[Socket]

Pillars have now been trimmed and fitted
Big call out to Tim as Sew Fine in Cranbourne for trimming these up

[Socket]

Been a while since I posted a pic..... these from last weekend showing the front sub, front stage speakers, rear pods and the AE subs peeking out from behind the rear seats

[Socket]

DrZ is asking about the fitment of the side skirt extensions, so this post is for him

The M3 side skirts extensions are from Eurodivision in Melbourne (not sure if they still sell them). With a bit of trimming they fit the E92 no problem

Remove the cars side skirt by removing the screws on the underside of the car and around the front and rear wheel wells. Then remove the scuff panel next to the driver and passenger seats and the press pins that hold the side skirt in place. Then pull the trim between the door and the rear wheels to unclip the side skirt

Now to attach the side skirt extension. Basically you just have to bolt the extensions to the side skirt using 10mm m4 nuts and bolts. Avoid covering the jack lift points openings on the bottom of the side skirt. I discovered this after putting everything back on the car. Had to remove everything and cut away the material covering the jack points...

The M3 extensions are about 10 - 20 mm too long for the E92, so I lined it up with the back of the side skirt and trimmed off the overhang where it extended past the front of the side skirt. You can cover it with a bung of plastic well the cut end, but I never bothered.

Pics below

Hope this helps

[vtl]

Have not updated this in a while so I thought i'd better post pics of the parts made since the last update


Wastegate port on manifold:

This is a pretty tricky coped merge so a 3D printed plastic piece was made up first, before transferring the cut line to a metal piece

[vtl]

Downpipe:

The downpipe is quite a complex piece but ended up being fairly straightforward to build, as it was decided to make a custom compact engine bracket to allow for a more straightforward piece.


- The 2 x 2.25" merge was made by modelling up in cad, and a bunch of 3D printed cut jigs were used to cut the compound angles on the bandsaw

- The flange was modelled up in CAD and laser cut

- An off the shelf stainless 3" oval to round to make the transition to the merge to the rest of the downpipe, this ended up being quite easy to et perfect as the part was simply cut with the bandsaw at the point where the oval width was equal with the 2x.25" merge


Some additional space was made clear above the downpipe to allow a wastegate recirc pipe with a flex joint to ensure the wastegate flange will be easily installed

The downpipe was made with a combination of 3" sanitary elbows, with some help from some 3D printed pieces for the final tuning of the fitment of the pieces. The whole weldment ended up fitting very nicely with no gaps, which is important as any gaps will shrink up as they are welded, resulting in the part changing shape and no longer fitting up properly once welded.


The mer

[vtl]

Turbo outlet


It was pretty clear that while there is a decent amount of space in front of the turbo, the outlet and inlet are really fighting each other for space given the paths they need to take. Rather than doing pie cut bends to get the tight radius bends, (which gets a bit messy), an aluminum full donut were used for this part.

The donut has a 1:1 bend radius ratio, for example a 50mm pipe will have a 50mm bend radius. This will allow you to acheive very tight bend radii easily. these come welded on the outer diameter, but you will need to weld up the inside curve after it is cut

First of all, the stock turbo system was put back onto the engine, and the stock turbo outlet put on. Then a jig was built up to the stock outlet location, so the single turbo outlet can be built up to the same point.


Some 50mm 1:1 radius bends were made up on the 3D printer, and these were taped together until the desired routing was done. A 3" intake was placed on the turbo to ensure that adequate clearance for both pipes was achieved.

The compressor housing on the turbo was cut, and a billet wiggins style Raceworks flange was welded to it. This gives a much nicer looking connection for the outlet pipe and should hold up to the heat near the manifold a lot better than a silicone hose.

[vtl]

Custom engine bracket

Now in metal, the custom engine bracket was laser cut from mild steel, then welded up.

The engine bracket also needed some machined parts, the plate that mounts to the engine is spaced off the engine slightly, so these spacers were machined on the lathe them welded to the plate. The rectangular top piece was also made on the milling machine.

Some tweaks on the vice was required to bend the side pieces slightly to allow some clearance for the mounting bolts, but otherwise was a pretty straightforward weldment

[vtl]

Wastegate recirculation pipe


Once the downpipe was made, it was clear the bends required to get the wastegate to recirculate was going to be not that straightforward, especially to get a flex joint in there. The tight radius donuts worked very well for the outlet pipe, so a stainless donut was used for the wastegate recirc pipe.

Again, a combination of 3D printed bends were used to mock up the parts to do the fitment. The last piece will require a cope merge to the downpipe. To make it look nicer, the cope will be done mid-bend on the 1.75" pipe.

This will be a little harder to do but will be done with the 3D printed parts first, then transferred onto the metal parts.

[Socket]

Originally Posted by vtl

Wastegate recirculation pipe
This will be a little harder to do but will be done with the 3D printed parts first, then transferred onto the metal parts.

Vince is an absolute genius fabricator, mechanic and all round top bloke. The design and thinking he has put into this bottom mount is just staggering. It is a bloody work of art. This is the third time rebuilding this ST, have come so far since the days on jack stands in your mum's carport. Six years on and still weaving your magic !!! Can't wait to see it all together

[jzx_andy]

Awesome stuff Vince and Phil

[Socket]

Originally Posted by jzx_andy

Awesome stuff Vince and Phil

Its 99% Vince, Ill claim 1% because I occasionally hand him tools and sweep up a bit

[kookie]

Don't forget holding the light
Awesome work guys looking forward to the results.

[Brule]

Nice fitment on all the tube.

