ProZac's 1982 Starion - Now with added 86!

[ProZac]

Got a couple of hours in today. I need a starting point for all the wiring, so the ECU is the logical place. Had to make a mount to put the EVO V ecu in the factory spot, and still have all the trim fit nicely.



Once you see the DomoKun doing Karate, you can't un-see it.



How the ECU fits in. It's nice a snug, but I'll add some foam padding anyway to keep the vibrations down.



In place. I put a hook on the back of it like the factory ECU cases have, so it held in there pretty well.



Trim still fits, yay!

Tomorrow I'm going to look at the seat rails. Mike had them fitted in there, but had fallen victim to the trick of the driver side having different height mounting points at the front, so it was a bit OTP. Ive got a BRIDE seat rail from an S13 for inspiration... Actually, it'd be pretty easy to make the Bride rail fit, but it's not mine... Bride do rails for starions, but they cost money. Anyway, I'll mash something up hopefully.

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What is the little clear window thing on the trim that covers the ecu? Always wondered what it was!

[ProZac]

Yeah, me too. I wondered if it was for some diagnostic light to shine through or something, and they never got round to implementing it?

[ProZac]

Have put a few hours into the seat mounts, they're working out pretty well.

I pinched an S13 Bride rail from work to use as a guide, as they have the same style of mounts at all four corners.



Did some quick measuring and cutting:


And after a couple more hours mucking around today I've got this:


The rear left-hand mount is reinforced with some box section underneath to eliminate the flex there. When it's all bolted down, and the seat bolted to it, its rock solid and slides nicely. Its a couple of inches lower than the factory seats, and in about the same position centrally, feels good man!
Still have to finish weld everything and trim all the edges, but I think it'll work out nicely.
Oscar has given this car his stamp of approval too :).

[ProZac]

Recaro's are gone, black leather seats on the way :) Big big thankyou to Martin, what a legend!

Have made some progress on the inlet manifold. Modified Galant manifold dont flow the water correctly throught the head, and the L300 manifold I tried would have taken a bunch of modification to fit the throttlebody I need to use.... So making one from scratch. Havent done it before, should be interesting:



Runners needed clearancing to get them close enough together.



The length is determined by leaving enough space to fit a decently sized plenum, and still being able to install or remove the distributor.



Machined the ends of the runners down to fit inside the flange... This is because the company I got to cut the flange fucked it up. I'll make it workj though.





I reckon it's looking pretty fucking cool :).

[4gpwr]

:o That is Awesome and the sort of stuff I love to see

[Alspos]

Looks like they did you a favor by stuffing it up. Nice work, just whack a filter on the trumpets as they are....bugger the turbo!

Have you calculated the runner length or just suck it and see engineered?

[ProZac]

Suck it an see in this case. I did some math, and came to the conclusion that for the amount of air this engine is likely to ingest, I could make runners twice as long as this, the same diameter, and there wouldn't be a noticeable restriction.

As far as reflected pluses go, Ideally it's be better to have longer runner than this, as I don't plan to rev the motor much over 6000 rpm, and would like peak torque in the 4500ish area...

But nah, runner length was determined by the need to have a decently sized plenum, but still be able to install and remove the distributor.

[Schultz]

NIce work there. Looks like you know what you are doing. I am in the process of building some seat mounts using commodore rails for my starion here and after seeing yours I had to start again because yours looked better then what I was building. Thank you for accidently helping me, lol.

[ProZac]

Massive thanks to Martin up north, another major part of the puzzle has arrived:



Sweet sweet black leather front seats. They need a couple of minor repairs to the adjuster mechanisms, but nothing major, and are totally Awesome :). I've always always wanted a set, and now I've got them! Whoopee!

The wheels for it arrived, thought it would be interesting to show the fitment:







They're Rota Torques, in 17x9.5 and 17x9.0, both 12P offset. I know, I know, photos of wheels without tyres are just plain dumb, but I didnt have time to get these fitted:



Nitto NT05 235/40/17 for the rear and Nitto NT555 215/45/17 for the front. Slightly smaller rolling diameter than the factory wheel and tyre setup, but once the car is a bit lower, it should look pretty cool. I would have liked the NT05's all round, but they didn't do them in that size... Plus, it's a street car, it's really not going to matter.

[Lunacy]

Nice seats :)

[ProZac]

Hah, I bought a bunch of leather cleaner and conditioner to help removing your years of accumulated buttsweat :-).

[Lunacy]

Hah, I bought a bunch of leather cleaner and conditioner to help removing your years of accumulated buttsweat :-).

Haha itl take more than that to remove years of farting on them :) Rims look nice too :)

[JAS]

Love those wheels man!!

Those trumpets are looking awesome too :beer

[ProZac]

I've got a mid-term on thursday, so I'm studying pretty hard for that at the moment.. But occasionally when I encounter brain-fade I pop out to the garage for an hour or so. Not much time to get anything done, but it's nice to make little bits of progress.

Today I continued work on the manifold. I needed to cut the holes in the plenum baseplate for the runners to pass through. As these holes are pretty big, and overlap, it was always going to be tricky with a drill or similar. A friend of mine suggested using a chassis punch. He works at a hydraulic tool supply company, and loaned me the gear. The punch made short work of the job, and gave a bloody awesome result!

First job was to mark out where the holes need to actually be. This was pretty easy to do once I marked out a centerline. I used the flange as a guide, a little measuring, and the hole centers were easy to fine. I drilled these points out to 10mm for the chassis punch to fit through.



I checked these marks against the machined runners, and it all lined up.



This is what the chassis punch looks like:



The ram pulls the center support down through a cup that is marginally larger than the cutter, which is threaded onto the top of the support... Pulling the cutter into the cup, through whatever is in it's way. I first had to take my 10mm holes out to 3/4":



This was so I could fit the bigger center support in the punch, which happens to have a shaft size of 3/4". With the bigger chaft in place, I could use the correct size cutter:



After cutting all these holes, I was left with this:



lining this up on the flange showed everything to still be pretty concentric.



This is about where it will sit on the runners:



With it here, there is still enough room to get a decent plenum area in between the strut tower, yet still be able to install or remove the distributor.

I plan to do a bunch of study tonight, so maybe i can sneak a couple more hours in the garage tomorrow to further progress with these bits:



I also dropped my wheels and tryes off to be mated this morning, then picked them up on the way home. Please dont laugh, the car looks bloody awful at this height. When I'm back at work next week I'll order the D2's for it and sort that issue out! The wheels would look nicer in silver I reckon, but Bronze is fine for now :).



There are 25mm spacers all round. I'll leave them as is till It's at ride heigh and I can see what sort of clearances there are. I bought 25mm spacers so I've got meat there to machine down to get them just right :).