Builds Red Dawn (60 converted 62 Build Thread w/ R2.8) (6 Viewers)

[TheNeek]

I've been purchasing parts. I think all the major components have been procured. Waiting on my Spal fan kit.

Been keeping myself busy, but this project should really start moving along again. Fits and starts seems to be the way I work these days. I spliced the original gear selector rod with the stainless rod and clevis end from Lokar. I'll test fit it today and then get a coat of paint on the FJ62 end. I need to get a new bronze and rubber bushing for it as well.

When the truck was first painted I had a new exhaust system from the merge back constructed by a local shop. Now it's time to cut the rest of the front off and get it ready for the new mid section. I got the 2.5" v-band on the old section. I'll toss a coat of high temp paint on here as well before I put it back in the truck and start routing the mid section.

Gets the job done.

Removed some "unnecessary engine parts"

Started pulling the air intake top apart. Going to adapt it with a 3" pipe for the MAF. I know the IHZ would work and I even found them for sale new for fairly cheap, but it's only 2.5" in diameter and the Cummins manual is very specific that a 3" pipe is required for proper measurement, even though the turbo inlet is 2.1". I think it's a fun project as well. I inserted a picture of a FZ80? canister top at the bottom of this post which would be prefect but I can't seem to find one. See if I can manage the fab work if a suitable top can't be found.

This will be where the mountain of work is. The cooling package bits are all here. New Mishimoto radiator and an air to air intercooler core that is bang-on the right size from Vibrant. Seems weird to cut up the radiator flanges, but it must be done to get this all neat and tidy. Part of me wonders why I didn't just try to make my own radiator as well. One giant project at a time I guess.

If anyone knows where a 1hd-t air canister top might be I'd entertain buying one. It would save me all the fab work and be a great fall back solution for the intake. The one on the right:

Is this one on the right the same as above? Looks like an FZ80 top?

 

[TheNeek]

I went ahead and bought this FZ80 box from Ebay. Should be here in a week. Problem solved?

 

[NookShneer]

I inserted a picture of a FZ80? canister top at the bottom of this post which would be prefect but I can't seem to find one. See if I can manage the fab work if a suitable top can't be found.

This will be where the mountain of work is. The cooling package bits are all here. New Mishimoto radiator and an air to air intercooler core that is bang-on the right size from Vibrant. Seems weird to cut up the radiator flanges, but it must be done to get this all neat and tidy. Part of me wonders why I didn't just try to make my own radiator as well. One giant project at a time I guess.

If anyone knows where a 1hd-t air canister top might be I'd entertain buying one. It would save me all the fab work and be a great fall back solution for the intake. The one on the right:

Is this one on the right the same as above? Looks like an FZ80 top?

[/QUOTE]

Beat me to it. Yup in the 80 series box

 

[ProwlerDriver]

Im running the mishi radiator and am looking for an air to air intercooler setup and am very interested into where this goes!

 

[TheNeek]

Im running the mishi radiator and am looking for an air to air intercooler setup and am very interested into where this goes!

Was that you on cruiserheads over the weekend? I'm going to get the core support in the truck soon and the intercooler is high on the list of priorities when that happens.

 

[ProwlerDriver]

Was that you on cruiserheads over the weekend? I'm going to get the core support in the truck soon and the intercooler is high on the list of priorities when that happens.

yeah that’s me. Ended up finding that performance diesel air to air which should be here from oz on Monday! Looking forward to your build

 

[TheNeek]

Starting to really finish up under the truck. I connected the transfer case electronics sensors to the patch harness. I removed one connection that was going to the old transmission. Things are a bit tight and the x-case shifter means I don't want the harness loom resting against any of that stuff. So I took a few hours and fabricated some harness uprights, structure or tabs. Not really sure what to call them. You can see in this first picture there is a big boss on the 6L80E that I'm sure is for some plastic clip thing that does harness management on the Chevy's they go into. I thought about trying to order whatever it was that went in there, but decided against it.

Cut, drilled, filed, face sanded and bent some aluminum brackets.

What's an engine swap without a fair number of zipties, amirite?

One towards the front:

One out back:

We had one dry morning this weekend so I got to paint the rear section of the exhaust. This was built by an exhaust shop a few years back because ours was rotted out when we bought the truck.

I got it back in without scratching all of it off. Started cutting tube for the mid section. This will be another update.

