I'm going to begin this diary from when I decided to purchase the On3 kit. It took me reading Gimmie11's post about his On3 turbo install that got me pumped up for doing it myself. I knew there were going to be challenges along the way, but I had to pull the trigger.
$4200 later and I had an On3 TT kit, with 60mm (standard) ceramic ball bearing turbos and all of the goodies to go along with it being shipped to my door. I decided to add on the FRPP 47# injectors to give myself a little breathing room. In hindsight I should have gone with the ID1000's, but I'll be kicking myself in the rear about that. It wasn't but about a week later and I dropped another $1585 on a set of rims and tires from American Muscle. I decided to go with the 20 x 10 (rear) and 20 x 8.5 Front AMR's in Silver, wrapped in Mickey Thompson Street 305's out back. I had a few days to see what those tires can do and so far I am not convinced in their performance. They spin even worse than the old 255's I had on the rear before it. I will hope that it just takes a little wear in order to get these to start getting sticky on the daily.
Edit**: Sorry about some of the pictures being rotated wrong. I will fix this once I have the time.
The turbo kit finally came in the mail....My kids were just about as happy as I was!
You can see them beaming with joy! Smile Damn it we're happy!
Yes, I know...they're a couple of nut cases.
So me, being the witty and convincing individual that I am, convinced my friend Steven to help me do the install. Took a lot of convincing (beer) and the promise that he would get first ride after the install. He agreed to allow me to use his garage, tools, and house for the duration of the install. What a guy, right??
So we have set aside two weekends to complete this installation....Here I sit after day 1, typing this up because my wife had to take our other car to pick up all of the kids. It's 10:35 and I still haven't started working on the car. It's ok because I love her. But goddamnit honey, I'VE GOT A TURBO KIT TO INSTALL!
Here's what we have accomplished in the first day of the installation.
1. Removed front wheels.
2. Removed bumper.
3. Removed ECU.
4. Relocated the fusebox.
5. Removed radiator shroud.
5. Removed Cervinis Cold Air Intake.
6. Removed Battery and Battery tray.
7. Removed both Motor mounts and passenger side Motor Mount bracket to engine. (I will discuss)
8. Removed A/C Lines in preparation for replacing with the one provided with the kit.
9. Removed Mid-Pipe and all O2 Sensors. Upstream and Downstream.
10. Removed Starter.
11. Removed Passenger side Header.
Anybody notice I duplicated number 5?
I'll go through the timeline of what we did.
Started the day around 11. Had to get our parts staging areas setup, the car on jackstands, and all parts removed from my trunk.
Removed the radiator shroud and cold air intake. Also, make sure to cover up the throttle body with something.
We used blue painters tape.
We removed the inner fender well splash liner to take the bumper off. Later found out that this wasn't necessary. So you don't have to make the same mistake.
Removed the battery and tray. Holy shit was it dirty in that battery tray.
Removal of the ECU. Top bolt is easy but the bottom bolt was kind of a pain to get to. Ended up using a couple wobble extensions and accessed it from in between the headlight and the radiator.
Removed the A/C lines running on the passenger side of the engine bay.
We had an interesting task ahead of us while working on relocating the ECU and Fusebox. I had no idea where the F that either of these things were going to relocate to. All instructions I've read are very vague and don't offer even a tidbit of good information as to how to do it.
We all know where the fuse box is mounted, basically unhook the power and ground going to it and then you're left with two massive trunks of wires coming in/going out of it. One of those trunks follows along the radiator and the other goes into the fender well headed to the inside of the cabin. There isn't a lot of movement because these trunks are so stiff. Apparently from the pictures I located, you basically just swing the fuse box about 45 degrees clockwise and push it down below where the A/C lines are. That is currently the way I left it and personally I think it looks ghetto. I will revisit this and hopefully come up with a better solution. I see this being very difficult to access once there is a turbo sitting almost on top of it. We didn't finish this part because I didn't like the setup, but included with the kit there is a power extension cable for the line going from the battery (hot) to the fusebox. This still needs to be done. The ECU seems fairly simple...It will go in the area where the windshield washer reservoir is mounted. I will come up with a zip-tie solution for this as I don't have the time or material to work on fabbing up a special mount for this location. (this is one of the $3000 differences between hellion and On3) Since the ECU is going to be located very close in proximity to the fusebox, there are a couple of places that you can route the three plugs that plug in to the ECU. That wasn't too difficult. I'll snap a couple pictures of this setup once finished.
Since I had already previously done a Pypes H-Pipe install, I swapped the orientation of the bolts on the passenger side where the H-Pipe meets the header. On that side, normally the bolts are facing upwards, so it is necessary to remove from the top (difficult). I changed the orientation so that the nut would come off towards you if you are underneath, making it very easy to remove the H-Pipe.
This is a picture of the motor mount / header/ motor mount bracket. It was a real pain in the ass on this part but not for what you would think. We wanted to get the motor mount bracket out of the way to make removal of the header a bit easier. This is the task that was difficult. Most of the bolts you can access from varied positions...on top and from below. However, there is one bolt that is double nutted with a wire (ground strap) in between. The wire is connected to the bolt with a round connector and the two nuts compress it between them. Once we got the first nut off we naturally tried to wiggle the connector off of the bolt, but goddamnit that sucker is on there. Long story short, we quickly discovered the the round connector snapped off and left just the copper circle on the bolt blocking the nut from being access by a socket. What the F right? We had no leverage in that situation and couldn't pry it off or even spin it off. It wouldn't catch a thread to spin off so we felt kind of screwed. We decided to attempt removing the header with the bracket still attached and we were able to successfully. It really wasn't that difficult. Have the right extensions, a few wobble extensions, air ratchet is helpful, and have the motor jacked up about as high as you can get it and you'll have it off quickly. We were able to get the header out in about 30 minutes. Once the header was out we had a lot better access to the problematic connector. I used a flathead screwdriver and a hammer and smashed the edge of it to get a little clearance so we could grab it with some needle nose. A bit of bending back and forth and we had the bastard off. We called it a day at 9:30 and wedged a piece of wood in between the frame and the block to support it so the jack wouldn't be holding up the motor all night. Success. Tomorrow (today) we tackle the drivers side and begin putting everything together.
Picture of the motor mount bracket removed. One of the bolt holes on the right hand side had the stud with the two nuts on it. Beware...
Well, Day 2 is in the books.
