The Project Pad

I didn't get a chance to take a pic of the bolt last night but you can get a good idea of what I did by these two pics. I cut the bolt in half, added a center section that is the length of the thickness of the spacer, beveled the ends for welding, had the machine shop turn down a centering pin to keep the three pieces straight and true for welding, drilled the bolt out deeper towards the head of the bolt, and drilled new holes in the side of the bolt to realign with the holes in the manifold. Last step was to press in two roll pins half way into my spacer.

Pics

The method is sound, but I still think you are going to be blocking the passage of oil. The bolt extension needs to go in between the threads and the holes in the bolt. Not trying to question your work, just trying to save you from a nightmare scenario.

I will send a pic of the bolt. The oil flows through the center of the bolt just like it did before. All that I had to to is relocate the holes in the bolt to better align with the ports on the aluminum manifold. There are only two ports on the manifold. It really didn't even have to do that because the oil flows freely around the outside of the bolt. There is a factory gap around the bolt as the bolt free floats in a way. The manifold doesn't squeeze the bolt. Toward the head of the bolt, you can see where it tapers for about the last 1/4". The two outside pins keep the manifold from rotating around the bolt and the larger shank just at the end of the bolt keeps it from moving off-center. Maybe there's something I'm not understanding.

Gotcha, makes sense, it's been a while since I had one of those apart. Just looking out for you!

Thanks for looking out for me Jim. I've learned a lot from everyone's projects on here. Better to remind about getting those light weight lifters out of the head before they trash my motor like your situation. Here's a pic of the end result of the bolt, It might better describe what I was going after. Jeff's improvement is to drill the holes out to 5/16" and I took it a step further by running a larger filter and adding more ports. I duplicated the pattern and shifted it over as well as chamfering the ports. I don't believe I will having a problem getting oil through the bolt. I also bored the center all the way through a little larger.

Now I just hope the bolt is strong enough! Looks like it will flow

I'm not worried, the bolt is still pretty thick. The two roll pins support the weight of the filter/manifold and the bolt just squeezes the manifold to the block and insures the gasket doesn't leak. I'll check the required torque spec, but I'm sure it's not much. The bolt is just large because it has to be to be able to have enough cavity to flow the oil through the center.

I like that bolt. Nice work

Yeah man, looks great

I've been working my way through the car and found more things that I'm glad I found now sooner than later.

This was new wire going to my starter.
What kind of slice in the wire do you think this is?...

A. I don't give a sh*t splice... Or
B. I don't know any better...

It was a good thing I checked the motor mount bracket bolts too. This bolt was too long, bottomed out in the block, and not tightened down to the bracket. I just used a shorter bolt and tightened it up.

Holy shit, who the hell did that?

I was not prepared for that splice. Good God. Imma go with option A. Surely no one who knew enough to try and make it in the first place would possibly think "Yeah, that's how it's supposed to be done"

When troubleshooting becomes permanent...?

At least it left the shop with a wrap of electrical tape on it.

The sad part is that there was enough new wire spliced on that you could have cut that bad section out and it would reach the starter.

It was a good thing I looked closer because the large nut that holds the wire on the stud of the starter wasn't tightened down either

So moving on and pushing forward with progress, I have done everything on the brakes that I think can/need to be done except for the vacuum issue. When the brake booster was converted to vacuum, I noticed the brake pedal was hard and I still didn't get the braking power I needed. So I put a vacuum gauge inline to see what was going on and I was getting minimal vacuum from the manifold. The check valve was good but I believe it is from the cams that are installed just don't create enough vacuum. So now I have removed that line from the manifold and am going to install this stand alone vacuum pump for the booster. It is supposed to be a high quality and really quiet. It turns on at 18"and shuts off at 23". It comes with all mounting hardware, connectors, checkvalve, "T" and vacuum switch, inline fuse, relay, and vacuum hose. The lazy way... so I don't have to piece stuff together from multiple places. The company says that it works so well, that you don't need a vacuum reservoir and that it recovers in 3 seconds or less once it gets down to 18" of vacuum. They claim the pump and motor is larger than the GM, Volvo, VW, etc. I tried to trick the guy into telling me where the pump comes from and he kind of hinted from a Tesla. I will see how it works out. It is supposed to be 70% quieter than other pumps on the market. Im sure I won't hear it over my cams and exhaust.

I found a good spot to mount the vacuum pump and it's really close to the booster so it will be minimum vacuum hose. It's mounted low so that the motor on the vacuum pump doesn't get direct hot air blown on it from the radiator when the fans turn on. Since the brake booster tucks in close to the firewall and there's no anti-lock brake pump/motor anymore, there is still a lot of room on that side. I just need to plumb it in and wire it in.

I finally had some time off from work and got everything put back together (minus the black trim below the grille). I took it out and on the third hard pull it sounded like a shotgun going off under the hood. I was mostly scared but then my heart stopped. I thought... WTF, OMG... what the hell was that? I was being slammed back on a hard pull and then all of the sudden it was like the brakes got put on and I had no power. I limped it home hoping for the best and expecting the worst. I started looking everywhere and found that I didn't tighten the clamp on the hose at the intercooler tight enough. Thank god. Put the hose back on, tightened it back up and went for a couple more rips again. woohoo! You couldn't wipe the smile from my face. The electric vacuum pump can't even be heard at all when idling.

Congrats on getting it going again. Great idea about the vac pump. I might have to do that on mine too. It's something I hadn't considered.

Also, I love what you've done with the front bumper. It looks fantastic! Really beefs up the front end. Maybe I'll have to do it afterall. I especially like the cutouts for the intercooler, but I fear it would only look good on a dark color like yours.

P.S. we need some more pics and vids.

P.P.S please make me those headlights!

I've had that happen on a few cars, it's scary as fuck! The bang and slam is so unnerving. Car looks great as Chris said. Definitely need some videoooooos!

I went to TX2K17 this past weekend and was blown away by the level of money that these cars had in them. Twin turbo Lambos, GTR's, Vettes, Ferrarri, Audi, big turbo Supras were a dime a dozen. Hands down, the Nissan Skyline GTR was by far the fastest car consistently/consecutively. I saw 197mph @ like 6.37 seconds on the quarter mile and these cars had full interior and were streetlegal. WTF! E-85 was the most common fuel from all different types of cars. There was free dyno all day and night for all of the cars for the four days. Tons of fun.

Twin turbo chic, cool t-shirt, cam driven fuel pump, and triple E-85 walbro 450lph.

Yeah it's a different level eh... I guess that's what happens when you start with a car that costs (often many times) more than what most people here have into their cars plus purchase price. I'd love to go to tx2k some year.

i started daily driving the car to work and have another "to do list" to be comfortable to drive everyday. A.C. Is one of them. The car definitely rides stiffer in the front now. I was used to the factory ride that was definitely softer. The car sits so low that I can't get it on the alignment rack so I will be adjusting the coilovers up some to clear the underside. The brakes still aren't to my liking considering what I have. I eliminated the rear factory porportioning valve and that definitely helped some. I also had a leaking vacuum hose off of the electric vacuum pump. I swapped small/bad/broken battery ground strap out with one from a V8. I also installed Hella super tones horns which are REALLY loud. The 3:89 TDI 6 speed is definitely for high speeds. I really can't even put it in 6th unless I'm 85-90mph which is definitely ticket territory Third gear is fun from 60-110mph. I'm going to have Jeff get rid of the light weight lifters so they don't trash the motor and I will be conveying to the 2.0t COP's.