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I will end this section with the shot above, showing the 8.8" housing, SPL Parts lateral arms with sphericals, and big fattie 345mm Hoosiers. This setup should be able to handle all the torque the 7.7L engine can throw at it.

OFFSET SHIFTER, SHIFT BOOT, HANDLE & KNOB

When we designed our LS swap kit for the E46 chassis we built it around the still somewhat common 1998-2002 F-Body Tremec T56. This OEM trans was rated at 400 ft-lbs of torque, which was OK when LS motors made 300-350 hp.

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For this car we went straight to the T56 Magnum - which shares almost nothing with the OEM T56. The Magnum has 700 ft-lbs of torque rating, but the shifter is about 1.5" farther forward. The shifter that comes with the Magnum is shown sitting atop the tunnel in the pic above right. We used an SFI rated scattershield from QuickTime as well. Safety is important on this build.

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The stock round shifter opening is pretty far back relative to the Magnum's shifter placement, so Ryan cut out the tunnel to expose the opening for this trans, then made an aluminum plate to cover it all up. To this he mounted the aluminum base for the Joe's Racing shift boot attached (see above at left). This includes a heat shielded Nomex shift boot (just sitting over the console opening, above at right) which snaps in place to the provided aluminum base, making for a fire / fume / heat barrier between the underside of the trans tunnel to the cabin. We use these Joe's shift boots on everything.

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The Joe's Racing boot will hide under the OEM center console plastics (which are shown above without the boot) and underneath a second, OEM shift boot. The included Tremec shifter put the lever a bit too far forward to be able to re-use the factory center console. For a race car its no big deal but this car has to "look right" for Optima, so we ordered a McLeod offset shifter to fit the Magnum. This custom built unit has 1" right and 3" rear offsets. The images above show the McLeod shifter in place - notice the handle stub lines up with the old "round" shift hole opening. We've used these shifters on previous builds like this when the shifter doesn't line up with some OEM console pieces.

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Once the McLeod shifter was in place a simple Hurst handle and 6-speed patterned black knob were added, then an OEM E46 M3 BMW Alcantara shift boot snapped into the OEM center console from above. This is the "pretty" shift boot to cover up the race parts underneath.

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That's the finalized shifter sitting in the OEM center console, above. Took a bit of work to get it all to line up but the shift feel is great and the McLeod unit has adjustable shift stops to prevent over-engagement. If the shift lever length isn't comfortable for the owner we will buy or make another arm, and the same goes for the knob.

FUEL RAILS BUILT & INJECTORS INSTALLED, MSD MODIFIED

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The MSD Atomic intake manifold is one ugly cuss of a cast Nylon unit, bit it outflows the other "OEM height" intakes for big displacement LS engines (including the FAST), and it will fit under the stock height hood. One other oddity is that the shape does not clear any aftermarket fuel rails. From anyone. We wouldn't consider using an OEM fuel rail on a build like this - both from a performance and aesthetics stand point. the OEM fuel system is made for a return-less style routing, which is another "Hard Pass".

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After wasting a good bit of time reaching out to companies who sell custom fuel rails (none of which had tackled the MSD yet) we settled on the same Holley extruded rails we use on a lot of LS builds. Ryan marked them for clearance around the various lumps and bumps in the MSD Atomic and handed them to Tim, who chucked these up in our CNC mill and got to work...

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Instead of mapping the cut-outs and programming the job in CAM software, then cutting each rail in CNC mode, Tim used the Digital Read Out and manually moved the cutter to clear away metal where Ryan marked. Each rail was milled in an area that isn't critical for strength or fluid / pressure containment, as shown above. It was a bit of a pain but with an end mill with a DRO you could do the same in about an hour.

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The images above show the rails mocked up with some injectors, which puts the rails at their final height. Ryan then built custom brackets to attach the rails to threaded bossed in the intake manifold at those heights. The top right pic shows clearance around some of the weirdly shaped humps in the MSD Atomic. Now about those injectors...


