What was so hard about it?

You'll see when you go to do it. The whole god damn linkage box has to come off and apart. I bought one but didn't end up replacing it. It was good enough condition.

Well, I have the perk of having the trans completely out already and my spring is completely destroyed, so it's getting done, lol.

Day 70: Tonight I worked on a second layer for the front bumper.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-1.jpg

A pic from yesterday:

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...p4684/file.jpg

How are you getting on with the v-mount? i also did one using an alloy FD radiator and kept the round bar which the oil cooler bots to factory, i made brackets that attached to it to help keep the radiator up right, i then moved the oil cooler forward. The only thing i had to cut out was the v-bar you spoke of which had relays etc.. attached to it. Once the ducting was done i have never seen intake temps higher than 35'C (95F) even in traffic. If the v-mount opening is big enough you wont need a spilter for road use or track from what i have seen so far on mine.
If you want any more pics so you can get some ideas let me know.
I like the colour of the front arms and steering rack! i wana powder coat mine now.

I'm waiting for the IC to come in the mail. I don't know about moving the oil cooler forward, it'll depend on how much slack there is in my new oil cooler lines. I can't stomach the cost of another oil cooler line order, so if they're not long enough, then I'll work with what I have.

Your's is definitely an interesting setup. I think my IC is shorter. I'm a very hands on person and my cardboard engineering can only take me so far. I'm looking forward to getting the IC in hand and start getting it sorted out.

Tonight I'll put the last of the glass on the front bumper and work on fenders. I need to really press on my body work because the weather will start getting too cold to paint in (easily).

You’re not wrong there the braided oil cooler lines where pretty steep, it’s the fittings that really nail you and I needed 4 beers after getting the braided line on the fittings that almost put me off. I found my factory lines were still in good condition so no need replacing them if the cooler is within range.
Once you have the cooler you can get a better idea of how you want it to sit etc... But I’m keen to see how the bumper turns out the rest is looking really good so far.

The hardest thing for me is language barrier and service availability. Some things I'm sure I can find/do locally, but translating what I want can be difficult at best. I'm also in a fairly rural area, so finding a shop that can do what I want can be difficult...like balancing my turbo. There doesn't seem to be any place around here that can do it for me, which means shipping it to the UK or US to get it done, and that means at least a 2 week turn around.

Day 71: I finished the bumper tonight. The glass was still a little "sweaty" so I'll finish de-molding it tomorrow.

Also, my headlights came in today.
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-2.jpg

Haha,.....you'll see.
Lookin good, can't wait to see this thing with body parts on it.

umm....:scratch: are you ice racing?

Day 72: Today I finished de-molding the bumper...it looks great! I also painted some rear suspension parts and the new front spindle. Tomorrow I'll finish the front end assembly and start reassembling the rear subframe assembly. Oh and my turbo compressor housing and wheel came today!

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-3.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-4.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-5.jpg

I second you on that it looks awesome! i couldnt tell if you where going fixed head lights or not before, but i like the RE style lights/bumper combo its gonna look awesome in white.....:nod:

Very impressive.

Thanks guys.

Today I need to trim up the bumper and reinforce a spot or two, then it'll be ready for paint. Maybe I can get another hood scoop made, since making another one would be faster than trying to touch up the first one.

Day 73: Today I painted my rear control arms and finished putting the front suspension together. Tomorrow I'll start the rear suspension assembly. I think I'll take the car off the rotisserie this weekend.

Awesome. That's a big milestone!

Day 74: I got off work early today and headed straight for the garage. I finished painting the rear suspension parts and got it partial assembled. I also painted and baked my rear calipers. Tomorrow, after I get back from a local car show, I'll finish assembling the rear and take the car off the rotisserie. We'll see how far I get this weekend.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-7.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-8.jpg

Day 75: This evening, after attending the local car show, I brought the hoist home. I finished assembling the rear suspension and mounted the brakes. I also test fitted the Work Emotion rims I have (FD offset/fitting). I think they might work for some daily rims, something I can mount my Federals to and use my Egrets for my track tire RS3s. Tomorrow I'll take the car off the rotisserie.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...684/file-9.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-10.jpg

nice

Day 76: Today, with a friend's help, I got the car off the rotisserie. Then I got the rear subframe bolted up by bolting the wheels to it, then putting a jack under it. Through a series of maneuvers, including hoisting the car up and down and raising the subframe with concrete blocks, I was able to get it all bolted up and torqued down. Tomorrow I'll work on finishing up the brake install and installing the gas tank and e-brake.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-13.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-12.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-11.jpg

Oh, I also discovered that the FD fitment Work Emotions I have actually fit without any spacers because of the extra clearance from the K-Sports.

