PhoCup's 408 Exo Build

[SeanW]

Nov 24, 2016 6:41:10 GMT phocup said:

Its off a salvaged '00 with 160k miles on the clock. Seller was a shop with ferrari, lambos, benzos in the front, but 8 junk miata and a bunch of other misc stuff laying all around behind / around it.

That's a pretty good score! Do you knew if he had any spare 99-00 heads and intake manifoldd laying around?

[phocup]

Will check with them tomorrow and let you know if they do Sean. From what I saw, it was mostly NAs.

Also, if the leak down tomorrow doesn't go well, I might have a spare 99 head / manifold laying around.  

[phocup]

So .. good news and bad news.

For the test, I set my compressor at 100PSI but only used 50PSI during my test. Here's the numbers I got.

44-44-46-43.5  ... which should translate to 12%-12%-8%-13% loss.

The 1.8 seems to be good!

Then I went to test my current 1.6.  The results were ( 40-44-30-45 ) which translated to 20%-12%-40%-10% loss.   Ouch!!

Looks like cyl #1 ( 20% loss ) was leaking from the intake manifold and#3 ( 40% loss ) was leaking mostly from the oil cap.  Quick google shows #3 is likely piston ring leak.  

Before I bought the donor I compression tested and the numbers looked great.  Car started and drove fine.  No smoke.  Don't know what happened to that 3rd cylinder.

Guess I'll be doing that 1.8 swap sooner than I expected to .. just hope the 1.6 makes it through registration / smog testing.

[phocup]

As usual, some progress and setback at the same time.

Got my 5/16 NiCopp brake/fuel line mocked up today. A few notes.

1. It doesn't bend /unbend nearly as nice as the 3/16 brake line that came with the kit. Perhaps its a different brand ( AGS ) than Exomotives, perhaps its more material to bend due to the thicker size.

2.  It doesn't like steep angles. 90 degrees was as much as I wanted to risk. I screwed it up the first few times pretty bad. Trick is to bend real slow and cautiously. The line actually 'kink' when you bend it, so its pretty easy to screw up. I doubled checked and there's also a kink in the OEM line, so I guess its just the nature of the beast.

3. There is no mode on my flaring tool ( or any non commercial one that I looked at ) that will flare with with two separate flares like the stock line. I can somewhat duplicate the flare at the very tip of the stock line, so I'll just run double spring clips to make sure it stays in place.



All in all, I was pretty happy with the end results ..



At least until I went to fit the tank and discovered that the line is in the way ..



I have two possible solutions now ..

A .. Remove the hard line, and trim off a few inches, so it terminates below the gas tank.  Then run flex 30R9 lines up to meet the fuel filter / pump.   Although I prefer as much hard line as possible, I still need to run flex line anyways, so perhaps 8-12" more of flex line wont hurt.

B .. Grind off a bit of the fuel tank to make room for the hard line.  This would certainly be the easier method but definitely riskier IMO.  Seems like I have 1/2" of flat area on that flange to grind ( where the top half of the tank is joined to the bottom ), but can't be 100% sure I do.   If I grind too much, I risk creating a leak.  If I don't grind enough, there might not be enough space for the fuel lines ...

On another note ..

I switched gear to test mount my steering wheel quick release.  Now my steering wheel sits 2.5" closer to me.  That's about 1.5" too close for me and makes it a bit hard to work the clutch without tiptoe'in.   Anyway I can shorten the steering column on the cabin side of the firewall ?



Also missing some bolts again.  Anyone know what the size is for this one ?

[phocup]

Tried to get my harness mounted up today .. what a MESS !!! Things did click together pretty ( for the most part ) thanks to the label. For now things are just strewn all over the place so I can get a test start. I'll work on clean it up a bit more after the start ( finger crossed ) though for now getting that the entire un-modified harness will fit cleanly into the cable tray seems like mission impossible.

I see that the other end of the battery negative cable grounds to the PPF. If I ran a my other grounds to a grounding bus ( like SeanW did ), is it safe to run the bus' main grounding cable to the PPF as well ? It seems like that could be the cleanest install.

