The AMS manifolds seem ok in general but the nuts/studs and other bits that came with them seem a bit ropey (read: shite!!) so where possible I've opted to re-use the OEM bits.
The first thing that I noticed was that on each of the mani's the OEM suds were too long and were catching preventing the manifold from siting flush against the block
so I dug out the dremmel and shortened it by about 0.5 of an inch
the AMS design offers much greater performance over OEM and other mani's such as Mike Smith but they are far from perfect. Some of the features make you wonder what they're playing at, for example the OEM washers can't be used as there isn't enough clearance to accommodate them so rather than rectify and modify the design AMS simply opted to supply some inferior quality split washers instead?
Regardless the stud that was cut down does not give enough room to enable a washer to be used, it just physically doesn't fit (not even the AMS split washers) so I've just tightened it up nice and tight using an OEM nut and hopefully that will be fine...
The mani' now sits nice and flush against the block
The next job was to tackle the turbo's. I stripped one down a bit further as I wanted to check on the work that a particular Zed specialist had carried out several years ago, and just as well I did really as there was all sorts of rust, crap and sealant blocking one of the banjo bolts.
Now considering that this banjo bolt has never been off the turbo since getting it from the aforementioned 'specialist' and bearing in mind that the car has never been run since I got it back from them (it was fired up once on their premises just before the bailiffs rocked up to throw them out) I can only come to the conclusion that it was like this when they fitted it....
I've already decided that I'm going to have to replace all of the hard pipes and banjo bolts, some of which the specialist figured would work better if they were bent over and crimped in the middle (fook' knows what they were thinking?)
I've given the turbo's a thorough dig out and am pretty sure that there's no crap inside, though only time will tell if that is the case.
As both turbo's (driver and passenger) side seem to be exactly the same I thought I'd best test fit them to work out which goes on the left and which goes on the right. This is very much a case of playing it by ear as I've never fitted turbo's to a VG before
The turbo inlet is the next part of fab work that needs to be addressed though my initial thoughts were to leave it open and just cover with a makeshift mesh protective filter just to stop large bits of track debris from getting into the turbo, though thinking about it further I may have an adaptive plate made up to enable a HKS mushroom filter to be fitted mounted 10" forward of the engine mount.
All it would require is a strong 10" length of re-enforced silicone pipe to connect the turbo housing to the filter, which would offer some protection but would not require masses and masses of pipework just to get the filters mounted in the front nose panel of the car (as is the case when in its stock location).
I want to keep the filters mounted just in front of the engine mounts and feed them with some ducting, this would mean a lot less clutter in the engine bay and offer better access
I'm not entirely sure that the braided hose (with the banjo bolt running from the turbo to the engine block) is in the correct location, however it fits so I suspect that it might be.....this is the next bit of googling' for me to check
I've also ordered some new turbo gaskets, this time I'm pretty sure I've ordered the correct ones
All in all it's been a productive few hours
