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Above 1200 Sq/FT 86's 20HP shop

Wokspaces above 1200 squarefeet.
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86turbodsl

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Jul 1, 2005
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6,556
Location
Michigan
Yeah, i think you're right, but i still have the desire to help others so i get into trouble.

The new borla's are here, just waiting on the vband flanges from amazon and i hope they fit. I am going to have to drive the car next week, there's no way around it. Truck aint going out in the snow.

I spent some time this afternoon digging stuff out of the bush/machine shed. Prepping the namco mast, which will NOT be as easy as i thought, and the big 4 post lift came out of storage. I am going to try to get that mapped out this winter as i need to work on the truck and need somewhere to do it. It's been too long.
 
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macgyver37

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Mar 7, 2013
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609
Location
Pittsburg, Kansas
What's the saying around here, if you're lonely, get a lift, a truck and a trailer?

I had to make a policy for my shop as it it my source of income and I let it get away from me a few times where someone else's project was in the shop for a Very long time. Anyway the policy now is that I am willing to help, but the vehicle is leaving when the owner does. If they want to stay up all night, that's fine, but if they leave, it leaves.

It still allows me to help, but it sets boundaries. (Don't let lack of parts or wrong parts stop you from following through with the rule, it has to be Their problem, not yours. If a part is wrong and they have to leave, then it gets thrown back together enough to drag it outside before they leave, sounds harsh, but there has to be a line somewhere.) Now, if you are like me, you will have your own broken stuff on the lift so it will never be open...
 
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86turbodsl

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Michigan
This. I like it. My **** is usually on the lift so I don't fight it much. The vbands don't fit. So I have to cut up the old ones or swap to new. That risks me taking the car this week so I am not sure what I'm doing going forward. We will see.
 
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86turbodsl

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Michigan
Ok, shop is heating up, to fill everyone in on what's going on:

My audi is back on the lift. The other dude's car wouldn't make it to my place. He jacked it up in his garage and i rolled around under it last night, and we pronounced it dead. It's a 2008 Exploder. 4.0/5R55S trans. Terrible continuous shudder while moving. We think the valve body might be junk, trying to put in two gears at once. he's unwilling to spend money on it at 265K. I'm done with it.

I am being forced to drive my car this week. No options. I put the rest of it back together this weekend, with a caveat. The exhaust is on the edge of what i can stand for volume. The gibson research mid muffler is staying. The jones resonators behind the axle are going. I found that the layout of them and the position of the vband flanges lets the rear pipes rotate out of the hangers, so they will drop down. Still connected, but will eventually hit pavement. I ordered what are marketed as quieter mufflers, Borla ProXS mufflers, which are a bit longer and supposedly have no drone.
My plan was to order new vband connectors that match and just swap out the rear pipes, about 3 ft each long. The original vband connections came from ebay and i didn't have a week to wait for them so i picked a pair off amazon that LOOKED like they should match. Did anyone else know that there's apparently no standard on chinesium vband sizing? The new flanges don't fit and aren't even the same diameter. I hope the clamps never break. I may order spares just to sit on the shelf... :rolleyes:

So since the flanges don't match, i have 2 options. Either pull the mid pipe and replace the flanges with new on both sides, or whack off the jones bullets and try to make the old pipes fit. Either way, my grand plan will not work. The thought was to have a backup (jones) pipe to quick put on the car in case i can't finish in time to go to work this tuesday. Sooo. That's not going to work.

My new backup plan is to whack the jones' resonators off the existing pipes, and tack the borlas on it in place. Test the volume on car on lift. IF it's acceptable, do the work to fit the new borla's ONE at a time to completion, so i can just tack the jones back in place on the other one if i run out of time. I have today, and a little bit of tomorrow to work, and monday night AFTER work. Which is not much time to fab and weld pipes. I am WFH monday,wed this week and AT office 125 miles round trip tues,thurs-fri. With snow moving in. I'm out of time and options.

I'll take a photo of the borlas tacked on lol. And will advise on volume when i get them. Stay tuned.
 
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86turbodsl

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Jul 1, 2005
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Michigan
Yeah, but i won't have any more time next weekend than i do this weekend. It's just kicking the can down the road.
 
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Seagoon

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Jan 23, 2014
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859
Location
Scunthorpe. UK.
True - but it would give you time to collect all the right parts so you don't have to bodge the job with what you have.
If I have misunderstood, and you are all rigged up with the best parts you can get then I apologize
 
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Strouty

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Mar 21, 2010
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Location
Southern Maine
The thing that would worry me is opening yourself up to something that can't be finished, then you are stuck. I know that this isn't something you want to hear, but just rent a car for a week or two. Figure that the some of the savings you have from doing the work yourself is paying for the rental, but it sounds to me that you are setting yourself up for a catastrophe. I have done this many times myself, I have been lucky enough that I can either borrow a vehicle or just work from home, but I technically don't have someone setting my schedule. I am inches from your position right now as this morning I found out my new truck not only has about two glow plugs that work, there is no cord to plug it in, double whammy.
 
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86turbodsl

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Jul 1, 2005
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Michigan
I just cut both mufflers off the tailpipes. They can be glued back on easily.

I am going to tack the borlas on and check sound. If it doesn't work, i may be stuck because that space is very tough to get a muffler in. The proxs were about the shortest 304ss ones i could get with a good reputation.

As far as renting a car, i looked into this, it would cost me over 500 a week. that's a negative.

I don't have the best possible scenario here, but it's been a tough lesson to learn to not wait around for perfection. I've been struggling with that for years. Time to just get it done.

