Franken-TD for an '84 Coupe: Like i need another hole in my build thread

[libbydiesel]

Yes, I made it from a pair of vice grips.

[TimpanogosSlim]

yeah, strictly tinker toy at this point.

I hadn't considered 90's. I can't find a 35mm to 55mm 90 degree silicone. So, I'd keep the straight reducer I've got, then a 35mm aluminum 90, and a silicone 90 into the fancy coupler w/ the port. I guess that would indeed shave some inches.

i don't see a lot of really tight aluminum 90's though. i could make a tool, but, bah.

I really wish i had a fully enclosed, air conditioned garage. I don't even dream about having my own lift, I'd be content to get a car up on four 6-ton harbor freight jack stands just so long as i don't have to get drenched in sweat while i work on it. or, the other four months of the year in utah, frost bit.

[libbydiesel]

Here's one that is 38mm to 51mm.  I'm sure it would stretch to 55mm and clamp to 35mm.  I also fully understand just going with what you have. 

[samuraij]

yeah, strictly tinker toy at this point.

I hadn't considered 90's. I can't find a 35mm to 55mm 90 degree silicone. So, I'd keep the straight reducer I've got, then a 35mm aluminum 90, and a silicone 90 into the fancy coupler w/ the port. I guess that would indeed shave some inches.

i don't see a lot of really tight aluminum 90's though. i could make a tool, but, bah.

I really wish i had a fully enclosed, air conditioned garage. I don't even dream about having my own lift, I'd be content to get a car up on four 6-ton harbor freight jack stands just so long as i don't have to get drenched in sweat while i work on it. or, the other four months of the year in utah, frost bit.

I know how you feel about the garage. This past year and a half is the first time in more than 5 years I've had a garage to work in. It's hard to take a garage for granted when you've been working in the dirt for so long...

[TimpanogosSlim]

Oh, i forgot to mention.

The edelbrock ball, er, nut? (not a stud) proved a disappointment. The ball is maybe 6mm diameter, vs. the 8mm i thought it was gonna be.

The problem with ball studs is that they typically aren't long enough to go through the stupid knuckle on the end of my weird linkage on the IP. I need a stud with about 15mm of thread on it, most are 10mm.

I'm beginning to wonder if i'm gonna end up having something machined. 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Hey we're back.

a lot has happened. But i still haven't timed the engine.

Got all the accessories bolted on. Found a manual steering rack that needs some love but the price was right. PO tells me that the power steering pump worked, so i think i will stick with power steering for now.

Bought a set of Crane Cams rocker arm adjusters, one of these seems to work to fix my linkage issues. Also broke out the dremel and trimmed a whole lot of BS off of the crazy linkage. Also deleted the stupid hard line from the IP and the superfluous 2nd shutoff solenoid.

Plumbing in the saab oil cooler is proving to be a pain in the butt.

kicking myself again for not deciding up front to service both inner and outer CV joints. First time it was because that would have made it very easy to strip the rust off and repaint the axles. This time it's because the left inner turns out to have some bad wear. long story short i bought a surtrak left axle complete with both CVs from rockauto but the stiffness of the outer worries me.

As i had been concerned, the turbo oil drain does interfere with the RH axle. Working on another solution.

[TimpanogosSlim]

OK, oil cooler is plumbed.

It was one of those situations where the solution came to me in a flash of insight, and then disappeared. and took me weeks to reacquire.

impossible to explain without pics. The basic idea is that there is a semi-S-curve at which the hoses are not kinked and not running into the radiator or alternator. but the exact way to get there had escaped me for some time.

took another look at my cheap crappy axle and the outer boot on it is torn. ugh.

got the missinglinkz shift rods measured to length, tightened down, and installed. fingers crossed. need to take another whack at aligning the main shift rod.

It looks like the short shift kit is gonna hit the downpipe that i haven't had fabricated yet. I need to try recentering the engine. I bet it can shift almost a cm to the left.

I guess at this point I'm done taking the radiator out and could start adding coolant.

[TimpanogosSlim]

Haven't decided what to do about my stupid axel issue. Leaning toward sourcing an outer cv boot kit locally and just transferring my known-good german-made outer CV to the chinese axle. It'd save time and probably won't be more expensive than return shipping.

