[Humble]

More progress since Friday, though not enough. Everything so far has been 5 steps forward, 5 steps back. Finished the front struts fairly quickly once I had the extended die grinder bits, so quick that I forgot pics until they were both assembled.



I swapped out the front 7"/300# springs w/ helpers to a 10" 300# spring to get some height on the front. I should be able to fit a splitter under the nose now




Here's where things started going less than perfect. Pulled out the old bugpack kafer brace that didn't work and started putting in the new mendeola stiffy brace. The mendeola piece is very nice, and money well spent but I found a problem with it once it was 90% installed. If you have a high torque starter the top cross bar that goes between the shock towers won't fit. I had to pull the tower plates out, re-drill new holes 1" forward and then put it all back together. It barely clears now but everything mostly fits...










Next it was time to weld up the waste gate flange on the drd header. Fair warning: all I had was a flux core welder which isn't the prettiest thing but it got the job done. I went through a few weld-grind-weld processes just to make sure it wouldn't leak. I also had to do a little cleanup on the sealing surfaces from the spatter.








Finally some easy small projects to make me feel better. First was a new lower brace for the oil cooler to push it out a couple more inches to make room for the new wastegate. Second, I had to turn the oil sump 180 because the oil return fitting was uncomfortably close to the hottest part of the header. I also replaced the brass oil drain fittings with some nice AN hardware.






That's it for now but I'll be back under it today. The goal is to drive the car tonight if possible, but we'll see. Race day is sunday bright and early so I'm counting the hours now.