The DaveFab D52 - EFR turbo build

PLEASE BE READY FOR COOMBE! Haha! No but seriously happy to help get it ready if you need extra hands!

Thanks for kind comments guys! Worst case it'll turn up on Saturday on a trailer 

But lets not think about that option for now..

We had a miniature time-out on the weekend at the Simply Porsche show at Beauleiu. Was a good day out although got quite sun burnt!

The car of the day had to be this Kremer slant-nose turbo for us though!









Closely followed by this GT1 











So many amazing shapes on that car.

Back to the project at hand though!

We got the manifold all finished, which looks like this:







Couldn't resist bolting it all in place to see what it looked like.









Our next task was the downpipe and turbo back exhaust. Which we're fabricating from 1.2mm thick 3" stainless tube.

We have had to use slip fit connectors with mikalor clamps for the meanwhile, due to not being able to get the V-Bands in time for Saturday.

Everything cleaned up and then back purged as normal to stop any contaminants or oxidization getting to the backside of the weld.











No crustyness in here:



And on the car:





Pretty tight! 3" is a fairly fiddly one to get right on an MX5 because it's almost twice the diameter of the original exhaust, but it's essential to getting optimal performance from the turbo. The less pressure on the outlet of the turbine will result in a greater pressure differential will be between the manifold and down pipe, which helps spool at low rpm no end. Turbo set ups are 90% plumbing!



Just the centre and rear sections now for the exhaust, we're aiming to have two removable silencers in the centre which can be replaced with a cat/straightpipe. This is so at the ring/road we can have a really lairy set up, with extra silencing available for Combe etc.

\Should get started on the cooling package soon, all our folded bits from the laser cutters are due to turn up today. So we'll be fabricating the radiator/ intercooler combo tonight with a bit of luck! Along with fitting the turbo/ manifold finally with it's support brace. 

One other side project we've been doing is 3D printing our own shorty console.

Which should look something like this:



We had a go at printing it yesterday, but after 9 hours of print time we had an epic fail (Power cut to the whole area due to winds).

We're having a few spells of bad luck at the moment, but we'll set it up again today hopefully.

As I'm writing this, it gets more exciting. Power outage again because of the weather! They reckon it'll be off most of the day 

That's all for now, we'll try to do another update later!

Welding porn!

So we made it to Combe in the end, after going 37 hours with out sleeping.

We had a massive push to get everything done in the small time frame we had, first big job after the manifold was the radiator/ intercooler combo.

Which looks like this.





Short routing was the aim of the game here to get the most efficiency we can from the turbocharger. With the correct ducting we aren't concerned at all about the slightly smaller (but deeper) radiator for a small engine.

Sure enough all the mountings for the original radiator line up with this new set up, so it's totally plug and play with exception of the
pipes.

One of the more relaxing jobs was the interior bits, we decided to use the 3D printer to mount the gauges.





Then added the final surround pieces.



In addition to this we 3D printed the radio surround panel, and the gear knob for the 6speed. 

After a chaotic 37 hours, we ended up with a running car. After doing a waterpump, prop seal, wrapped the front and rear bumpers, applied all the artwork, and bled the clutch through the night before JDM Combe.

So without further ado, here's a few pics of the car as it stands.















We've a few tidying up jobs to do in the meanwhile, but we're booked in with Nick at Skuzzle for mapping in a couple of weeks.

Pretty excited to see what happens!

It's first track outing will probably be 5Fest.

Either the 28th or 29th this month, still need to confirm which, that'd be cool though! It'll be interesting to see what it makes!

I can't stress how Canoeing nice this build is. Seeing it in person at Combe, was deffo my favourite car of the day, even if it didn't make it on track!

Top work lads!! Can't wait until I can get some of your bits on my car!