2016.07.25 - UPDATE! - EXHAUSTING WOODWORKING..!!!!
For those of you who don't know, yesterday was a "Man Points Sunday" event hosted by
@NorCal69... and a lot of guys got in on the action. It's a great way to get re-motivated to work on a build and a great opportunity for some friendly smack-talking as well.
The exhaust system planning is coming along nicely, and the pieces of the puzzle are almost all ready for assembly. Since the exhaust system will be going together soon... I really needed to get the headers finish-welded, and there is also a need to double-check the new Brodix exhaust ports to insure that they flow cleanly and without obstruction into the rectangle-port exhaust flanges. The biggest obstacle to all of this is the lack of space in the garage, and the loss of my workbench a few months ago as a storage spot for my replacement rear bedside floor. It seemed like a good a time as any to finally resolve my space issues, and get this project "flowing" again.
Any good project starts with a pile of fresh 2x4's from the local lumberyard!!!
The bedfloor has never really been very stable sitting on the workbench. It's surprisingly flexible torsionally, so I wanted to make sure that there would be a safe way to move it without putting a permanent kink, or damage in the part. So the basic idea was to run a couple of 2x4's down along the underside and run lag-bolts down through the factory body mount holes to lock it down....then run a few wooden "cross members" to increase the stiffness as well. One final 2x4 was run right down the center to help gently slide it off the workbench, since the outer 2x4s were wider than my workbench. Taking small steps, I was able to walk the bedfloor off the edge of the bench and gently ease it to the floor....
I had a leftover set of big casters left over from when I finally finished up the front axle / suspension portion of the build, so I bolted them on as well... just to make things easier to move around as needed.
FINALLY....... by around 7PM, I was already tired, but was ready to get to the business of doing some exhaust-related work. I pulled the ORI strut out of the way, and unbolted the PS header so that I could bring it over to the workbench for a test fitting (which had never been done before).
This particular Brodix head is a lot nicer than the factory iron 502 head that I have on the engine now, but it maintains the original exhaust port height. That will obviously save me a lot of time and rework of the headers. The one thing that is quite different is the shape of the exhaust ports themselves. The new ones are a pretty pronounced "D" shape, whereas the old heads are more rectangular. The main concern was making sure that there wouldn't be any "overhang" of the header flange that might block the exhaust flow into the headers, or any sharp edges that could create turbulence. So it carefully fit-up a piece of construction paper and transferred the Brodix port shape to a template.... then laid it over the headers to see how bad things were going to be.
The end result isn't too bad:
There are a few places where the header flange encroaches into the port by maybe 1/16" like you can see on the right side of this port:
So... I think in those areas I can simply mark them, then when I cut the tubes out of the flange to do the individual welding of the primary tubes, I can take a die grinder to the header flange to open those spot up just a tad... then when the tube is re-installed I can just hammerform it to the slightly larger shape and everything should be perfect.
-G