I started cutting flanges off a brand new mishimoto aluminum radiator. These flanges mount the radiator to the core support, but since I'm moving it towards the engine, they are just in the way. You can see below that they sit fairly proud of the radiator core surface. I really want the stack up to be tight and as short as possible. I'll be attaching the intercooler and radiator together and then setting the entire assembly onto the core support. Still separate pieces, but bolted together so they go in and out as one. I plan to use the stock mounting locations on the core support with some custom bracketry that adapts the stack to those factory locations.

Now the intercooler core sits close to the radiator and doesn't need to fit between those bent pieces. I filed down the edges of the radiator to be flat. You can see in the previous photo like this that the core is really tightly wedged between these pieces.

Core support is back in the truck and I hoping to get the cooling stack all done this Christmas season. It's a big job, probably the most daunting of the entire build.

 

[TheNeek]

I built the mid-section of the exhaust. Nothing spectacular, but worth taking pictures of. Enjoy.

Added the same black paint. I added it to stop rust... yea... that's why, not like my welds are ugly or anything.

 

[TheNeek]

Plans. Lots of Plans. It seems like the cooling package for this swap has been rolling around in my head for ages. I put my ideas into CAD, then realized there were things in the way and put new ideas into CAD. Of course I needed to do more thinking and had to come up with a third plan in CAD. I have started executing this concept and have been making some decent progress. First things first. I set the core support on the truck with the stainless battery trays.

Started to get a good idea of things in space and how the radiator and intercooler "work together" as it were.

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but the intercooler core is exactly the same width as the radiator core. I wanted to maximize the heat transfer surface by not having the intercooler end tanks blocking any airflow over the radiator core. This was going to cause some challenges which you'll see as this post rolls along. The concept for mounting should take care of them and keep everything relatively stock feeling, even if things were moved around.

Here is a decent picture of why the intercooler width is an issue. The stock radiator mounts (which I like the idea of very much) are right where an end tank would need to be. It looks like there is enough room outboard to move them and reuse the rubber bushed mounting concept. I'll just weld them straight to the core support. Chances are I'll have to get crafty with the AC lines, but these were going to be custom anyway. Should be relatively easy to pop some holes in the core support for them.

I modeled the radiator, intercooler core and placed some basic battery trays in space. Then started building the end tanks and mounting digitally. These two elements are probably the two most complicated. There is also some top mounts that move the radiator back from the core support. All of this will be part of the intercooler. The plan is to mount the radiator and the intercooler together and then drop the whole assembly into the truck onto the factory mounting points. Top two locations will be the stock location, bottom mounts will be move out about an inch or so.

Here is the intercooler design. This will all be TIG welded together:

It's not going to win any beauty contests but does the job and is the best solution I could come up with while sticking my design concept of a 24" wide intercooler core.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

That's not a lot of plenum volume going to the lower half of the intercooler core. Any concerns about flow to the bottom half?. Gotta make compromises if you're keeping the batteries there. Nice design.

 

[TheNeek]

I made a little test piece to make sure my top mounting concept would work with some scrap aluminum I had lying around. The spacing looks good and the factory rubber mounts fit well. I'm going to do some "sealing" around the edges to keep as much of the air as possible pushing through all the cores.

The great thing about CAD is the drafting. I modeled the end tanks as a sheetmetal part so I can make them flat and print out some 1:1 templates. I call it "glue stick fabrication".

A little work on the bandsaw and some bump bending of the endtank caps and we've got something that is looking close.

A couple gaps I'll be having to figure out:

The fit up is still in progress. Get these end tanks done and then I can move on towards mounting.

The 15° chamfer of these back plates is making things complicated, but is need to avoid any problems with the core support which tips in on both sides.

 

[TheNeek]

That's not a lot of plenum volume going to the lower half of the intercooler core. Any concerns about flow to the bottom half?. Gotta make compromises if you're keeping the batteries there. Nice design.

yea, I looked a ton of end tank designs and noticed that this tapered approach is pretty common. Some of them are very narrow, more so than the one I'm attempting.. Can't say mine is the pinnacle of engineering, but it will work. I looked at this picture of an old F1 intercooler and said "ok, I think I'm fine".

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Relative pressure and flow requirements are a huge factor in intercooler design. Depending on pressure and flow, having end tanks like that can dramatically reduce intercooler efficiency. Do you have the ability to do flow calculations?

