Hal returns

I'd thought I was going to get a bunch done this weekend, but it just didn't work out that way. Friday was mostly lost to work and messing around with my welder. Saturday was lost to pulling ivy, and the sore muscles that follows.

Today, the weather was beautiful, and I only had a few commitments. Between running kids around, taking the dog to the park and going to a lacrosse parents meeting (and watching the Olympic hockey gold medal game on tv), my day was quickly consumed, though. My wife returned from her weekend at the Oregon Coast with a late birthday present for me: one of them big red tool chest things. So, of course, I spent a bunch of time messing around with that. It's an oldie that was made in America (by Kennedy), and with a little graphite on the slides, it works very nicely again. As you can see by the over whelming clutter behind it in this picture, I needed this very badly. We hope this is the beginning of a much better organized sub-single car garage where we keep just about everything that is used outside.

Turbo to inter-cooler
Between errands, I put together the solution for getting the charged air from the turbo to the inter-cooler. Using the hose that came with the engine, I simply cut it in half and connected it with a 2" stretch of 1-1/4" pipe. At the inter-cooler end, I'm using a copper step-up.

Enter Hal
After getting some tools stowed, Hal arrived. This was the first time I've seen Hal since before Christmas, so we had quite a bit of catching up to do. We ran through the progress I'd made, and he generally agreed with my decisions. It was nice to have another set of eyes look it over. We decided to punt on the dog-bone mount until we get the engine running, and we'll determine if its needed then. Also, he won't be doing the exhaust work. If we find a better muffler, then, great. Regardless, the routing of the exhaust will be done by an exhaust guy. We set the order of work for the next couple of weeks:

cooling system
1- get the 90* bends at the radiator
2- integrate bleeder in the "lower" hose
3- fabricate bracket for the overflow bottle, install bottle
4- finish running hoses

Intake
1- complete inter-cooler to intake charged air line
2- find and incorporate an air cleaner

Vacuum
1- run vac line to the turbo waste gate
2- run vac line to new air cleaner

Electrical
1- plug in everything I can in the engine compartment
2- accelerator pedal install
3- next.... detail the rest of the electrical work needed, and revisit this list.

That should get me through the next couple of weeks. If I can get that much done, I'll just have the electrical system to do. That list isn't that imposing, so I'm optimistic. Hal will be involved for the accelerator pedal install. More next time....

pictures:
top - new tool storage birthday present (yeay!)
middle - turbo to inter-cooler charge air line
bottom - charge air line installed