Intercooler part 2

This is a continuation of the previous post. The inlet tucks into the holes perfectly.

The outlet does the same.
A straight on shot of the outlet as viewed from the engine bay.
The stock intercooler has tabs with rubber isolators. The next few pics will show the process for making these mounts.

The back-side of the isolator was right at 1 1/2" from the core support. Looking in a tray of misc. junk, I came up with two spacers that were exactly 1 1/2" long and had a 1/2" inside diameter. I ground the paint away where the spacer comes in contact with the core support and tack welded it in place.
Then I welded all the way around the spacer.
The rubber isolator bushing has a sleeve i it that just accepts a 1/4" bolt. It just happens that a 1/4" nut fit almost snuggly in the end of the spacer, so I welded it in place. First I threaded it onto a bolt so I could hold onto it and keep it aligned while welding.
When I was done, I had made a nice little bracket this one is on the passenger side. I removed the overflow bottle prior to welding since it was attached to the other side of the core support.

This is the bracket on the driver's side all painted up. It happened to land right on the end of the indent for the battery tray, so, befoe welding it in place, I beat the end of the dimple flat with hammer from the engine side so I would have a flat surface to weld to. The rest of the dimpled area will still work for the battery tray.

I still need to make lower brackets for the intercooler.

I will weld two pocket to the front bottom of the core support to accept these bushings.

Here is the stock '92 tube attached to the outlet of the intercooler.

The same tube also attached to the intake.

Finally, this is the the tube installed from the turbo to the inlet on the intercooler.

Intercooler Part 1 - Lots of work today.

The Ramcharger will be getting a stock first generation intercooler. I hope to fit it in behind a stock '89 or '77 grill. Some people say it can't be done. This is the side profile of the inlet. The outlet is identicle.

The tape shows that the bell is about 6" from top to bottom.
The inlet/outlet is a little over 2 5/8" in diameter.
The center of the inlet/outlet is 6 1/2" from the bottom of the intercooler. The inlet and the outlet will just fit on each side of the radiator flanges. The distance between them is the same as the distance beyond the flanges.
My layout may be lower on the core support than others because of the 1 1/2" body lift. The fact is, i am installing it as low as possible to keep the intercooler piping as level as possible. I am going to cut two 3" holes, one above the other, with a hole saw. Since the center of the hole is 6 1/2" from the bottom of the intercooler, I marked the center up 6 3/4 " up from the ledge at the bottom of the core support. Then I made marks 1 1/2" above and below the center mark. These will be the centers for the holes.

Since the fit will be tight, I measured 1 1/2" from the edge of the opening. This will put the edge of the hole right at the radiator flange.

Here is the outline of the of the hole marked out on the tape and the hole saw that gets to do the carnage.

The holes are drilled. The rest will be get trimmed out with the cut-off wheel.

Except for smoothing and paint, this one is done.

Clearly this flange in the center of the support will need to go away. I'll just cut it off.

The bracket is off now and the other hole is layed out the same as the first.
The two holes ar mostly through.
Once cleaned-up, the intercooler slipped right in place. In the next post, I will make some brackets an hook things up.

Radiator part 2

Here is the missing trial fit 4 pic from the last post. As mentioned in the previous post, al it needs now is a little trimming of the support flange beside the lower radiator hose outlet.
Ther is plenty of fan clutch clearance.

I just nees to drill two holes to mount each of the two upper support barckets.
The upper hose fits perfectly.
The lower hose will hook right up. The arrow indicates where I trimmed out a little of the radiused contour to make room for the radiator mounting brackets.
I will have to wait until the fenders are on to see if the hood clears. Next, I will grind down all the sharp edges from all the cutting, weld the lower brackets in place, and touch up all the bare metal with black Zero-rust. Then, I will attack the intercooler.
The upper factory bracket installed.

Radiator fab work.

Time to install the radiator. First test fit. I knew I would have issues using a gasser/non-intercooled core support, but as yet, I did not know what those issues would be. The first problem was the flange set-up for the radiator support. The v-8 gas engines are not as long as the cummins so the radiator was mounted toward the engine on these flanges. The radiator that goes with the cummins and intercooler needs to go between the flanges and fit almost flush with the core support. But alas, the gap is too narrow.
The cross-flow radiator is 30 inches wide. I marked out the cut lines with duct tape. Using the cut-off wheel, I will cut along the edge of the tape.
I am taking off about 2 1/4 inces from each side.
This will leave a 30 inch gap between the flanges.
This is what it looked like after cutting off the driver's side flange. The arrow and the lower red lines indicat additional cutting I need to do. Prior to the additional cutting, the radiator sat up about a half inch too high.
Same issue on the pass. side.

