that piece of metal..... it's part of the sheetmetal from behind the bumper, under the SS beauty trim.
anyhow, enough of that, i wanna think about the IC otherwise i'll get sidetracked and drop the ball on my big fab projects here. the repairs are straight forward, this custom stuff takes concentration and creative thinking, which is what i need to produce from my mind
intercooler mounting... i had some carriage bolts left over from the old A8 parts car and i thought, huh, this would make mounting and unmounting the IC easy. only need to hold one tool to undo it. i drilled the holes and stuck the bolts through...
then sucked them through..
then pulled it apart and carefully filed the holes square so that the bolts aren't a super tight fit, but they won't rotate now when you tighten the nut from the backside.
end tanks!
before we go on, i did a little googling of end tank design, and came across this, which i found interesting
it's an F1 car piece. super thin tanks, but blended out nicely. i need the clearance of a low tank, so i'm going to make a slight compromise to get the fitment i need, although my tanks look to be considerably larger than these.
I cut out the end plates and then formed them a bit on a block of wood so they fit better. my welding skills are sometimes better... sometimes not. still learning.
i have a box of misc pipes to rummage through and the ones i'll be using here are volvo bits.
note to self, and everyone else welding aluminum who doesn't do it for a living... FIT EVERYTHING PERFECTLY
it's a pain in the neck to weld up gaps if you aren't super proficient with the welder.
this is the general idea for the inlet
i cut the elbow out to give it a nice inlet angle and point it in the right direction on the car
i'm fitting 2" pipe to a 3" round endcap, so i had to open up and form it a little. turns out 82mm bearing shells work great for this!
then set it all in place and mark the main tank
carefully cut it out
and how it should hopefully all turn out