[gwnwar]

Running ground from PPF unit to Bus sounds OK.. I would also run a ground from Bus to engine.. Make these runs of a heavier
gauge wire..Clean metal surfaces to metal and check all work with an OHM meter..

[SeanW]

Nov 30, 2016 9:01:57 GMT phocup said:

Also missing some bolts again.  Anyone know what the size is for this one ?

I think your missing bolt is an M6.

[phocup]

Sorted out the battery terminals today.   You can see the old cobbled together piece of junk on the right of the battery.   New terminals are marine 'quick disconnect' terminals and it worked out pretty well so far.



Also tapped a new steel nutsert for the engine to frame ground connection and swapped out the old worn out shrink wrap for something nicer to look at.  

[phocup]

Dec 1, 2016 14:53:33 GMT gwnwar said:

Running ground from PPF unit to Bus sounds OK.. I would also run a ground from Bus to engine.. Make these runs of a heavier
gauge wire..Clean metal surfaces to metal and check all work with an OHM meter..

That's something else I'm not sure about .. what gauge wire to ground the bus.  It seems like the OEM ground wire for engine to frame is 2 AWG so I was going to copy that.   My bus actually have two 'main' ground post .. so I was going to run one to the engine block and another to the PPF for good measure.  Is that overkill ?

[gwnwar]

Grounding to both sounds good.. A lot of elec problems are just bad grounds..
You could drill and tap the front end of the PPF by the trans for the ground so you don't have to run a heavy wire to the diff end..
2AWG is good. you can get premade cables for a clean looking install..

[phocup]

Got my fuel system 90% finished today ( hopefully correctly ). Still need to figure out how I'll deal with the gas filler cap.

Not sure if the stainless line kit makes this job any easier but it literally took me 2 hours to replace the two rubber fuel hoses that routes through the intake manifold. Struggled forever trying to contort my fingers into strange shapes while forcing that line up from the bottom. Finally gave up and started taking things apart and was able to pull out the fuel rail by itself without needing to remove the intake plenium. After the rails was out, things became pretty straight forward.

Also swapped all my old spring clips for these injection fuel hose clamps.  They seem to do a really good job of holding the lines in place.



Also finished my main ground wires.   The bus now have 3 lines going out.   1 to the engine block.  1 to the PPF.  1 to the exo frame.   The engine have 2 lines going out.   The OEM line from block to frame and an additional line from block to PPF for good measure.  All these lines were 4AWG stranded wires which would already have been impossible to crimp by hand ( thanks SeanW for the use of your hydraulic crimper ).   After looking at different wires in the store, I feel like 2AWG would have been overkill.  Speaking with SeanW today and seeing his setup, which had what looked like 8AWG wire and works fine, I am happy with my decision.   My only concern is that the readily available THHN line from Home Depot isn't insulated enough to be in the engine bay.  I'll be adding some wire conduit sleeves to dress up as well as protect these lines.

[phocup]

Wondering how eryone did their lower radiator line. The guide seem to suggest reusing the stock metal pipe and creating a custom bracket for it, but that seems a bit messy and unnecessary to me.



Am thinking of using this universal line instead ..

[SeanW]

Dec 10, 2016 3:24:06 GMT phocup said:

Wondering how eryone did their lower radiator line. The guide seem to suggest reusing the stock metal pipe and creating a custom bracket for it, but that seems a bit messy and unnecessary to me.

So this is what I did on mine. I won't say it's the best way but it's working well for me so far. (I didn't want to use the stock pipe, either.)



Couple of silicone elbows and a length of stainless steel pipe. (Painted black) mine happen to be from the mishimoto hose kit for the NA buy any 90/45 degree elbow should do. You should be able to just use a similar length of thin-wall stainless with the stock rubber hoses. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XN8UEI/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

[phocup]

Thanks Sean. I ended up going with this hose which works but at 20" is just barely long enough to cover that span. I didn't like stretching it so tight, so I ordered this 22" hose to replace it.

In other news, my dumbass bought the V8R radial mount big brake v8roadsters.com/shop/pro-series-radial-mount/ it on sale on Black Friday and it doesn't fit my wheels ( without spacers ).  

[SeanW]

Are you running zero offset wheels?