festy's Alfa Romeo Alfetta GTV

[vlad01]

Nice work, the board has turned out well!

Haha thanks, but I don't think I should give up my day job any time soon though

Hi Festy will you still be making these available for sale ? I'm still interested

I still need to do some more testing first, I'll PM you as soon as I'm done.

1km is good enough, and a hell of a lot better than the 10 you had before!

Being "only" 10km/h out already made it one of the most accurate speedos I've ever had
I really didn't want it any closer, and certainly didn't want it reading slow at all...

got some work to do to catch up to my 0.2Km/h speedo error then

[Vpgts076]

Hi Festy,

Is the speedo corrector ready to rock and roll?

I am after a few....

thanks
Daniel

[festy]

All finished, now I'm just waiting on a couple of parts so I can start assembling a few.

[HQ355]

I'm running a festy corrector box, works great, just make sure to use shielded wire on the install, great bit of gear and easy to install !

[festy]

I've been (very) slowly working on building my turbo manifold.
When I decided to go up a size in primaries, that caused clearance issues with the exhaust studs.
My custom brass nuts gave me an extra millimeter which helped a fair bit, but I still had to do a lot of cutting and grinding to give a couple of the nuts enough room to be turned.

I plasma cut a rough log-to-turbo-flange join from some 50x75 RHS - it will need some trimming once I work out exactly where it will go:

rhs.jpg (98.42 KiB) Viewed 3679 times

I'm glad I did go up a size in primaries, they still look small:

m4.jpg (51.09 KiB) Viewed 3679 times

m1.jpg (80.26 KiB) Viewed 3679 times

My plan is to use the internal wastegate - either with a solenoid in the inlet line to give some control over boost, or maybe replace the stock wastegate controller with a linear actuator solenoid directly controlling the wastegate from a flex output.


I'll probably have to position the turbo closer to the front of the manifold to clear the brake m/c. Yet another compromise, but plenty of OEM manifolds have the outlet offset to one end so it should be fine.
I don't think I'll have too much of a problem routing the dump pipe, it will only be 2.5" - mainly because that's the size stainless tubing I have on hand

The rear housing of the turbo is a weird one, I couldn't buy the matching flange so I made one, but the housing has a tapered lip on the outlet that I'm guessing would be a complete PITA to get a decent seal, so I'm thinking I'll just remove the studs and weld a 2.5" v-band flange to the outlet.

After mocking up the layout, I'm a bit concerned about snapping exhaust studs from the weight of the turbo. Making it a proper top mount rather than hanging off the side of the manifold should reduce the leverage effect (if it clears the bonnet), but maybe I can add a support rod in somewhere to take some of the weight...

I've started collecting bits for the oil and coolant lines, still plenty of pieces missing from the puzzle though.

[VL400]

Looks great! New pipe dia is much better.

Plasma cutter made short work of what would normally be a PITA cut with a grinder and hole saw!

[Holden202T]

yeah totally agree, plasma for the win!

looks good man!

[festy]

plasma for the win!

smiley.jpg (3.61 KiB) Viewed 3650 times

Yeah, it's good fun to use compared to grinders etc and makes light work out of jobs like that.
It took longer to mark out that part than to cut it.
The plasma cutter cost me something like $120, because you can't buy consumables for it anymore so the guy selling it was trying to offload it onto some poor unsuspecting sucker....

One ebay $20 generic handpiece later, sourcing consumables will never be a problem again
It's marked as a 30 amp unit, which is average sized but I was never really happy with it's performance on anything over about 3mm steel. Then after it's plug melted I looked into the specs a bit closer and it's actually rated at 30 amps *input*



So I replaced the power cable with something more substantial,
and swapped one of these

10a.jpg (4.28 KiB) Viewed 3650 times

with one of these, to run it from my dedicated welder circuit

56p332.jpg (5.88 KiB) Viewed 3650 times

and now it clean cuts 8mm plate, and rough cuts 12mm

[Holden202T]

lol!

[festy]

Doing a bit of work on the turbo setup, the 3 studs on the rear of the turbo were pretty messed up so decided to replace them. Actually, the original plan was to make a 3 bolt to 2.5" v band flange, but the stud spacing wasn't quite enough for 2.5" so decided instead to weld the v band directly onto the rear housing. Either way, the old studs had do come out.

I sprayed them with wd40 every second day for a fortnight before attacking them with a camming stud remover.
First one came out easy enough, but the other two stripped the threads in the holes and just spun, refusing to come out and resisting all sorts of violence and name calling.
Drilling them out wasn't an option because one of the holes is inside the housing underneath the wastegate so decided to cut them off and weld up the hole to seal it.
I'd spark tested the housing and it didn't look like cast iron but I wasn't totally sure so this would be a good test before attempting to weld the v band on.
Using ER70S-6 filler and absolutely no surface prep (it was still soaked in WD40) I was surprised how well it turned out:

weldtest.jpg (107.26 KiB) Viewed 3607 times

I'll be using ER308L filler for attaching the V band to the housing, so feeling a little more confident in that now.

When I went to refit the rear housing, I found a couple of cracks around the wastegate port. Google tells me it's a pretty common issue with these, and not necessarily terminal...

cracks.jpg (114.62 KiB) Viewed 3607 times

With the studs gone I could test fit the v band clamp:

vband.jpg (126.75 KiB) Viewed 3607 times

I then spent far longer than I'd planned clocking the turbo and fitting the wastegate actuator, then re-doing it all a couple more times to get it right.

Not sure what to make of this though - maybe I better leave this part off, it sounds dangerous

warning.jpg (57.3 KiB) Viewed 3607 times

Next step - remove the exhaust and fit the new log manifold, work out the best position for the turbo flange and tack it on. This is the only time I miss my little mig welder

tacked.jpg (139.38 KiB) Viewed 3607 times

Then, test fit the turbo to make sure it... umm... ... fits....


Glad I only tacked it on

bugger.jpg (160.61 KiB) Viewed 3607 times