[evilSTi7]

that turbo looks sweet bruce. and it was great meeting you at englightown (i was the kid with steve). hopefully i'll be able to see it when your on your way down to get tuned.

[Neanderthal Racing]

Originally Posted by evilSTi7

that turbo looks sweet bruce. and it was great meeting you at englightown (i was the kid with steve). hopefully i'll be able to see it when your on your way down to get tuned.

i'll make an effort to touch base with you before i head down. i had a great time hanging out with you on saturday. have a great time in dc.

[evilSTi7]

Originally Posted by BruceChapman

i'll make an effort to touch base with you before i head down. i had a great time hanging out with you on saturday. have a great time in dc.

awesome. good luck with everything, hope to see some vid's of it running soon.

[Crewchief]

Bruce, are you going to be using the stock radiator? If not which one did you decide to go with? Oh and if you dont mind me askin, how much did that STI kevlar timing belt set you back? Whats the benifit of having a kevlar timing belt? Sorry about all the questions .

[Neanderthal Racing]

daily update - day 32

we worked until midnight last night to do a complete mockup of the element gt65 kit install, including all of the plumbing. the kit's plumbing interfaces with the aps dr725 plumbing below the fenders. see pics below. remember this is a prototype and not a production kit.

other news:
the intercooler is mounted and we'll be trimming the bumper back to accomodate it shortly. the templets supplied by aps should make it pretty easy.

the cusco radiator shield arrived.

i decided to paint the intake header and tumblers in wrinkle black. we'll start that shortly.

i just ordered 100' of thermo tec 2" tape to supplement the taping of the up/downpipes by element. i also ordered a thermo tec turbo bag for the turbo and lace-up heat wrapping for both in/out intercooler plumbing sitting across the top of the motor. heat is my enemy and i'm doing everything possible to mitigate it.

i underestimated the negative impact the b&b catted intermediate pipe would have on tuning for the element kit. to order one without a cat would take at least 10 days. so here's what we're looking at doing: we're going to cut the high flow cat out and replace it with a section of 3" stainess pipe. i'll eventually add flanges to both sections so we can swap the cat in as needed.

i posted closeup pics of the turbo on my last update but took them down because i wanted to get phil's ok. he had been keeping details of his kit close to his vest up til now. i've got the green light from him to publicize the specs.

- it's the older and less expensive t3 and not a "gt" series
- compressor section a/r - .7
- turbine section a/r - .82
- 65lb/min compressor
- on the turbine side he matched a smaller t wheel to the larger housing to facilitate spoolup, which is a problem on the gt35r turbos.

all things considered with my particular motor, we're expecting between 550 and 600 on race gas. i can live with that.

pics - in order
- compressor side closeup
- turbine side closeup
- 3 shots of the kit from above

[Neanderthal Racing]

Originally Posted by Crewchief

Bruce, are you going to be using the stock radiator? If not which one did you decide to go with? Oh and if you dont mind me askin, how much did that STI kevlar timing belt set you back? Whats the benifit of having a kevlar timing belt? Sorry about all the questions .

i went with a koyo r series from tarmac. it has 2 rows of 1" tubing. it will get filled with evan's waterless coolant.

the kevlar timing belt was about 200. chris at crawford told me he had never seen the stock wrx timing belt break but i'm not cutting corners with this motor. it's considerably stronger.

questions are always cool with me, crewchief, as long as you ask me questions where i actually know the answer (isfh).

[eatV8]

Lookin' good Bruce! Can not wait to go for a ride in it!!

[Neanderthal Racing]

daily update - day 34

ricky had to do some fabricating of the element downpipe to make it fit. phil's car has a different exhaust set-up than mine. we had to cut the last section out of the dp at the weld and replace it with a new section of 3" stainless angled to meet the b&b intermediate pipe correctly. right now it is tacked. we need some ss wire to complete the job but it looks great. we also needed to trim back the downside end of the elbow section of 3" that passes through the passenger side fender well to meet the aps pipe entering the intercooler.

next: as i said previously, i ordered the b&b intermediate pipe with a hf cat. phil had a coronary so here's what we're doing. we're cuting the cat section out and adding flanges to both ends of it and the a new straight through section of 3" stainless so i can swap them both in or out later if needed.

i decided to paint the intake manifold and tumblers in a blue that matches the other blue accents this weekend. (don't bother arguing with me about the color until you see see it. if you still want to puke i'll lend you little ricky's hat). the tumblers have the tvg deleted and the holes for the rods welded and cleaned up. flow baby flow. i'm also trimming back the front bumper to accomodate the aps front mount. good thing for templets.

[wdb]

Gotta love it when a project drags on and on but for all the right reasons. This car sounds meaner and meaner every time I read about it. Plus now maybe I will get to see the great unveiling! As always, thanks for sharing and please keep us updated.

[Flycaster]

Originally Posted by BruceChapman

...ricky had to do some fabricating...

We've run into similar problems on the Perrin GT30R kit build. The Perrin FMIC and Intake not only have some fitment issues with the Garret turbo, but also the way they stress certain *key* things (ie, fuel and power steering lines) necessitate that we fab some new parts. To be expected I suppose, but nonetheless dissappointing. I guess other people just bend and shove stuff around, and accept poor fitment, but I don't care for stretched lines to be touching hot parts, no matter how much heat wrap they put in the box. A 12 second car on fire is hazardous to your health.

Also, the "kit" came in boxes with no directions, no pictures, not even a parts list. My mechanic's been working on Subies for over 25 years and has built up a lot of cars, but even he said it would've been nice to start with a few significant clues. Oh well, at least the AVC-R came with a nice set of directions!

A build is a build - you either take your time and do it right the first time, or you pay more to do it all over again later.