Day 77: Today I thought I was going to be doing the brakes on our Odyssey, but only the pads came in. So I finished installing the rotors and calipers on the rear and got the e-brake installed. Word to the wise, if you take the e-brake off on a rotisserie, it's probably best to put it back on the rotisserie. The retaining clips were being a real PITA. Tomorrow I'll do the dash/heater/steering column.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-14.jpg

Ohhh, yea.....I need to get a new e-brake cable and rear calipers and I am not looking forward to this at all.

Day 78: This evening I installed some of the under dash components. I also managed to finagle the e-brake retention clips on...finally. I organized most of the many many little ziploc bags that contain all the bolts for the car. Hopefully I can finish installing the dash tomorrow.

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/...837B0974B6.jpg

It's nice working under a completely clean car...nothing falling in your face. When you do the cable, take off the drive shaft, it'll make life much easier with the clips that hold the two side cables. I need to figure out a fix for the right side e-brake lever on the caliper. It's sticking...like the spring isn't strong enough to retract the e-brake. It actuates just fine. I wonder if I just leave it, if it'll just work it's way out with some heat cycles in the old caliper. 'Course it could also cause the pad to stick and warp the hell out of the rotor. I dunno...maybe I can transplant another spring.

Day 79: Today the brake rotors for my wife's van came in, so I spent an hour putting the brakes on. After that I worked on putting the rest of the heater boxes in. I also put a couple more things into the engine bay. Slow progress this week, but I got a three day weekend coming up and I'm hoping to make some serious headway.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-16.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-17.jpg

How well was the fully stripped car balanced on the rotisserie? I'm going to build one but it's hard to guess where the CG axis will be.
If it is unbalanced I'm hoping it's light enough that it can be turned without too much grunting.

Don't over think it :)

I just slapped the pivot point brackets where the bumper supports went and it worked great. I had no problems rotating it by myself. I did have a scary moment once, when I lost my footing and let go of the car it flipped almost a full rotation to completely roof down, but aside from that no problems. I put the latch pin end on the back. So when I rotated the car I grabbed one of the welded on exhaust hangar brackets and usually put my foot on the bottom of the quarter panel to get things moving. Then I could easily put the pin in when I was rotated to where I wanted. I would have liked to do the slack adjuster setup. A guy on here somewhere put a slack adjuster on one end of his rotisserie and used it to rotate it...not a bad idea at all.

Day 80: Today I finished the dash, got the Momo wheel in (took some doing), and mounted the seat. I also got the windshield clean. Tomorrow I'll probably hit the fiberglass again.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...4/IMG_0433.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...9E74A32881.jpg

Day 81: I got my front caliper hard lines in and installed my braided brake lines. I also installed the shifter centering spring, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I also installed some more miscellaneous engine bay parts (wiper motor, coils, etc). Tomorrow I'll take apart my turbo and get it ready to mail off for balancing. I may also mount my doors to get ready for paint. I'm really feeling the pressure to get the paint done, it's starting to cool off quite a bit here.

Day 82: Got my donor turbo torn down and I'm not sure it'll be usable. It looks like carbon built up between the heat shields on the exhaust side and caused enough "swelling" to get the heat shield to contact the back of the turbine wheel. I'm not sure if it's enough to be of concern, as long as I clean up the heat shield. If it knocked the wheel out of balance, then hopefully they can correct it when they balance the whole rotating assembly. I'm just hoping that the slight wear on the wheel won't be an integrity issue.

