Okay big update for you I will guide you through my yesterday, sorry about the lack of pictures as I was too oily and stuff to get my phone out to take pictures, but no bother it was a good day!
So yesterday morning me and a few mates got together to sort out my car: This Included changing the turbo for a GT2871R with braided lines, the manifold, turbo elbow, downpipe and swapping the cat for a decat
We got the car on the ramp with difficulty, as my skirts were too low they basically bent against the one arm of the ramp, and that is with bits of wood on top of them! so I have some wear and tear on them that needs refurbing but it's no bigger for the gain I've got through the day.
After dallying around with the ramp we got her up in the air, we then started undoing all of the various bolts and removing the pipework out of the turbo side of the engine. That did take a few hours but some good luck we didnt have any bolts or stuff that caused us any major problems. The heat shield got binned as it wouldnt fit on the bigger turbo we were putting in. We then got the car up in the air and removed the cat and the downpipe, the cat was a bit of a bast*rd as its heat shield had to be bent out to be able to reach the bolts to get it undone. The drain line also got removed while we were under the car.
That done we put the car down and started unbolting the manifold from the block, and the other lines to the turbo so we could then take out the manifold turbo and elbow out in one. It came out without too much effort. Then was to build the new turbo up.
We realised we needed to go and get some threadlock and some exhaust gasket sealent to make sure I didn't get any blows, went to halfrauds for this, and as me and my mate got back my 2 mates had already built the bits they could on the turbo, we used the stuff I brought to finish the rest of the turbo and then came the complications.
1) the manifold when it had the bolts in it didn't line up properly with the turbo so one had to be hammered in so that it was a pefect fitting.
2) when the manifold came off the block and the gasket needed a lot of tidying up so I sanded them down to get them to be a flat fit
We got the braided lines, elbow and downpipe onto the turbo and then pushed that into the engine bay to line up with the block, as we did that it was a bit fiddly and a tight fit but finally we got it on, then we lifted it up to attach the drain pipe and the decat and WOW!
The down pipe wasnt long enough and it was at the wrong angle, a couple of things suggested could be wrong, it could be an s14a down pipe I'd been sent or as the manifold was new then it might have changed the angle of it, there was also another problem, the decat pipe, as the down pipe was too short, didn't fill the gap between that and the rest of the exhaust.
First off was bending the downpipe, we used 2 blowtorches to heat up both sides, after trying with 1 but it didnt heat it up evenly enough, we tried pushing and pushing but it didnt do anything, so we raised her up a bit, and put a gearbox jack underneath and pushed it down on that to be able to bend it up. Then there was the problem with the fact it didnt fit together, after pushing and pulling and detaching the exhaust from its rubber hangers, we got it to fit, but then the exhaust was just loose, luckily there was a bracket around the tailpipe, which had its fittings on it for the rubber fittings, so as we'd rotated the exhaust to get it to fit, we managed to rotate that bracket and push it up onto the rubber fittings, with a bit of hammering they went on nicely. To fit it we did have to pull the end of the exhaust up slightly on the next pipe, but still having a good 2 inches of connection between the pipes so no problem. After some blowtorching and giving up the other fittings we decided to cable tie or used various other fittings to get them on.
All this done we rebuilt the rest of the engine back together and started her up, MASSIVE OIL LEAK!
After cleaning it all up, which took an ages with only blue roll to do it with, we went in to find the problem, after getting bits out the way it was one of the banjo bolts not going in enough, we tightened it each time thinking as far as we could then started her up but still leaking. One of my mates realised that the braided line was not angled quite enough so that it needed to be pushed up then the bolt tightened so it would sit flush, after doing this, started up again, and still leaking. The copper washer we then thought had bent wrong after the tightening and untightening, so we replaced it with 2 new ones, still leaking, these were too big someone suggested, fitted with different washers and sorted.
Now sounds amazing and the power is clean through all revs, spooling up quickly, running at 0.7 bar until more supporting mods are added and the boost will be upped.
All in all a good day, few complications, sorry about the no pictures I would have done a how to if I had taken them.
Only injury of the day and I don't think it even merits being called an injury, stung a bit for a while though, so I would say we did pretty well!:
Big shout out to James Littleton for all his help yesterday too!