Today I accomplished, well, a minimal amount of work. The AFC Championship was on and I'm an avid Patriots fan, so I was throwing wrenches and shit more than working on the car. I was however able to install a couple things:
1. New SS Brake Lines included with the kit.
2. Clocking the turbos
3. Turbo Manifolds mounted on Drivers and Passenger side*
4. Steering shaft
The kit included header bolts within the packaging with the header gaskets. I'm not using their gasket and rather opt to use the stock metal gasket with a bit of aluminum RTV.
Here's the kicker. The header bolts they sent me don't fit the damn block lol. There are several places on the manifold when attempting to mount it the manifold wouldn't slide right up and mate because one of the studs were in the way. You wouldn't think so because it is supposed to be the same, but I struggled and struggled and couldn't get it done. I think I was able to use 3 or 4 of the stock studs on each side and would have to use the supplied bolts with the kit. This was a big mental roadblock for me because it was Sunday, the game was on and most hardware stores were closed. I'll have to get the exact size of the bolts and hit up the hardware store. I called On3 and they said that they couldn't do shit basically. "That kit was designed around a 11-12" It was a very matter-of-fact kind of conversation. Not a, "I'm sorry, how can I help?" Kind of conversation. Pissed me off a little bit. But whatever, bolts are bolts. I can buy them cheap but this is the kind of shit that makes or breaks a company. This is the difference between a good review and a shit review. This is the difference between a few hundred thousand dollars revenue because bad reviews deter customers and that is revenue that you never even knew you lost. You lost the opportunity for that business before you even got to try to make a sale. I guess I just found the $3000 difference between Hellion and On3.
Moving on past the header bolts. I've decided to get this mental block out of my head because I wasn't going to let it hold up the rest of the install day. I began working on the steering shaft. There are a couple bolts attaching the shaft to the yolk near the bottom and act as a form of compression for the entire block housing, mounting to the steering gearbox. Just loosening them seems to be enough to get movement out of the shaft, but it wasn't enough to get it to lift out of the housing all of the way. It is required that you go into the cabin to loosen the two nuts that are holding the shaft to the firewall. Do not let this flange disconnect all the way out. Just another inch is all you need to let the lower part move up towards the inside of the cabin and that will allow it to disconnect. ****Important Note: Make sure that your steering wheel is locked. This will keep the shaft from rotating on you and possibly (GREATLY) screwing up your alignment or breaking shit when you put it back together.
It should be noted that you'll want to perform the steering shaft removal before taking off the headers...It just makes it A LOT easier. I have room FOR DAYS down there with that thing moved out of the way. You can easily see 4 of the studs from underneath on the drivers side with plenty of room to ratchet.
Moving on, I decided to tackle the new brake lines included with the kit. The reason for replacing them it to move the stock stiff ones out of the way because they are VERY close to the manifold/turbo on the drivers side of the car. To be clear, the two lines you are replacing are the fatter two brake lines coming out of the master cylinder. I loosened the bleeder valved off of the drivers side front caliper, put a 1/4 piece of vacuum tube pointing down towards a drain pan (or cup) and then hopped in the car and pumped the brake pedal for as long as I heard it squirting out. Probably close to 100 pumps it felt like. Then I disconnected the lines from the master cylinder side first, placing a small cup beneath it and some rags to catch the brake fluid. That stuff is nasty, so don't let it get on the paint. Not very much came out (< .5 oz) and I was able to snake the hard lines out of there with ease after disconnecting them from the distribution block. Now, I want to have you look at this next picture before I explain:
You'll see the washers that they included with the kit. I literally was stumped on this for about 20 minutes trying to figure out why the hell you would need these. They include 4 fittings total and these washers made no sense at all. Everything already appeared to be flared as far as the fittings go, so it didn't make sense to me why I would need to use these. I used a little bit of teflon just to make myself feel good about myself. BTW, the guy at On3 thought it was because they revised the fittings but still included the washers...just in case....smh, I guess. Anyway, I tightened all of the fittings down snug and ran the wires similar to factory. I just didn't loop back underneath the distribution block. I did use a stainless steel zip tie because there is a perfect spot for it (see in pic)
Couple random pics:
Passenger side turbo manifold. (Notice the fusebox? This is not its final resting place, I was able to move it a little further underneath the radiator hose. It looks a lot better that way and I'll get a final pic for it later)
Here's a couple of bolts holding it on. Notice I was able to use some of the stock studs with nuts. These are the top two you are looking at and the number 3 on top would hit the manifold, hence the need for bolts instead of studs.
This proves that with the current location of my fusebox, I will have the length to have the connectors pull through the hole that I used. BTW, this hole needed a little bit of TLC (bending) in order to get the big PCM plug to fit through it. You can do it with a pry bar or with your fingers if you're a tough guy. Fingers worked for us.
In this pic, notice how tight the clearance is between the valve cover and the turbo flange. This picture shows the turbo flange spacer they have recently started including with their kits. Once I get the header fully mounted I will be able to start messing with the turbo/wastegate/v-band situation. They supposedly included this spacer to attempt mitigating the tight fit that has been seen in other threads between the turbo hotside and the wastegate. Pay attention that it is thicker on one side of the spacer than it is on the other. I haven't even figured out which orientation it is supposed to go in yet, but I have a 50/50 shot. I would think that the fat side would go closer to the valve cover to allow more clearance because there is ZERO room there. But it might also need to be flipped to allow clearance for the wastegate. Jesus, this is going to be fun.
Another shot of the spacer.
That was most of what I did...damn football games...and Whataburger.....and them being chincy with their fries. "Oh lets fill in the empty space with ketchup packets, they won't know the difference. Screw those fat bastards for ordering a Whatasize". Thanks for reading so far guys.
Well, son of a biscuit, I've spent two solid weekends working on this car..........................I'm exhausted............................I'm cranky........................I'm not done..............................Blood, sweat, tears, busted knuckles, Monsters, and Vicodin would sum up my weekend. I won't even begin to attempt numbering out what I completed this weekend. I will rather number them out as challenges. My buddy that was helping me out was sick so I was going solo this weekend. I'm roughly 35 hours in and I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is a glimmer of hope that somewhere out there, there is an extra 200hp waiting for me.
The two snails are staring at me in the face, on the car, waiting for the gas pedal to let the fuel flow to allow a violent thrashing of pistons to transfer raped apes to the concrete. Mickey Thompsons screaming for mercy as the car shimmies side to side rolling through 3rd gear. I can't help but be excited yet scared at the same time. This car is going to be an animal, unmatched except for maybe 0.1% of other cars on the road. I literally can't wait. Once the Parkinson's like shaking stops in my hands, I will then complete this project and propel "The Beast" to speeds at which it has never gone before. I will now begin the tale of weekend number 2.
