I didn't take the seats back Saturday. I ended up running around town all day. I dropped off my IC and one of the pipes with Mitch. The pipe so he can weld the water injector bung into it. While he's fixing the IC he's going to hack off the 2" inlet and weld on a 2.5" inlet. Then we'll just have to make another new pipe. I also stopped by David Motley's house to check out the swatches. None of them are close haha, so I'm going to either do a gloss black, or maybe crinkle black, or black chrome or some other color. I'm not really sure yet, but I'm not going to try to match it anymore. It's practically impossible, especially since it'll be too noticeable if they're not the same with them right next to each other.
I got the turbo and manifold off yesterday, along with the exhaust and the diffuser. I forgot how light the exhaust is lol, I almost don't want to change it out now haha. The diffuser needs A LOT of work, I'm not sure if I want to see if it can be fixed and beefed up or just scrap it and get a new one. I bent one of the fins on the compressor wheel on the turbo the other day. I think my glove caught it as I was doing stuff under the turbo. It just bent the tip but it's bad enough. I was planning on seeing if I could get it rebuilt but I'd rather not have to pay for a new wheel too.
I removed the fuel rails and took the top hats off the primary injectors and got some spacers and bolts from ACE today and test fit them. It worked perfectly! At least I think it did, I haven't pressurized the system yet to check lol. I could be in for a big surprise. Either way I have so much room now even without the spacer between the engine and LIM. It's hard to see in this pic, but it's there where I marked it. Just about where those two lines are, they used to press against each other. I don't know why I never thought about doing this before.
I test fit the new manifold and turbo on the car. The Vband on the compressor housing hits where I circled it, but not too bad actually. I'm going to grind down the outside of the LIM a little bit to clear it. I thought about taking material off the mating surface of the LIM, but if I do that it will push the UIM, elbow and IC pipe even closer to the firewall and it's already a bit closer since I removed the spacer. This will also cause some problems with the water lines, I'll have to make a new oil drain, and probably a new downpipe since the turbo will be angled, and I have NO idea why they did that.
Jason finished fixing the CAD for the new wheel faces, and I think they look awesome. I'll take them to a machinist soon. I'm super stoked for this haha. I talked to the guy I was going to be getting the lips, barrels and hardware from and he's no longer doing wheels, and might not ever get back to it. Figures, lol.
I started talking to another guy that a coworker told me about regarding the wheels, and he put me in touch with a company that sells forged blanks. So I requested a quote from them. This guy designs wheels and who knows what else, sends the design to one of these companies and then they make the wheels and ship them out. He says it's called private label. I've never heard of it before but it sounds awesome. He said that's how ADV1 does their wheels, but maybe that's why they have so many problems with customer service lol.