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The tuner we are working with to build the Motec M150 ECU and engine harness wanted us to use the Bosch Motorsports based Injector Dynamics set. But at $1000/set it was making my eye twitch! Even if it is not my money, I still try to look out for our client's budget. We investigated some other brands, made some calls, and then I went with DeatschWerks. Their 16U-00-0065-8 injectors flow 65 lb/hr (700 cc @ 3 bar), have an EV14 plug, LS3/LS7 injector height, and also use Bosch Motorsports parts. They cost about half as much as the IDs but are built with the same housings and coils. I liked them so much we became a dealer and you will see more of these on our other builds, like my C6 Z06 (aka: #Rampage).

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Of course there is a frenzy that stirs up around certain sacred items and beloved brands, and when you ask "what injectors should I use" online it damn near breaks the internet. DW has the same Motec flow data for the tuner to use for EFI tuning, and if they work, they work. I don't get the hate, but I suppose I do the same thing around certain shock brands, so what can I say? #KoniTriggered

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Before the MSD Atomic intake was final installed the hole for the MAP sensor had to be drilled. There are a couple of optional locations cast into the upper housing for this sensor (even the old LS1 EGR location), with a threaded boss for each. Ryan picked the one at the "back" of the intake, which will be at the front of this engine bay, and fitted the sensor in place.

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This MAP sensor location will connect to the Motec harness being built for this car.

VALVE COVERS, COILS AND PLUG WIRES

Not a lot of high tech here. Seriously, there's no need to spend thousands on coils or plug wires for any LS or LT V8. Just use good, proven brands that fit your engine's specifics. This ignition system is light years ahead of what the OEMs used even in the early 1990s.

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When it came to coils I wasn't sure it was even worth using something other than stock replacement units (of which there are 5 distinctly different styles for LS engines), which can be bought for as little as $30/each. With EIGHT coils - one for each plug - there isn't a lot of stress on the ignition coil. These have a long time to saturate with high voltage before it fires it's one spark plug every two rotations. For this build I went a little further and bought MSD branded replacement coils, which were not that much more. We need D&E points for Optima, and "favorably branded" parts don't hurt.

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We have had really good experiences with Holley Group parts, and MSD is a part of that. Naturally we went with Holley valve covers, too (polished aluminum units slightly taller than stock). These have integral mounts for one of the LS coil shapes, so we don't have to use the ugly black steel coil mounting brackets made for OEM valve covers. This engine bay needed a little bling.

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I had spec'd Holley valve covers out for another BMW LS swap a year earlier, but they didn't fit the E36 chassis they were going into. They went back in their box until we needed them for this E46 build - which has a 2" wider engine bay than the E36. We also picked up Taylor 409 series 10.9 mm plug wires and DEI heat sleeves.

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The Taylor plug wires come in a variety of boot angles and colors, as do the DEI sleeves, but for this build we went with all black. The NGK plugs are now connected to the coils, which are mounted to the Holley valve covers for a nice, tidy look.

REMOTE COOLANT RESERVOIR

I never trust the itty bitty plastic reservoirs on BMW E46 coolant systems (I've had two fail on track in two different 330s!), but instead I like to see a larger, remote mounted reservoir set high in the engine bay with as much volume as possible. Usually that means at the back of the engine bay, opposite the brake master cylinder, which is the highest part of the engine compartment. That corner usually has plenty of room.

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On this build of course we have one of the twin air filter boxes taking up that space, so I asked Ryan to utilize the space in the right front corner of the engine bay. He whipped up this custom reservoir out of cardboard mock-ups and turned it into an aluminum welded tank.

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If you look closely at the image above left you can see that it ties into some OEM bracketry in that corner, for a bolt-in application.

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Once we were happy with the shape and placement a few more items were ordered, including an aluminum weld-on radiator filler neck and some steam vent ports from TFS (made for AN lines). A number of aluminum weld-on AN bungs were also procured for lines that connect to the reservoir.

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You can see the finished reservoir above, with the filler neck and welded bungs for AN lines. We used a 16 psi, lever-style pressure release cap. If this cap isn't deemed pretty enough for D&E, we will find some billet doo-dad with some shiny colors.

