Hello ladies and gents, so after a lot of pms and questions regarding my DIY v-mount, heres a write up and walk through of my vmount and other misc stuff...lol.

So the first thing i wanted to address was the cooling system of my FD. As we all know our cars run hella hot and im not too comfy with our plastic rad end tanks etc....
So i upgraded to a alum. Koyo rad and while waiting for it to come in, i thought what the hey, im going to try to do a v-mount using common hand tools....here starts the journey...

Before...started to teardown as i waited for parts to show up



Intercooler has arrived!





Now just waiting for the Rad, which was delayed for another week.....soooo i decided to keep myself occupied and addressed small things:

1. Made a mounting bracket for the PFC unit: Used some flat aluminum stock









used some velcro to attach the ecu to the bracket and add some cushioning..



Done...


2. Made a Commander holder, wanted to be able to read it easily...

 

After paint:







Still no rad at this point...sooooo....

Cleaned up the brakes:









relubed all the slider pins and cleaned brake pad journals



Done:





Finally!! The Radiator arrives!!

 

So now that the Rad was here, I needed to make some modifications to the rad so that it would work with the angle it was going to be used. The outlet at the bottom had to be moved to the top of the rad to make the cooling plumbing easier....By doing this and to make sure that the coolant flows the intended way, the rad had to be make to a twin pass, a partition had to be added to the top of the rad..

After doing research, I came across Weir Technologies in Burlington. Seen a lot of his work, his exhaust and turbo manifolds are a work of art. Man can this man weld. Got the rad in Friday night and he took time out of his saturday to meet with me. Swell dude:

Heres Aaron Weir going over the rad with the modification i outlined:





He was a bit swamped so he told me he'll have it done in a week...more waiting and so i did more house-keeping...

rear wiper delete:



insert..


painted insert



With week almost over and the Rad being done soon, i began further teardown:





When i mocked up the intercooler, I knew I had to make as much room as possible so I relocated the fuse box to the front:



made a bracket:



Still accessible from under the front bumper



Thats it for tonite....sorry for the pic intensive thread...lol. more tomorrow

 

Good job man....for someone new to the scene your getting ur sh*t together quick! Keep up the good work!

 

What intercooler core did you end up gonig with??

nice work so far!

 

Awesome work!

 

thanks Shawn, yeah i figured the best way to learn is by hands on. Hows the tranny rebuild going??

 

Thanks, the intercooler is from CXRacing, ebay special. They are all the same, bar and fin....lol the quality is actually pretty good. Nice welds and when we pressure tested it no leaks so so far im happy.

Im still running the stock twins so i didnt want to get too big of an intercooler and get some pressure drop so this one suits me fine, ill post dimensions when i find them...lol

 

Thanks, Darryl!

 

To relocate the fuse box to the front, I had to open up the wire loom under the front support to get more slack from the wires. This also allowed me to separate the Fan wires and move them all the way over to the intake side for easier connection to the fans:





Anybody know what this is supposed to be connected to??



Done the electrical relocations:

view from the top with front crash bar


View from underneath crash bar


By relocating the fuse box here, i thought it was all good...lol....well i ran into a small issue....more on that later

So later on that night I had a stag and doe to go to so off i went and on the way there my DD started acting weird, radio shut off....sputtering...even when i kept the revs up....yep you guessed it! My alternator went to the *******....so after getting it towed and missing the stag and doe..... So yeah i felt so low....2 cars not running...

the next day..



after i finished her, i was able to run more errands, like meeting up with Aaron to go over the finished rad...







We're home!! Koyo vmount rad vs. stock:

you can see the new endtank added and the "v" where the partition was added to the inside of the rad. Bottom outlet was closed and relocated to the top

 

AST nipple also moved to new endtank





Mock up time is close at hand...bolted the fans to the rad:

Did not quite line up..


dremel'ed a new hole..


done...


Mock up starts....rad first...



some tool boxes to help..



intercooler next....

This was the original design i had in mind with intercooler inlet and outlet up top but when i closed the hood, there was no way the hood would shut with the piping...



so...i flipped the script...lol



more updates later, im hungry

 

So when he welded the rad, he just closed the bottom neck up, cut a section out of the top, made a tank and then welded her all back up?

 

What's the bill on the rad? I really want to go v-mount.

