Auto Weekend

Weekend started with finishing off the front end grill area of the Scat Sled. We knew what we were going to do so the work went faster. Chuckster showed up in the morning so getting the turn signal patch cutout, flattened and tacked in was done by lunchtime! The patch was soon fully welded in and by the end of the day all the center seams were also welded, and there was still daylight left! Movie here.

In addition to the old school auto work, I also did some work on the rally FX. One issue I took care of was the torn intake hose. The previous setup was hacked together and had a super weak strap to attach the filter to the body. That quickly fell off at one race and damaged hose at one end. I replaced that with a less weak strap that was bolted a bit better in, but it proved still weak and this time the silicone hose on the other side failed. I’d been lazy about this as I was addressing other bigger mechanical issues, but finally took care of this. I ordered some less generic silicone hose from, yes,  www.siliconehose.com. Sure I wanted to go brand name snob and get Samco hoses, but it was hard to find a seller in the U.S. that also had the sizes I needed in stock. Flex Technologies Siliconehose.com is a bit unclear whether the hose is manufactured in the U.S.A., which kind of leads me to believe they are not. But they do have a large warehouse in the U.S.A. and had what I needed in stock. The hoses are fiber reinforced and layered, unlike the monolithic generic mystery hose that was there before. What you see in the above picture is actually my cobbed together assembly from bits scavenged to make a working intake. That entire mess was now replaced by this single 45 degree reducer hose. Nice and clean, it doesn’t get any cleaner than that! I’m hoping it helps the flow, and keeps it cooler too. I’ll make a airbox one of these days to enhance that too.

On to the next order of business I wanted to take care of. What you see here is the collector flange of the JDM header that I’m running. It’s a tubular header as opposed to the big heavy cast iron manifold that is stock. The problem is whoever sells these never seem to have associated hardware and so you see is a mounting tab floating unattached there. I’ve been running like this without any major problems, but I did have the flange at the head loosen and start leaking once. I was thinking it would be a good idea to attach this to the block as designed to lessen the vibration & strain.

I mock up the piece in cardboard and then scrounge the garage. I come across a bracket plate from the old FJ-55 that even has one appropriate sized hole already that will serve well as the base. One of the FX transmission mounts looks like it will function perfectly as the connecting piece as it already has a slotted hole. It takes only three cuts and one hole drilled to get the pieces I want, sweet!

I break out the welder. This is big stuff so I crank up the little MIG as high as it goes. Zap up some tacks and fit it up.

Damn, almost perfect! No need for adjustment, time to go for it. Hit it with all the welder’s got, I guess when working with stuff this big you can’t goof it up by burning through. It would have been nicer to lay down a single bead, but it’s easier for me to reposition. I’m not so good that I can lay down a really long bead consistently.

Hey, check it out, not too shabby! I can actually weld something usefull, and it doesn’t look like ass!

Here’s the finished piece, no need grinding, oh yeah! Just under two hours not counting painting to do this. Not going to be doing any 24 hour monster builds, but still not bad considering.

And here we go, fully installed and ready to race!