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The various coolant lines were later built to connect to the reservoir, steam lines, and heater core hoses to the Motorsports defroster mounted under the dash. I will show this in more detail later, but the cooling system is plumbed.

MAIN BATTERY KILL

One thing virtually all race cars are required to have is a main battery kill. If you see the "magic smoke" being released from your car's wiring (it only comes out once!) or if you have any type of racing crash / incident / fire, you are supposed to hit that button first! But gone are the days of the $25 electro-mechanical kill switches, which have a high failure rate and require high amp cables to be strung near the driver's switch. Even the solenoid relay style kill switches still have moving parts that can fail. Now there is something better.

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The solid state electronic "battery isolator" units from CAR TEK out of the UK are a slick, safe, and FIA approved solution. This page shows the evolution of the kill switch. We saw how much US suppliers were marking these up so we purchased a bunch of these and became a dealer. We have used them in the past and will be putting these on everything...

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There are two main models from CARTEK. The "GT" model shown above kills the engine by taking in a fixed 12v input and sending a 12v output that would power your Ignition or ECU. When the negative side of the battery has been disconnected it will also cut the 12v output powering your Ignition or ECU. This will kill the engine. Designed for cars with Standard ECU’s or Historic Race cars. These can be wired with one or two remote kill switches, which have integral LED lights inside the button.

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The "XR" unit we chose for this build is made to trigger a Motorsports ECU (like the Motec M150 we are using) or PDU. The "XR" unit is newer and does not have a power input or power output. Instead it sends a signal which is wired to either a Power Distribution Module or Motorsport ECU that has an ignition switch signal input. The ECU or PDU will then shut down when it sees this signal - which then kills the engine. The XR also features a 0.5 sec time delay between transmitting the engine kill signal and disconnecting the battery, allowing the ECU time to perform a shutdown sequence before electrical power is lost.

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It was a relatively easy hookup, with the XR unit placed in the trunk area on a panel Ryan built near the Odyssey PC80 battery. Two kill switches were added with one mounted on the dash and the other out the driver's side window area, so a corner worker could disable the power if the driver was incapacitated.


TWIN FIRE SYSTEMS INSTALLED

This car is being built with serious safety in mind, to match the serious performance it will be capable of. To take it to the next level we built this car with two separate fire systems. And each system has two cables - for multiple locations.

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One Aqueous Foam (AFF) fire suppression system is plumbed for the engine bay, where most of the fire situations break out on a race car. If there is evidence of smoke from underhood and the driver has the right mindset and training he can pull that release handle (only) and snuff out the fire without filling the passenger compartment with foam.

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If something is on fire in the cabin the driver can grab that handle - or both - as he is bailing out. We have dual pulls for each bottle, too... with a pair for each system on the center of the dash (driver) and a pair outside the driver's window (corner worker, or driver after he bails out!)

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These were cabled with the included cables that came with each fire system from Lifeline. The secondary cables were purchased from a local bike shop and added to each pull handle on the bottles. Each pull will be marked clearly and boldly, but if in doubt - pull 'em both! I will cover these again when they are plumbed to show the nozzle detail in my next post.

FUEL CELL ARRIVES & INSTALLED, FUEL SYSTEM BUILT

One more safety aspect is finally wrapped up, and boy this one was a major task! You saw the creation of the fuel cell enclosure and then the firewall structure around that, but when we sent the drawing off to be quoted by "the companies everyone uses" we had a heart attack with their quotes.

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A few years ago we found Harmon Fuel Cells. They had some BMW cells that we thought we could use in our standard swap cars, but this one was going to be custom. So we sent them the drawings and enclosure to quote. Their ballistic kevlar FIA approved fuel cell with an integral surge tank and twin Walbro 450 pumps was HALF the cost of the "name brand" fuel cell. This was an eye opener!

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The reasons we got for the high quote were "time and materials" to make the custom cell, but Harmon seemed to use the same materials and got it done for less, with all of the right FIA markings. I'm now a fan of this brand, especially for custom cells. The twin pump sump looks good and should keep this engine fed with fuel down to the last drop.

