1988 W124 300 TurboD Coupé ''Gold'nBrown'' - intercooling it

[TurboDieselWeasel]

Continuing from where I left yesterday - I turned down some more steel. 55mm - that's pretty huge for that tiny lathe I guess...



Then I put two bolts in a steel plate.



Drilled two random holes in a bit of steel. Let the drill find it's own center, zero fooks given.



Then I finished increasing the volume of my piece of steel by breaking it apart in to smaler peices. weird how that works...



Then I went looking for another bolt, some washers and a nut - and bolted the lot together and put it in the vice.

[mattiwagon]

Ah tube bender

[TurboDieselWeasel]

Yes! And with a bit more development of the big roller - maybe I could even get rid of the last bit of deaselweasling in there... But then I have to defend my name!



And you know what? This will do just fine. After all it's only to repair the hoop holding the oil cooler. Which I cut up to make room for the intercooler I'm no longer going to use. 15x1mm tube, 20mm radius.

Cheers,
Jan

[mattiwagon]

That is flashier than a flash thing, I see mr Bravo has given his nod of approval! I nod also

[william123]

Plumbers tool made on your own lathe, cool deaselweasling !!

[TurboDieselWeasel]

Soo - another play-day. First up: some more pipe bending, I bought another pipe to bend, the last one was all bent.

Though today... I don't know. You've all seen the proof. Today pipe decided to not play along.



That's probably because not everything they sell as 1mm wall thickness is actually 1mm wall thickness.

So instead I dragged out the welder. Quick look at the wire reservoir - oh dear... Quick look at the gas reservoir - oh dear...



So I went back to the work bench and made some CAD. Cut out a bit of sheet metal, bent to shape - and threw them in the bin. Me no likey. I thought I could do this much simpler. So I took some 2mm flat bar and bent it to a certain angle.

And welded it to the radiator mount. Support brackets for the AC condenser.



Then I looked at them - and made them complicated again. Too flimsy.



Only tacked, as I'm out of welding wire. Of course on a saturday evening. But oh well. I'll weld them up when the radiator comes out once more for painting the radiator mount.

Back to the pipe bender... I measured up all the bends I had - and luckily the best bend was just long enough for a repair section. And so I finally welded up the oil cooler mount bracket hoop pipe support thing.



Fit's quite well.

Next I installed the oil cooler temporarily with the duct & bumper in place. I need to modify the oil cooler duct slightly to fit the low temperature radiator for the charge cooler, but apart from that - all fits quite nicely!

And further, a little proof that the car is actually alive



That's all for this week. Will it drive this year? Let's see...

Cheers,
Jan

[TurboDieselWeasel]

So, I thought I had to have another go at this pipe bending thing - and so I ground me a radiused tool bit and tried. Now this is only the second tool bit I made, it's not quite on par with a professional tool bit. But it got the job done...



I still don't know how I got the one bend almost good and all others failed... Maybe I should read up a bit on this topic. Which I have not done, I just started from scratch. Didn't even look at other benders - maybe I should. Or maybe a radius with the diameter of the pipe is just too tight and there's a rule like " radius = 2 x ø " - I don't know.

This was allready last week, this week I forced myself to not do any work, since my left hand is kind of broken and hurts and needs rest. Overworked, overstressed - too much work at - er - work. And it'll stay very stressfull for many more weeks - better try to keep myself in good order, car stuff can wait. Has to wait.

That's all.

Cheers,
Jan

[pwogaman]

Have you considered heating the tubing prior to bending, such as with a propane or map gas torch? That should make it a little more malleable.

[mk2cossie]

Apr 18, 2016 4:58:18 GMT pwogaman said:

Have you considered heating the tubing prior to bending, such as with a propane or map gas torch? That should make it a little more malleable.

That would be my suggestion as well, would be a tad easier to bend then. As it looks quite a challenge to bend in that video, even with a strenght bar on the former arm

[TurboDieselWeasel]

I've tried that, though I had the impression it would just increase the wrinkling dieselweasling - I guess whilst it's easyer to form, it's also easyer to push together, if that makes sense. My verdict is: either I'm doing something wrong, I'm using the wrong material or the radius is just too tight. Probably a combination of two

In other news:

Taadaa!



Cheers,
Jan

[maxypriest]

Regarding the pipe bending – been there tried that with sand, bungs, heat, hydraulics etc and gave up. I just buy bends now and weld them in, whether its brackets, plumbing or exhausts. So much quicker and the results are spot on. Plus you can tack, check and adjust.
Of course I know you know this….

[TurboDieselWeasel]

I know, yes. Knew this. Though - sometimes I like to understand how things work by experiencing how they work. And from now on, I'll never look at a bent pipe the same way as I did before. I'll be able to judge this sort of work by personal experience. And sometimes this knowledge/experience is worth a lot more than the quality of the things you produce along the way. If that makes sense.

