Ten Pounds of Shit in a Five Pound Bag - Twin Turbo LS3/DCT Daily Driver

[Exidous]

Nice update!  I run an ex NASCAR oil cooler in my '69 Chevelle turbo LS as the a/w heat exchanger also.  It is massive!

Oh nice! Do you have any pictures of it? How are IATs?
Did you pick one up with Wiggins style fittings or AN? I'm having trouble finding the proper Wiggins style fittings that'll work with rubber hose.

You probably won't find them. I had to cut the Wiggins off and weld AN on. There are only two companies I could find making Wiggins pieces and they involved goodridge lines with crimp ends.

[spacevomit]

Nice update!  I run an ex NASCAR oil cooler in my '69 Chevelle turbo LS as the a/w heat exchanger also.  It is massive!

Oh nice! Do you have any pictures of it? How are IATs?
Did you pick one up with Wiggins style fittings or AN? I'm having trouble finding the proper Wiggins style fittings that'll work with rubber hose.

What size do you need? I can look through my boxes of stuff that Iran must not acquire, lest they fix their Tomcats.

[shainiac]

Nice update!  I run an ex NASCAR oil cooler in my '69 Chevelle turbo LS as the a/w heat exchanger also.  It is massive!

Oh nice! Do you have any pictures of it? How are IATs?
Did you pick one up with Wiggins style fittings or AN? I'm having trouble finding the proper Wiggins style fittings that'll work with rubber hose.

What size do you need? I can look through my boxes of stuff that Iran must not acquire, lest they fix their Tomcats.

LOL, Iran may need to call up Tom Cruise to fix them.

I'm not positive on the size, but I THINK 3/4". I ordered the cooler yesterday, so should have it this week.

Because the system is low pressure, I was planning on using crimp on fittings and just using soft rubber hose and Oetiker clamps. Should work fine I think.

[shainiac]

@spacevomit

What size do you need? I can look through my boxes of stuff that Iran must not acquire, lest they fix their Tomcats.

I'm having trouble finding dimensions on the Wiggins fittings. The OD of the fittings on the cooler are almost exactly 1.00", but the ID is more like 0.7". I'm guessing they're AN12?

It looks like the corner of one of the fittings got dinged and pinched the o-ring groove a bit. I'm not sure how forgiving these fittings are. I may need to weld ANs to it either way.

[Exidous]

Iirc is based off tube size. .7" should be -12.

[spacevomit]

You can get Hydraflow weld bungs then get Hydraflow clamshells. I couldn't find any "small" ones, mine only go down to -16.

[1point3liter]

I got one downpipe finish welded, the other tacked and fitted. What a pain in the ass.
The little tube stub that connects the wastegate to the downpipe is 3/4" long at one point lol.

This was my first real thin-wall stainless project. I did end up getting a backpurge regulator, which definitely helped color and preventing nasties in the welds. I still struggle with being consistent and patient, though.

Once the passenger side downpipe is welded up, I can make the exhaust from the firewall back. The exhaust, charge piping, turbo intake, and oil lines are more or less all that's left.

love this build! amazing work

[shainiac]

Small update. The cooler stack is almost finished. I'm waiting on a couple SendCutSend pieces to show up for stuff like the swirl pot and oil heat exchanger brackets. I did weight the rad/HX/fan and it's 20# lighter than my old rad/fan and A2A intercooler. I think that the A2W intercooler will probably be a bit more than 20#, but it's 2' further back than my old A2A. There's probably a gallon of water also. CWA200 water pump is also mounted behind the headlight. The MaxxECU can run it's brushless controller out of the box.

My buddy is supposed to be welding up the intercooler this week.
I still haven't figured out a good way to mount it. The 3rd image below shows the hose routing.
There aren't many bolt options that aren't within the belt routing. The goal is to not need to unbolt anything on the IC if I need to swap belts.
The top water pump bolt on each side is fair game. So is the bottom-most front cover bolts. one thought was to use standoff spacers and long bolts and make cantilevered mounts for the water pump. I dunno how 8 M8 bolts would do holding up 25#+ 4" off the block.
There are also a couple bolts on the oil pan that maybe could help. Shit's tight...