[Socket]

Originally Posted by kookie

Don't forget holding the light
Awesome work guys looking forward to the results.

lol

[vtl]

Wastegate recirculation merge


The wastegate has to recirculate back into the downpipe, and to make it look nicer, the merge will be done with a piece of curved pipe. This makes things a little bit more tricky, but the process of fitting it will be the same. A 3D printed piece was made, which can be used as a cut template

The trick with the 3D printed piece is that the metal pipe can fit inside it, so the 3D print can be put over it like a sleeve for accurate transfer of the shape.Then the merge is just fine tuned with a grinder until theres minimal gap to the downpipe.

The order of operations will be critical to ensure that the merge can be welded easily, and that the hole in the downpipe can be created. The temptation here would be that a hole would be marked and cut prior to welding, but imo this is a mistake as removing the metal there would mean that welding the merge pipe would be much more difficult and more prone to blowing holes through the thin pipe. A safer way would be to weld the merge first, then punch a hole through and finish it off with a die grinder. This is more difficult to finish but should result in a better weld.

The downpipe and the rest of the recirculation pipe will need to be fully welded before making the final connections to the merge too, this ensures that if the parts move/warp during welding this can still be adjusted by tuning the vband clocking

[vtl]

Wastegate recirculation pipe welding

Vband flanges tend to warp when welding, particularly if theres any gaps to the pipework its being welded to. An aluminium plug was machined up on the lathe, along with a barb fitting that was pressed and sealed in with Loctite 643. This plug loctates into the vband and is clamped tightly, resulting in less distortion. The barb fitting allows the inside of the pipe to be purged with argon. As this pipe is stainless, the unshielded weld on the inside would 'sugar' up on full penetration welds, the argon purge will ensure the backside of the weld is nice and smooth.

The wastegate pipe was welded up to the flex joint only. The last two pieces have been left off as they can still be used to fine tune the fitment (after distortion from welding) once every other part has been welded.

[vtl]

Downpipe welding

The downpipe was ready to be welded up for the main body, the welding is actually the short fun part, the fitup and cutting of all of the material, planning all the paths, doing side projects like purge plugs and engine brackets take up 99% of the time.

Again, a 92mm vband purge plug was machined for the downpipe vband flange to allow an internal argon purge for welding. The exhaust side was taped up with aluminium foil tape and holes punched through to allow the oxygen to vent

After welding, the downpipe was placed back onto the jig to see how much the pipe moved. Due to the tight fitup of the pipework, the downpipe did not move very much, and has shrunk around 3mm away from the exhaust, but the alignment of the downpipe did not change, so thats definitely a win

[vtl]

Vband flange for downpipe


The Vband flange that came with the AGP turbine housing for the EFR7670 isn't great. It just has a flat face and does not have a locating feature to the turbine housing. Additionally, the turbine housing's locating feature is very shallow and probably wouldn't work well.

In my experience metal on metal vband flanges do not seal well at all if theyre just flat faced with no step. They will typically leak when the car is cold, and maybe if you're lucky they seal up when the car heats up. A locating step aids in installation and helps the flange seal better. If it still leaks, at least the step gives a tight surface to put a very thin layer of exhaust sealant on. On OEM applications they usually use non standard vband flanges with gaskets to ensure sealing.

After all the effort put into this kit, itd be very silly to end up with a leaking exhaust, so it was decided that we would go with a custom flange. The step on the turbine side was machined out to be deeper to ensure a good tight seal. The depth of the step is around 3mm, which is a lot deeper than most aftermarket vbands.

The flange was then modelled up in CAD, and some stainless steel hollow bar has been ordered to make this part from scratch

[jzx_andy]

Beautiful.

[vtl]

Downpipe exhaust flange

It is pretty common for flat flanges to warp when welded to pipework, resulting in a potentially poor seal to the exhaust. As with the vband flange, itd be pretty silly to have a leaking exhaust so the exhaust side needs to be flat for a good seal with the exhaust gaskets.

To flatten it off, the best tool would be a belt linisher, but without access to one, improvisation was required. It would be great to be able to machine the flange, but theres not really any good way of fixturing it.

I have a chop saw which I don't use much anymore, but I have found it actually does a decent job at grinding by sidewheeling the part against the cutting disc. This is obviously not the correct way of using the machine but seems to work decently for flattening faces of rough sawn pipes and the faces of flanges.

The outer holes of the downpipe were quite a bit bent but after 10 minutes on the chop saw it cleaned up quite nicely. Finished it off with an air powered chamfer tool, which really gives it a nice look

[Socket]

Originally Posted by vtl

Downpipe exhaust flange

It is pretty common for flat flanges to warp when welded to pipework, resulting in a potentially poor seal to the exhaust. As with the vband flange, itd be pretty silly to have a leaking exhaust so the exhaust side needs to be flat for a good seal with the exhaust gaskets.

To flatten it off, the best tool would be a belt linisher, but without access to one, improvisation was required. It would be great to be able to machine the flange, but theres not really any good way of fixturing it.

I have a chop saw which I don't use much anymore, but I have found it actually does a decent job at grinding by sidewheeling the part against the cutting disc. This is obviously not the correct way of using the machine but seems to work decently for flattening faces of rough sawn pipes and the faces of flanges.

The outer holes of the downpipe were quite a bit bent but after 10 minutes on the chop saw it cleaned up quite nicely. Finished it off with an air powered chamfer tool, which really gives it a nice look

amazing work mate !!!

[Coupes33]

It is certainly a work of art Vince.