Challenge #1:
Lets start with the turbo manifolds. Ahhh....you silvery little bastards. You look so pretty, yet you take every opportunity to make my life a living hell. *Epiphany moment*....much like a woman. My debacle began at the beginning of the week after the first weekend install. I was on the hunt for bolts....and not just any bolts....coyote header bolts....and not just any coyote header bolts, specific year model bolts. FML, I called 6 different places; Fastenal, Port City Fasteners, Lowes, Ace Hardware....It was finally on a last ditch effort that I called Home Depot. They had them :-D
M10 X 1.25 X 25MM
The 2011-2012 Primarily had the M10/1.50/25MM bolts, yet my car is a 2013 and clearly had the finer thread pitch of 1.25. Finding this size bolt was like trying to find a unicorn in hell. But I did it....I scooped up the last 12 that they had. Now, I'm not an idiot when it comes to metal material, and I'm no stranger to galvanic corrosion. I'm sure I should have found grade 8, 309, 304 or some other badass version of stainless steel bolts, but I was unable to from all vendors I spoke with and I settled on Zinc Plated Steel bolts. I plan on retightening the header bolts after several heat cycles to make sure they settle in their places.
I had to go through all of this before I could even begin my install on Saturday, 1/30/2016.
Challenge #2:
Lets mount these manifolds on the car with these new bolts....Hell, everything is off already it should be easy right? WRONG. I couldn't get all bolts to thread into their holes because the stock gaskets holes where the bolts thread through were interfering with the bolt holes in the head. Ultimately I had to take off both turbo manifolds, scrape off and redo the RTV that I put on it, take a grinding wheel to the bolt holes on the stock gasket and place everything back on the car. Great...3 hours gone on Day 3 of the install, but finally the manifolds are mounted and were appropriately tightened to Hulk ft lbs of torque. If I get an exhaust leak, I will break many...many things.
Challenge #3:
I did a fair amount of reading and discovered that it makes a lot more sense to punch the oil pan instead of drill through it. The theory behind this is that if you drill it, there will be a lot less material for the tap to grab ahold of and creates threads on.
Link for $15 tap & die kit I used from harbor freight: http://www.harborfreight.com/6-piece-pipe-tap-die-set-91395.html
I used a center punch to start the hole and then gradually stepped up to bigger taps. You can access the holes that you are going to punch from the fender wells on both sides of the car. I had a unique setup, but it worked beautifully. Punch > Socket > 2' Extension > Hammer. I cleaned up the area I was going to punch with a wire wheel. This is very important that you take it slow. On the biggest and last punch I would need to use, I taped off with blue painters tape the point at which I would need to stop to get the tap in the hole successfully. The taps are tapered, so you just need the small end of the taper to get into the hole solidly and you can begin threading it in. I replaced the punch with my tap on my little extension combo discussed above and added a socket wrench to the end of it. Now, this is where the challenge comes up. I planned on punching and tapping the oil pan nearest to the transmission bellhousing on both the drivers and passenger side. This appeared like a great spot. However, I punched just a hair too low on the drivers side and this caused a dribble of oil to slowly come out during the tapping process. Since I had the engine jacked up right underneath the transmission, it was in the way so I couldn't drain the oil and I was constantly using shop towels to clean up my mess. It wasn't much, I'm not going to blow this out of proportion, but just should be noted that your oil level is very near the area in the pics where I tapped. Passenger side went smooth and didn't have any dribbles. I followed up with using JB Weld on the threads of the fitting and around the fitting as well. This appears to be holding well.
You can see a little dribble of oil even while the punch was still in. At this point, I knew I messed up, lol. It's ok because the majority of the drain is still open and will allow oil to flow into the pan.
I used lithium grease on the tap to help catch as many of the metal shavings as possible. I also left the oil pan full so the shavings would flow out with the oil.
Note: When choosing the location for your holes *giggity*, make sure you are punching in between the oil pan bolts above. DON'T BLOCK ONE OF THOSE BOLTS. You won't be able to remove your oil pan easily.
The drivers side took me a while to get finished, while the passenger side took around 10-15 minutes. It went really easy and smooth. Also, make sure not to go too deep with your tap. It will make your fitting go in slightly loose if you do. I wanted mine to be a bit snug, so that's another way that I fixed my mistake on the passenger side vs. the drivers side. I'm sure it would have been best to take off the oil pan and weld in a couple bungs, but this works just as well (If it doesn't leak)
Challenge #4:
So at this point, the drains are done, the turbo manifolds are on...I'm ready to get the turbos mounted. I recommend loosening all of the bolts on the hot side housing and the compressor housing to make spinning and clocking the turbos successful. You can install the turbos on the car while these bolts are loose and once you get the turbos tightened to the flange, you can then tighten everything up. Another note, make sure that you get the turbo clocked correctly before mounting the oil drain flange. One of the bolts on the compressor housing will interfere with the oil drain fitting if you try to back it out with it installed.
Oil drain:
Oil feed:
Good shot of the bolts on the left and right that need to be loosened to allow the turbo to spin freely (don't get crazy on the spinning, there is an o-ring on the compressor side that can be damaged if you try to twirl it like a socket wrench in the air:
Placement of turbo on the drivers side:
Challenge #5:
I didn't take many pictures of this upcoming part, because I was balls deep in concentration and didn't want to stop to take pics. Sorry about that...I'll probably go back and snap a few pics to highlight what I'm going to discuss. The part of the install I'm talking about is the hotside piping. The downpipe going to the midpipe. Now, I've only done the passenger side so far and I will give my experience with that before I move to the drivers side. What you have to do in this step has to happen in this order:
1. Loosely bolt down turbo.
2. Loosely place v-band clamp on the turbo going to the downpipe.
3. Grab the two downpipe pieces and connect them with a v-band clamp loosely. This is important because I had one hell of a screaming match with the car attempting to connect the upper downpipe to the lower downpipe while also trying to tighten a v-band clamp around them. I still think it is impossible, but I hope one of you can prove me wrong. Do the easy way and raise up the engine on the passenger side to allow you to run the downpipe down below. Pre-assemble the two pieces with the v-band clamp loosely keeping the two together.
4. Mount the wastegate to it's flange loosely pointing it in the right direction. Make sure to plug the bottom hole on the wastegate that will be facing the fender. Your banjo nipple fitting will go on the inside closest to the engine. Top port is left open to vent to atmosphere and we use the bottom port banjo fitting to connect the two turbos to the wastegate later.
