The Project Pad

JT4k wrote:I'm all freaked out now an have the urge to go check my lug nuts. Soon Dan.... Soon. I have got to get to those sweet roads of yours.

HAHA, its almost a scare tactic. I think i'm gonna make it a rule to just check em before every good drive. I'm gonna try to scout out some good roads to try. I'm thinkin outside of foresthill where there are some roads well known to the street bike community like mesquito ridge road... very twisty and lots of elevation change, and some good scenery to boot.

Forest Hill? I have a good friend that lives there.
Also I've experienced the non tight lug nuts and the aftermath of them not being tight. Never again have I forgotten to tighten them after that experience.

Well Phil, i guess you will have to come down too then.

You can see how the rear mount doesnt allow for forward movement of the exhaust...



This is what happens because of that and a scrunched up flex pipe...


Heres the vband flange after grinding all the weld and pipe peices off and then hammering it onto the last of the 3" scraps...


Forgot to get a pic of the finshed product so i'll get one later.

40v4kq wrote:Ringbearer, me too! LOL.

Selmir, we need to do that again. I'm gonna try to scout out some other good roads for the next drive. I know JT4K wants to come down for a drive so i need to find some good roads to hit to make it worth his while.

Ben, My first thought was that i was gonna have to go five lug if my wheel was damaged because i dont think i could find a replacement for it. What saved me was the long wheel studs, they were the longest i could find. More threads = takes longer for the lug nuts to fall off. Long studs FTW!

Sooner better I talked to my cousin he will come up with his URQ too.

Not sure if it's been thought about, but one other thing to consider with the aluminum exhausts is the high CTE of the material and that it will lengthen up to about 0.5" when very hot...This expansion requires mid/rear mounts that can accommodate the movement. This problem is also compounded by the poor fatigue life of aluminum.

Yes, I saw that too Chris. Being hard mounted will be very hard on the exhaust. Mine was always free flowing on rubber hangers.

Hank

Hank,
If there was a mount that allowed fore/aft movement with expansion, but was hard mounted otherwise, would that work? I'm thinking a sliding mount, or something of that nature.

Eric

A floating mount system was something I was actually thinking about the other night. Gonna buy some material and start making that up as soon as I can get some free time to play with it. Wish I had a tig welder.

Just out of interest, what is the approximate weight of a 1ft length of 3" SS304 pipe and 1ft length of 3" T6061 pipe.

I might be in for a drive if it falls on a Sunday. And I have a Tig Welder you could borrow

Chris, I have not a clue. Although i'm pretty cetain the aluminum is roughly half the weight of the stainless, and the alu wieghs hardly anything so the SS=2x hardly anything.

xpalendocious, thanks for the offer, and I dont think the drive will be happening for some time now. Explanation below...

Well, bad news first. Exhaust broke again and tagged the ground which gave it a nice kink where it makes the transistion from singel to duall. Dont think its effective to try and repair it this time due to a couple reasons so plans now call for a single 3" stainless system with a real muffler at the back. Gonna start collecting parts for it soon. Stil havnt pulled it off yet but heres an undercar pic...



The real bummer is that the car is gonna sit until it gets towed up to derracuda so we can fab up the new exhaust while im there for the whole thanksgiving week in november :( Maybe I'll see if i can fab up a little muffler off of the flex pipe in the meantime.

And now for the good news. I pulled my front wheels off to clean em and decided to give my calipers a fresh coat of red caliper paint and put on the high temp decals extreme90path got me while I was at it. This makes me happy...

Looks great man! ... other than broken exhaust. :(

Dude, just grab a roll of exhaust repair tape and some bailing wire, you can rig a short term fix

Bummer to have it off the road

Thanks for hookin me up Ben :-)

Dan, that actually is sounding like a rational thing to do right now :dur: I guess i want to be able to drive it that bad. I just might do it so its driveable until late november when I go to oregon.

Brakes look sweet man. Sucks about the exhaust but at least the shakedowns are only bringing out stuff that is easily taken care of (some what).... You built a solid car and should be very proud of that. We are going to be at Apple Hill on Sunday, is that close to your place?

Grab a section of pipe, run down to your local "bobs Muffler" ( who prolly already has scrap lying around) hand him a sixer of beer for a 2 foot section of pipe swaged to slide over your existing pipe. 10 minutes with a sawzall, 2 clamps and back in business!

On a side note, I'd seriously take a look at your exhaust design. I'm assuming a hanger broke then contact with the ground was made?

Your hangers should be redundant enough that every other one can fail and the exhaust still hangs in the same place.

What are hangers? LOL. No hangers in the front section, so your are correct as to why it kissed the ground. I wish the fix was that easy. I wish it was that easy to fix, the problem is that its kinked where the 3" was custom massaged down for the duall 2" pipe. So you cant just slide a pipe over it and clamp it on :( I still need to pull it off and officially declare it dead though. So there is a gilmmer of hope. The other reason why id like to just redo it is because of the lack of muffler. The rear section needs to be completely rebuild to add a muffler...so if the front and rear sections need to be rebuilt i may as well just build a more proper system. I'm gonna talk it over with derracuda in depth before i order any material.

Mike, Apple Hill is about an hour away from me but I'll be in your town for the air races on sunday, remember? We were gonna try to meet up so i could get those trim peices from you.

The air races are sunday? WOW this year has blew by. I have sunday off, maybe we'll head up there.

I almost went to the reno races this year too. Just backed out last night. Had I known there were going to be audis...

On the exhaust, when you re-do it, use something common like an off the shelf 3" to 2 1/4 adapter. I'm sure the 3" to 2" y pipe exists... I just have no clue where to order one.

Oh shoot thats right.... I cant believe they are this Sunday already either.... This year is flying by. Since my wife planned the Apple Hill thing and I wont be getting out of that I will drop the trim in the mail today Dan work is finally slowing down so I will have time. My god I am unorganized!

Sorry to hear about the exhaust. I was hoping to ride in your car before I pull hte vr6 turbo out and put the 40v into my Golf

V8 no go vroom vroom no more :?

I wish all the problems I have were exhaust related lol

I'll see what i can do about a temp fix but the car may only be here for another month or so before it goes up into the PNW for a small vacation. I couldnt remember where Pinole was so i looked it up, your only about and hour and and 120 minutes away from me.
It still goes vroom vroom, its just a deeper and somewhat louder VROOM VROOM.

40v4kq wrote:It still goes vroom vroom, its just a deeper and somewhat louder VROOM VROOM.

Thats the best kind

Today I drove the 4k to work and at 5 i was able to pull it in and put it up on my lift and play with the exhaust and see if I could make a temporary fix. It didnt go so well. Turns out the extension i had welded on last time it got fixed had been broken off and is missing. I started with removing the car chemistry exhaust insert which was a PITA because it was snagging on the inside of the flex pipe. I was able to shove the last peice of 3" tube that I had left over(1.5") in there and drill some holes and make stiches with coat hanger to hold it all together and then wrapped it with that exhaust repair wrap crap. After driving the whole 3 miles from work to home all the wrap was gone and this thing sounds straight up NASCAR. It hurts my ears just cruising with the windows down. So its safe to say the temp fix was a total fail and it looks so bad i'm not even gonna take pics of it. It has to be the biggest hack job i've ever done and a waste of 10 bucks.
Maybe I'll go full bore and try wrapping it with mechanic wire and then put a bunch of giant hose clamps on it to try and hold it together. I Just need something that will hold together for a few weeks.