Mr. G. Brettin's Slow Motion Leg Hump

gbrettin

Tick Performance Valley Pan Install and Snow White Heads to Streetcar Takeover:

gbrettin

Having to disassemble the front end of the car for the valley pan installation forced me to take another look at the front end of the car. From the start I wanted to a forward leaning radiator boxed in. Truth be told, I wasn't fully happy with the placement of the A2W IC in front of the radiator. My whole goal with this car is to produce the best result I can possible do. Knowing that the airflow is not optimal, creating drag and inefficient cooling wasn't going to cut it. The time frame for this year and the corvid experience has made it so there is no sense of urgency to have the car running. There's simply no reason to take a short cut, and it weighed heavy on me that I was taking a short cut.

I remedied that with action. I am 100% moving forward with a forward leaning and boxed in radiator. I'm not going to completely duct the air out the hood but I will have ducts shooting towards hood vents (on my non existent pin on hood as of right now).

Moving forward...
The mount bar was cut leaving the two turbos to hang by themselves. I'll need to cut down an extra plate of metal and weld it to the existing flat stock; then drill some holes so that a bolt can go into existing threaded crash bar holes. The bar that was removed between the two turbos is an absolute perfect fit for the front bumper curve. I'm going to use that for a legitimate crash bar. I need to use some more tube stock to get it in the vicinity shown in the last picture. The crash bar will also serve as a mounting location for the radiator.

The hurdles...
I found a pretty nice radiator to use: CSF R1 Radiator

The problem is this: I am going to keep AC so I need an AC condenser unit and I don't know jack **** about it (I know enough to be dangerous). If any of you guys know of a separate system that is unmarried from the radiator, I'm all ears. Well, that's what I'm going to research.

Someone grabbed my phone and started taking pictures of me working. The action shots are rare. lol

Edit - I went to Streetcar Takeover last weekend. My buddy said he wanted to get faster than "14.0", mentioned in my last video. He got 11.2 on a low power setting being 50% or so in the throttle the whole time (I saw the data log). He was happy having it out and that was the first run on any track with his fresh build. He expects to go 8's in the future; however, he was VERY nervous at the event. I 100% understand why. He built it. That sounds funny to say, but there's no factory testing. Stuff can go wrong or really bad. It's best to ease into it. Also, jumping into 1000whp animal (yes, that's not high boost) is pretty nuts. For all the 1000+hp builds you see on the Internet... I'm willing to bet most people haven't experienced over 500.

Anyway, I wanted to give that little bit of information since I mentioned it in the video.

Rusty

You might want to look at the A/C set-up on a 3G Ram trucks (05 to 10). The radiator is on one side and the condenser is on the other side. They are not piggy backed. The condenser has it's own electric fan.

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浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
http://www.the370z.com/members-370z-...o-journal.html

gbrettin

Since the bar has been pushed out further I wanted additional surface area over the mounting point so I cut up some scrap metal, sanded a bit and drilled a whole. I cut the tabs using an angle grinder because the Harbor Freight bandsaw gave up on life. The shop has an industrial bandsaw waiting to be setup, which I need to continue the hotside.

It was a real b1tch one man wrestling bar stock around trying to tack some welds. It pretty much got to the point where the bar was in the right spot and I zapped at the seam getting it to stay. Then I put a thicker tack on. This is the downside of building something late at night. Overall, I'm Very happy with the new direction so far.

I'm going to add gussets in the corners for strength; although, After it's TIG welded (by my buddy) it should be REALLY strong.

If you are curious about the metal type, Rusty, it's mild steel. I'm not sure the exact wall thickness or alloy. It was "hey, this looks like it will work." *pulls from metal pile*. The price was right... Free.

I ended up pulling the trigger on CSF. It's already set up for AN fittings (money saver), the dimensions are right, it's meant to be v-mounted and it looks good. I came to the conclusion I will worry about AC down the road... probably when it's really hot out and wonder why I didn't do it sooner.

gbrettin

These pictures happened over the last few days so I'll attempt to give context.
Wed:
While the crash bar was tacked up I tried to bend one side up. In doing so I broke the tacks and everything fell down. The welder was not turned up to lava to penetrate the steel properly. I pretty much got pistoff/frustrated and threw in the towel that night. Prior to making the crash bar fall apart I made gussets. I used the angle grinder and sanding disk to make them from scrap. Gussets will add significant strength to the bar. The bar is angled upwards a tad. I did that because I wanted to be able to get the bolts on/off easy. Downside with that is that it would be weak(er) if it were raised up higher in the middle. I have ideas that could be way better... but that's falling down a new rabbit hole. No thanks.

Thur
Fast forward to the next day. I came out to the shop, mentally refreshed, to retack and set the gussets up but find out someone took the shop extension cord for the welder. This isn't some regular extension cord either. It's 8 gauge for 220. All the hardware stores are closed because it took me a while to get out to the shop. Defeated again!

Fri
New CSF radiator arrives mid day, renewed ambition. Head out to the shop and do a test fit. <-- Bung to Bung --> the radiator fits perfectly! The higher bung must go on the driverside. If the radiator is flipped the other way the bung will be right in the area of the hot side; not immediately but, the -16 would 100% be impossible to route. Look at the dimensional picture in the previous post to see how the bungs are set up. ... Rough test fit ... Check.