5. Mount the dumptube to the wastegate.
6. I then tightened down the v-band clamps in this order: Turbo to upper-downpipe : Wastegate to turbo-manifold flange : Dump-tube to Wastegate
7. I left the Upper downpipe to Lower downpipe connection loose with easy access to the v-band clamp bolt so I could tighten it later once I finish the drivers side and am ready to mount it to my Pypes Off-Road H-Pipe.
I want to stop here for a second and make sure that challenge #6 gets the respect it deserves because you won't be able to get past the step above unless you do. Make sure to read Challenge #6 before doing what I did in Challenge #5.
Challenge #6:
The rear most upper stud that mounts the header to the engine interferes with the downpipe. See pic below:
It is the bolt on the far left side..
Challenge #7:
This is the most frustrating part of the install I have run into yet and I fear that the rest of the hotside will be just as difficult due to this. This challenge is primarily caused because of terrible fitment issue. The whole drivers side is FUCT. When I mount the turbo to its flange, I use the spacer that they included with the kit. This helps, but it still doesn't clear the wastegate v-band clamp. The problem here is that once the turbo is mounted and you mount the wastegate, the hotside housing hits the v-band where the wastegate mounts to its flange. Gimmie11's had this problem and documented it in his build where he had to grind a portion of the hotside house in order to make it fit correctly. I too had to do this and because my grinding tools were minimal, I spent about 30 minutes with a wire wheel and drill gradually scraping off a little at a time. I tried it with a hand file and that was just taking way too long. I feel that I got it close enough and attempted a test fit and I will make sure to take more off before I complete the job because there is still too much.
Challenge #8:
Due to the way that the downpipe runs off of the turbo it interferes with the strut tower fender wall. It doesn't allow the pipe to mate up to the turbo, soooooooo....Me being the crafty individual I am, I had my sick buddy take the pipe to work with him on Monday and use a shop press to press the pipe in roughly 3/8 of an inch. No pics of it yet, but I'll upload some soon. This is the part I am stuck on and it will take a little bit of test fitting in order to get it to mount right. Another notable part of this is that the wastegate dump tube also has issue lining up and it will probably take a good bit of muscle and even a bit of testicular fortitude to get it to mount correctly. I'm trying my best not to try to tighten anything down with the v-band clamps until it is properly lined up. We'll see if I can do this afterall.
Challenge #9: The wire leading to the alternator has a rubber boot that goes around it and a little plastic protector on either side. This requires you to trim (or remove the plastic piece) and rotate the wire a little close to the front end of the car. If you don't, the rubber protector will melt to the turbo manifold.
Pic showing the portion I grinded off with a dremel to allow the wire to swing around to the front:
Pic showing the rubber boot and wire rotated in the proper location:
Couple of pics to show where I left off:
No turbos:
TURBOS!:
Passenger Side Dumptube and Downpipe:
Drivers Side:
Weekend 3 is in the books.
I had full expectations going into this weekend that I would easily be able to complete all leftover items and be able to fire it up. Well.........THAT didn't happen.
This is what I had left to do going into this weekend.
1. Install Fuel Injectors
2. Install Spark Plugs
3. Complete drivers side hot side.
4. Install Intercooler.
5. Install cold side pipes and couplers.
6. Install H-Pipe and axle back.
7. Mount ECU
8. Program Startup Tune
9. Reinstall everything
10. Check for leaks and clearance near hot side pipes.
11. Oil Change
I started the weekend off with working on the drivers side hot side.
Holy shit was this hard to complete. It is a full on McGangBang of pipes rubbing on eachother. There was no space and everything was touching. It was like.....car porn.
I'm going to place a few pictures on here just so everyone can see how close all of the connections are and what I had to grind down in order to make it work.
Picture of the v-band clamp holding the wastegate to the turbo manifold:
I literally had to use a ratcheting strap to get the dump tube to apply enough pressure towards the downpipe in order to get it to line up.
This next image shows a few things:
The clamp that mounts the wastegate to its dump tube....I had to grind down the faces of those (you can see that they are diagonal currently and not flat) My shitty grinding skills I guess. The purpose of doing this was to allow the clamp to open up a bit more and apply more clamping pressure. I'm so frustrated at stupid goddamn fitment issues like this. This is not necessary and is just overlooked. I actually had all kinds of problems finding a combination of v-band clamps that would work properly.
It also shows the v-band clamp connecting the turbine to the downpipe. I also had to trim a small amount of material off of this to allow the wastegate dump tube to move enough in that direction to allow it to align with the wastegate mounting surface.
They labeled the passenger and drivers side wastegates differently and included different clamps with each one. I believe the passenger side had these shitty stamped clamps, while the drivers side had the better CNC billet clamps. With one of the passenger side clamps, I had to get a longer bolt because the clamp wouldn't close enough to allow the bolt/nut that came with it to start threading. Another avoidable problem.
Struggling with the hotside took a couple hours. I'm not proud of it, but God was I happy once it was all mounted and solid.
Since I needed a 3rd hand in order to get the lower downpipe of the drivers side mounted, I decided to move on to the cold side piping.
There is literally shit for pictures about how these are supposed to install correctly.
I created a pretty simplistic Microsoft Paint diagram on how the pipes are to be routed.
Couple pictures of the coldside pipes:
Passenger:
Drivers:
Changed out the Fuel Injectors to the 47#ers:
Changed out the Spark Plugs:
I struggled a bit on getting the drivers side lower downpipe twisted in the correct orientation so there was enough clearance to mount the H-pipe correctly. Passenger side was a breeze. Make sure to have the engine lifted up a bit...It helps provide clearance so you can get the v-band clamp mounted correctly. It should be noted that they put a bend (radius) on the drivers side lower downpipe so that it clears the steering shaft. Problem is that the bend is about 1 inch higher up than what it needs to be FML....I think I can make it work though by placing some washers on the studs of the steering shaft that go up into the firewall. I'll have to provide more pictures of this once I know that it works properly. I'll find out after I start the car up and turn the wheels.
