'84 Dodge Rampage Build Thread

[Tman]

You will be fine, just hydrate like you are doing a century! My single speed makes a good pit bike.

[SteveM]

Time for a few "real" updates...

First, I made the mental leap that until Bonneville, I will not park my daily driver in the 2-car garage where my build is taking place.  I got tired of looking for boxes and parts that I knew were stashed "somewhere".  I decided to put all the remaining parts on or under a large table.



For the most part, when all these parts are installed on the vehicle, then the Rampage will be complete, or it will be time to buy more parts...



The windows turned out pretty nice, but if I had them to do over again, I would have left some additional stock on the window panels, and trimmed to fit after mounting to the doors.



The "real" engine is completely assembled, except for a few fiddly bits, and the pump has been timed.

[SteveM]

The coilovers have been finalized....



...back on the ground, and lower than ever....





The low point on the crossmember is now about 1-1/2" from the ground.  I don't think I can get it much lower before September.



When the workbench looks like this, it's time to take a pause for the cause, clean up the bench, and catch a second wind.

That's all for now, folks.

[Tman]

That workbench looks clean!? You should see mine. I will keep you posted on the gauges.

[gkabbt]

As usual, looks REALLY good Steve!
I see high test Mountain Dew on the workbench. Plenty of caffine in there to keep you going and that is what I drink as well!     

Gregg

[Tman]

Dam.n that thing looks killer!

[SteveM]

A few more pics, and some good news.

Good news first - I bought a reman Bosch alternator, and I guess it was my lucky day, because it came with the somewhat rare "W" terminal on the back.



This means that the alternator was from a VW diesel with a tachometer, which is quite rare.  The W terminal sends a signal that the tach can read.  There is some calibration required, but this is the most straightforward way to get a tach signal for a VW diesel engine.

A friend came by to help with the exhaust.  This was a step that was weighing on my mind.  I knew it was going to be tricky to get the exhaust pipe out of the turbo housing and get it under the car without hitting anything.



As you can see, I had to "massage" the firewall a bit, where I had previously boxed in an area for the turbo.  Other than hammering on the firewall, the exhaust came out nice and smooth.



Lastly, here's a shot showing the preliminary mock-up of the intercooler location.

[gkabbt]

I knew it was going to be tricky to get the exhaust pipe out of the turbo housing and get it under the car without hitting anything.

Once more, it's a TRUCK not a CAR and from you of all people.....!!!!!  LOL, LOL, LOL!
How many times have I busted peoples chops about this?        

GREAT find on the alternator.....Maybe you should buy a lottery ticket!  

I really like the way the coilovers and Caster/Camber plates turned out.






 
Keep up the good work    and I'll see you in September on the Great White Dyno!

Gregg

[SteveM]

You caught me slippin', Gregg.  Thanks for keeping me on point.

Thanks again for the camber plates - they make the whole "homespun" coilover setup possible.    If I need to raise it to get on/off the trailer, etc., I will have to install some temporary spacers on the bottom of the coilover sleeve, then remove them for competition.

Steve.

[Crackerman]

Steve, you may wan to keep an eye on the ait after the intercooler, i used a smallish frozen boost cooler with the same configuration you have, albeit it was a bigger turbo (hx40) with lowish (16psi) boost, and it never cooled the air down at all, or wamed the water inthe tank up. Ice in tank made no difference.
160dg was common and made power impossible to make. I recommend going with the cooler that air flows through long ways. More time in cooler gives it a better shot at transferring heat out.

[SteveM]

Hmmm, very interesting.  Thank you for the information about your experience.  I had some concern about the same thing, but figured that this IC would be better than an air/air IC. I'm prepared to be proven wrong, however.

I'll take a look at some of the "longways" style air/water units. 

Steve.

[SteveM]

Crackerman:
    Out of curiosity, what was the displacement of the engine you were using?

    Thanks again for your input, my mind is racing now.  The first thing that came to mind was to put one of those "barrel" style air-water units in line with the one I have.

Steve.

[Crackerman]

2.0 4g63t
It was used for packaging reasons, and was disappointing.
I believe it was the unit rated for 350hp, but at 16 psi, there is no way that turbo was making that kind of airflow. 
We went back with a smallish air to air and now it maxes at 145ish dg at the end of a run at 28psi.
Its a street car.
Yours may be able to get away with it, using large quantities of ice water and a much smaller engine and turbo...  Only one way to find out.

[SteveM]

"Only one way to find out" - that's for sure.  I just want to put my best foot forward when I "find out".

I'm seriously considering putting one of the tube style intercoolers in-line with the one I have.  What's another couple of hundred bucks?

Steve.

[Interested Observer]

Steve,
Intercooler comments:
When one does an actual heat transfer analysis on a typical crossflow air-to-fluid heat exchanger, it becomes apparent that the most efficient configuration for a given volume of “core” is for the air to see the largest cross-section of core possible, resulting in a relatively thin depth of core.  Even if this does not seem intuitively comfortable.

The  proposed configuration in the photos seems perfectly suitable and is similar to most successful layouts.  One consideration would be whether the momentum of the air coming in is so great that it tends to concentrate at the narrow end of the header and thus not flow evenly across the core.  In this case an internal turning vane may be useful to spread the flow more evenly across the face of the core.

It is not clear just what a “smallish frozen boost cooler” is, but if it provided zero cooling, there was probably something else wrong somewhere in the system.

“I recommend going with the cooler that air flows through long ways. More time in cooler gives it a better shot at transferring heat out.” 
Who says flowing longways keeps the air in contact for a longer time?  Flowing crosswise the air is flowing at a slower velocity.  It is easily shown that for a given volumetric flow rate, the transit time through the cooler is proportional to the volume of the core.  That is, frontal area times the core depth.  Any combination of area and depth that maintains the same volume will result in the same transit time.