Rainy autocross

The event on Sunday was in great weather.  It was fun like always only this time I took my brother-in-law offroading in the Corvette.  The people who saw it said we made a great splash. Check it out for yourself.

Accessory bracket

Well the accessory bracket is pretty much done.  It holds the alternator and power steering pump nicely.  I tried to keep the weight low in the car and put the pump at the bottom so it doesn't leak into the alternator.  Hopefully the Audi one doesn't leak like the Porsche system does.  I had a local guy machine a mounting boss for the idler pulley that you can see in the pictures and then welded it into the bracket.  The power steering pump uses three bolts to hold it in like the original Audi mount used and the alternator uses a lower pivot and the adjuster from the Porsche engine.  I had to shorten the adjuster 2.5 inches to make it usable.  Just cut of the nut on one side, cut the tube down to size and weld the nut back on.  The two rod ends needed about .5 inches removed from each end also.  The engine side mount for the adjuster is welded to the bottom of the lifting eye that bolts to the cylinder head.  I don't think I will have any problems with belt squeal, hopefully.  Soon I will drop it by the powder coater and post pics of the bracket by itself.

Saturdays progress

I added the alternator's pivot point to the bracket and decided that I will surely need to have an idler roller involved to minimize belt squeal.  So after scrounging around in my local parts store I found a roller that looks suitable.  I just finished drawing up some plans for a spacer bushing that I will need to get the pulley mounted.  Hopefully I can get them dropped by a machine shop this week.  I'm trying to keep things kind of modular so that if a part fails I can redesign without major work.  Hopefully the first design is adequate.  Yea right.  LOL.

Sundays effort

Well today I finished installing the new fuel pump.  Hopefully the new foam sealing strip that I installed will keep some of the crud out of the pump's cavity.  All said I was not the happiest with the fit of the 044 pump.  Don't get me wrong, it will work fine, but you can tell that the space was designed for a different pump.  So with that project down I moved back to the front of the car and made a bracket for the power steering pump.  I'm using the pump and alternator from the Audi so that the belts will not be an issue.  I've heard that the 7a motor has a v-belt setup so you could use the Porsche pump and alternator if you'd like, you just need to source the correct harmonic balancer.  Hopefully there won't be any issues will pump output volumes or pressures, but if they crop up I'll let you know.  It would be doable to fit the pulley from the Audi pump onto the Porsche pump with a little work.  I have to get a steel tube to make the alternator bracket and then I will post some pictures like normal.  I have both units mounted as low as possible on the drivers side.  There was quite a bit of room in that area.  My only concern now is routing of the lower radiator hose.  Some sort of custom hard line may be in order.