I located a different 8 gauge cord. The ends are missing and I want to weld; so, I head off to Lowes and Home Depot to get supplies. Why two stores? because one store never has all the stuff I need. That's the way of life and I've come to accept it, especially with plumbing.

The new ends are put on cord and voila, the welder has life! Now I get started with the crash bar, take 2. I turned the welder up to lava melt and increased the line feed. It's clear this is burning into the metal now and laying thick beads. I got excited and rip welds everywhere I could, in a short amount of time... it's Friday and I'm not trying to be at the shop all night while my wife sits at home. Anyway, I was able to fill in some gaps and get the metal grinded back.

I guess this is a long winded way of saying stuff doesn't go smoothly doing custom stuff. Not for me anyway.

gbrettin

IG@gbrettin:
Filled all the gaps, laid some heavy weld and added the gussets. I'm completely happy with the results. I'm starting to get the hang of welding with MIG. Also, if anyone was wondering how the turbos are mounted, look into Maven mounts.

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Next up... Mounting tabs. I'll knock that out later in the week.

Rusty

Trial and error. Welcome to the world of custom fabrication.

__________________

浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
http://www.the370z.com/members-370z-...o-journal.html

gbrettin

I got to say Rusty, I found this process incredible frustrating. However, it's crazy addicting. I literally took junk bar metal in the shop and made something useful out of it. Very gratifying.

I had a lot of additional ideas going through this process... but at at some point I had to commit to a direction.

It's not perfect... but hey, I guess it has character? lol

Rusty

You will be the only person to know all of the screw ups and fvck ups are. Unless you tell someone.

__________________

浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
http://www.the370z.com/members-370z-...o-journal.html

BettyZ

It doesn't matter if you're running stereo wires, piping an oil cooler, or going full hard-on with an engine swap, doing anything 'custom' can and likely will be a gold-plated b*itch of an experience. Kudos for keeping on it!

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

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'14 MB Nismo | Boost Lab 6870 1.32 AR 553 HP / 471 ft.-lbs.
Betty Mods

Hotrodz

Hell, sometimes an oil change can be challenging for me!

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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gbrettin

IG@gbrettin

Finished the crash bar, sort of. Added the last two gussets. Now I need to figure out the mount points for the radiator. Way easier than the crash bar.

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Same day - Not long later
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The bar wasn't strong up and down, but strong as heck laterally. So...Another GUSSET!!!!! WhhhhhOOOOOO....

Ok, NOW I'm done. Crash bar ready. That Maven mount looking good in the light too


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Ok, I added the the so call "final" gusset in (noted in first IG post) and thought it was definitely stronger, crazy strong laterally, but not strong enough up and down. I was going to ask my buddy Dave about it.... except he sauntered on over to the crash bar and attempted to lift the front of the car up. The car did not lift and the crash bar was just a frail bar at that given point. SOOOOOoooo....... I added vertical strength.

After all this was done, Dave told me the shop is getting an order of chromoly and a really nice machine that bead rolls, break, shear, bends and copes bar stock.

GD man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He's busy as sh1t with actual paying customers... so the likely hood of him bending a new crash bar, coping and TIG welding one is like 5%. I say 5% because it's a new toy and he may want to try it out.

However, this now means I can make a legitimate strong airbox.

On a different note...

I had to to bug my dude about an oil pan. He said he will get on it this week. He typically sticks to his word so I'm not really worried. There's also a market he can sell the rear sump LS 370z pans too. Extra motivation? Maybe...

SHoot... I need to tell him to put a bung right on the oil reservoir so that I can add a check valve and attach the Accusump direct to that. Might as well fill the oil right where it's needed.

I also learned from when I put my Morosso pan on that the LS oil pickup tube has a weird design flaw. The engineers only have one bolt that bolts into the oil pump. Very odd. If the pickup tube is not fully seated into the oil pump then it could create an oil starvation issue. It's like drinking from a straw with a hole. ICT Billet has an LS oil pickup girdle for 25 bucks. Already threw the kitchen sink at the engine, so what's another part... right?

ZontheRocks

Bang-a-rang

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'16 Pearl White Sport | Stillen Gen. 3 | Motordyne ART | Motordyne Shockwave | ZSpeed | Powertrix | EVO-R | Aeroworkz | Nismo | Z1 | EcuTek | Tuned by Seb @ SpecialtyZ

gbrettin

Is that like a boomerang, except modified to the crashbar new name? If so... I like it.

ZontheRocks

Build has me feeling excited like a kid. My excitement above comes from the all-time classic film, Hook.

One of the cool characters was Rufio and when he did something perceived as cool, his crew would yell out "Bang-a-rang, Rufio".

So a very nerdy version of "Super cool, man" from me to you.

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'16 Pearl White Sport | Stillen Gen. 3 | Motordyne ART | Motordyne Shockwave | ZSpeed | Powertrix | EVO-R | Aeroworkz | Nismo | Z1 | EcuTek | Tuned by Seb @ SpecialtyZ