Day 48 - 22nd August 2011, Build slows

It has been a few months, and being winter, it's been slow progress on the build.  I've also a little distracted building a larger carport and converting it into a garage so I can work on the car a night.
I have got a few things done since the last post, new Sard 650 injectors have been installed, the exhaust cleaned up, painted and wrapped, and the dash covered with suede.
The Injectors where an easy install, the hardest part was getting the right O-rings, but it’s been well covered on the RS Liberty Site, and they installed without issue.





Next was the exhaust, this was a little more work, some of the heat shield was bolted together, but most of it has been welded together, a bit of careful grinding was needed to get it apart. The manifold was in good shape, after removing the heat shields and giving it a clean with a wire wheel, it looked like new. The tabs and excess casting steel where also ground off, this was to make wrapping the exhaust a little easier.



The dump pipe also looked a little old, it required more grinding to get it apart, but once it was the wire wheel made it too look like new.


Each part of the exhaust was painted with heat pain, then wrapped, painted again with heat pain then the heat shield placed over the top. The idea is to keep as much of the heat in the exhaust and out of the engine bay and under the car.

In the end, 30m of 50mm Cool-It heat proof tape and 3 cans of Hi-Heat coating paint was used, the manifold was wrapped in Generation II Copper Header wrap and the up and dump pipe in Exhaust Insulating Header Wrap (Graphite black), so it will be interesting to see the difference between the two point in temperature with the copper tape being 30% better according to the literature.

The dash was also covered with suede to reduce the reflection of the dash on the windscreen. $25 of suede from Spotlight, a can of adhesive and 1 hour later the job was complete.


I also picked up some more parts for the car from a 1999 STI, quick rack, 4 pot front brakes, hubs, disc’s, control arms (alloy) and CV’s as well as new STI 6Speed gearbox mount, clutch slave cylinder and new safari engine mounts.
A few weeks back I also picked up some SpeedLine Racing Rims, these fit over the older 4 pot brakes I've picked up, just.