Hey Nick why didn't you change out the exhaust sleeves?

is it safe to say too much time in your hands counts

I fully plan on it. I've got a set of TII sleeves to swap in. I'm going to let Gotham do it when they rebuild/port the engine.

Sick! You are going to catch so much shit at musclecar shows. The fab work looks fantastic.

haha, +1

But I think the amount of shit he'll catch, and the amount of "so tell me, WTF is this again? awesome!!" will be 50/50

Very cool! I love mutts...

lol part of it is a joke. part of it is my actual posts. thats why i said dont ask

Why are they better than the FD's? I took mine out yesterday and was going to get the FD's.

He's got an RE, not REW.

The RE has tiny sleeves.

I know he has an RE, so do I, but I was asking why is he using tII exhaust sleeves and not 13brew exhaust sleeves, what's the difference?

This is a very cool project. I cant wait to see final pics of it!

Not sure. I happened to have a TII engine that I have been stealing parts from to use on the RE. I needed the front pump setup to be able to run the Gilmer drive. The TII sleeves look like a big improvement over the ones on the RE.

I have an extra set of REW sleeves if you need them.

Did some work on the exhaust manifold this week. It's turning out pretty good so far. The tubes are 2" sched 10 304 stainless steel. Both flanges are stainless as well. Runner lengths are 15 3/4" and 16" (98% equal length). There is 2" of straight pipe on each port before the bends. I'm going to run dual 38 mm Tial wastegates, which should be in any day now. That way the runners will be totally divided.

I love it...

Damn, looks realy great! I particularly like what you`ve done with the motor flange. Could I ask how did you get the "semi" holes in it? I suppose you will penetrate deep wen welding those stainless bends. :)

I'd like to take credit for the flange, but I bought it from Mazdatrix (part #16187). It comes with a shoulder to insert 1 1/2" Sched 10 pipe into which is very cool. Only problem is that 1 1/2" covers up a good portion of the exhaust port. I had to surface the lip off of the front and open the hole to the I/D of 2" sched 10.

The welds will penetrate almost all of the way through. We'll test on some scrap pipe until our heat settings are right. Then we'll backpurge the pipes with Argon to keep those sugary deposits from forming on the backside.

cool car...

Today, the throttle body came back from being bored out by RC Engineering. I had them do the secondaries and primary. They charged me the same price to do everything as they do just to bore the secondaries. It was still expensive as hell, but I thought that was pretty cool of them. The work looks fantastic!

makes my big block 5spd nova seem plain...

My brother and I almost have the manifold done. Just need to remake the support. I couldn't keep it lined up while welding the pipes up. Even if they only pulled 1/32" it was amplified by the time you got to the connection point on the engine. I could have oversized the mounting holes, but that just seemed ghetto. No problem. It should only take a couple of hours to remake. I learned an important lesson when cutting the wastegate holes on the primary tubes. Don't EVER cut pipe with a plasma cutter without backing to catch the slag. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the slag out. The last thing I wanted was for some of it to let go and wipe out the turbo and/or engine. I ended up having to cut out the pieces of the primary tubes and refit and weld in new ones. Then I opened up the holes with a step drill and rasp instead. I left a little bit of inside lip on the wastegate runners for anti-reversion. Not sure if there is really any benefit, but hey.......it shouds good right! I used to think the $1000+ shops wanted to make a custom manifold was outrageous, but after doing it myself...it's a steal. There is a great deal of satisfaction making your own though.

Oh yeah, I sold the GT4088R and stepped up to a GT4294R with 1.15 hotside. I'm also going to see if Gotham will do a full bridge instead of a half-bridge. Exhaust is being upsized to a full 4"

More pics....

very nice welds. project is looking great.

Thanks. I've only been TIG welding for about a year now. I hope my technique keeps getting better, and more importantly.......more consistent. I have the unique capability of going from pimp-to-gimp in a heartbeat.

I have been TIG welding for about 8 years now, on and off. I have found that even the mood you are in will have an effect on the welds...
But I have to say, nothing wrong with those welds! :icon_tup:

where did you get your gilmer drive from?