Vlad's rides thread

[vlad01]

Last thing I have here is these universal hangers by Invidia.

My hanger fitment never was great on this car, too angled and too short for the factory height.

So I am going to try bend the peg straight and as a result it will be even longer center distances. I calculated around 45 to 50mm. Stock is about 40mm.

These are one of the few universal mounts that has 10mm peg holes, not only that, but is also multi hole with sensible sizes in the centers.

All others I found were 34 ish mm or 57mm, weird inch to metric nonsense specs that fit mostly nothing. Most were also 12 or 15mm peg sizes too, hardly any were 10mm

These are 35, 40, 45 and 50. All common distances and plenty of in between.
The thickness is 25mm, Holden use 35mm but 25 is plenty thick enough and gives a little wiggle room for adjustment sideways.

Also mentioned in the other thread about pipe beading, which still no luck finding anyone that can do it, I have my sample piping cut and bent up to my liking for PS cooling lines out of the old auto ones, of course I want them in 3/8 or 10mm, these 5/16 are too small for the PS return.

Idea is these barbs on the side of the engine that is well enough away from the headers, runs a hose from the PS return, to a front mount cooler, back to these lines on the block, the other then feeds back into the PS pump res. So this makes routing hoses short and direct to the res and rack, and same at the front of the car.

Since my car had a big ass auto fluid cooler and brackets bolted to the rad support, I might as well reuse some of this hardware and layout, of course I would need to change the cooler to something smaller, but also from 5/16 in/out to 3/8. PWR have such units off the shelf. The auto one that I removed was also PWR, so most of the work is already done.

[vlad01]

New idea with the exhaust support die, from mortar? (spelling?) this time.

Haven't checked if it's cured or not yet. Hope it doesn't just crumble like the resin and grain idea. This was heaps easier to work with I might add, not sure why I didn't think of it first. Seems obvious.

Idea is to fill the tube with sand and have a few goes with a rectangular block of steel and the press to try form some nice clean indentation flats.

The T5 retainers are apparently ready, they were support to call me last week on the pricing. They have made a small batch of 5 to start with.

I'll update on the outcome.

[vlad01]

T5 retainers are ready!

Just note that I have not made my way there to pick one up put aside for me, so I have not been able to double check fitment into the gearbox with shims, bearings and seals yet. So hopefully there are no oversights but there always could be.

I'll update that once I have my unit in hand and do a mockup and check over it.

https://crdengineering.com.au/product/h ... -retainer/



Also the mortar support for indenting header pipes didn't work, too piss weak and crumbled immediately. I don't understand how they get away from selling premixed cement products that never work. Years ago I used the premixed concrete bags for structural posts for a fence for a chook yard.

The concrete was so weak it was like sand that had just dried out.

So I might try getting raw cement powder and adding a heap to the mortar to make it a lot harder and stronger.

interestingly the pipe off cuts I got from my mechanic are of the straight section aluminium coated pipes and they are very hard and springy! Even pack hard with sand inside it was springy and the whole thing bent before I even managed to get a dent formed in it, even then it was only 1mm deep while the rest just flatten and curved out of shape. Massive pain to work with that stuff.

I am sure the tubes for the headers are soft, the back section I cut off certainly was, and one home made header off my nephew's 4runner with the buick in it indented pretty nicely just as is with a caliper piston as the tool in the press, so I think it should work once I get the concrete/mortar situation sorted.

[vlad01]

If you are interested in grabbing the retainers, I would hold off. After test fitting my one, I found the seal bore was too big and the seals just drop in with almost their own weight which is obviously bad! They need to be tight to the point that a good portion of body weight needed to push them, that is what the OEM ones are like.

So the small run of them will need to be sleeved to the right diameter. So my unit is going to be posted back to them with one of my OEM retainers so they can double check the measurements. I think they bored them to the industry standard of 44.5mm, but looking at seal catalogs, there are different bore tolerances for different type of seal constructions for the same "sized" seal. The OEM seal is on the tight side it seems.

The bearing bore is also 0.4mm deeper than the OEM one, but nothing the right combo of shims won't sort. Bummed that this happened . I could tell the guy was annoyed about this, but I did provide a sample seal and parts to double check all of this.

One other thing is the OEM had two cutouts for the fluid/oil, but they milled just the bottom one as they said their other ones only have this as that is standard on other boxes, I feel like having both will be better as it appears to be a BW/Tremec implementation for increased oil pumping paths for the bearings in the front and pocket of the input shaft. I suggested they should do both but feel like they won't bother, but if you feel like adding the top one, a mill can easily do so, I might as well when I get a few other stuff milled at my other engineering shop I use in Airport West.

Otherwise the workmanship is excellent!

I assume this will be corrected in the next batch, I will try to make sure they do as I feel like that is standard practice for any good engineer, actually more like a compulsion

Also I redid the exhaust pressing mold from mortar and added cement powder, some 1/3 ratio, so ridiculously strong mixture.

It just worked for this test piece with the mentioned much harder and springier pipe. So the mold did manage to hold up and not allow the pipe to distort or curve out of shape at all, but it still split during the pressing.

I did a quick test on the actual Pacemaker off cut I had, and as suspected, it's much softer than my test pieces, so I am confident it will work.

The last pic shows the first atempt and how that failed to do much other than to distort the pipe, and the 2nd successful one.

[vlad01]

So I have rigged up the Y pipe as the first cab of the ranks, adding a long flat spot where it comes close to a support rail on the drivers side.

Stupid how Pacemaker sell two different part numbers for manual and auto, and both are the same to suit auto clearances, and a compromise in manual. There is a canyon of space for that pipe to move towards the gearbox, but it's so close to the rail it makes no sense, until you have seen it with the auto installed. The auto is fat as a pig in comparison to the manual box.

Working from the Y pipe to the headers in logical order so I can check the clearances as do the next one.

Btw, I pack the pipe section with just regular construction sand, shove a rag to where I want the sand to start, fill and pack as I go, then cap it off where I want to end with another rag. Worked well on the tests.


When I formed the mold, I set a block of steel level with a precision level and then once the cement was poured and packed, the pipe was tweaked to be the same level. So that when in the press it will reduce and hopefully eliminate the press from cocking sideways or the flat spot not where I want it or uneven in depth along the length.

To stop the mold from splitting outward, I have clamped wood blocks to make the sides nice and parallel and flat while it sets over a few days, so I can then also clamp them evenly while pressing to hopefully control the and prevent the mold from splitting down the length.