Intake Manifold Ready

Last night I went ahead and got the intake manifold squared away.  The PT one wasn’t going to clear the hood, so I drilled new holes for the original 2.0 DOHC manifold and went to line it up.  The coolant hardlines were completely in the way, so I cut them back to where they come around on the side of the head.  The plan right now is to trim them up a little more and run hoses around to clear the manifold.

Before I did anything with the manifold, though, I power washed it to clean it up a little, so it looks a little nicer now.  

The PT fuel rail wasn’t going to work because the mounting tabs were in the wrong place.  I was going to weld up some tab extensions and just drill new holes, but the fuel rail wasn’t ferrous, so I’m thinking it’s aluminium.  The DOHC rail had been sort of hacked together to accommodate the longer injectors, but it wasn’t really right, so I went ahead and cleaned up and re-welded the tabs so the fuel rail sits tight on the manifold.

Now that it’s all bolted up, I had to make some decisions around water filler neck.  I seem to recall talk about the PT neck, but that one didn’t fit right from a bolt-hole perspective, so I went with the DOHC neck and it looks like it’ll work.   One of the bolts will be a little tough to start, but it fits.

I need the gaskets for the throttle body and for the water neck, as well as some longer coolant hose for the smaller of the two hard lines.

The wiring harness is pulled through the firewall and I need to go ahead and start splicing on the various connectors.  Some research on the MegaSquirt tells me that the spark output should remain the same under MS2-Extra, but I need to add a 12V jumper to the daughterboard.  I’m still really unsure of what to do about the tacho output — there’s plenty of talk about a circuit schematic to add, but they don’t go into any detail about where to add it.  I’m going to get things wired up without the tach for now and will come back to that and the FIDLE control later.

Also, the voltage regulator is mounted and ready to go.

And there’s plenty of room for the power steering pump:

Things that I know about that need to be done at this point:

  • PS and ALT belts
  • Wire up voltage regulator
  • Gaskets for water neck and throttle body
  • Build torque strut
  • Add bushings to bobble strut*
  • Connect throttle cable
  • Connect clutch cable
  • Connect water hoses to hardline
  • Connect heater core water hoses
  • Connect exhaust
  • Connect shifter cables
  • PS reservoir mounting
  • PS reservoir hose
  • Wire engine
  •  Install radiator
  • Install cooling fans

I’m sure there’s more, but right now that’s kind of the big picture.

*On the bobble strut: I’m afraid it might just be too solid, so I’m thinking that I may have an extra Prothane sway bar bracket bushing laying about.  I was going to put a set of those bushings on the trans bracket to put a little bit of give in to the engine mounting.