So now, I leave off with the following To-do list:
1. Fix leaky thread tap on drivers side oil pan. (JB Weld will do the trick)
2. Finish mounting H-Pipe and Axle back pipes.
3. Tighten down last passenger side cold-side coupler. (Lost a nut for the clamp because the car likes to eat nuts and bolts and never ever will you find them again)
4. Mount ECU
5. Program ECU.
6. Reinstall all front end parts (possibly need to trim bumper)
I made a video to show how to route the A/C Line. Sorry for the music in the background and the poor quality. I thought my phone was on a higher quality setting.
https://youtu.be/US8NekpYyc0
$4200 later and I had an On3 TT kit, with 60mm (standard) ceramic ball bearing turbos and all of the goodies to go along with it being shipped to my door. I decided to add on the FRPP 47# injectors to give myself a little breathing room. In hindsight I should have gone with the ID1000's, but I'll be kicking myself in the rear about that. It wasn't but about a week later and I dropped another $1585 on a set of rims and tires from American Muscle. I decided to go with the 20 x 10 (rear) and 20 x 8.5 Front AMR's in Silver, wrapped in Mickey Thompson Street 305's out back. I had a few days to see what those tires can do and so far I am not convinced in their performance. They spin even worse than the old 255's I had on the rear before it. I will hope that it just takes a little wear in order to get these to start getting sticky on the daily.
Edit**: Sorry about some of the pictures being rotated wrong. I will fix this once I have the time.
The turbo kit finally came in the mail....My kids were just about as happy as I was!
You can see them beaming with joy! Smile Damn it we're happy!
Yes, I know...they're a couple of nut cases.
So me, being the witty and convincing individual that I am, convinced my friend Steven to help me do the install. Took a lot of convincing (beer) and the promise that he would get first ride after the install. He agreed to allow me to use his garage, tools, and house for the duration of the install. What a guy, right??
So we have set aside two weekends to complete this installation....Here I sit after day 1, typing this up because my wife had to take our other car to pick up all of the kids. It's 10:35 and I still haven't started working on the car. It's ok because I love her. But goddamnit honey, I'VE GOT A TURBO KIT TO INSTALL!
Here's what we have accomplished in the first day of the installation.
1. Removed front wheels.
2. Removed bumper.
3. Removed ECU.
4. Relocated the fusebox.
5. Removed radiator shroud.
5. Removed Cervinis Cold Air Intake.
6. Removed Battery and Battery tray.
7. Removed both Motor mounts and passenger side Motor Mount bracket to engine. (I will discuss)
8. Removed A/C Lines in preparation for replacing with the one provided with the kit.
9. Removed Mid-Pipe and all O2 Sensors. Upstream and Downstream.
10. Removed Starter.
11. Removed Passenger side Header.
Anybody notice I duplicated number 5?
I'll go through the timeline of what we did.
Started the day around 11. Had to get our parts staging areas setup, the car on jackstands, and all parts removed from my trunk.
Removed the radiator shroud and cold air intake. Also, make sure to cover up the throttle body with something.
We used blue painters tape.
We removed the inner fender well splash liner to take the bumper off. Later found out that this wasn't necessary. So you don't have to make the same mistake.
Removed the battery and tray. Holy shit was it dirty in that battery tray.
Removal of the ECU. Top bolt is easy but the bottom bolt was kind of a pain to get to. Ended up using a couple wobble extensions and accessed it from in between the headlight and the radiator.
Removed the A/C lines running on the passenger side of the engine bay.
We had an interesting task ahead of us while working on relocating the ECU and Fusebox. I had no idea where the F that either of these things were going to relocate to. All instructions I've read are very vague and don't offer even a tidbit of good information as to how to do it.
We all know where the fuse box is mounted, basically unhook the power and ground going to it and then you're left with two massive trunks of wires coming in/going out of it. One of those trunks follows along the radiator and the other goes into the fender well headed to the inside of the cabin. There isn't a lot of movement because these trunks are so stiff. Apparently from the pictures I located, you basically just swing the fuse box about 45 degrees clockwise and push it down below where the A/C lines are. That is currently the way I left it and personally I think it looks ghetto. I will revisit this and hopefully come up with a better solution. I see this being very difficult to access once there is a turbo sitting almost on top of it. We didn't finish this part because I didn't like the setup, but included with the kit there is a power extension cable for the line going from the battery (hot) to the fusebox. This still needs to be done. The ECU seems fairly simple...It will go in the area where the windshield washer reservoir is mounted. I will come up with a zip-tie solution for this as I don't have the time or material to work on fabbing up a special mount for this location. (this is one of the $3000 differences between hellion and On3) Since the ECU is going to be located very close in proximity to the fusebox, there are a couple of places that you can route the three plugs that plug in to the ECU. That wasn't too difficult. I'll snap a couple pictures of this setup once finished.
Since I had already previously done a Pypes H-Pipe install, I swapped the orientation of the bolts on the passenger side where the H-Pipe meets the header. On that side, normally the bolts are facing upwards, so it is necessary to remove from the top (difficult). I changed the orientation so that the nut would come off towards you if you are underneath, making it very easy to remove the H-Pipe.
This is a picture of the motor mount / header/ motor mount bracket. It was a real pain in the ass on this part but not for what you would think. We wanted to get the motor mount bracket out of the way to make removal of the header a bit easier. This is the task that was difficult. Most of the bolts you can access from varied positions...on top and from below. However, there is one bolt that is double nutted with a wire (ground strap) in between. The wire is connected to the bolt with a round connector and the two nuts compress it between them. Once we got the first nut off we naturally tried to wiggle the connector off of the bolt, but goddamnit that sucker is on there. Long story short, we quickly discovered the the round connector snapped off and left just the copper circle on the bolt blocking the nut from being access by a socket. What the F right? We had no leverage in that situation and couldn't pry it off or even spin it off. It wouldn't catch a thread to spin off so we felt kind of screwed. We decided to attempt removing the header with the bracket still attached and we were able to successfully. It really wasn't that difficult. Have the right extensions, a few wobble extensions, air ratchet is helpful, and have the motor jacked up about as high as you can get it and you'll have it off quickly. We were able to get the header out in about 30 minutes. Once the header was out we had a lot better access to the problematic connector. I used a flathead screwdriver and a hammer and smashed the edge of it to get a little clearance so we could grab it with some needle nose. A bit of bending back and forth and we had the bastard off. We called it a day at 9:30 and wedged a piece of wood in between the frame and the block to support it so the jack wouldn't be holding up the motor all night. Success. Tomorrow (today) we tackle the drivers side and begin putting everything together.
Picture of the motor mount bracket removed. One of the bolt holes on the right hand side had the stud with the two nuts on it. Beware...
Well, Day 2 is in the books.
Today I accomplished, well, a minimal amount of work. The AFC Championship was on and I'm an avid Patriots fan, so I was throwing wrenches and shit more than working on the car. I was however able to install a couple things:
1. New SS Brake Lines included with the kit.
2. Clocking the turbos
3. Turbo Manifolds mounted on Drivers and Passenger side*
4. Steering shaft
The kit included header bolts within the packaging with the header gaskets. I'm not using their gasket and rather opt to use the stock metal gasket with a bit of aluminum RTV.
