Purple! In honor of FAILflora cuts/welds

 

Purple would really "Pop."

Can you anodize something like that ;-)

 

If you are really concerned about the look of the welds, you could take some body filler (bondo for most people) and smooth them over then paint it black. I think if you painted it black the welds would probably stick out more. I have gotten decent at welding aluminum, I still hate doing it though.

If it were mine, bondo is what I would do. Smooth them out with that, then paint.

 

------- insanity in this thread.

 

I 2nd meg lol

looking good sir! i'll have to check her out one day...the miata...not meg lol

 

tim makes the best IMs.

 

Wrinkle finish powder coat can hide some sins.

Another option is to grind the welds down and pay a good aluminum tig welder to lay some pretty beads on top. Shouldn't charge you more then 60-80 bucks (not a lot labor there). I've seen my father do this a number of times with great success (he often goes over the part twice on cast pieces anyway since they're porous and shitty to weld - it's hard to get pretty beads and 'fill' at the same time, or so he claims)

That being said, welds on cast aluminum only get so good.

Whatever you do, don't just paint it black, even if satin. I did this on an elbow which had some slightly janky welds as a result of how shitty/porous the casting was - if anything, it looked worse. I ended up polishing the part since the reflections caused enough of a distraction to deflect focus from the welds. Reweld, wrinkle, or file/polish IMO.

-Zach

 

Castings and the anodizing process do not play nicely together. You see it done on fishing reels, bike components and other smaller 'precision' castings, but it's not terribly common.

As a result, nearly everything you see in the market place which is anodized has been either extruded, machined, forged, etc.

-Zach

 

over 90psi (pegged factory gauge) oil pressure at idle. Looks like I didn't need to shim the pump like the internets & Interprep said. I will have to see what it drops to once it's warm, or else I'll holesaw a hole into the pan and remove the shim, then weld the hole closed. I don't want to yank the engine at this point.

And I plumbed the heatercore return hose after the waterpump. Duh. Time to drain all the coolant back out.

But it fired on first try!!!!!!!!!

 

"here, I'll show a shot of my feet for all those pervs on miata turbo with feet fetis...doh!"

 

She's tries to show her preggers belly. My kid will want to know where he was when he watches this in a few years. Ya knwo...

 

I hate you tim. You don't want to know what I will do when I get a welder. Imagine.

 

I do not want to imagine you with a welder. That thought is just scary.

 

 

That's awesome, congrats! I'm inspired.

 

Congrats on the startup!

+1

 

whoah congrats! Cant wait to see some in car vids.

 

Awesome!

What's the time frame for the first drive?

 

Sorry, i'm going to go back and read the whole thread today, but did you remove the squirters and go with solid lifters? Those two things alone will skyrocket the oil pressure on a KL.

I'm not a fan of shimming the pump, i've found that it gives insane oil pressure even with HLAs and squirters still present. Like... 50-60psi hot idle insane.

That said, i'm still going to do it on mine with squirters removed and SLA conversion simply because i'm trying to see if there's a cheaper way to get around the oiling issues that would be present at the 9500rpms i'm going to spin this stock bottom end to.


Looks like i'm going to start necro-replying to posts...

The ZE heads actually flow the worst. You see people making more power swapping to a ZE top end, but that's because of the cams more than anything. These guys would make more power keeping the DE oval port heads and just dropping in the ZE cams.


CZT Manifold.

CZT is now defunct. (As of... 8 years ago?) That manifold (there were two versions, i believe the one pictured is the better one) dyno'd a 27whp gain on an n/a KLDE with no other modifications. The factory manifolds suck bad. A good friend of mine was one half of CZT, and knows what he did for the manifolds in general, but no longer has the blueprints or equipment to produce them.

 

Last night I drained coolant, welded shut the hole where the heater core return went, welded a bung where it should be, epoxy'ed the 2 pinholes I found in my thermostat housing.

Tonight I refill and see if the holes still leak. If they don't, I let it idle to temperature (tune idle) to see what the oil pressure does once warm and to verify my electric waterpump duty cycle curve is somewhat close. I'm guessing there.

If the oil pressure remains silly high (likely), Friday I will holesaw into the oil pan to access the relief plug and remove the shim. I will machine a cover plate and drill/tap the pan for 10-32 screws.

Then go for a drive.

My block did not have oil squirters. I think that makes it a early 2000's block? It came from some country that does not use VIN tags. Dunno. It did have a forged crank. I don't remember the number engraved onto it, but it matched the internet "this is the crank you want" pics.

KLDE heads (oval) with hydraulic buckets, KLZE (square) intake. That's what was on it when I got it.

My sheetmetal intake has flanges that match the port shape of the head, but the ZE wasn't too far off. I may finish my intake over the winter. Or not.

I believe it. Allistar/Interprep said do it. But uhh...yeah.

I aim for 8000, the limit Allistar said his springs are with the HLA's. Now that you found a cheap source for solid buckets I will do that if/when the engine comes apart next and go higher (and probably redo the oil pan and fuel lines to support that rpm). But I don't know why you'd need extra oil pressure for that. I didn't see anything in the oil galley design that looked bad. In fact, it all looked quite good.

Besides the shim, 'they' say to drill out the feed to the rear mains. Mine was already huge. Much larger than what I saw on the internet on the piston squirter blocks. When mazda took out the squirters they also redid the sizes on the main feeds.