15 Aug Pipes ‘N’ Stuff
As Motor Union approaches this week, the fervor and intensity at Fluid continues to ramp up. And we’re definitely hauling on the Explorer turbo build.
The last time we checked on the turbo Explorer, we had finished welding the manifolds, and the turbos and intercoolers were up next. Now, they’re no longer up next, they’re on the main stage! Let’s start with the turbos. To start with, the turbos just hung out in the engine bay, waiting for more fabricated steel to help the snail stand on its own two legs (if turbos have legs, which is still an unfounded theory). Both turbos had their flanges already cut out on the mill, and the first piece of pipe was tacked on in order to help determine placement for the remainder of the connecting pipe:
After some measuring, we started with tacking together the pipe to connect the turbo to the manifold:
After double-and-triple checking the pipe’s location for fitment and everything, we started welding. And the result is, well, much stronger than the tacked-together version. Strong enough to hold up the turbo on its own, that’s for sure.
Gratuitous welding shot!
With the passenger side finished, we move to the driver’s side.
Sadly, they don’t make mirror-version turbos, so the engine bay won’t be entirely symmetrical, but a little less piping to weld is never a complaint when you’re working as hard as possible to finish the job without losing an inch of precision.
Yet ANOTHER gratuitous weld shot? Sure!
And so the turbos are mounted, and half of the exhaust work is done. From here, all that’s left is routing the exhaust from the turbochargers out the back of the Explorer. But we’ll save that for another day…
Next, we approach the intercoolers. Instead of choosing to weld tons of small chunks of metal together, we took the proper route and just fabricated a small table-like structure to hold the intercooler in place. Starting with a base design and creating the mount around that, we made sure to keep these intercoolers as secure as possible, while also keeping them relatively close to the intake manifold to reduce heat soak in the charge piping. Utilizing already existing mounting points is a challenge, but certainly not the toughest challenge we’ve ever faced:
And the intercoolers are mounted! The driver’s side is mounted too, but the sides look exactly identical, so we didn’t include it in the picture-taking.
We’re putting together the downpipe right now on the passenger side, so already there’s even more progress than you see here. Stick around for more in the coming days! But you should also stick around town for Motor Union on Friday. Everybody else is doing it; so should you.
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