorrow, so car off the road for a coupla days.

 

[CMF_White Knight]

Good stuff Cisco. Happy you had put that MDF rear shelf in White Knight before I bought it as made as good platform to cut out two holes and put in the rear speakers.
They sound great but maybe I am not a good judge as I am not into sub woofers etc.
Hmmm I hope you said sorry to your Japanese good luck charm. Bad vibes to misplace it.

 

[cisco]

Bloody cars. Its always something.

Got my leaking radiator out - what a dodgy hack job it is.
Will get it repaired and strengthened this week.

Front speakers and crossovers now hooked up and working well.

Had problems trying to crimp these huge terminals around the huge 8gauge copper cable. Need some kind of special crimping tool/press, the only thing I had with enough leverage was some huge bolt cutters, but then they just hack the terminal to pieces and destroy it. ****.

Now I'm looking at the intercooler and wanting to replace it and fix up the excess run-around pipework from the turbo exit into the cooler. Might as well do it all in one hit.
See what happens. So frustrating!

 

[CMF_kneival]

You should be able to hire some large crimpers from your local electrical wholesaler (you can in the UK and its £15 a day) or they might even let you take them to your car etc if you take it there :-]

 

[cisco]

Ahh sweet thanks. I'll try to find out.

 

[CMF_Sean]

My setup got you thinking about re-routing your i/c piping hasn't it Aaron?

I'll see if my dad has some crimpers to suit, he used to work live wires so he should have something...

Seano

 

[CMF_Alex_B]

re the heavy gauge cable and crimping> a place up here called ideal electrical sell those crimping pieces and crimp stuff for you http://www.idealelectrical.com

> unfortunatly no stores in ACT, only QLD and VIC, but maybe there is something similar to you?

Alex

 

[cisco]

I've never been happy with the way the pipe exits out of the turbo, but its always been a low priority. Nowdays, intercoolers are very cheap, so its worth doing. There's definately some redundant indirect piping in my current setup, yours is a very nice direct setup Seano, I like it.
I need a larger cooler and I don't want to part from a front mount design.

But I'm essentially leaving the setup the same way as is now, because I need a half decent sized cooler due to the amount of boost I'm running, but I'll rotate the turbo's front half so it points downwards straight into the new cooler, then the cooler will still be front mount like this one, not as wide, but a bit taller. Still don't want a huge cooler, just moderate size so its effective but not laggy.

There's some cool second hand intercoolers going. XR6T factory ones look very nice also actually, they are black
too, with lovely end tanks aswell.

Re:crimping, thanks guys. Need to get it sorted out ASAP.
Seano, I still need to borrow your vice! I haven't built my workbench yet! damnit.

 

[cisco]

Some other misceallaneous progress to report:

Shortcake's rear disc pads and rotors are completely worn out. Metal in the pads scraping on the old rotors.
So I'm putting bluey's current rear pads and rotors onto the white car, they still have 6-12 months of wear on them. And have ordered a set of new rotors and pads for the rear of bluey.

In the process of I discovered the cause of a massive annoying creaking noise coming from the back of my car. The bloody handbrake cable has been zip tied to my lower control arms since the whiteline gear was first fitted. Its creaking like a biatch, and has polished a part of the lower arms where it rubs. Man. So happy! So have cut those zip ties and will come up with a better solution. yay, that one was killing me.

Then I also discovered that bluey's right hand rear wheel bearing is making some bad noises. Still turning freely and all tight/straight etc, but the bearing is definatey not happy inside, its crunching/rumbling etc. So I will replace both rear wheel bearings and also get nice new split pins and polish up those hub centre bits so they look much more presentable. The calipers are also getting cleaned up and sprayed in the awesome black caliper paint too. Will do that this weekend. Have been wanting to do this for ages!

Will post a new thread soon on some other bluey changes going on in the background. Yeah bloody thing off the road again haha.

 

[cisco]

Allright.

Just removed the ABS. Man o Man. Get it out of there. Its extremely heavy. Its really much heavier than I thought.
Just need to get some special adaptors to join up the brake lines that are now hanging out where the ABS was. B-Crews make some special ABS-removal adaptors exactly for this job. Its so you can keep the ABS lines in there and re-install the ABS later on if you want to. Pretty cool.

This is going to really improve the weight distribution and balance of my car. I'm just about to go and remove its controlled ECU too. Its hidden up behind the glovebox kinda.

That combined with the battery being relocated is going to improve the handling a lot. And probably make the traction a bit worse haha. But I can get better tyres to improve that.