Comparison Pics:
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-18.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-19.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-21.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-20.jpg

Damage:
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-23.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-26.jpg

Not sure how exaggerated it is by the carbon that's still built up on the wheel.

That does look pretty rough, sounds like an opportunity to upgrade to a real turbine wheel ;-)

I have 3 other turbos to check out before I even think about sinking more money down that avenue. I'm not running super high boost and I need response more than anything. Definitely not building a big number dyno queen.

Lol, no sorrows there. The terms "hybrid" and "dyno queen" don't belong in the same sentence....ever.

Day 83: I took another turbo apart last night and it was in much better shape, but the turbine housing had a broken bolt on the wastegate side. So, I'm using the turbine housing from the first turbo, the turbine wheel and CHRA from the second and my new compressor housing and wheel. I packaged up the rotating assembly to ship off to the UK tomorrow.

Day 84: Today I mounted a few things...see if you can tell what they are:

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...848988CD49.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-29.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...8490FAE017.jpg

For those that didn't figure it out, I mounted the doors and the spoiler. The doors stayed on, I had to take the spoiler off because I didn't want to take the car off the stands yet and it protrudes past the threshold for the garage door. I still need to make the struts that go from the rear of the spoiler to just above the tail lights. I'm very happy with the way it looks. The last picture is the view most people will get, lol.

Nice spoiler, what mounts did you use?

It's a APR GTC-200 from a S2000. I just used the S2000 mounts and am adapting them using the same mounting method that TurboSmart used to mount their wing.

did you replace the bushings on the rear dog bones? (not quite sure what they are called, the things that attach the control arms to the subframe). did you use oem or aftermarket ones?

I replaced 2 of the 4 bushings in the rear control arms. The ones that attach to the subframe are energy suspension polyurethane bushings. The top bushing that attaches to the hub assembly is a OEM bushing. And the lower bearing that attaches to the hub assembly was left alone, because they were in perfect shape. I also left the DTSS bushings in because I feel that if you can learn to drive with the "system" in place, you can carry more speed through the turns.

Day 85: Today I hogged out the wastegate port and matched the runners. I got the port to 29mm. I just don't trust the 25yr old metal not to crack by taking more material off the wall to go any larger. Took me 2 hours to get the grinding done. Tomorrow I'll weld on the flapper and be done.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...7A4566ABDF.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...7A4DDE42CC.jpg

You probably mean short camber links, which are not adjustable (in stock form). They dont have bushings, its spherical bearings on both sides....

Wonder why it was never port matched from the factor. Does it have something to do with the runners internal length/volume?

^Because of the twin scroll I'd imagine.

It has to do with the twin scroll. It needed to be smaller to allow the flapper that goes over the smaller port, to seal. I don't have the twin scroll any more because my tubular exhaust manifold keeps the two exhaust pulses separate for the most part, so it made more sense for me to match them up. There's always been a debate about removing the twin scroll, my choice of manifolds made it a moot point.

Day 86: Today I trimmed up the front bumper a bit, test fit it along with a lot of the rest of the front end. I also mated the engine and trans and test fit the new intercooler. I also did a little house keeping.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-30.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-31.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-32.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-33.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...84/file-34.jpg

I'm hoping for a one piece, tilt front clip.

Make it so.

LOL, maybe if Higgi hooks me up with his NA hood mold...then I could do a one piece. That would be pretty nice. Damn you clokker! Now I'm going to have something else to add to the list of things to do.

One piece flippable on stock hood hinges, or flippable towards front?

Or just quick disconnect and complete removal without flipping?

Flip towards front is problem due bumper's lip being quite low.
Flip on stock hinges might be doable, but you end up with lot of weight in air, huge bumper in your eyesight and dont forget headlight wiring....

I would do one piece, quick release for the whole thing to come off, with maybe an option to flip forward for quick fluid checks.

Clamshell it like Lotus.
Everything below the body trim line stays fixed, everything above flips forwards.
Solves the issue of the lower lip and reduces the mass of the pivoting section.

I have a pretty good idea of how I'll do it. Guess you guys will have to wait to see how i decide to do it, lol.