May 26, 2006 - Starting the Exhaust and the
Beginning of the Fuel Pump Saga (1)
On Friday May 26 I was supposed to be racing at the biannual
Smackdown event at Norwalk Raceway Park. However, mother
nature got the best of the situation and I found myself with the day
off of work and no race to go to, so we made our way to my Uncle's
garage and started working on the twin turbo project. I
finally felt like we were starting down the homestretch, I had the
fuel pump, the Boost-A-Pump was ordered, the cat back was ordered,
and all I really needed to figure out was the tune.
The first thing we did was grab the turbo down pipes and figure out
which one went on which side. After we had that sorted out we
tried to snake the driver side pipe between the k-member and the
header to turbo pipe. I tried turning the pipe every which way
but it wouldn't go in. Coming to the realization that we'd
have to take something off to further the install was hard to
swallow, but I grabbed the 7/16 deep well socket and the 1/4
inch drive ratchet and started taking off the header to turbo tubes
on both sides. With those out of the way the down pipes slid
into place and I was able to tighten them and reinstall the header
to turbo pipes without a problem. I didn't grab any pictures
but the install was pretty straight forward. I had to twist
the down pipes a bit to give the header to turbo pipes enough room
to fit. It's a good idea to leave the v-clamps a little loose
when installing these pipes to allow them to move in case something is in the way. Then, once everything is in place,
tighten the v-clamps.
We decided to leave the h-pipe off until the cat back arrived
because the HP h-pipe does not have hangers like the stock piece and
the cat back would add enough support to keep the h-pipe in place.
We moved on to the fuel pump. I was glad to finally get this
thing installed, but the first thing we had to do was drop the fuel
tank and that's always a chore, especially when it still has a good
deal of fuel in it. Of course I wasn't able to run the tank
dry because I broke the transmission so we had to siphon just over
half a tank. We tried snaking a tube down the filler neck but
were unsuccessful. We had no choice but to drop the tank and
then start the siphoning process. Here's one mistake we made.
We found out afterwards that we did not have to remove the four
screws holding the black rubber piece in place. However, we did have to remove the three screws holding the top
of the filler neck to the body of the car, and we had to remove the
filler neck from the tank. There is also one screw holding
each tank strap to the body. In order to lower the tank from
the car we positioned a jack under the
tank, it's important to get the jack under the center of gravity of
the tank otherwise it'll tip and possibly spill fuel when the straps
come off. It's also a good idea to put two 4x4s on the ground
under the tank so that when you lower the tank it rests on the 4x4s
and you can remove the jack from under the tank. Here's a
picture of the metal piece that secures the filler neck to the tank.
This is a picture of us trying to siphon the gas out of the tank
before dropping the tank, as I said earlier we were unsuccessful.
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