Recent content by Br3ntfire

@wngrog I had this same problem with my 61 when I replaced my calipers—bled and bled and bled and bled (w/ power bleeder) and the pedal just went straight to the floor. Turns out that I had a nasty air bubble stuck in my MC—A bench bleed fixed it. Looks like the parts cannon has been lit, but...

Yeah, sure did! One was perfectly on center, the other was off a little bit, but not enough to hit any threads. Not sure if that was a measurement error or because it was more angled and the bit wandered or if it was a result of tolerance stacking...or just plain ol' user error.

Thanks! I could, but if I were to do it again, I'd want to do it in aluminum. The plywood wasn't quite rigid enough to keep things as tight as I'd want if someone else were risking their engine with my product. More work with tolerances too to make sure it works "as advertised" every time

I did some reverse engineering to make a guide plate to perfectly center my drill bits to get the broken exhaust studs out of my block without ruining the threads. First i scanned both a single and the half gasket set, then busted out the micrometer and took a bunch of measurements while...

Look what's here! The fit and finish of both are incredible

All small parts are in, and the GTurbo is scheduled for delivery today! Here's my labeled hardware pile:

Damn, she was mangled!

Spent 3 hours today cleaning most of the last 36 years of grime off the side of the engine block with degreaser, a steam cleaner and elbow grease. Still some more to go but that's all the time I have today. Do I need to worry about how flat the exhaust manifold mating surface is? I'm worried...

Sooo we're 0.0845" out of flat (almost 3/32"). This is on my CNC spoilboard right after a flattening pass, so not perfectly flat but d—n close.

I'm back from vacation and working on this today. Bit of a 💩-show, and it's looking more and more like someone who either didn't know wtf they were doing, or gave precisely zero f's had pulled and reinstalled the manifold sometime in the past - only three of the studs didn't pull with the nuts...

A few OEM NOM NOM treats came in from the UAE today. A MUCH larger package from Japan is on its way. My ritual when parts come in is to get in EPC and immediately label them for ease of installation later—it's saved my butt a bunch of times, especially with a ton of similar but different parts...

With the help of a friend to help keep things held down + a plastic deadblow hammer and some strong whacks, we were able to get the turbine outlet elbow off the turbo. I measured axial shaft play at 0.178 mm, so it's definitely time to make the decision: rebuild or GTurbo. Radial play was...

Forgot to say—if anyone has recommendations on a good shop with CT26 rebuild experience, I'd love the advice. I know a few of the questions to ask, but if I'm being honest I know little enough it'd be fairly easy to scam me.

There have only been 2 truly difficult bolts so far during this process, which I'm undyingly grateful for on what was previously a very rusty truck. I'm not sure how the frame and body were so rusty, but nearly every bolt in the engine bay is in great shape. This one took several heat cycles...

Lil' photo dump & update: Turbo's off the truck now. Took some doing, mainly this lil' bas——d, which was both difficult to get leverage on AND one of the more stubborn bolts I messed with. It had just accumulated a TON of crud around it—I went from thinking it was a 16 to realizing it was a 14...