Race pipe and intake movement

I tried to take yesterday off from work after working last weekend, but it didn't quite stick. I had put in at least 5 hours every day for almost 2 weeks, so I figured I needed a day away. Unfortunately, I got roped into a meeting for an hour, and there were a few other items that needed doing, so I basically lost the morning. Shrug. I was able to make some headway on the intake effort, though, so today's post is about that.

Race Pipe
In my last post, I crowed about the delivery speed that dieselgeek delivered the race pipe kit. This kit includes an EGR replacement pipe made of 1/4" thick 6061-T6 aluminum and the related fasteners. The race pipe has a nipple for a boost valve. The kit also includes a block-off plate for the exhaust manifold end with a gasket. After putting the rubber gasket on the intake-side of the race pipe, the provided bolts threaded right in. I cinched it down with an Allen wrench, and the pipe is in. The boost nipple points towards the driver-side, and I was happy to see there were no engine-hatch fitment issues. As you can see from the pictures, it looks better than the rest of the engine does. I'll have to clean the rest up a little bit. Maybe there will be time when I replace the injector-to-injector pressurized rubber fuel lines.

Block Off Plate
The diamond-shaped plate that comes in the kit blocks the port on the exhaust manifold where the exhaust gasses would have been sourced for the EGR system. Without the EGR, the engine will have less soot routed into the intake (preventing that goop issue I blogged about here), but without the blockoff plate, I'd have a leak in the exhaust, which would be bad. The enclosed plate came with a replacement for the gasket, but not for the nuts. As luck would have it, these nuts are the same size as the exhaust manifold nuts from the old aircooled engine. I had replaced them with stainless steel bolts, nuts, lock washers, etc, before, so when I sold the exhaust, I kept those fasteners. Now, they adorn my new block-off plate, and look great.

From Inter-cooler to Intake
The route from the intercooler to the end of the intercooler suddenly grew much shorter when I installed the race pipe. I had been concerned about having enough rubber material, and after that install, I was concerned that I'd have room for the routing at all. From the inter-cooler, I used the stock rubber hose that's about 3" long. From the race-pipe, I attached another stock rubber piece that turns sharply 90*, and twisted it so it points at the intercooler. From the picture, here, you can see that there is practically no room between the 2 rubber bits. After pushing through a bunch of scrap pipe, I discovered that an exhaust pipe would fit, but I needed a sharp 45* angle. They don't sell those at Meineke. So, I cut a leftover bit of exhaust pipe, and spent my afternoon welding it so there aren't any leaks. It may not be pretty, but it will work. I'll cut it down to size tomorrow, shoot is with some paint, and we'll know about it, but no one will ever really see it.

Hal should be stopping over tomorrow after work, so we'll have maybe a couple of hours of daylight together. Ok, more like 1.5 hours. Anyway, we'll go over what's been done, and what's needed to be done. I have a very short section of pipe I need to put on the turbo-side of the inter-cooler, and the intercooler will be done. Then, I'll have the air-filter end to deal with.

More after tomorrow's efforts..

pictures:
top - race pipe installed
top middle - block-off plate installed
middle right - engine bay with diesel-geek kit installed
middle left - rubber to rubber where inter-cooler meets race pipe rubber
bottom - my craptastic welding job.