Project "Endless Challenge" 4l80E, dry sumped 500 wedge

[Tubbed440]

Here you can see the added o-ring.



I also cleaned up the welds on the throttle body mount so it could seal against the surface.



I know you can barely see it, but I also made a gasket for the lid today.



Here's a couple more pics of the inside of the runners.  I think they look quite nice.
As you can see, I'll have to fill in some of those low spots with epoxy.  I hope to get to that point later this weekend.





I also had to do a little welding to the sealing surface for the lid.  In a couple places, I had gone through the weld with the mill while I was straightening the sealing surface.  I re-welded them and flattened it out too.  Worked out quite well, but I didn't start taking pics until I started messing with the bungs.    My fuel rail extrusion came in about a week ago, but I have not had time to machine it yet.  That's on the to-do list for this weekend also.  Hopefully, after the first week of January, I can get back started on the car and front suspension/trans tunnel.

Thanks for the interest and I hope everyone has a happy new year!!!

[Chryco Psycho]

Nice work 

[Tubbed440]

Thanks!

[Tubbed440]

I started working on the fuel rails today.  I bought 3 ft of -8 fuel rail extrusion so I could make my own.  The only other folks that make a on the shelf version of this is Edelbrock, and I was not about to pay 200 bucks for it.  37 bucks and about an hours worth of work, and here we are.



I'm not done with them quite yet, I still need a .520 reamer to make the o-ring holes a little larger.  The next size up from .5 I have right now is 9/16, and that's a bit too large.



Injectors in the manifold



One rail installed.








I'll make the mounting system here in a few minutes.

[Tubbed440]

Well, I decided to work on something else instead of the fuel rails.  I can't really mount them until I have the holes sized correctly, so I'm going to hold off on that for a bit.  I decided to handle another issue instead.  Previously, I was using nuts on the back side of the throttle body to hold the bolts in.  I was not a huge fan of that - it made taking the throttle body off a pain in the butt.  Taking the top of the intake off everytime you want to remove the throttle body was not going to be a good solution.  So, I made some pieces to weld in that I could drill and tap into.









Both in place, awaiting a small weld.



I did the same thing for the bottom holes.  Looking back, I should have just sucked it up and made the throttle body mount thicker and drilled and tapped it.  The only problem that would have caused is welding it in due to the different thicknesses of Aluminum.  Oh well.



I also made a gasket for the throttle body.  It sure is nice that Fel-pro sells gasket material by the roll.



And the finished product, well, at least that part.

[conv340]

You've been busy. Thats looking good.  I can totaly relate to the amount of work. If you want to be truly "custom" It can be painful how many hours go in to it.  Keep up the great work.

[Tubbed440]

You've been busy. Thats looking good.  I can totaly relate to the amount of work. If you want to be truly "custom" It can be painful how many hours go in to it.  Keep up the great work.

Thanks for the compliments!  The devil is in the details, that's for sure.  I have lost track of how many hours I have in this manifold.  Probably more than I have in the rest of the car!   

[the_engineers]

Wow...how'd I miss this?  Great thread and awesome progress!

[ShelbyDogg]

I don't see how I missed this either. Good job on the manifold.  I did see that you didn't machine a space or hole for your idle air control motor. Better think about that now.

[Tubbed440]

I don't see how I missed this either. Good job on the manifold.  I did see that you didn't machine a space or hole for your idle air control motor. Better think about that now.

There's a provision for it on the throttle body, on the bottom where you can't see.  I've still got a lot of work to do to the manifold before it's done, but I'm getting there.   Sometime soon, I'm going to bolt an LT (GM) style MAP sensor to the back of the manifold so it will be out of sight.  I figure the MAP sensor would get a better and quicker response reading directly from the plenum instead of going though a vacuum line.

[ShelbyDogg]

Per the megasquirt manual, the map sensor hose can be 1" or 30" and it wont make any difference. make sure it is away from the heat and that the vacuum port is mounted down to keep dirt out of it, like GM usually mounted it.

[Street_Challenged73]

Very nice job fabricating that manifold!!!

[Tubbed440]

Very nice job fabricating that manifold!!!

Thanks for the compliments everyone! 

[Tubbed440]

Well, it's been hard getting motivated lately will all the other stuff I'm doing.   I did manage to waste a couple hours messing around with this thing, practicing welding, and doing a little grinding on the inside of the plenum.

Here's the bosses I made to weld to the plenum.  These will hold the fuel rails in place.


 
A shot of them in place.



I had to use a clamp to get them to mate to the side of the plenum before welding.



Welded up and installed.





Just playing around with the camera at this point.



The part I left out was using the reamer to size the holes correctly for the top of the injectors in the fuel rail  - and tapping them for AN to AN o-ring fittings.  Maybe one day I can afford to replace all the fittings in black.

[Tubbed440]

Just figured I'd post this to allude to things to come.  The thread maybe dead at the moment, but the behind the scenes work is still happening.  Nothing too exciting to post yet, but I will have data shortly.