Waiting on parts to have another go at the turbo oil drain. Should be here fridayish at the latest.

So I'm gonna try and get electrical worked out before then. And i guess it's high time i timed the engine.

If all goes well, I may be able to fire this thing up this weekend.

There's a local monthly car gtg that is having their last event of the year on the 18th, i may have to get on the horn to my insurance co. about adding the jetta to my insurance, and head down to the county building to register it.

In Utah, due to a bill passed into law a couple years ago, vehicles 30 years old and older "used only for participation in motor enthusiast events, and occasional driving" ('occasional' being undefined) can pay an extra $15, fill out a form, and get a personalized license plate with a sticker on it depicting a generic early automobile and 5 letters. I'm thinking "KOHLE". and with this particular registration, the vehicle is not subject to emissions OR safety inspections. Though you can still get pulled over for blatantly unsafe conditions and get a fix-it ticket. No deleting the wipers and then driving in the rain. Bumper delete not always tolerated. etc.

So if by some luck i get it running friday or saturday, I can get an alignment and drive it.

[TimpanogosSlim]

So this is the new, doesn't interfere with the axle version of the oil drain.

I think it'll be fine given how much bigger all the plumbing is than the orifice that is draining oil.

Since I now have a 1/2" NPT female on the turbo and a 3/8" NPT female on the pan, if this gives me any trouble I will find someone with good tubing flare & bend tools and make a single solid line with the subtle sigma curve (or a big loop) required to avoid the axle w/ this turbo. 1/2" stainless steel perhaps.

I'd also like to point out that you should never, ever, buy any "surtrack" products.

initially i had made a regrettable decision to only service the outer cv joints. That went off without a hitch. Then i realized that i was stupid not to do the inners, and ordered inner boot kits.

RH inner was fine.

LH inner, well, has some deep gouges in the inner race.

Mind you, I don't want to spend ANY money on these axles. The plan is to find (in a junk yard, or someone parting out) an 85-up cabriolet or rocco and get oem 100mm axles, joints, and spindles. Clean up the spindles and have new bearings pressed in. Have the shafts media blasted and maybe powder coated. Install 100mm flanges in the 020-7a  with the 80% shim kit from peloquin.

I did actually try to get an inner joint from a junk yard mk1. Couldn't get all the bolts out, stripped the head of one, didn't have my cordless drill with me. The next day they crushed the car. oh well.

It turns out that it's cheaper to get a complete half-shaft via rock auto than to get a Meyle inner joint. Empi sold their axle business to "USA Industries" a few years ago and what you get when you order an Empi axle these days is getting very bad reviews on the vortex. So i bought a Surtrack half shaft assembly because i couldn't find any negative reviews.

Box arrives, I unpack it, check everything out, throw away box.

Two days later i go to install the shaft and note that the outer boot is already torn, right on the edge of the joint where it would tear if it got smacked against something.

I didn't want to deal with a return and i don't want an outer boot that is that fragile anyway so i bought a boot kit from napa yesterday, and then spent 2 hours failing to get the outer joint off the shaft. Ultimately i damaged the joint trying to get it off. My guess is that the circlip inside the joint isn't properly formed and instead of slipping inside the joint and letting it slide out, it's caught between the joint and the splines and is now bent over and going nowhere.

So i took the inner joint off of that shaft and installed it on the rusty old OEM shaft with the extra Rein inner boot kit i already had.

[samuraij]

Looking good. Nice work on the line!

Sent from the moon, via Tapatalk

[TimpanogosSlim]

Thanks. The idea of a 1/2" soft copper compression-fitting drain line appeals to me so much that i might just try to implement it next summer. on principle. But this looks like the above should work ok.

Forgot to mention, I have successfully mounted a single-din stereo head unit in the shifter console. And mostly successfully mounted 3 gauges in the stereo cutout of the dash bezel. I'm not 100% happy with either implementation but hey.

since i have a thing for doing things some kind of "right way" I have a mk3-ish car-side metra wire harness that I will be hooking up on the car side.

