Quick Monday nighter

Finally got my mounting plate for the fuel tank cut properly, so I TIG welded the locking tabs in tonight, drilled the screw holes into the tank, RTV'd it to the tank, lock tight the nuts and finished up by test fitting the fuel pump setup. Everything worked pretty good, ran into a problem with not reading the measurement that I put down on the piece of paper proper, thus the pump wouldn't fit well, unfortunately I didn't test fit the pump so I had to trim the plastic on the flange a bit.......remember kits, measure twice, cut once and always test fit before mounting components permanently. that's what I get for rushing the sun..........Either way I got everything mounted and good for install, but first I need to remove the pump and wash out the tank first.

Saturday of progress

Got a few things done yesterday, first off had to hit the wrecker to grab a couple pieces that I scraped with the ION that I shouldn't have, mainly the ABS pump and the windshield wiper motor. At the time that I was planning the build I didn't include the possibility for ABS, but as the project went on and I was using stock wheel hubs with ABS sensors I said why not include it. Secondly I figured that I would be able to get a Fiero windshield wiper motor to work on the ION wiring harness, this isn't possible at least not easily, it would be easier to take the ION motor and mod it onto the Fiero bracket for the windshield wipers. I also picked up a bunch of headlights, turn signals and a couple fog lights that I think may look good on the front end that I'm going to be building.

On the assembly front I was able to finally get the heater coolant ports tapped with a 1/2-14NPT and got the fittings installed so that I could get the header mounted. I'm going to use the heater ports to cool the turbo as the car isn't going to have any HVAC setup, well not in the normal sense, I'm going to be running a defog motor setup to keep the car "legal" but that is all. After the header was mounted I also installed the turbo re-clocked the turbo so the drain and oil feed ports were in the right position plus installed the exhaust piping. I'm going to have to design some bracing for the turbo and manifold, currently the weight is being supported by a 2x4.

Lastly I started modifying the original fuel tank to accept the ION fuel pump setup, gotta laser a couple parts but it should work out pretty mint.

Been a long time but some progress.

Its been a long time, but there is some progress. I finally brought her home, seeing as most of the major fabrication work is complete I didn't have any more reasons to leave it at work, also being that work has been getting very busy it was just getting in the way.

Now that it's home I can also spend an hour or two every couple days (although work has had me travelling a lot lately) and hopefully I can get more done to it quicker than doing the odd weekend once a month. Recently I was able to start cleaning up and painted the fuel tank, modifying the old tank to accept the new ION fuel pump setup actually isn't going to be that difficult, I'll be doing it soon and I post up pictures of the installation of the pump. I've also started prepping the engine for the turbo coolant lines and oil feed lines, plus I've gotten the gaskets in to mount the intake/exhaust and turbo. Running the coolant lines for the turbo was "interesting", since I'm not going to be running a HVAC system I'm using the coolant lines for the heater core for the turbo, but this is going to be fun since one of the lines was really close to the turbo header. To fix this I removed the pressed in coolant tube and I'm going to tap the housing with a 1/2-14 NPT fitting and from there I can use standard fittings and to connect to the turbo with -6AN fittings. Problem is finding a 1/2-14NPT tap that wouldn't break the bank........for this there's Ebay and the Chinese, especially since it's tapping aluminum and I'll only need it twice.

Also started to connect the shifter cables, have some problems here since I got new and better cables but they measured up differently than the mock up pair so it will require some adjustments to brackets and a spacer or two.

I'll post up pics of the progress as it goes but here's a couple pictures of the current state.