DaveStruve Build Log

[flyerncle]

That was the place Ayjay

[StruveD]

It was a locost christmas this year.

[Talonmotorsport]

ooh a spool gun, are you planning on doing some ali welding with your MIG? It will be interesting to see how you get on with that, best of luck!

[K4KEV]

well cool Dave ....looks like you are going to have some fun over the coming weeks

[StruveD]

Originally Posted by Talonmotorsport

ooh a spool gun, are you planning on doing some ali welding with your MIG? It will be interesting to see how you get on with that, best of luck!

Thats the goal. I want to fabricate a proper intake so that I can get the filter to the cool side of the engine.

[AshG]

well done on the first start dave, merry christmas

[StruveD]

Finally after weeks pruning the damn thing the wiring harness is totally complete. Removed a few more things from it and shortened it to a decent length. Still a bit clunkier than I would have liked but it would have been a real splice job to take it further.

[StruveD]

This weeks task was to create the header. My original plan was a caterham style exhaust with the collector on the outside. However after receiving my tubing kit from columbia mandrel, I realized that I would not have enough tubing to complete it, that it was going to be a pain to run it and clear what needed to be clear, and since I was using stainless it was going to cost me another $100+ for the additional tubing.

So i started looking at the miatas header, and since that is generally considered to be the optimum config for that engine, I went about replicating it with my requirements. The main requirements being that I wanted it to move over the steering shaft, so that I could remove it without taking apart a good chunk of the car. It needed to pass underneath the supercharger with enough clearance, so that I could wrap the header to prevent heat transfer to the supercharger. And that I could get the collector high enough that I could get (2) 2.5" 90 degree mandrel bends out the side of the car without coming in contact with the chassis and without have the side exhaust pipe sitting to far from the chassis.

Here what I made. Cylinders (1 and 4) and (2 and 3) are approx equal length. Which is how mazda did it.







What I learned from this adventure:
Stainless Steel is harder to mig weld. Not drastically, but enough to be slightly be off putting with the visual quality of the welds. In hind sight I should have tacked and had someone tig them. But since the header will be wrapped it doesn't really matter.

You really need something to mock these up. The method I used here was to make the center 2 tubes first since they were more or less straight shots. This allowed me to get the collector into its position, then I worked 1 and 4 to clear the supercharger. I used some wire loom to figure out the direction needed on 1 and 4, which helped a little.

In the end I'm happy, mainly that it's done and doesn't look like a disaster, I may still need to take it to someone to weld up the center of the collector as I have some concern that the slip fittings may not have been tight enough, and I can't get the mig in there to do it myself.

[K4KEV]

Thats very nice work Dave and nice to see another 3" exhaust coming out of the side panels.....looks like you are on schedule for this summer, keep cracking on bud

[StruveD]

Not quite done for the day, with the completion of the header, I went ahead and built the exhaust. Only thing left to do is attach the muffler to the body somehow. Exhaust pipe is actually a 2.5".