The Project Pad

It was negative 17 degrees today. You know what I did? I went and picked up my first order of fiberglass silicon hoses for 20vt cars and then know what I did? Lost all feeling in my hands when test fitting the first one onto my car. Worth it? Totally. Did I swear and curse alot? You bet your audi lovin ass I did.


Now get to shoveling and GET THAT CAR RUNNING!!!

This whole weather thing sucks.
At work I tell myself to do stuff as soon as I get home.
I get home, it's cold, I go upstairs and do not accomplish anything.




I'm just terrible at motivation. Jeeze.

Thats ok, I have no power at my apartment, so I packed up the wife and kid and took them to her parents. I then went back to my apartment and went to sleep. I woke up to it being a brisk 56 degrees inside. Needless to say, not in the mood to do anything. Oh... and I'm now at work, go figure.

On a plus side, my braided brake hoses showed up today. I'm sure the UPS guy loved finding my door in the dark! HAHA.

I am truely starting to believe that my statment is correct. MOTHER NATURE HATES ME!!! Over the past 48hrs, we had about 14" of fresh powder dumped on us, wait for it, and we are expecting another 3-5" TONIGHT! So I went from 4-5" of snow and ice around and on my car, to feet of it! I really need to get working on this thing, carlisle is coming up in a hurry.

Maybe Santa will bring you a BIG turbo for Christmas in July judging by the way you are getting snow this year

Well Taco, if it doesnt warm up here soon, most of this snow will be around until then. We are expecting more tomorrow. I dont know any totals for it this time, but at this point, doesn it really matter?

Either way, I got my dad to send me some pics of the car. The snow on top of the car isnt as bad as I had expected, but there is still about 18" around most of the car. I really need to get over, shovel it out, and get to work. This will be on the road for carlisle damnit!

On a good note. My Small chassis G60 clipers, and good rear calipers with a working ebrake showed up last week from Varia. Now I have correct/working brake calipers, SS brake lines, and most of the AN fittings I need.

I do have one question for those still following along. I have the option of using nylon braided fuel line instead of SS braided. The only real advantage I can find is that the nylon braided line is more flexable. Both have the same pressure, temp raiting, and liner material. Any reason most people seem to run the SS braided line?

Cheaper and more readily available I'd imagine.

Ur gonna get towed bro. That car is now over 9000 pounds with all that snow. I don't know about 9001 but you better hope you don't get another .000000001" of snow or they're towing your ass!

HAHA...shutup...

No but seriously, the nylon braided, and SS braided are about the same price. But as tim pointed out to me, the abrasion resistance just isn't there on the nylon. That ok, ill just order another 3' or SS braided and call it a day.

Oh and you better buy Silicon Radiator hoses from me for your "Raider". I'm working on the 4.7L hoses right now lol

Too bad the Raider is a 3.7L. Plus it only had 58k miles on it, and don't see it needing hoses any time soon.

Pfft that's nothing, dig it out. There have been times where we've gotten that much snow in a day or overnight. Still gotta get to/home from work! It'll be good for you

Thanks Matt, been a while since we have had this much snow around here. I'm going to go over on Wednesday after I drop my daughter at school. This way come the weekend, I can get to it.

DE80q wrote:Too bad the Raider is a 3.7L. Plus it only had 58k miles on it, and don't see it needing hoses any time soon.

I just cant win with you can I?

I FINALLY had a day to work on the bandit yesterday.


I had some fairly ambitious plans for the work I wanted to get done


I Started on the Driver front caliper, and boy Im glad I did. Turns out someone had tried to remove the upper brake hose before, and had the tubing nut completly destroyed. So I ended up cutting off the hard line just above the nut. I removed it from the ABS pump, and made a trip to the part store. The line I picked up is just a little too long, but I dont have the tools to reflair the end, so I just left it long. After that it was just a matter of fighting all the other hoses off. I managed to do it without messing any of them up, so I was fairly please with myself on that. I only ended up getting the correct/functioning caliper installed along with the SS braided lines. Sorry, couldnt get any good pics. One question I have is, why do I have to use a 7/16" wrench on the metric tubing nuts? I tried a 10mm and 12mm but neither were correct, the 7/16" fit perfectly. Just kind of strange I guess.