No success without failure

[gn3dr]

Apr 19, 2016 17:45:09 GMT TurboDieselWeasel said:

I know, yes. Knew this. Though - sometimes I like to understand how things work by experiencing how they work. And from now on, I'll never look at a bent pipe the same way as I did before. I'll be able to judge this sort of work by personal experience. And sometimes this knowledge/experience is worth a lot more than the quality of the things you produce along the way. If that makes sense.

No success without failure

You need one of these www.stakesys.co.uk/tube-pipe-benders/manual-tube-benders/sta137-buzz-bench-top-manual-tube-bender
Nice looking kit although a bit pricey for occasional use.
I made a die myself for bending fuel pipe a few years ago. From looking at your dies the main thing I think is that the depth of the channel in the die should be at least 50% of the diameter of the tubing - so that when it is being bent the sides of the tubing are kept in check. Hard to describe....

[Deleted]

I take it you are using welded tube, not seamless pipe.?Have a look on the good one and see where the seam is. Tube bending not difficult as long as your form tool matches the tube really snugly. It then only has one option, and that's to play nicely.... No Dieselweaseling in sight....

[maxypriest]

Apr 19, 2016 17:45:09 GMT TurboDieselWeasel said:

I know, yes. Knew this. Though - sometimes I like to understand how things work by experiencing how they work. And from now on, I'll never look at a bent pipe the same way as I did before. I'll be able to judge this sort of work by personal experience. And sometimes this knowledge/experience is worth a lot more than the quality of the things you produce along the way. If that makes sense.

No success without failure

I fully understand - same for me.

[TurboDieselWeasel]

So, couple of free days means: cracking on. My hand is almost good again, I can work again. Time to take a break from work

I removed the sway bar in order to be able to re-fit the side covers of the engine bay encapsulation. Was a lot easyer than I thought, only a slight trimm with the tin snip - and the fit. Will fit some rubber profiles on them and they will look like a factory thing.



This time there will be ventilation flaps on both sides. They are actuated by a little thermostatic sping-thing - just another crazy detail on these cars.



The lower cover had to lose two edges - and now it fits snuggly to the radiator mount. Nice! I feared there would be a lot more modification required to make this fit well.



With the height of the engine bay cover now determined, I went ahead to find the final location of the charge cooler radiator. Which required cutting a little piece out of the oil cooler air duct:



I will remodel this with GRP later.

Next up was making two smal brackets to fix the radiator in place.





everything fits, there are BIG air gaps between the various heat exchnagers - and I will need two smal aftermarket pusher fans to fit in front of the A/C condenser & above the low-temp. radiator. All good. And only very minor modifications required to all parts involved - which makes replacing them easy.

And then I noticed that my battery was a bit dead...



And THEN I noticed that the coolant reservoir was still pressurized. I jump-started the engine - still a LOT of air bubbles in the coolant, rising into the expansion tank. No matter if the engine is cold or warm - there's a constant stream of air bubbling into the expansion tank. And I don't know what to make of that. The Taxi's engine doesn't do this. It takes about 15 minutes for pressure to build up in idle when I put the cap on the expension tank, with the engine fully warmed up. So that's a good-ish sign, though. I think. But I'm a bit irritated by the amount of air/gas bubbles....



On the other hand I have never payed this much attention to the expansion tank before - so I'm sort of lacking any experience with this... My head says "that's not normal" though. Bit frustrating realy - mojo is dropping rapidly...

Cheers,
Jan

[65mustang]

Cant you get a Sniffer ? you can use it to see if they are exhaust gasses or not.

[TurboDieselWeasel]

I'm scared of the result... This morning there was no pressure in the expansion tank, though. Whatever. You know what? I stopped caring. I'm just going to run it and if I ruin it - so what. There's still that OM606 waiting in the corner...

Got a new spool of welding wire today and finished welding up all the brackets. I removed the radiator for welding and painting.



Removed the last remains of the old radiator mounts and threw a couple of coats of paint on.



It looks like so much space there, when it's actually very little...

Then I watched the paint dry and did some little things on the Taxi, cleaned the work bench & lathe - and that's it for today. I enjoy working slooooow

Cheers,
Jan

[TurboDieselWeasel]

So initially I wanted to use air hose quick connectors as take-off for my heater bypass. But I chnaged my mind and made them myself. Filed some flats to the middle section so I will be able to tighten them down.



The reason I made them myself is simple; there is allready a 4.75mm air bleed line bypassing the heater core. Those air couplings are 5mm on the inside, the groove for the snap-ring doesn't allow for a bigger hole.

Mine is 7.6mm on the inside:



Still need to make a second one, but I'm not in the mood to turn down my stock of 35mm aloominum to the required size (15mm)... Maybe tomorrow.

Cheers,
Jan

[TurboDieselWeasel]

Yeah, well - make that two.





I actually tried to capture making the second one on video, but my computer ist too slow and has too little free space for editing... xD Damn HD! Also ordered a die to cut a thread on the nipples.

Cheers,
Jan