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The fuel cell is now mounted in the car's back seat, the lower section of the firewall enclosure is mounted, and Ryan is plumbing the fuel system from the cell to the engine bay.

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The AN braided lines switch to aluminum tubing under the car, to protect them from fire / cutting / off road adventures. The feed line is a -8 and the return is -6.

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Most of the fuel system is completed when I write this in January, with just a few items left to plumb this week.

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One of the craziest parts of the fuel system is this Injector Dynamics F750 fuel filter with optional pressure and temperature sender. It has pressure differential meter on board, drain, integral mount, it is all made from 100% CNC machined aluminum. The point that really matters: it has a replaceable filter element.

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This was something G-SPEED insisted on for use with the Motec and cost a staggering $550. For a fuel filter. But these sensors are what they wanted for pressure and temp signals, so on it went. When you see it fist hand, the fitted foam box and the jewel like fit and finish, you can see where the cost comes in.

HYDRAULIC PARKING BRAKE INSTALLED

The OEM rear disc brakes on most modern cars use an integral drum brake inside the "hat" of the 1-piece cast iron rotor. The drum is actuated by the parking brake lever and locks the wheel when parked.

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Well the Powerbrake 350mm 4piston rear brake uses a 2-piece rotor with an aluminum hat. Like the Stoptech Trophy and almost all other Motorsports brake kits they do not have a provision for a parking brake. But for Optima use this car needs one. We did some research...

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We found that obp Motorsport out of the UK makes a hydraulic, stand-alone parking brake handle, mostly used in the drifting world. These also have a lockable setting for use as a hydraulic parking brake. I ordered the one Ryan spec'd and ... they shipped the wrong style, above, which is made for drifting. So now I own that one.

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I re-ordered the same part number and the second time they sent the right style, which can be configured to allow the handle to lie flat - like the stock unit. Stop the car, pull up the handle, engage the lock, and you have locked the rear brakes for parking.

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Ryan built a bracket, mounted the E46 "console delete" center console, built a cover for the cup holders, and it covers the obp handle nicely. We will show the plumbing of this in a future post.

1-7/8" LONG TUBE HEADERS COMPLETED

These custom headers should have been done months earlier but we had a series of delays on parts, tools, and equipment that is too long to list.

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After the ICE Engine Works 1-7/8" header modeling kit arrived in November and then the Argon flow meter regulator arrived in December the last few bends could be finished.

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Then each tube could be sealed off, back purged with Argon, and fully seam welded. Once each tube was leak free it was then welded into the flanges and collectors.

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Ryan even installed the "cones" inside the merge collectors, for that last little bit of flow. The headers were quickly installed shortly after being final welded, so I didn't get the "glamor shots" they deserved. But no matter - they are done!

DRIVESHAFT BUILT & INSTALLED

We measured for a custom driveshaft to fit this E46 with a T56 Magnum and the 8.8" diff housing. When we went to install it, we found we had left the factory brackets for the 2-piece BMW propshaft's center bearing and they were in the way of the fat 3" diameter aluminum driveshaft.

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A little spot weld drilling and some cutting removed the offending brackets, which we didn't need in any case. Much bigger diameter driveshaft stuffed up as high as possible to give exhaust clearance in this tunnel.


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With the newly acquired input flange for the pinion added (per our driveshaft company's recommendation for the torque this unit will see) the driveshaft was bolted in place. One step closer to moving under its own power.

OIL LINES BEING BUILT

With an external, 4-stage dry sump oil pump, remote oil tank, twin oil coolers, and a breather tank this car will need a lot of oil lines run over the course of weeks. Since we are already a dealer for Fragola, and to save some time, we did not farm this plumbing work out like we sometimes do.

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Ryan designed an oil system routing and made us a parts list, then we ordered a boat load of AN fittings, hoses ends, and hose. After various components were mounted the hoses were built one by one, tested, and installed.

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Instead of boring you with a lot of step by step pictures of hoses being made, let's move on.

CHASSIS WIRING

Speaking of exciting, let's look at a bunch of pictures of custom chassis wiring! I have dozens!