Here's the kicker. The header bolts they sent me don't fit the damn block lol. There are several places on the manifold when attempting to mount it the manifold wouldn't slide right up and mate because one of the studs were in the way. You wouldn't think so because it is supposed to be the same, but I struggled and struggled and couldn't get it done. I think I was able to use 3 or 4 of the stock studs on each side and would have to use the supplied bolts with the kit. This was a big mental roadblock for me because it was Sunday, the game was on and most hardware stores were closed. I'll have to get the exact size of the bolts and hit up the hardware store. I called On3 and they said that they couldn't do shit basically. "That kit was designed around a 11-12" It was a very matter-of-fact kind of conversation. Not a, "I'm sorry, how can I help?" Kind of conversation. Pissed me off a little bit. But whatever, bolts are bolts. I can buy them cheap but this is the kind of shit that makes or breaks a company. This is the difference between a good review and a shit review. This is the difference between a few hundred thousand dollars revenue because bad reviews deter customers and that is revenue that you never even knew you lost. You lost the opportunity for that business before you even got to try to make a sale. I guess I just found the $3000 difference between Hellion and On3.
Moving on past the header bolts. I've decided to get this mental block out of my head because I wasn't going to let it hold up the rest of the install day. I began working on the steering shaft. There are a couple bolts attaching the shaft to the yolk near the bottom and act as a form of compression for the entire block housing, mounting to the steering gearbox. Just loosening them seems to be enough to get movement out of the shaft, but it wasn't enough to get it to lift out of the housing all of the way. It is required that you go into the cabin to loosen the two nuts that are holding the shaft to the firewall. Do not let this flange disconnect all the way out. Just another inch is all you need to let the lower part move up towards the inside of the cabin and that will allow it to disconnect. ****Important Note: Make sure that your steering wheel is locked. This will keep the shaft from rotating on you and possibly (GREATLY) screwing up your alignment or breaking shit when you put it back together.
It should be noted that you'll want to perform the steering shaft removal before taking off the headers...It just makes it A LOT easier. I have room FOR DAYS down there with that thing moved out of the way. You can easily see 4 of the studs from underneath on the drivers side with plenty of room to ratchet.
Moving on, I decided to tackle the new brake lines included with the kit. The reason for replacing them it to move the stock stiff ones out of the way because they are VERY close to the manifold/turbo on the drivers side of the car. To be clear, the two lines you are replacing are the fatter two brake lines coming out of the master cylinder. I loosened the bleeder valved off of the drivers side front caliper, put a 1/4 piece of vacuum tube pointing down towards a drain pan (or cup) and then hopped in the car and pumped the brake pedal for as long as I heard it squirting out. Probably close to 100 pumps it felt like. Then I disconnected the lines from the master cylinder side first, placing a small cup beneath it and some rags to catch the brake fluid. That stuff is nasty, so don't let it get on the paint. Not very much came out (< .5 oz) and I was able to snake the hard lines out of there with ease after disconnecting them from the distribution block. Now, I want to have you look at this next picture before I explain:
You'll see the washers that they included with the kit. I literally was stumped on this for about 20 minutes trying to figure out why the hell you would need these. They include 4 fittings total and these washers made no sense at all. Everything already appeared to be flared as far as the fittings go, so it didn't make sense to me why I would need to use these. I used a little bit of teflon just to make myself feel good about myself. BTW, the guy at On3 thought it was because they revised the fittings but still included the washers...just in case....smh, I guess. Anyway, I tightened all of the fittings down snug and ran the wires similar to factory. I just didn't loop back underneath the distribution block. I did use a stainless steel zip tie because there is a perfect spot for it (see in pic)
Couple random pics:
Passenger side turbo manifold. (Notice the fusebox? This is not its final resting place, I was able to move it a little further underneath the radiator hose. It looks a lot better that way and I'll get a final pic for it later)
Here's a couple of bolts holding it on. Notice I was able to use some of the stock studs with nuts. These are the top two you are looking at and the number 3 on top would hit the manifold, hence the need for bolts instead of studs.
This proves that with the current location of my fusebox, I will have the length to have the connectors pull through the hole that I used. BTW, this hole needed a little bit of TLC (bending) in order to get the big PCM plug to fit through it. You can do it with a pry bar or with your fingers if you're a tough guy. Fingers worked for us.
In this pic, notice how tight the clearance is between the valve cover and the turbo flange. This picture shows the turbo flange spacer they have recently started including with their kits. Once I get the header fully mounted I will be able to start messing with the turbo/wastegate/v-band situation. They supposedly included this spacer to attempt mitigating the tight fit that has been seen in other threads between the turbo hotside and the wastegate. Pay attention that it is thicker on one side of the spacer than it is on the other. I haven't even figured out which orientation it is supposed to go in yet, but I have a 50/50 shot. I would think that the fat side would go closer to the valve cover to allow more clearance because there is ZERO room there. But it might also need to be flipped to allow clearance for the wastegate. Jesus, this is going to be fun.
Another shot of the spacer.
That was most of what I did...damn football games...and Whataburger.....and them being chincy with their fries. "Oh lets fill in the empty space with ketchup packets, they won't know the difference. Screw those fat bastards for ordering a Whatasize". Thanks for reading so far guys.
Well, son of a biscuit, I've spent two solid weekends working on this car..........................I'm exhausted............................I'm cranky........................I'm not done..............................Blood, sweat, tears, busted knuckles, Monsters, and Vicodin would sum up my weekend. I won't even begin to attempt numbering out what I completed this weekend. I will rather number them out as challenges. My buddy that was helping me out was sick so I was going solo this weekend. I'm roughly 35 hours in and I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is a glimmer of hope that somewhere out there, there is an extra 200hp waiting for me.
The two snails are staring at me in the face, on the car, waiting for the gas pedal to let the fuel flow to allow a violent thrashing of pistons to transfer raped apes to the concrete. Mickey Thompsons screaming for mercy as the car shimmies side to side rolling through 3rd gear. I can't help but be excited yet scared at the same time. This car is going to be an animal, unmatched except for maybe 0.1% of other cars on the road. I literally can't wait. Once the Parkinson's like shaking stops in my hands, I will then complete this project and propel "The Beast" to speeds at which it has never gone before. I will now begin the tale of weekend number 2.