I'm just doing every single thing at once, going hard and the car won't be driving again until its perfect and to my exact specs.

Also just got my 2G battery relocation cables crimped with eye terminal end fittings from "The Battery Factory" in Fyshwick. Mega cheap, bargain price, the crimps are awesome quality. So just properly hooking up the battery now. Highly recommended if you are doing a battery relocation.

Because of the ABS being removed, I'm now going to be able to run a 2.5" inlet pipe from the intercooler to the plenum all the way. The entry into my plenum is 2.5", so that's ideal. Also straight out of the turbo I will put a 2->2.5" expander into the cooler. The cooler will have 2.5" inlet/outlet. That will mean everything is 2.5" which is a bit better than before now that I have the space.

Also found some awesome stuff at Clark Rubber today. They have this stuff called "thermatec laminated wrap" or something. Basically you use it to sit your intercooler on. So it stops heat transfer between the engine bay metal and the intercooler. Its cheap when you buy a thin strip of it. I got a 100mm strip only cost a coupla bucks. My car already had some of this stuff in there, but its all worn and damaged. So this will be good to replace. Also gives the intercooler some padding/cushioning to sit on so it doesn't bang or get any bad jolts etc.

Later today/tomorrow getting a heap of heavy oregon and making a new heavy duty work bench. Then will get a vice and slam it on there.

Bring it on!

 

[CMF_Alex_B]

most excellent cisco, heh > i do enjoy reading these upgrade/progress posts, just like the first upgrade to bluey, hopefully less time till getting back on the road. Let us know how you go with the alloy block to go inplace of the abs unit. Maybe take a picture of the abs gear on the scales too?

Alex

 

[CMF_White Knight]

Always a great read Cisco.
Its like we are there every bit of the way.How about setting up a web cam and we can all watch in real time!!
Come on Bluey we want you back!!

 

[CMF_evade]

haha cisco cam in the garage

 

[CMF_Alex_B]

cisco, let me know what arrangement you end up with the abs,
think my abs is cactus, as my abs light stays on now after the drive back from uni tonight, gave the brakes a firm jab and the pedal did its usual monster growl weirdness for 1/2sec then the light came on and no abs. Upon turning motor off/on, the light went off, but after giving the brakes a firm jab on the light went. heh, locked up the wheels for first time ever tonight,

Alex

 

[cisco]

Eek that's weird Alex.

Allright, I'm the proud owner of a T28BB turbocharger.

I'm going to name it the "t28bb long throw". I think it has a long throw in terms of top end and big push back oomph.

They are basically an OEM version of the garrett GT25, only cheaper. Flows approx 300hp and spools up pretty well.

Can't wait to slam her on there and see how she goes. Should make the same power at lower boost levels for a start.

 

[CMF_Ed]

Quote Cisco: "sounds terrible when you don't have them mounted in any kind of enclosure - heh almost zero bass"

For anyone interested - that is exactly what happens positive pressure waves one one side cancel out the negative pressure on the other. Sealed speaker boxes remove one half of this. Where as ported boxes (at the ported freq invert the back pressure waves to be in phase with the front of the speaker this happens only around a certain few - hence port tuning, but this makes them more efficient as both sides of the speaker are working where as a sealed box you loose the back side of the speakers work.

Quote Cisco: "Had problems trying to crimp these huge terminals around the huge 8gauge copper cable. Need some kind of special crimping tool/press"

8 awg isnt that bad, you can infact solder them on if you have a good gun. The other option is a blow torch, It can be done, I did this with my 2awg cables. It offers many advantages over crimping. Main one being you get a very large contact surface area due to the solder filling the gaps, and a very secure connection. Its quite easy to do this without melting wires. Other option is to use a vice to clamp the wires in again this works.

 

[cisco]

My mistake: Its 2G cable. Its quite thick.
Sorry, not 8G. Its about 10mm thick or something, could have soldered it as a hack job, but my soldering iron wouldn't really heat this much cable up enough. The battery factory had a large crimping press which was what it needed.

 

[CMF_Ed]

Ok, Even then 2awg imo solders better than 8awg. I used a gas torch to do mine. Trick is to solder them fast enough beforeyou damage the insulation. Which IMO is not hard. About the best way to do it IMO. Perhaps not as neat if you dont like a bit of silver/lead on your nice gold connections

 

[cisco]

Solder can create hot spots. I don't have a gas torch anyway.

The professionals say its an option for the DIY person who doesn't have access to a powerful crimping press.

Fine on small stuff, but its not ideal on huge thick wire with big current running through it. They crimp them on just like factory terminals, however the cable is much thicker.