Puma's 818 Build

[e-rue]

So the gas tank is bulging on the bottom and back (guessing its warped from the welding process?) Anyhow I have it bolted into the car to the best of my ability, the brackets that hold it are not tight to the floor or rear frame due to the tank holding them off a little. I thought I had done a decent job of lining everything up and bolting it together till I went to install the firewall. Both ends of the firewall touch tight against the floor, and where the gas tank brackets aren't flush I had to machine recesses into the fire wall to clear them. Additionally even with the recesses machined in, with both ends being tight to the floor, out in the middle of the car its about 1/4" from contacting the floor. This is extremely frustrating to me. I may just come back to this after knocking out some other more straight forward stuff.

[Ajzride]

I have a stock tank that fits well. You are welcome to it if we can figure out delivery. It’s in Houston, cant remember where you are.

[DSR-3]

I don't know how tall you are, but I suggest a test-seating before committing to that 1st gen/stock tank. At 6ft tall there's no way I could live with it. Not a cheap fix, but easier now than later.

[Ajzride]

I don't know how tall you are, but I suggest a test-seating before committing to that 1st gen/stock tank. At 6ft tall there's no way I could live with it. Not a cheap fix, but easier now than later.

Agreed, and even now that I've bought the Boyd's tank I wish I had more room. If I had to do all over again I'd do a front mount tank.

[DSR-3]

Agreed x2. Seat/leg room is the biggest miss with the 818 design/spec. IMO.
I don't know that a front tank will gain much, as my seat top is at the frame, and I'm not willing to reduce the tilt- but that's all I have left with the Boyd tank too.

[e-rue]

So I took a break from fire wall issues and decided to knock out the brakes.
This first picture is of my JDM Miata brake booster with the ports facing the passenger side. I screwed in the metric to standard adapters, and started trying to plan out where I should put the ABS pump, and how I was going to mount the ABS pump. I knew right away I didn't have enough parts to make all this work, but I figured I would lay everything out and see how far I could get.

[e-rue]

I knew I didn't need the stock lines but I kept it all together so I could figure out how it went together and how to make it work in the 818.

[e-rue]

The ABS mounting bracket is important to keep because it has nice soft rubber vibration isolators in it. The bracket itself however was a hot mess. I ended up cutting and grinding all the extra weirdness off of it, smoothing it out, priming and painting it twice.

[e-rue]

The next trick was to figure out where to mount the pump/bracket on the car so that it wasn't in the way of something else. I really hope the place I chose is ok. I tried to look ahead in the book to see if I saw anything else that went there. So after I chose the location I knew the bracket wouldn't work unless I added some steel to mount it to. Fab time!

[e-rue]

After the white primer dried I painted it with a black industrial enamel...... sort of matches the black powdercoat. Just not as smooth since its brushed on. While waiting for it to dry, I started working on the ABS pump, cleaning it up and putting the metric adapters in it. I got to thinking while I was doing this. Why in the world didn't Factory Five just send inverse flair fuel lines with metric threads? They are commonly available at all autoparts stores? In the end I just ordered more metric adapters since there wasn't enough for the ABS pump and the rear bias/restrictor. I had already started running the standard lines and didnt want to mix standard and metric..... nor did I want to start over making lines.

[e-rue]

Once the paint dried I managed to get the ABS pump and the rear bias restrictor mounted to the frame so that I could start running all my brake lines.

[e-rue]

I don't guess I need this thingy since I have individual rear lines from the ABS pump.

[e-rue]

Brake lines brake lines brake lines....... and more brake lines!

[e-rue]

[sgarrett]

Looks good. Now is definitely a good time for you to be test fitting the aluminum pieces that go around the front wheel wells. There are a few triangular pieces that I was warned are hard to fit in once you start adding other pieces into that area. I agree with the warning....it is hard to do later! You don't need to attach them now, but it is easier to fit and drill now for sure.

[e-rue]

sgarrett, Thanks for the heads up! I will look into that!