John’s Mk4 Build Thread

[John Ibele]

I'll own up to it right at the beginning of this post. I wandered a bit away from the proper order of things. See, I went to the MN DMV, and quite surprisingly, walked away with a registration, and this:


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

I know, I like the painter's tape too. It adds a super professional-looking touch. But with all the necessary mechanical stuff buttoned up, it was time to take a few cautious drives mixed in with the final pieces of building.

I'll get to initial driving impressions in a minute, but will briefly mention a few items finishing off the build.

Side pipes: I ordered the GasN side pipes in the touring length, and certainly wasn't displeased by what finally arrived - they're gorgeous. Mounting them required a bit of fiddling here and there. First, while the PS fit reasonably well in terms of exit position from the body, DS was quite high. I was limited by the pin on the PS side ... just couldn't move it any higher to drop the DS side. I swallowed hard and went back for the engine hoist rental one more time, and carefully lifted the engine just off the mounts, and did some work to lengthen the slot for the PS pin, taking care to keep all human body parts out of harm's way if gravity did its worst and for some reason the engine came down the fast way.

Before:


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

After:


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

So, a little touchup paint required, but otherwise no harm done, and it allowed me to get the headers within 1/2" of each other in terms of height relative to body at the exit point.

So far so good, mounted the driver's side first after removing a bit of body in the cutout area and it looked good from just about all angles ... parallel to the body front to back, could level it even with the bottom of the body when looking from the side. Nice.


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

I marked it, removed it and had the O2 bung welded in the narrow portion of the side pipe after the collector. Nice job by the guy, protected the pipe, cleaned up the weld so it looks nice, fair charge. I thought about depinning the O2 connector, feeding the wires through a neat grommet ... then decided I was building a car, not a piece of art. Plus, the body has to come off; this is the only way I could figure to not hand the paint & body guy a pain in the neck. Other ways to solve this I'm sure, but this worked for me.


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

I hemmed and hawed about using the fasteners that Georgie sent me, and finally ponied up for more ARP jewelry ... along with their clearly communicated torque values. I torqued, heat cycled the pipes a few times, and torqued again ... nothing's moved in quite a few drives now. I was able to use the larger diameter fasteners on both sides and still get the alignment with the body I wanted, so good news there.


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

[Mike.Bray]

I marked it, removed it and had the O2 bung welded in the narrow portion of the side pipe after the collector. Nice job by the guy, protected the pipe, cleaned up the weld so it looks nice, fair charge. I thought about depinning the O2 connector, feeding the wires through a neat grommet ... then decided I was building a car, not a piece of art. Plus, the body has to come off; this is the only way I could figure to not hand the paint & body guy a pain in the neck. Other ways to solve this I'm sure, but this worked for me.


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

It's usually recommended to install the O2 sensor at least 10 degrees above horizontal (wire side up, sensor tip down) to prevent moisture from collecting in the sensor.