First off for this evening, let's start with that fixture plate.
A 33" long piece of 100x16mm should do nicely.
Spend an hour and a half measuring, marking, re-measuring, re-marking, re-re-measuring, head-scratching, drinking coffee and thinking real hard, then measuring again just to make sure. It's recommended you do some swearing when you find out that the 3 pairs of studs that clamp down the inlet manifold all have different spacings. (There's about 3 to 4mm between the tightest to the widest.)
Thankfully, their exact spacing isn't critical, as long as they don't interfere with the flanges on the manifolds. But this does explain why I had a bigger gap than expected between two manifold flanges; I thought I'd just screwed something up with the welding somewhere, but the bolt-holes lined up!
Then spend about half an hour drilling holes, and waiting for the drill to cool down. Optional step: Discover your 3/8NF tap has disappeared into the aether, and decide maybe that's enough on the fixture for one evening. I'm extremely not looking forward to drilling three 48mm holes through it.
With that on hold, next I want to test-fit that intake runner I've been making, and see how much clearance I have to the engine cover. From measuring, I was pretty sure I'd have a little over 2 inches, but there's nothing quite like fitting it and measuring.
(This picture also shows that the engine is settling into its home quite nicely. Plenty of grot helping tone down that fresh paint. You can also see that the exhaust for #3 is blowing, and has destroyed its gasket; something warped during welding, and if I don't tighten them down in the correct sequence it won't seal. I'm hoping to fix that, hence why adding the exhaust mounting holes to the fixture )
Next step is to close the engine cover, and hold up a calibrated stick behind the intake runner, to show how much clearance there is to the lid.
It's about 2-3/4" or so, at the tightest point. I want to leave at least 1/2" to the underside of the cover and any insulation I end up adding, so it is going to be tight regardless. Going to do some more pondering and doodling...
(Do I make a wedge shaped plenum right on top of that vertical section of the runner? Do I roll the runner hard over another 90 degrees and build the plenum over the top of the injectors? I was pondering over intake trumpets, but I don't think there'd be enough room for that, and I don't think they'd add any real benefit anyway; so long as the transition is smooth... This sure is a neat corner I've painted myself into!)
The 26th
Man, I seem to have been crazy busy for having not gotten a lot done!
The car forced my hand on the exhaust front, when I hit a speedbump at a funny angle dodging some clown who came to a complete stop on the far side of a blind bend on a B-road, and the exhaust just ... disintegrated. As amusing as it is for a small central-european economy car from the 90s to sound like it's just driven out of a tractor factory in Stalingrad and straight into action, the novelty wears off very quickly.
So I spent five hours welding up just barely enough of an exhaust that I can use the car. It's basically just a 2" straight-pipe with a 45 degree turn-down pointing at the floor on the passenger side; but I sacrificed a complete roll of steel wool from my little selection bag and stuffed that into said turn-down, with a little piece of bar tacked across the end to hold it in place, and it's surprisingly civilised unless I really lean on the throttle.
I managed to put a burn-mark on my tongue, because I was getting so sleep deprived that I went to hold the filler rod in my mouth while I adjusted the pipe in the vice... and bit down on the wrong end of said filler rod. I do not do well when I start running low on sleep.
...anyhow, on the truck front:
I've also fitted pipe to the extended fuel pump pickup thing. It's a slightly thinner wall, more flexible version of the nylon pipe I'm using for air on the truck; since I had the remains of a big roll of it from redoing the fuel lines on my car several years back. Need to put some little clamps on it, but I can't remember where I left them.
(Those air-pipe pliers are a godsend for pushing nylon tubing onto hose-barbs and the like, without kinking it!)
Now I just need to come up with a mounting flange to stick it to the tank (and space it up a little bit, I think) and I'll be golden!
Oh, and noodling over intake manifold design continues, too...
I ordered new belts of the right size this time:
Well, that's that sorted. Still need to get some longer bolts, as well as find (or re-make) the tensioner bolt thing. I'm also pretty sure I have the bolts for the compressor's intake manifold, so I should find those and actually fit that bit properly too.
While I'm still noodling over how I want the manifold to lay out, I can still make up the other two runners to the same finishing point as the first. So, step one, cut some material in just the right way...
Enweldinate
And admire!
Optional step: Quietly wonder where the hell that missing manifold nut went, because it doesn't appear to have hit the floor. (Or if it has, it's zoomed off into oblivion.)
I would like to also get the mountings for the injector hold-downs done, but I have managed to kill my drill (To be fair, it was already poorly, but now I've really finished it off. Smoke, flames, and flying chunks from the vents... It went out in spectacular fashion!) So those bits are a bit stuck until I can grab my other drill from work (and buy a new one at some point.)
Also got started on the other mounting bracket for the back end of the main compressor feed pipe, but that needs a hole drilling in it, so that's on pause for now as well. :)
Still plenty of other bits n pieces to fabricate, things to paint, etc. Frankly, the list seems neverending!