Challenge #1:
Lets start with the turbo manifolds. Ahhh....you silvery little bastards. You look so pretty, yet you take every opportunity to make my life a living hell. *Epiphany moment*....much like a woman. My debacle began at the beginning of the week after the first weekend install. I was on the hunt for bolts....and not just any bolts....coyote header bolts....and not just any coyote header bolts, specific year model bolts. FML, I called 6 different places; Fastenal, Port City Fasteners, Lowes, Ace Hardware....It was finally on a last ditch effort that I called Home Depot. They had them :-D
M10 X 1.25 X 25MM
The 2011-2012 Primarily had the M10/1.50/25MM bolts, yet my car is a 2013 and clearly had the finer thread pitch of 1.25. Finding this size bolt was like trying to find a unicorn in hell. But I did it....I scooped up the last 12 that they had. Now, I'm not an idiot when it comes to metal material, and I'm no stranger to galvanic corrosion. I'm sure I should have found grade 8, 309, 304 or some other badass version of stainless steel bolts, but I was unable to from all vendors I spoke with and I settled on Zinc Plated Steel bolts. I plan on retightening the header bolts after several heat cycles to make sure they settle in their places.
I had to go through all of this before I could even begin my install on Saturday, 1/30/2016.
Challenge #2:
Lets mount these manifolds on the car with these new bolts....Hell, everything is off already it should be easy right? WRONG. I couldn't get all bolts to thread into their holes because the stock gaskets holes where the bolts thread through were interfering with the bolt holes in the head. Ultimately I had to take off both turbo manifolds, scrape off and redo the RTV that I put on it, take a grinding wheel to the bolt holes on the stock gasket and place everything back on the car. Great...3 hours gone on Day 3 of the install, but finally the manifolds are mounted and were appropriately tightened to Hulk ft lbs of torque. If I get an exhaust leak, I will break many...many things.
Challenge #3:
I did a fair amount of reading and discovered that it makes a lot more sense to punch the oil pan instead of drill through it. The theory behind this is that if you drill it, there will be a lot less material for the tap to grab ahold of and creates threads on.
Link for $15 tap & die kit I used from harbor freight: http://www.harborfreight.com/6-piece-pipe-tap-die-set-91395.html
I used a center punch to start the hole and then gradually stepped up to bigger taps. You can access the holes that you are going to punch from the fender wells on both sides of the car. I had a unique setup, but it worked beautifully. Punch > Socket > 2' Extension > Hammer. I cleaned up the area I was going to punch with a wire wheel. This is very important that you take it slow. On the biggest and last punch I would need to use, I taped off with blue painters tape the point at which I would need to stop to get the tap in the hole successfully. The taps are tapered, so you just need the small end of the taper to get into the hole solidly and you can begin threading it in. I replaced the punch with my tap on my little extension combo discussed above and added a socket wrench to the end of it. Now, this is where the challenge comes up. I planned on punching and tapping the oil pan nearest to the transmission bellhousing on both the drivers and passenger side. This appeared like a great spot. However, I punched just a hair too low on the drivers side and this caused a dribble of oil to slowly come out during the tapping process. Since I had the engine jacked up right underneath the transmission, it was in the way so I couldn't drain the oil and I was constantly using shop towels to clean up my mess. It wasn't much, I'm not going to blow this out of proportion, but just should be noted that your oil level is very near the area in the pics where I tapped. Passenger side went smooth and didn't have any dribbles. I followed up with using JB Weld on the threads of the fitting and around the fitting as well. This appears to be holding well.
You can see a little dribble of oil even while the punch was still in. At this point, I knew I messed up, lol. It's ok because the majority of the drain is still open and will allow oil to flow into the pan.
I used lithium grease on the tap to help catch as many of the metal shavings as possible. I also left the oil pan full so the shavings would flow out with the oil.
Note: When choosing the location for your holes *giggity*, make sure you are punching in between the oil pan bolts above. DON'T BLOCK ONE OF THOSE BOLTS. You won't be able to remove your oil pan easily.
The drivers side took me a while to get finished, while the passenger side took around 10-15 minutes. It went really easy and smooth. Also, make sure not to go too deep with your tap. It will make your fitting go in slightly loose if you do. I wanted mine to be a bit snug, so that's another way that I fixed my mistake on the passenger side vs. the drivers side. I'm sure it would have been best to take off the oil pan and weld in a couple bungs, but this works just as well (If it doesn't leak)
Challenge #4:
So at this point, the drains are done, the turbo manifolds are on...I'm ready to get the turbos mounted. I recommend loosening all of the bolts on the hot side housing and the compressor housing to make spinning and clocking the turbos successful. You can install the turbos on the car while these bolts are loose and once you get the turbos tightened to the flange, you can then tighten everything up. Another note, make sure that you get the turbo clocked correctly before mounting the oil drain flange. One of the bolts on the compressor housing will interfere with the oil drain fitting if you try to back it out with it installed.
Oil drain:
Oil feed:
Good shot of the bolts on the left and right that need to be loosened to allow the turbo to spin freely (don't get crazy on the spinning, there is an o-ring on the compressor side that can be damaged if you try to twirl it like a socket wrench in the air:
Placement of turbo on the drivers side:
Challenge #5:
I didn't take many pictures of this upcoming part, because I was balls deep in concentration and didn't want to stop to take pics. Sorry about that...I'll probably go back and snap a few pics to highlight what I'm going to discuss. The part of the install I'm talking about is the hotside piping. The downpipe going to the midpipe. Now, I've only done the passenger side so far and I will give my experience with that before I move to the drivers side. What you have to do in this step has to happen in this order:
1. Loosely bolt down turbo.
2. Loosely place v-band clamp on the turbo going to the downpipe.
3. Grab the two downpipe pieces and connect them with a v-band clamp loosely. This is important because I had one hell of a screaming match with the car attempting to connect the upper downpipe to the lower downpipe while also trying to tighten a v-band clamp around them. I still think it is impossible, but I hope one of you can prove me wrong. Do the easy way and raise up the engine on the passenger side to allow you to run the downpipe down below. Pre-assemble the two pieces with the v-band clamp loosely keeping the two together.
4. Mount the wastegate to it's flange loosely pointing it in the right direction. Make sure to plug the bottom hole on the wastegate that will be facing the fender. Your banjo nipple fitting will go on the inside closest to the engine. Top port is left open to vent to atmosphere and we use the bottom port banjo fitting to connect the two turbos to the wastegate later.