I hope your situation improves Strouty! Keep us in the loop. I will tack the mufflers on and report back shortly.
 
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86turbodsl

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Ok, the mufflers were tack welded to the original tailpipes and installed on car.

The car is slightly quieter, with less of a raspy tone. I'd classify it as more of the borla bumblee sound that's typical of euro sports cars.
I'm a little amazed how loud it still is with 2 mufflers in each pipe. I may remove the center section at some later date and add the jones resonators. Those would be straight thru and easy to add later. As for now, i will work on one pipe at a time, and if i get to monday evening and still not done, i can always tack the jones back on one side. I should be able to get at least one side done in that amount of time. Wife and daughter are going out tonight so i will be home alone and should be able to get something done by bedtime.
2024-01-06-15-20-54-834.jpg2024-01-06-15-07-18-615.jpg
 
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jbmatth

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Jun 3, 2013
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5,682
Location
Northern Ok.
I've used the ProXS mufflers before and really liked them, much better than the Flowmaster 10 series I had on it at the time. I used the same ones on my Saturn and it really mellowed it down and made highway driving bearable. As for Vbands, I've fought the same thing a few times, glad to hear you are getting it solved though. If it makes you feel better when I was working on my Mustang this weekend I discovered the exhaust hanger is set up to where you can't remove the pipes without cutting something, definitely built by a cheap exhaust shop, terrible welds, kinked bends, and just tossed together, pretty sad for sure.

JB
 
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86turbodsl

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Michigan
Well that's good to hear. I only got a feel for them on the lift, not under load, so it's a bit of a guess at this point. I reversed the orientation of the hanger, so if the vband wants to twist, it will tighten into the hanger. Beats the alternative i think , which was a pin drilled into the vband.
nobody will love your car as much as you do, that's why i tend to do my own work. Nobody to blame but me lol...
 
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86turbodsl

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Well that was fun. Finished welding the driver pipe up, just was going to put a little more weld on the hanger and welder quit. No output. I switched some controls around and got a little more arc strikes but nothing significant. So it looks like i can't finish the other pipe at this time. I just migged spot welds on the passenger pipe to get the jones back on it and put it back on. So now i need to find the service manual for the syncro 300 and figure out what is wrong there. It's always something.
 
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bimmer1980

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Feb 5, 2009
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2,104
Location
York, PA
Were you at least able to drive the car to work today?

***** about the welder.... Hopefully it's just a contactor or switch or something simple.... I'm assuming that was the tig welder? Didn't you comment awhile ago about your foot pedal having some issues?
 
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86turbodsl

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I gave my car to the wife to drive the 5 miles to work. She ended up taking my daughters audi because she went to work and got sent home. Temps are getting shuffled around right now. So for now, nobody had to drive it a long distance.

The tig was the one that died. The pedal has been pretty trouble free since i spent a bit of time working on it. I have no HF and no arc. I need to do some more testing, which i may get to tonight. I have a service manual pdf somewhere, but have to find it. There's only 1 pc board on that welder, all through hole. It's likely fixable as long as it's not too complicated of a fix. Old syncrowaves used a light bulb/variable resistor optoisolator to set welding current. Those are long out of production. I don't think anybody has come up with an equivalent circuit. I'm just enough of a hack in EE that i don't feel real comfortable doing that sort of thing. I started out as an EE student many years ago, and made it through some of the classes but never finished after i switched to ME. Circuit design was not something i covered. Some circuit analysis, but i'm pretty rusty. With the state of the world now i probably should have stayed in EE.. oh well. I enjoy mechanical things a whole lot more.
 
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86turbodsl

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Jul 1, 2005
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Michigan
I somewhat regret not moving forward with my EE degree. I had a nice run ~25yrs designing engines. Now NOBODY wants engines. Whole world has gone stark raving nuts. If i'd gone EE i'd still be fat and happy. But probably a lot more bored. I've worked on some truly cool stuff over the years. 2 Million dollars of prototype engines in the back of a pickup running across town. I'm a little nuts...
 
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86turbodsl

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I found the technical service manual for the welder. It's not as detailed as i hoped. I still need to look it over more carefully and do some testing. I hope to get to it by Friday night. I think tonight i put snow tires on the audi and last night i got chains on the tractor and ready for the storms. I still need to get gasoline.
 
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86turbodsl

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Jul 1, 2005
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Michigan
Well in the never ending *** kick, i took the audi to town this morning for a pharmacy run. about 6 to 7 miles down the road, the low oil pressure light came on. Called my daughter to come get me. We went to town and ran the errands, then we stopped at the car and topped up oil, which wasn't that low. Went about 3-4 miles before the light came on again. Did it 3 times on the way home. A shut down for a few seconds fixes it momentarily. I have a theory that there is junk in the oil pan slowly filling up the pickup, after you shut it down, the **** drops off. I'm putting it back on the lift today and check oil pressure.

I'm so tired of this.
 
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Mr.zippy

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Apr 27, 2020
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Location
Wyoming
Damn……with the luck you have been having, I would suggest you not purchase any lottery tickets.
Tough go you have had, I hope it turns around for ya!
 
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Strouty

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Mar 21, 2010
Messages
38,215
Location
Southern Maine
The issue with the Audi seems similar to the XC70 I dealt with, those have a "flame trap" that is a crazy PCV system and they get plugged, then the that can cause all sorts of issues. I had to change o-rings and pickup tube along with all the PCV components. But don't worry, just like you, after I did all that work it came up with even more problems making it unusable. Unlike you, I moved on to the next vehicle, of course I have run out of my surplus, pretty soon I will have to switch to forklifts...

You want to borrow a forklift?
 
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