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I'm kidding, of course. Not many people like working on automotive wiring, much less building it, or watching it being built. But we do have a lot of pictures of this progress to show the customer as this work stretched out for a bit.

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But seriously though, the work done in this area by Ryan was over the top. What started with a Painless 26 circuit harness has turned into a work of art.

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The main wiring panel was built onto a false floor aluminum panel in the passenger foot well. All of this is hidden under another panel, shown above right, for a clean look - and to keep feet away from wires and components.

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Lots of components are hidden under the dash or elsewhere and everything is noted in detailed wiring diagrams, kept within a binder. We are using Deutsch Connectors and pins for every connection, except for a handful of OEM connectors. Ryan was ringing out circuits today, bumping windows and lights with a tester, and the chassis wiring is almost complete.

BRAKE INLET DUCTS BUILT

The front end on this car was made from a hybrid 1M / E46 bumper cover made by Duraflex in a fiberglass-like composite.

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Some might not like the look now but once the front wheel fairings are built and the splitter installed I think it will make more sense. It fit the look the owner was going for, but didn't really have a great location for front brake inlets.

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Early on in the project Jason worked with Ryan when he was mounting the bumper cover to show him where we wanted to pull brake cooling air from - a high pressure section of the lower grill area. The two outer openings were then utilized for twin oil coolers, as shown above left. The brake ducts were recently built and fitted to the triangular sections shown above right.

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Sometimes you get lucky and the OEMs make a nice, tapered funnel that necks down to a 3" or 4" round section you can slip a brake cooling hose over, but not this time. We decided on 4" cooling to deal with the speeds and brake heat load this car should be capable of. Ryan made the outer panel then transitioned this to a 4" round aluminum tube for the hose to fit over.

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He makes it look easy but there was some time and skill that went into these inlets. We will add the 4" hose after the final oil plumbing is completed, but room was left to clear all of that and for the route to the front wheels. The brake backing plates were made months earlier.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Whew, that was longer than I thought it would be! What's next? Well last week Corey and Louis from G-SPEED stopped by to measure the engine bay for their custom Motorsports engine harness they are building to fit a Motec M150 ECU.

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With this mapped out they are building the harness now for delivery soon. The last bits of plumbing and chassis wiring will be tidied up and then Ryan will move to the front splitter, wheel fairings, and rear diffuser.

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And the exhaust system is already being built as well. Gonna sound good, and will exit through the diffuser.

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More soon!

Thanks Terry! Reading an update from you on a Friday night after a long week at work is a great way to spend my time. Now, I'm off the watch Grand Tour. Keep up the great work, guys!

I always appreciate detailed well photographed posts. Especially of well prepped race cars. Thanks for putting in the effort.

Really good stuff on the power cutoff as well, that whole scheme with the power cutoff switch always bothered me especially once the alternator was wired in. GIf you did it right you had giant power cables routed not just to the outside switch but a driver switch as well, seemed more dangerous than not having hte switch sometimes.

Project Update for August 9th, 2019: You could say I am a little behind on build thread updates. We had a bit of a delay in 2018 when we moved out of our old shop, moved into the shop we built, and finished construction after we moved in. We went months without any "billable shop work" during that period, but we got back into the groove in Fall 2018. Then the main fabricator that worked on this car from the beginning left, but we got another man on the job, and kept it moving forward. So in the 18 months since my last post in this thread we had some delays, but the M3 V8 build kept going - lots of detail work was finished, the aero was completed, the the Motec M150 was installed and dyno tuned, and we even test drove the car on track, then tweaked and tested some more.

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To further our "forum" delay, we also had a total forum outage in 2019 that lasted nearly 3 months - a server update happened, which made our version of vbulletin obsolete, so we had to update that, then move to a faster server, then fought with some DNS name server issues. But by late July 2019 we had our forum back up, which is where we write and edit all of these forum build thread updates - that get pushed out to the forums we support.

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So all of my tardy update excuses are out of the way, and we have a couple of current 2019 teaser shots to show this car on track above. Now let's get caught up as much as we can in this post, covering late 2017 to early 2018 work.

