An exhausting time

By moving the turbos from their natural home, the original oil and water feed & return pipes were no longer suitable. The water pipes have already been done, but the oil pipes required a bit of external help to ensure we had pipework suitable for the temperature and pressure of the oil. We contacted Hosequip who are based not far down the road, and talked to John who has made up some wonderful braided hoses.

With these in place, and the oil feed coming from the back of the block, we reassembled the rest of the engine and gearbox, and checked the fit of the starter motor with the new gearbox.

Before fitting this back into the car, we started to run the brake and clutch lines down the corner of the engine bay – access is a little tricky with the engine in place!

The new oil lines look great through the front.

We’d identified that the original gearbox mount we made was not quite correctly aligned, and was putting some twist into the mount – but it was done before the engine & gearbox were properly mounted, so it’s not too surprising that it needed a small tweak. Once this was done, and the rubber mount sitting correctly, we attached the clutch slave cylinder to the side of the gearbox.

Taking some more of the stainless bumper bars, we continued working on the exhaust.

Using two corner pieces, and the centre section of the bit used for the bits directly off the turbos, we brought the pipes towards the gearbox, away from the steering column, and turned towards the back of the car.

From the side it looks a little low, but none of it is any lower than the front crossmember, which is the lowest point of the car – there’s still plenty of ground clearance so speedbumps shouldn’t be an issue I hope!