It's probably normal that i have 3 pair of red and brown wires for speakers, right? but why three?! I've decided to install speakers in doors and deck and figure out which channel is which before connecting to the stereo harness. I just have to figure out the 'right' way to cut 6x9 holes in the deck. Anybody want to buy my OE 3" or whatever rear deck speaker pods?

[libbydiesel]

Copper tends to work harden due to diesel vibrations and then crack.  I would not use copper without rubber hose isolating it on each end and then there wouldn't be any point. 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Copper tends to work harden due to diesel vibrations and then crack.  I would not use copper without rubber hose isolating it on each end and then there wouldn't be any point.

Interesting, even though the turbo and oil pan are largely vibrating in unison?

How about stainless steel?

[Gizmoman]

Another view of what you have would help but from what I can see in the photo, it looks fine as is.
Whatever you do, keep some flex in it. Yea, it all vibrates together (sorta) but heat changes things more than you think and some parts get much hotter than others.

A cracked return will dump your oil right quick.

Keep up the great work.

[TimpanogosSlim]

Yeah that makes a lot of sense.

The House of Hose is generous with their cutting so i have almost 3 feet of 5/8" Gates LOL hose spare.

Today i finished the ground wiring for the headlight relay harness. I'm hoping and expecting that 12awg from relay to the RH headlights won't appreciably dimm those lights but i guess i am prepared to apply another relay or so and have equal lengths of wire from the starter +12 stud to each set of relays.

I finalized the oil sensors and oil feed for the turbo on the filter housing as well. it doesn't appear that the feed hose will flop down onto the exhaust manifold but i will zip-tie it to the heater hard line anyway.

I think i have resolved the coolant leaks. Serves me right for not putting proper torque on _all_ hose clamps when fitting hoses.

At this point i could put oil in the engine but i feel like i should wait until i am pretty sure i have timed the engine properly and then pour it liberally over the cam right before turning over the engine for the first time. I also think i might see if i can drop the pan one last time and then seal up the pan and windage tray with the "oil resistant" black RTV after wiping everything down with acetone. my machinist friend does this on every engine he assembles and the shop he works for has a guarantee against oil leaks, so it figures that it's a good idea. he's been there for 11 years.

he also says that he has statistics showing that engines built with graphite impregnated seals are less likely to leak than the ones built with brown rubber seals, fwiw. 11 years of noting what kind of seal was installed on engines that came back under warranty.

anyway, things standing between me and a running diesel coupe:

A few wiring things to be sorted. fan, windshield washer, proper engine ground, couple other things. today i started running wire for the oil pressure sender, fog light relay, and etc. Need to figure out where to mount the fuse block for the glow harness. I did finally mount the solenoid and hook it up to the old glow power lead and ground.

The IP is mounted with the wrong hardware. hex cap bolts fell into my hands when i was test fitting and they are still there. I'll probably just go buy some short 8mm bolts, and i am pretty sure there should be some beefy washers too.

There was a mishap when installing the engine and trans and i need to pull the PS pulley off of the crank and straighten it. I don't want to talk about it. i also need to find my crowbar aka "Old Blue" and re-center my engine to the far right extreme for shift linkage clearance.

Need to finish my cluster modifications and put the new cluster in. At least i'm assuming that the cluster should be present when starting - actually now that i think about it, the engine probably doesn't care. I have a strip of a dozen warm-white LEDs installed where the 2 cluster illumination bulbs used to be. I have figured out where to connect the ground lead to the cluster but i think i will need to get creative with the illumination power lead to the cluster, probably solder in a Y split with a spade terminal. Oh, and i have a VDO hour meter that i want to install somewhere. because diesel. It was very cheap, and it's waterproof. I could install it in the rain tray maybe, or perhaps in the 'shelf' under the dash. Same power source as the fuel shutoff solenoid at any rate.

I've decided to not bother installing the exhaust tunnel heat shield until summer. i might want exhaust tunnel heat this winter. and next fall i may take a whack at retrofitting a mk6 PTC cabin heater. Physical install aside, it appears that it may require little more than a rotary switch hooked up to switched power selecting 1, 2, or 3 heating elements. Speaking of climate control, a friend has been extracting a dealer-installed (non-factory) AC system from his early caddy and i am gonna buy it all off him. I am pretty sure what i need to do to install an r134 system.