Have a read here:

Intercooler Sizing And End Tank Design With Rob Dahm

Rob Dahm rethinks, redesigns, and retests his current intercooler and end tanks to unlock more horsepower on his 4 rotor RX7. Using CFD analysis, he identifies where the current setup has restrictions that are causing pressure drop and robbing Rob's 4 Rotor of horsepower

www.garrettmotion.com

 

[TheNeek]

Relative pressure and flow requirements are a huge factor in intercooler design. Depending on pressure and flow, having end tanks like that can dramatically reduce intercooler efficiency. Do you have the ability to do flow calculations?

Have a read here:

Intercooler Sizing And End Tank Design With Rob Dahm

Rob Dahm rethinks, redesigns, and retests his current intercooler and end tanks to unlock more horsepower on his 4 rotor RX7. Using CFD analysis, he identifies where the current setup has restrictions that are causing pressure drop and robbing Rob's 4 Rotor of horsepower

www.garrettmotion.com

Sure. I could do some flow simulations in solidworks. There are definitely some edges to smooth if I wanted to. The sharp 90° inlet is probably a bigger issue than the tight endtank bottoms. I'm not entirely sold on their being big gains at the intercooler for such a small engine that isn't moving gigantic volumes of air. The turbo outlet of the little Holset HE200wg is less than 1.5" in diameter. Puts out .33 kg/s max. She's not a big puffer.

The big gains so far will be the EGR delete.

 

[TheNeek]

@GLTHFJ60
I was in a slow meeting this morning and did a flow simulation on the intercooler. .33kg/s is the inlet mass flow rate on the right hand "inlet". Atmospheric pressure at the left side "outlet". I did an adaptive mesh with 5 refinements. It's true, that the flow through the lower section of the intercooler is slow. The inlet flow is faster than what is moving across the core. That shows me that the core isn't a significant restriction. The issue looks to be the outlet geometry. Maybe I should put in some work there. Those sharp angles as the flow collects back together and through the outlet tube could be improved.

Flow:

Mesh with refinement values:

Thanks for pushing me to do this. I should have looked at it first.

edit -

Here is a particle study for the intercooler. If you click the photo below it should take you to a video.

Animation 1 by Neeko, on Flickr

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Sooooo cool that you can do that. Nice work man. I used an off-the-shelf intercooler from a powerstroke on my truck which fit reasonably well, so I didn't go through any of this. To clarify, i didn't go through flow-calculating my own intercooler design, not that I'd know how

 

[TheNeek]

Sooooo cool that you can do that. Nice work man. I used an off-the-shelf intercooler from a powerstroke on my truck which fit reasonably well, so I didn't go through any of this. To clarify, i didn't go through flow-calculating my own intercooler design, not that I'd know how

Using previously designed solutions would have been preferred for me as well. I just couldn't find an intercooler with the dimensions I needed. Couple that with the tight constraints and my desire to not completely cut apart the front end and I ended up taking on the challenge of fitting and welding together my own unit. Since you dig this stuff so much I added a particle study to the previous post I did. It's just a little video that shows relative velocities through the intercooler. It's kind of fun, but I don't plan on iterating the design so it's really just pretty pictures at this point.

 

[TheNeek]

Got the end tanks glued together. "welded" would be too generous. I'm getting better with aluminum. For only my second project, I'm happy with the results. I will need to devise a pressure setup to pressure test the IC when it's all done. Fit up took ages. Bending all this stuff with just round stuff around the shop and my hands took quite a while.

End tanks tacked up and test fit on the core.

Kind of grey. The rotary table I made makes it look ok.

All done. Had some good runs in there, had some challenging sections as well. Always learning. Not afraid to show you guys the warts.

 

[Major Nelson]

Well.....thanks to you I blew the first half of my work day.

 

[cwwfj60]

Got the end tanks glued together. "welded" would be too generous. I'm getting better with aluminum. For only my second project, I'm happy with the results. I will need to devise a pressure setup to pressure test the IC when it's all done. Fit up took ages. Bending all this stuff with just round stuff around the shop and my hands took quite a while.

End tanks tacked up and test fit on the core.

Kind of grey. The rotary table I made makes it look ok.

All done. Had some good runs in there, had some challenging sections as well. Always learning. Not afraid to show you guys the warts.

Impressive for your second project

Impressive for your second project