 

sorry for the no updates, my pc crapped out after almost 8 yrs...lol

yes pretty much all he did.

the cost to do all that was $200, warrantied by weirtech of course

 

vmounts kick ***. Nice work so far, I can't wait to see it when it's done.

 

Cool thread.

 

Sweet, got a hold of a loaner laptop....

So yes, with the oem rad mount, the powersteering loop is fine where it is, but i decided to relocate mine to behind the rad fans for less interruption of air flow...that and it looks a lot better..

heres the loop...



So if you crawl underneath the car, theres two areas where the hard lines meet the rubber inlet and return hoses. There are compression rings in each end that you will need to obviously remove to take the p.s loop out...

CAUTION!!! safety first, make sure that you are wearing safety glasses/goggles when doing work that involves chemicals!!

To lessen the mess, i found 2 bolts with roughly the same, if not slightly larger than the diameter of the rubber hoses and used them as temporary plugs as i modified the hardline....and save some p/s fluid.

I cut approximately 3 inches off each end....




reinstalled the clamps....turned out wonderfully...the p/s loop is right behind the rad fans and is cleanly tucked in....hell even I didnt expect it to work out this good..



stock mounting bracket on the p/s loop....


used it as an additional mount to the rad fan housing...



So once everything was buttoned up, check for leaks obviously. To bleed the p/s system, add fluid and without starting the car, turn the steering wheel lock to lock making sure not to keep it in full lock for prolonged periods of time. Check fluid and add as needed. You may need to repeat this procedure a couple of times..

With p/s loop addressed, we can go ahead with the vmount....the most tedious job I had to do was to make the various brackets needed to mount the rad and intercoolers. Remember that I had nothing but hand tools...no band saw...no press brake...

Rad: used square aluminum tubing to mount and provide support for the rad and attach it to the frame with rubber isolators.. Im sure you could get away with just a flat aluminum stock but i wanted to make sure i was supporting a rad full of coolant...

 

Once I was happy with the location/orientation of the rad, I finished bolting everything up. Now to the part that gave me the most headache....the rad hoses.

At first i was able to use the upper and rad hoses...with the bends that i needed and made a template hose that would work....joined them with metal inserts but no dice, once the system was pressurized, hello submarine leaks...Luckily the guys at partsource think i live there and were kind enough to let me to the back with my template and go thru their inventory of hoses.....yes they are pimps with an inventory of hos...

aaaanyways, so i was able to find a hose for a GM Truck with the bends that i needed. Threw it on the car and after some manipulation, tbolt clamps, i was in business. I guess i couldve saved myself the hassle and gotten my Aaron to make me aluminum hoses from the get go and jus leave me enough gap to join the inlet and outlet to the engine....but I decided against this since i needed to be able to squeeze the hoses when i "burped the system"....to each his own



While i had the engine drained, I thought what the hey, might as well change the thermostat....


the gasket....apparently you have to buy it separately now....what a rip.


So theres three bolts attaching the thermostat housing to the block, loosen these..and gentle remove the cover..



hello mr. thermostat....


heres a closer pic of the thermostat, making attention to the orientation of the "jiggle pin" on the thermostat. Its at the top



thermostat removed..


New thermostat....Make sure that on the new gasket, the indentation on the inside diameter goes above the "jiggle pin" like so...


make sure the mating surfaces are clean and then bolt the housing back using the FSM torque specs...

 

I also wanted to change the thermoswitch to the FC thermoswitch but it would be a lot more involved to remove the waterpump housing...next time then

So with the cooling system almost done, waiting on the AST, the intercooler was next..

where engine bay space and plumbing let me locate the intercooler..


made brackets....made the bends with creative big C-clamp usage...





done...


the next issue i had was the intercooler piping....i knew that i had to get Aaron to weld up piping for me...but how the hell was i gonna get the car there???? so after some trial and error with some piping i had in hand...i kick something under the car.....it was the stock intercooler pipe....fate?? Hell yes and i couldnt believe that it actually fit!!!



Man did it feel like it was coming together....now for the charge pipe side.....you thought the stock intercooler pipe was mcgyver???....stay tuned for the other side...

 

Awesome progress!

Glad everything is coming together, vmounts rock!

 

Update your thread!

 

Wow, that's an awesome DYI you got there, good progress.............. thanks for sharing with us!!!

 

how did this come out, im debating on getting one also. im going single turbo though so it would prob be a bit easier on charge side

 

I hope you're going with a new vented hood that will best exhaust that setup no?