Some Minor Welding

Got all of my XRP port fittings welded onto the water pump and thermostat housing. I obviously hacked off the -16 threaded male from the thermostat housing to make room for the XRP clamshell port. Then the two -8 ports for the heater hoses.

Upper port welded on and mocked up with a 90 degree -16 clamshell fitting.

I also came up with a bulkhead design for the heater line connection at the firewall. 1/2″ aluminum plate with a -8 straight cut threaded center. Then a 5/8″ round tube welded to the back side. This tube will actually get cut down quite a bit. It will then attach to the plastic tube coming off the heater box on the inside of the vehicle via a rubber hose. I will also need to cut down the plastic tubes as far as I can to squeeze it all in there. I still need to thread the outside of the 5/8″ tube. I will use a large washer and nut threaded onto it to sandwich the bulkhead to the firewall. Lastly I will powder coat the bulkheads black.

With 90 degree XRP -8 clamshell fittings:

Mocked up in the car. Note: I may not use the 90 degree ports… I also have 45 degree ports, straight ports etc. to tryout and see which is going to work best with the motor in there. I just tossed them on there for picture sake.

XRP AN Fittings

The XRP group-buy was a success! I received my stuff on Friday. This is my first time handling XRP product and I am really impressed. I can’t wait to get some lines mocked up in the bay and see what it looks like. First I need to fabricate some simple firewall bulkheads for the heater hoses. Then I can drop the motor back in and get busy on some hoses. I’m still waiting on my custom radiator to arrive… which should be soon. I need to get the -16 ports welded onto the OEM water pump also. For now I’ll leave you with some pics of the XRP product:

XRP -16 Kevlar HS-79 hose with crimp clamshell fittings and weld-on double o-ring flange:

Smaller -8 Kevlar HS-79 hose which I will be using for my heater hoses and fuel line:

I’m pretty excited about this next piece. It’s an inline oil filter with a removable/washable stainless filter. You can get the stainless filter with various micron ratings and with or without a pressure bypass valve built-in. This one is utilizing XRP -10 Kevlar HS-79 hose:

Correct Color

Busy time of the year for me with remote start season and then of course all the seasonal family stuff. I just wanted to post up a quick pic of the engine bay with the proper color. It was too white the first time around. Neither my good friend Dave who painted it or I realized that it was too white… not until I got it home and slapped the fenders on did I realize it. Now I can start installing stuff more permanently.

XRP AN Fittings Opening Order

I am in the process of becoming an authorized XRP dealer and need to make an opening order. I figure if anyone is in the market for some AN product, this could be a great opportunity for all of us. I have to place an opening order… and the bigger the order, the more I save. Which means I’m willing to pass along those savings to you if it helps me with a larger initial order. Now keep in mind, if it’s something you need right now, then this is not going to be a good option for you. As it will take time to get everyone gathered up that’s in for this and receive payment from those people so I can place the order. This would basically operate as a group buy.

If you are not familiar with XRP, then you need to familiarize yourself! They have EVERYTHING when it comes to AN product. XRP is widely used in professional racing, NASCAR, ARCA etc. They have some very innovative product. I’m pretty sure if they don’t make it, it doesn’t exist. You can download their 96 page catalog here:

http://www.xrp.com/xrp_catalog.pdf

If you are interested, please email me at Toby.Broadfield@Gmail.com with the XRP part #’s you need, along with quantity, color etc. I will then reply with a quote and we can go from there. Please be patient as they have thousands of part #’s that I have to search through to get you your quote. I will most likely have your quote back to you within 2-3 days. Please do not request a quote if you do not have any intentions of getting in on this opening order. Once I’m a dealer and have made the opening order, then you can flood me with the standard product quotes.

Repaint

Not really many updates on the car… I have been busy figuring out all of the AN stuff that I need to run. Going with some pretty baller fittings and hose from XRP. I will post more on that once I start getting the stuff in. I am in the process of becoming a dealer for XRP because I certainly do not want to pay full price for them… the stuff is very expensive.

I also need to repaint the bay at some point because the white is a tad too white. It needs to be perfect and I have gone through too much work to have it a be a little off compared to the exterior of the car. Not really a big deal though at this point. All of the stuff in the bay was only being test fitted anyway. And it’s a simple scuff the bay then just trailer it over to the body shop again. No rush on it at this point though… it will probably happen next month or so.

I will leave you with a little teaser pic of the AN fittings. I will be going with their Kevlar line most likely… definitely not stainless as pictured:

Help A Friend Out!

I’m hoping you guys can help out a good customer and friend of mine. He has entered an onion decorating contest good for a $1000 shopping spree at Rooms Direct. He’s really hoping to use that money for some new mattresses for his kids. Now normally I don’t ask others to help someone they don’t even know, but this guy is one hell of a person and deserves it more than most. You just need to simply follow the link and “Like” his submission. If you care to share it with others on your Facebook that would be great too!

PLEASE LIKE/VOTE HERE!!!!

… And It’s Painted

I got the car back on Sunday from Dave’s shop.