5. Mount the dumptube to the wastegate.
6. I then tightened down the v-band clamps in this order: Turbo to upper-downpipe : Wastegate to turbo-manifold flange : Dump-tube to Wastegate
7. I left the Upper downpipe to Lower downpipe connection loose with easy access to the v-band clamp bolt so I could tighten it later once I finish the drivers side and am ready to mount it to my Pypes Off-Road H-Pipe.
I want to stop here for a second and make sure that challenge #6 gets the respect it deserves because you won't be able to get past the step above unless you do. Make sure to read Challenge #6 before doing what I did in Challenge #5.
Challenge #6:
The rear most upper stud that mounts the header to the engine interferes with the downpipe. See pic below:
It is the bolt on the far left side..
Challenge #7:
This is the most frustrating part of the install I have run into yet and I fear that the rest of the hotside will be just as difficult due to this. This challenge is primarily caused because of terrible fitment issue. The whole drivers side is FUCT. When I mount the turbo to its flange, I use the spacer that they included with the kit. This helps, but it still doesn't clear the wastegate v-band clamp. The problem here is that once the turbo is mounted and you mount the wastegate, the hotside housing hits the v-band where the wastegate mounts to its flange. Gimmie11's had this problem and documented it in his build where he had to grind a portion of the hotside house in order to make it fit correctly. I too had to do this and because my grinding tools were minimal, I spent about 30 minutes with a wire wheel and drill gradually scraping off a little at a time. I tried it with a hand file and that was just taking way too long. I feel that I got it close enough and attempted a test fit and I will make sure to take more off before I complete the job because there is still too much.
Challenge #8:
Due to the way that the downpipe runs off of the turbo it interferes with the strut tower fender wall. It doesn't allow the pipe to mate up to the turbo, soooooooo....Me being the crafty individual I am, I had my sick buddy take the pipe to work with him on Monday and use a shop press to press the pipe in roughly 3/8 of an inch. No pics of it yet, but I'll upload some soon. This is the part I am stuck on and it will take a little bit of test fitting in order to get it to mount right. Another notable part of this is that the wastegate dump tube also has issue lining up and it will probably take a good bit of muscle and even a bit of testicular fortitude to get it to mount correctly. I'm trying my best not to try to tighten anything down with the v-band clamps until it is properly lined up. We'll see if I can do this afterall.
Challenge #9: The wire leading to the alternator has a rubber boot that goes around it and a little plastic protector on either side. This requires you to trim (or remove the plastic piece) and rotate the wire a little close to the front end of the car. If you don't, the rubber protector will melt to the turbo manifold.
Pic showing the portion I grinded off with a dremel to allow the wire to swing around to the front:
Pic showing the rubber boot and wire rotated in the proper location:
Couple of pics to show where I left off:
No turbos:
TURBOS!:
Passenger Side Dumptube and Downpipe:
Drivers Side:
Weekend 3 is in the books.
I had full expectations going into this weekend that I would easily be able to complete all leftover items and be able to fire it up. Well.........THAT didn't happen.
This is what I had left to do going into this weekend.
1. Install Fuel Injectors
2. Install Spark Plugs
3. Complete drivers side hot side.
4. Install Intercooler.
5. Install cold side pipes and couplers.
6. Install H-Pipe and axle back.
7. Mount ECU
8. Program Startup Tune
9. Reinstall everything
10. Check for leaks and clearance near hot side pipes.
11. Oil Change
I started the weekend off with working on the drivers side hot side.
Holy shit was this hard to complete. It is a full on McGangBang of pipes rubbing on eachother. There was no space and everything was touching. It was like.....car porn.
I'm going to place a few pictures on here just so everyone can see how close all of the connections are and what I had to grind down in order to make it work.
Picture of the v-band clamp holding the wastegate to the turbo manifold:
I literally had to use a ratcheting strap to get the dump tube to apply enough pressure towards the downpipe in order to get it to line up.
This next image shows a few things:
The clamp that mounts the wastegate to its dump tube....I had to grind down the faces of those (you can see that they are diagonal currently and not flat) My shitty grinding skills I guess. The purpose of doing this was to allow the clamp to open up a bit more and apply more clamping pressure. I'm so frustrated at stupid goddamn fitment issues like this. This is not necessary and is just overlooked. I actually had all kinds of problems finding a combination of v-band clamps that would work properly.
It also shows the v-band clamp connecting the turbine to the downpipe. I also had to trim a small amount of material off of this to allow the wastegate dump tube to move enough in that direction to allow it to align with the wastegate mounting surface.
They labeled the passenger and drivers side wastegates differently and included different clamps with each one. I believe the passenger side had these shitty stamped clamps, while the drivers side had the better CNC billet clamps. With one of the passenger side clamps, I had to get a longer bolt because the clamp wouldn't close enough to allow the bolt/nut that came with it to start threading. Another avoidable problem.
Struggling with the hotside took a couple hours. I'm not proud of it, but God was I happy once it was all mounted and solid.
Since I needed a 3rd hand in order to get the lower downpipe of the drivers side mounted, I decided to move on to the cold side piping.
There is literally shit for pictures about how these are supposed to install correctly.
I created a pretty simplistic Microsoft Paint diagram on how the pipes are to be routed.
Couple pictures of the coldside pipes:
Passenger:
Drivers:
Changed out the Fuel Injectors to the 47#ers:
Changed out the Spark Plugs:
I struggled a bit on getting the drivers side lower downpipe twisted in the correct orientation so there was enough clearance to mount the H-pipe correctly. Passenger side was a breeze. Make sure to have the engine lifted up a bit...It helps provide clearance so you can get the v-band clamp mounted correctly. It should be noted that they put a bend (radius) on the drivers side lower downpipe so that it clears the steering shaft. Problem is that the bend is about 1 inch higher up than what it needs to be FML....I think I can make it work though by placing some washers on the studs of the steering shaft that go up into the firewall. I'll have to provide more pictures of this once I know that it works properly. I'll find out after I start the car up and turn the wheels.
So now, I leave off with the following To-do list:
1. Fix leaky thread tap on drivers side oil pan. (JB Weld will do the trick)
2. Finish mounting H-Pipe and Axle back pipes.
3. Tighten down last passenger side cold-side coupler. (Lost a nut for the clamp because the car likes to eat nuts and bolts and never ever will you find them again)
4. Mount ECU
5. Program ECU.
6. Reinstall all front end parts (possibly need to trim bumper)
I made a video to show how to route the A/C Line. Sorry for the music in the background and the poor quality. I thought my phone was on a higher quality setting.
https://youtu.be/US8NekpYyc0
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