So finally back at it after bit of a lull. I think trying to do a car on a budget makes it a bit hard to have motivation when you're seeing people doing $20,000 builds and you're working on a small percentage of that. Anyway I got back into it this weekend getting major progress done.
First I started by putting the car up on jack stands. This was done because I needed the wheels off it, it's impossible to work under otherwise, and I need fix the rear brakes/wheel underlay.
Next was to get the dump-pipe in. You couldn't pay me enough to do this job under the conditions I was in. The lack of height and the rocks made it a nightmare. I have a track on a BE5 STI midpipe and axleback so I will follow that up when I get the money from the guy picking up the wheels this week.
Next was to get the valve cover off. This job was way easier than expected taking like 5 minutes to do. I'd been putting it off for weeks. When I got it off I was amazed. This was so clean for having 425,000km (264,000 miles), mind you I haven't seen one before so I didn't know what to expect.
So I originally tried to tap the valve cover and that went badly. The fittings thread wasn't round so it wouldn't cut the thread. So I moved on to something else until I could come up with a solution.
Crjohnson your photos were invaluable for this so thanks for the location for the drilling.
Next was the coolant feed and return. I got these T fitting of eBay that are a 16-12-16. This meant I could just splice into the heater hose and go straight to the turbo with a single fitting.
Spliced heater hose.
Where I Tee'd in for one. I put clamps on after as I didn't have any on hand
And here's the other, just under the pitch stop mount. Same deal as before, I ran out of clamps at the time.
Next I went into town for coolant, hose clamps and whatever the Australian version of JB weld is called. My solution to the oil return was to just JB weld it in place. I'm not exactly proud but it will work well.
It was a pain to get the valve cover back on because of the fitting but we got there in the end. Foil below to stop oil leaking onto the headers. In the end pointless as you'll see later.
So next I fill up the car with coolant, tightened all the hose clamps more (apparently a screwdriver isn't enough) and started the car. It's ran really well and I was starting to burb the coolant when my brother noticed this.
Well my dumb ass didn't double check the AN fitting to the banjo bolt on the turbo and oil leaked all over the up-pipe. I originally thought it was from the oil drain but chased the problem back. So that's now fixed.
Now this wasn't the best way to end the day but it didn't dampen my spirits.
WE HAVE BOOST
I didn't have any of the intercooler piping connected but it works. This is a major win for me as until this point I hadn't really felt there was any progress despite the 5 months work and the $2395 spent so far.
Cheers for reading
Luke