The shifter is finally hard mounted also. My trans tunnel was pretty hacked after multiple itterations of T56 Magnum shifter trimming (non-F Magnum).
I made a plate of 1/8" 7075 AL that's super tough, and riv-nut'd it for the shifter to bolt to with standoffs. It's surprisingly rigid. There's an eBay vendor that makes super nice real leather shift boots that fit like OEM for $30 (bonniebbuttons). A bunch of ribs and nubs needed cut off, but the OEM BMW shift selector fits. I also bought some carbon fiber tube to extend the choady lil shift knob up out of the boot and 3D print a knew knob. I'll lose the OEM BMW gear mode LEDs, but I have those displayed on the CAN keypad, and I just bought a Haltech IC7 to replace the OEM cluster.

[shainiac]

Intercooler is almost done. the 4" outlet needs trimmed to fit and welded. It's annoyingly tight and even a "tight" 4" CLR 4" 90 pushes the IC out too far. Vibrant makes a 3" CLR 90 that's super tight, but also $100 lol.

I still need to figure out how to mount it. Originally I wanted to mount it to the engine so that it moved with it when the engine moves in the chassis, but I haven't found a good option that clears the belt. Currently looking at making cross braces to the frame rails and rubber isolating it. And using a hump coupler on the throttle body to give it more flex.

[shainiac]

Cooling system is almost done.
All that's left is to make the chassis mounts for the A2W intercooler and plumb rubber hoses.
I'm planning on making the chassis mounts out of 1/2" stainless tubing buttresses to the tops of the frame rails.
Clearance for the serp belt, lower rad hose, and turbo inlets are all pretty tight. It'll be interesting what works.

I also caved and decided to do a silicone coupler from the TB to intercooler outlet. I had a hard time finding the right radius 4" 90 that didn't require moving the intercooler forward. Having a big silicone 90 will also give the IC some play when the motor flexes and the IC doesn't.

The swirl pot was a fun aluminum TIG project. It's not perfect, but I'm happy with how it turned out. All of the IC system is 12AN, so the inlet to the swirl pot is  3/4". Outlet is 1.5", which matches the CWA200 pump inlet. It also has gives me a convenient location to fill that feeds directly into the pump inlet. Hopefully it's not a paint to bleed.
 There wasn't a very clean way to put a 12AN 90 on the 1.5" outlet of the CWA200, so I cut it back and welded a "full flow" barb'd 90 directly too it. The anodizing turned orange, but I think it'll work just fine.

I also mounted the rad to the chassis. I welded 3/16"thk L's to the sides of the rad and those bolt to the frame rails with 6X (3 per side) M10 studded rubber isolators. It's pretty firm but still has some give to it. I don't think it'll need upper rad supports.

[shainiac]

Cooling system is done, with the exception of plumbing the oil cooler and DCT cooler.
The IC mount turned out pretty decent. I used an Amazon manual tubing bender (cheap Chinese kit with multiple mandrel sizes). The 3/4" 1/8" wall 6061 was about max of what the bender could safely do I think. It was not fun to bend, but turned out sturdy enough.
I got to try out the thumb trigger on my AHP welder and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting to tack the pipe up. I did have to plug the welder into 120V, which caps the welder at 150A. If I welded for more than maybe 10s, it'd trip my 15A 120V breaker lol. It got the job done, though.
The IC sits on little 3/4" OD silicone isolator studs. The silicone couplers do the majority of the work holding up the IC, though.

One annoyance is I made the IC sit level and square to the engine (balancer). The radiator stack I mounted square to the chassis and shock towers. I didn't account for the fact that the engine isn't perfectly centered and straight in the chassis, so the IC and rad aren't parallel. Oh well.
It's still quick and easy to change the serp belt without having to disconnect anything on the IC.
I'm still debating on whether I want to make a heat shield for the IC, powder coat it, or wrap it in some kind of insulation. It's definitely going to heat soak being that close to the radiator, but I'm not sure there's much I can do. OEM and aftermarket BMW intercoolers are also bare metal and mounted on top of the engine. I don't think this could be much worse.

Yesterday I started on mounted and wiring the PDM. I'm honestly not using much from it at the moment. I'm mostly using it to power the ECU, DCT, Dash/CAN devices, interooler pump, and misc 12V standalone stuff like wideband and boost solenoids. I do have plenty of extra that I can add in down the road.

[digitalsolo]

That IC bracket looks pretty beefy!

[Exidous]

Not even going to mention what the real reason for the PDM purchase was?

[shainiac]

Not until the project is at least started lol

[babillaracing]

Dang very nice sir