So in the 5-7 hours I worked on the car, I managed to get it up in the air and change out the calipers and lines. What a PITA! nothing wanted to work for me, but then again, how could I expect any less?

I did manage to fab up a seal ring for the stebro though, Id say its just a little bigger than the factory

The stebro is hanging on the car as of now, but the URQ down pipe is no where even close to it. they are also not straight in line with each other. Im going to order up 2.5" "U" and make it work.

Also, shawn got the MS harness finished, so that should be going in very soon. Im just glad that the snow is gone, and warmer weather is here. Time to really get busting on this.

So on sunday, I went over to work on the Bandit again. My plan was to swap the front control arms, bleed the brakes, mount the oil cooler and starter, make/mount the fuel lines, and start on the wiring.

Well as luck would have it, the DS control arm swap went very well, but the PS wasnt having it. The front bolt came out no problem, but the back bolt will not budge. I torched the hell out of it, soaked it in oil, and tried again, still no go. So I called it a day on that until I could come up with a way to get a better grab on the nut. Using a standard open ended wrench, I was only grabbing about half of the nut.

After I gave up on that, I moved onto bleeding the brakes. Thanks to RS4Tech, I had a pressure bleeder, so that was about as easy as could be. Nice clean fluid coming out all 4 corners!

Then I moved onto the fuel lines. Again, with a little help from RS4Tech, I was able to get them all made up, and mounted on the car. The feed line is a little awkward, making a slightly high arch, but should work just fine. All lines have been sleeved with high temp reflective sleeving.

After that I ended up picking a good 5 window dizzy to install, and put that in place with a new 0-ring, cap and rotor. It is starting to look like a real engine compartment again.

That was where I stopped for the day. I was pretty hot, and exhausted so the wife picked me up. and went home. Sorry, again, no pics of progress

Now last night at work, I had some time to kill so I think I came up with at sulution to the control arm nut. I call it the "socket on a steek". I took your normal jo blow cheap socket from HF.


Made up a 1/4" thick handle for it, and welded it on. I then put it back in the mill and plunged a 1/2" end mill through the 3/8" square and the handle to make sure it clears the bolt. I think it will work, lets keep our fingers crossed



More to come, I plan to go over on thursday to get some more work done. Im running out of time quickly, so I need to get my ass in gear if this is going to make it to carlisle!

hurry up!

YAH, YAH, YAH, must be nice to not have a wife and kid to deal with. Then I might be able to spend more time working on this...

Ill worry about those things after Im out of school lol

AngryTaco wrote:Ill worry about those things after Im out of school lol

Sorry guys, I have been slacking on updates.

The socket on a steek work perfectly! It was a little cumbersome to get on the nut without being under the car, but once it was on, it pulled the nut right off! Luckily I had a few extra control arm bolts kicking around from the part out, because the threads on the bolt I took out were completly jacked. At least now the control arms have "good" bushing, well at least ones that arent falling apart.

I also got the bent tie rod in, along with the WG flex pipe. I have 1 question about that though. When I installed the pipe, it apeared to only go one way, but there is a arrow on the one end and as of now, it is pointing down, and the part # is upside down. Did I put that in upside down? It looked correct, but then I started to second quess myself. I still need to make up the pipe to conect the down pipe to the exhaust though, that will be fun...

Then the next day I decided to go ahead and run some wiring. The battery cable now runs from the trunk, to the engine bay, I just need to figure out how I am going to attach it to the other wiring. I also managed to get the megasquirt harness through the fire wall, and kind of routed to where it all goes. At least I think so.



HOLY LEAD LENGTH!


And here is the rainbow of wire colors... aint they pretty!


So hopefully this weekend, I will be getting all the wiring finished, drain the 2 year old gass from the tank, and and get some fresh 93 in there and see if we cant get this started! after that its off to the alignment shop to get it to at least drive straight

When you look at the flex pipe, the inside must be smooth. If you can see a rim, it is upside down. I had mine like that for the longest time. It will effect wastegate operation.

OK, then I put it in right. The "tube" part of it should be againt the WG, with the flex shell attached to the down pipe. I thought thats how it should go, but then the arrow threw me off.

correct. The arrow points down and the "rim" on the inside is on the downpipe side