New Hotside being installed

The headers fit w/o needing to move the motor up but the A/C unit had to be removed.

Messaged the header to clear the Kmember and frame.


I bought a pair of these flanges then machined off everything except the V-band flange then had a buddy weld the flange onto the exhaust housing. Doing it this way was cheaper than buying new housings and I could tailor the length of the flange to what I needed. Right now it looks like I will have about 1/2" between the two down pipes. I also machined a .2" deep step in the flange so the down pipes will stick into the flange keeping everything perfectly centered/sealed.



Here's one of the 2.25" to 2" reducer.


Spent most of the day making brackets to hold the turbos in the desired position but should have them done Monday/Tuesday. I'm also fine tuning the sway bar mounts but once all these parts are done we can start mocking tubes together.

ks

A little bit of progress this week. Spent several days making the fixture to locate the turbos solidly but still allow me to clock them for the best fit.
We connected the exhaust housings together with a 3" tube that clamps onto the V-band rings that were welded to the housings. This tube was then welded to the brackets that are bolted to the block allowing each turbo to spin freely on the end of the tube.

I don't have a pic of them but I had custom turbo flanges made that are 1/2" thick with a round hole so they fit the 2" hot side pipes. Cost: less than $20/pr.




Here's the mock up of the sway bar and brackets on the passenger side. The position looks great and it looks like we should have room to run all the piping and still run a custom sway bar.



Here Curtis is messaging the inside of the pipes for the driver side pipe that comes off the header.



ks

I haven't had much progress b/c I am waiting on tubing but I did machine the v-flanges on the inlet side for O-rings. This eliminates the hose splices that connect some of the cold side piping together. If I decide to have some parts chrome plated then this should look a lot nicer.

ks

Four steps forward and three steps back but we've made some progress this last week. We constantly needed to alter the position of the sway bar in order to get everything to fit like I want which required redoing all the piping a few times. I'm trying to make sure all the pipes have as smooth of bends as possible and access to bolts, drain lines, radiator hoses, etc are easy.
We'll also be making new power steering and AC lines and routing them away from all the exhaust pipes.

You can see in one of the pics that we ended up cutting off the collector on the pass. side header and welding an elbow on it. This allowed us to run the piping over the top of the sway bar which also made that pipe nice and short at only 14" long.

Great news for me is that it looks like we can run the 3" down pipes behind the stock springs so I can get rid of the coilovers. In order to run the exhaust behind the stock spring the 3" pipe had to run directly under the oil filter so we're going to make a removable section in that area.

It looks tight but there should be just enough room to get the wastegates in there even tho each hot side pipe will have two O2 bungs. Things are getting tight!

I also concluded that since there is only about 3/8" between the pass. header and the K-member even after messaging the header we're going to cut the top corner of k-member tube off then add nice gussets under and around that area. When we get that far I'll take pics.

Currently we're at a standstill until the ABS delete arrives. Once it arrives we can finish the cold side piping on the passenger side, then make the turbo bracket, then install the down pipes then........

Driver Side Turbo Bracket. When the brackets are done I think I'm going to have them zinc plated:




Passenger side collector that we cut off and added an elbow:


Driver side collector and 3" exhaust pipe routed behind stock spring. To make sure we have enough clearance we jacked up the A-arm until the strut topped out against the CC plate then located the 3" pipe to clear it all. We tried to have at least 1/2" clearance between the 3" pipe and the rubber boot on the inner tie rod.




Passenger side piping to the turbo. Here you can see the custom turbo flange I had made for 2" piping:


Driver side piping to the turbo:


ks

A few more pics.
All the pieces for the 3" down pipe are made and assembled for the drivers side. We still need to create a removable section under the oil filter and some rubber mounts for the pipe that runs behind the coil spring but all the pieces are made to the rear of the A-arm. The 3" piping will be made up of several removable sections to ease maintenance and assembly and the one section behind the spring will be held onto the k-member with several rubber mounts so all the pieces will be supported and located properly whenever it's disassembled. The passenger side down pipe is next on the agenda along with the WG's.

From what we've done thus far it looks we can move the location of the custom sway bar down about 3/8"-1/2" and move it closer to the motor about 1" which should give us more clearance for the piping and make the sway bar easier to bend to clear the front tires.



Passenger side Turbo Bracket:


Pics of the two down pipes:


ks