This is a shot before I did the additional cutting. It was the secod test fit, if you will.
This is the drain plug on the drive side befor a cut the clearance below it.
This is the lower outlet on the pass. side with marks indicating the additional cuts mentioned before.
Once finished with all the additional trimming, I was able to test fit the radiator for the third time. This time it fir well, I just need to trim a little on the side by the lower outlet so it does nor rub on the flange. At this point I was able to see that the radiator was right at 1 inch above the bottom of the core support. After scratching my head for a while, I cam up with the plan to cut some brackets out of some scrap frame channel I had lying around. The radiator has two pins on the bottom that fir into rubber bushings that in turn fit into holes that are just under 1 inch in diameter. Since I do not have a drill that big, I wil utilize the hole in the frame channel. Once again, I marked off my cuts with tape. This time I will use the porta-band in the background.

Here are my two brackets almost ready for test fit 4.
This pic shows one of my fabbed lower radiator brackets with the rubber bushing and a burr in a die grinder. The hole was not quite big enough, so a couple of round-i-rounds with the burr were in order.
This is looking straight down between the engine and the core support. You can see the two brackets with bushings sitting doun there. Eventually, I will weld the brackets to the bottom of the core support.
The 4th trial fit put the radiator in almost perfect location but the picture seems to be lost.

Core Support

I was thinking the next step was the doors, but changed my mind and went to work on the core support. I am using a core support out of an '89 gasser (the one that donated its firewall and dash/heater). The only mod I had to make to put the '89 core support on the '77 frame was drilling two holes for the mounts. The holes in the frame were about 2 inches farther apart than the holes in the core support. I chose to drill the frame rather than the support. I figured it did not matter and the frame would stay put while I drilled. In this picture you can see the 1 1/2 in. spacers for the body lift below the support.
In this shot you can see that I still have work to do on the brake booster/master cylinder. I thought I was going to use the booster out of the '89 so I left it on the firewall, but as it turns out, I need to use the one that came on my cummins donor because the port size is different and I need to use the bigger plug to plumb in the heater controls. I considered tapping into the vacuum system elswhere, but I am not sure if the vacuum pump on the cummins needs a special booster or not. Anyway, five bolts and it will be changed. It is easy to get to with the dash out.
On the passenger side, I wnt ahead and put in the inner fender. Other than someday replacing the turbo housing and/or upgrading the exhaust, very little work will need to go on on this side of the engine. I will most likely need to move the radiatoor overflow bottle toward the headlight in order to run the intercooler pipes.
Next up, radiator.

Heater box install.

Now that the firewall work is done, I installed the diesel heat/noise blanket.
And the heater box.
Engine side of heater box.
Another shot.
Heter hoses hooked up. Not sure I got the controler on the right hose, but no worries. Sombody will set me straight.
Next, I will replace the door hinges. This is a tough thing once the dash is in. I am changing the higes to newer because the newer have replacable bushings. This rig will have summer doors and winter doors. The summer doors will not have any glass or mechanism in them, and they will be cut down to armrest height. I plan to rig up a door lock button to work the latch. It should be cool. The idea is to get rid of the frame around the side windows when the top is off. I will set it up so that I can change the doors by driving out the hinge pins. My hope is that I can change out the doors twice a year without having to adjust them each time. We'll see.

Firewall finished

I finished welding in the new firewall today. After grinding the high spots off the welds, I spread seam sealer over the joint. This is the outside driver's side. I had already touched up the paint at the windshield flange.

This is also the driver's side, but on the inside. Everywhere that you see sealer here, there was factory sealer. I also seam sealed the outside only to ensure that water does not get in.
The stitch welding took a while, but, now that it is done, I am glad that I did it. This newer style firewall will make everything else about my conversion go slick.
Here are the same shots, after I touched up the paint. I know the seam sealer looks cruddy, but that is the way the original came out of the factory. I am not going to worry about it. I am not building this one for show, and once it is all together, nobody will notice it unless they are looking for it anyway.
The inside looks pretty much factory.
Looks pretty good. I will roll out some bedliner material on the floor at a later time.