MORE ON DRY SUMP OIL HOSES AND LINES

Last time I showed the start of the oil hoses and lines that are part of this 4 stage dry sump system. Since we built this we have tested, tweaked, and learned a lot about this system. Needless to say, a belt driven dry sump system is a complex, costly system with a lot of hoses getting oil to and from the remote oil tank, to the ARE dry sump pump, as well as through the remote oil filter and twin oil coolers. Also, being a part of Horsepower-Research (an engine shop that is about 5 miles from Vorshlag), which sells and installs a lot of ARE, Daily, Aviad and other dry sump oiling systems, has taught me a lot.

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This 4 stage ARE pump sucks oil from the ARE oil pan (which is a funky shape) through 3 stages, goes through the pump (suction side), has a run back to rear, through the Spintric III oil/air separator, and into the oil settling tank. Above was where we were last time, routing the hoses and making the aluminum hard lines.

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This pair of pictures shows the current setup. The "RETURN" line comes from the combined 3 suction stages, pushes oil back to the oil settling tank. This actually routes through the optional Spintric oil-air separator (shown above left) and that feeds oil into the TOP of the oil tank. Inside the oil tank are several "settling screens" or baffle plates inside that help the oil "settle" from foamy back to liquid form. As it goes through this cycle it works its way back to the bottom of the tank and out to the "RETURN" line, into the pump's pressure stage. The pressure stage then feeds oil back into the engine, as shown in the image above right. Hopefully the labels help make sense of all of this.

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Inside this rear "enclosure" are the ARE oil settling tank (massive, tall unit), plus you can see the ARE breather to the left. We have actually moved this breather tank to the trunk, and mounted it much higher. This move was after a lot of testing and calls to the folks at ARE and some help from Erik at HPR.

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Getting the oil back and forth to the rear mounted oil tank was tricky, too. These long-ish runs to the rear mounted oil tank made it worthwhile to go from flex lines to 3/4" aluminum tubing for the runs under the car. There are 3 main lines going back and forth: from suction side of pump to tank, from tank to the pressure stage of the pump, and one vent line. We found out during dyno and track testing that we do not need that vent line - it caused more trouble than it solved - but I will cover that in a future update.

A reader on one of the forums where this build thread is posted asked about the aluminum tubing, so I went out and took some pictures of the tubing and bender we used on this build.

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The aluminum tubing we used for the long runs of the oil lines to and from the dry sump oil tank is 3/4" OD. This stuff is common, lightweight, and inexpensive. It also comes in numerous wall thicknesses, but even the thinnest wall (.049") is pressure rated at 1300 psi. The aluminum tubing is lighter, less costly, and less bulky for these long runs than the braided hose. We convert from hard to soft line at a bulkhead connector at the ends of each run. Of course if you keep the dry sump tank closer to the engine you can avoid these long runs.

The ends of the tubing are flared for 37° JIC fitting, with a tube nut and sleeve attached before flaring. That picture in the inset above is pretty self explanatory, but you can always look up "tube nuts and sleeves" to see what to get and where. All of the major fittings suppliers can source these parts and the tubing. We stick with Fragola, which is made in the USA.

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The 3/4" oil line tubing was bent with our RDB-25 Baileigh manual tubing bender. We bought this $295 kit specifically to do these small diameter plumbing bends as well as some small diameter structural tubing on some cars.

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There are some 1" and smaller tubing sections we use in areas that we would prefer to crumple in a crash, to avoid wadding up a chassis or roll cage. This '69 Camaro front nose has some of that smaller tubing in place. We also have mandrels for our JD2 tubing bender down to 1" OD, which come in handy for this small stuff too.

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Back to the oil lines. So there are a lot of these hoses and tubing on this car, and a big batch of them run along the driver's side behind the strut. The extreme steering angle of a SLR Racing control arms (more on that later) made us create a "shield" around the back side of the LF wheel well. We also limited the steering rack with spacers, and it still has a lot more turning angle than stock.


continued below