I didn’t really get a chance to work on it much on Sunday though as I had my youngest daughter’s 1 year B-day party at our house. I did get it on the jack stands so I could get the dollies back to Dave’s body shop and cleaned up some rubber grommets. It’s gonna be go time now though on getting it back together!

I went ahead and had the cross member, Nismo Power Brace and steering rack brackets powder coated a gloss black. I fought for a little while on the color, but came to the conclusion that black is the only color that fits my style for that type of part:

Cleaned up the wiper motor and mounted up the new Chase Bays master cylinder setup:

My steering rack needed some serious cleaning and help. Even though you won’t really be able to see it under the motor, I needed to address it:

I cleaned all the cast aluminum up with some Maxx Solv and painted the rods and body with some gloss black epoxy paint.

At this point I couldn’t really think of anything better than dropping the motor in for a test fit. I want to give a huge thanks to my boys Kyle and Jeff for giving me a hand with this:

Me struggling putting the driver’s side header in. I actually had to have the motor mounts up and out of the cross member, then drop each header into the car. Then lower the motor into place and bolt the headers up:

It’s officially in… well, temporarily:

The nice thing is that there isn’t going to be much else in the bay that isn’t in there now. I will be tucking the radiator, battery in the trunk, tucked coolant overflow etc. So really the only other things that will be seen in the bay are just a custom intake setup, black braided AN radiator hoses with all black fittings, AN heater hoses also with the all black setup, custom oil filter relocate setup… again with the same all black AN stuff.

Guide Coat and Some Seam Sealer

Last Wednesday night I applied the guide coat. Now in the past I have always just “peppered” the surface with a black aerosol paint to create a guide coat… actually works pretty darn well. But Dave had me try a product from 3M that is specifically a guide coat. I’m not sure what the composition of it is, but it’s basically a powder that you apply with a round wax applicator pad. Just wipe it on with a little pressure over the areas you want to block down and you get the results below:

Now you will be able to tell how this stuff works. First picture is after a couple passes with 500 grit:

The next picture you can see where there is an area where it’s just white… that area does not need to be sanded anymore. If you can see guide coat, then it’s not perfectly sanded yet… even if it’s just a speck:

After some more sanding and now I’m starting to make a little progress:

So this is why the guide coat is so great. Shows you where you need to sand and keeps you from sanding too much where you might create a minute low spot.

After 9-10 hours of straight sanding with 500 grit and a grey 3M scuff pad, the bay is blocked:

Next up is the seam sealer to replace the OEM sealer I removed:

I have never used a seam sealer before, so I taped off the upper fire wall to give it a shot:

Applicator gun, which is same gun I use for the other 3M product I use for my custom interior work:

I applied a small bead then smoothed/forced it in with my finger… wearing a latex glove of course:

Now this is when I should of removed the tape, but I didn’t know that. I’m use to removing tape once paint, resin, glue etc. is dry. But this stuff you need to remove it before it dries…. it has about a 10 minute working time. So apply then remove the tape within a few minutes.

The rest of the bay masked off:

Seam sealer finished. Like I said, this tape should of been removed, but I let it dry until the next morning before I removed it. You live and learn I guess… it just made it more difficult to remove:

Dave let me borrow some bad-ass dollies from his shop. They have several mounting options… I chose to clamp them to the pinch welds for this application:

It’s time!

100,000 Views!

Just wanted to thank everyone who follows this blog… it hit 100,000 views today! I started Broadfield’s Blog just over a year and half ago. So far I have been really happy with the results and I hope you feel the same way. If you promise to keep coming back then I promise to always post something worth checking out.

Thanks!

About Time For Paint

Well, the time is near…. PAINT! I have been sanding on this thing forever simply because the previous owner painted the bay improperly. Remember kids, it’s all about the prep! Whomever painted the bay before I owned it didn’t prep it correctly. So feathering in the edge between the original white paint and the off-white paint that he had it painted in was a real chore. Since it was not scuffed before the off-white paint, it would just flake off when trying to sand it. Some places where ok, so I would just keep sanding until it feathered in correctly. Once I thought it was good enough I would etch primer it. And guess what, the primer would still lift along the edge as seen in the picture below.

So I would have to let the primer dry then sand that area again and try to feather it out further. Total pain in the ass. The bad part is that the areas that were the worst are the areas that are really hard to get to and sand… so I had like 30 hours into just feathering everything out and redoing it several times until it was correct. Had I known it was going to be this way I would have stripped the entire bay down to bare metal before I even welded anything up. However, it’s actually best to not strip if you don’t have to because the OEM E-coat is better than anything you can buy to put on there. So leaving that intact in as many areas as possible is the best solution.

So I officially finished it without any lifting primer and scuffed it all down with a red 3M scuff pad as of 12:30PM yesterday. Which is good because I needed to have it done by 5:00PM yesterday… which is when my good friend Dave came over and shot primer on it for me. He’s the painter at the body shop that I have all of my paint work done at. So he brought some baller Spies Hecker primer with him and shot it for me:

Tonight I will apply a 3M guide coat and block the entire thing down with 500 grit. Then apply the seam sealer later this week. We are trailering it over to his body shop this Saturday morning for paint… so it will be done this weekend. FINALLY!