***UPDATE***
Yes its true, an update!!Hi Forumites,
Well for the first time in ages I have had the weekend to myself - well almost, if you take out mowing the lawn and other household stuff.
So, I had decided to spend some time working on The Cat. This was precipitated by sending some stuff off to the ceramic coaters to get it heat-coated. In the past, I have sent all my stuff off to HPC to get done, but the bloke running the Queensland operation has shut up shop, so a new supplier needed to be sourced. I had some pipework and other bits n pieces that had to get coated for clients, so I thought I would test the new suppliers finish on some of my own gear.
I chose a company called Thermal Edge Coating at Brendale - they seemed to get a good wrap on some of the online forums and they were close - perfect. I dropped off the dump pipe, EM and turbo to Paul at TEC and got him to coat it all in hi-temp black - 1,500 degree protection according to them. Paul even took the turbo apart to coat the turbine housing, which was nice.
Anyway, the parts came back looking great - the coating was nice and even, smooth with no blemishes or milky shadows as sometimes happens when ceramic coating isnt applied properly. Although I didnt specifically ask for it, they did coat all the parts inside and out, which was a bonus
Here they are at home, just in hi-temp satin black:
Its been some time since I had these parts on the car, and subsequent to the length of time and also moving from the top shed to the bottom workshop some of the fixings have gone astray, and some dont look as good as they did - so it was off to Masters to get some Champion blister-pack bolts and nuts - Masters have the whole range!
Then, it was time to install the EM, turbs and other associated underhood items. First things first was the reinstall of the remote oil filter arm and the spin-on adapter that would allow me to relocate the fiilter to somewhere more accessible. This meant also that the braided nylon hoses for said relocated filter would have to be installed before the turbs and EM went on, because it is mission impossible to do so afterwards. So, I roughly cut them to length on they all went:
Next was the EM and the turbs, with new EM nuts:
Then on went the inlet pipe from the airbox to the turbs:
And finally the water and oil lines to the turbs (sans the oil feed line, as I havent got the banjo fittig for it. If IIRC, the banjo fitting was in a right state of disrepair so I chucked it in favour of a new anodised aluminium jobbie from Earls - yet to be ordered!!). The water and oil lines I decided to use some hi-temp silicone hose for the job, as it was pre-bent to the rough shape and it was spare. It came in a box of relpalcement silicon hoses I ordered a long time ago to suits a Subaru WRX - which I ordered for the pre-bent blow-off hose.
One thing I did alter from my pre-paint install was the location of the Digidash sender unit - this is a combined oil pressure/oil temperature unit that is calibrated to suit the Digidash. Originally I had it located down behind the turbo, fed off a tapped in line to the spin-on oil relocator. In hindsight this was a stupid position - it is around a fair bit of heat, and being down low is subject to road muck and grime and maybe even an errant rock or two. For such a precision device, it needed to be reloated somewhere more protected and more accessible should it ever need replacing. To this end, I ended up drilling and tapping a 1/4 BSP thread into the remote oil filter housing and screwing it directly into that. A much better location - both accessible and protected. Here you can also see where I have terminated one half of the remote oil lines from the bottom relocator housing - the other hose goes to the oil cooler which is yet to be installed:
I then made up some L-brackets to clamp the hoses to - simple pieces of aluminium angle bolted to the inner guard using nutserts and 6mm domed socket head bolts - keeps the braided nylon oil lines away from the EM and keeps them in order:
Last job of the day was the windscreen wiper motor. Simple install, but it meant that the radiator overflow bottle will need to be relocated, as the two were just touching and with all the vibration that goes on it would have eventually worn a hole through the thin aluminium of the overflow bottle. I just need to find another place for this now, but its getting crowded in there.
I purchased some new wiper gearbox lock rings and angle mounts but have misplaced them somewhere - might have to be re-ordered along with some new gaskets etc.
So, some progress which is good. Still a fair bit to do underbonnet - the oil feed to the snail, boost signal lines need to be run, a little bit of wiring still outstanding, and the radiator and other bits n pieces like the BOV still need to be installed. Might get onto that next weekend - life permitting!!
Cheers,
Tricky
