The engine is finally in the car. I have a lot of work to do. It's in "for now" so I can measure and mock everything up. I am almost done paying off some bills, and when I do I can start buying stuff for the car again. for now I'm going to do the "free" stuff. Free meaning anything I can do on my own on my day off.

 

I decided I want to try and keep the A/C and power steering in the FC. That's not a problem except by doing so it makes intercooler piping tricky, especially when you want to run piping on the larger side. I have the K2RD mounts, and although K2RD says it does not fit, I am likely going to use the FD accessories bolted onto the 20B front cover. The 20B accessories are more compact and leave a lot more room for piping and suck in the FC engine bay. The drawbacks are that I need to relocate the radiator and AC condenser, and also that I might need to block off the hood scoop. The reason I need to do all that stuff is because the FD accessories and pulleys are about an inch and a half more forward than the FC accessories. This means that the main pulley would hit (actually, go through) the Griffin radiator I have, and the alternator, by being more forward, now definitely hits the hood as the slope of the hood is lower in the forward position.

There isn't really a sense of scale in the photo, but I tried to mark how much more room there is with the FD power steering. Yes, by the way, I know I will need to make new lines, but oh well. New lines are a drop in the bucket compared to the overall cost of a 20B.

 

Here's a shot from above. The engine with the FD accessores is very far forward. That little bar that the yellow arrow is pointing to is the base where I had previously mounted my Griffin radiator. I pointed that out to illustrate where the bottom of my radiator used to extend to. I know I can get it to work if I mount my radiator vertically, but I it will take some cutting.

 

Here's another shot of the front, from the side this time. The blue rectagle is the old orientation of the radiator. The yellow rectangle is what I'd like to do with it. This still poses a problem though - by cutting off the old mounting brackets, I also cut out the AC condenser brackets. Mounting the AC condenser in front of the radiator, vertically is going to be tough, because it will either hit the hood latch on top (kind of non-negotiable...I'm not going to use only hood pins for the hood.) or it will hit the tubular cross bar on the bottom. (Marked by my favorite Decepticon, Devastator. )

Right now, ground clearance permitting, I think the best solution would be to cut out the tubular crossbar and weld in some box steel that will serve double duty - it'll put some strength back into the front and also mount the AC condenser.

By the way, that's NOT a FD AC compressor (marked by Goku). I don't have one yet, so I dug around and found something similar and bolted it in place with 1 bolt just to get the general feel for spacing.

 

looks good. have you thought about using the fc ac/ps? i think it might be easier to fit

mike

 

? I already mentioned why I wasn't using the FC PS and AC...

 

you can use the fc pump on the fd bracket. the fd pump will not work with an fc rack. your car looks sweet btw

mike

 

Thanks. Why won't the FD pump work with the FC rack? I already know I need to make new lines, but I'm not worried about that...

 

As expected, the FD alternator hit the hood, stopping it from closing. However, it manages to hit the hood in a very convenient place - the center of the fiberglass hood scoop. I cut my spare hood scoop to allow the alternator to peek through, thus allowing the hood to close. Next, I'm going to block off the front of the hood scoop. It'll look clean when I'm finished, I think.

By the way, I figured out the power steering rack thing.

 

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Pic of the hood scoop after the FD alternator was installed. Yeah, I know the FC or the 20B alternator clears the hood, but I'm really set on using the FD stuff

 

Hyperex,

That looks mighty fine indeed!!!

What kind of bumper cover/headlight kit is that? I have a BoMex bumper and I want to fab some lighting something like what you have. Do you still have the safety bumper behind the bumper cover?

any help would be great!! thanks!

BradA

 

haha, thats kinda how my scoop ended up too

mike

 

The crash protection was one of the first thing I tossed out. I actually plan on putting some sort of reinforcement back in, but it won't be the stock stuff.

The body kit is from R-Magic. I picked up the front, sides and rear about 4 years ago. Since then, the kit has had a massive price drop. Right now the front with headlights is 159,000 yen...whereas 4 years ago, I paid 220,000 yen. The only thing I didn't get from R-Magic were the fenders and the side mirrors. I went with Amemiya side mirrors because I thought the R-Magic ones look weird. My front fenders are the Mariah ones - the ones that look like stock. The rear fenders were from a relatively obscure company called Dimos, and those look mostly stock as well. I just wanted a 30mm flare front and rear - I'm not a big fan of the "peanut" shape the real extreme wide-body cars end up taking on. Oh, the hood...Ted Koseki once had a problem with his non-heat shielded turbo actually bubbling the paint above the turbine housing on his hood. Before I painted my car, I stripped the paint and took the hood to a lowrider shop to get the louvers punched in the hood to maybe vent some heat over the turbo. Then I went 3 rotor and, well, the louvers are now in the wrong place hehe.

 

You should get one of the vented scoops that RE Amemiya makes for the Turbo II hood, would clear the alternator and vent


http://www.rx7.com/pics/fc-amemiya-scoop1.jpg

 

Yup, and pour water into the top of the alternator. Thanks though.