Engine case together!
Ports being matched for EVEN MORE FLOW!
CSP oil pump cover with pressure relief valve means my engine can use a remote, modern, high-filtration oil filter instead of the big, ugly oil pot / crappy filter that the engine was originally built with. Also gives more oil flow, which makes Dude happy because Dude Loves Flow.
This also makes Dude happy - it's an oil cooler bracket from a Beetle. In standard form, the 912 engine has the oil cooler sitting inside the fan shroud. Air passes through it, slowing down and warming up, on the way to cylinders 3 and 4. Not great. By using this bracket, it allows us to fit a VW oil cooler - out of the shroud, in a separate dog house to the rear - and means there's an uninterrupted flow of clean, cool flow of air to cylinders 3 & 4. Dude Loves Flow.
Other benefits of this plan include the Beetle fans shroud being physically larger and more powerful, balanced fans being available (we'll be doing this) and new VW oil coolers costing 50 quid, as opposed to $500 for the Porsche part. We won't be re-using the old cooler due to the potential for crap to be lodged inside. The down-side of this big plan is that a Beetle fan housing has to be fitted to the 912 tinware, but that's Dude's problem, and apparently it isn't really a problem.
I've saved these for last - they're exhaust stubs from my friend Hayden at Wevo. Hayden gave me these when he was over in the UK a while back. As an exhaust wasn't exactly a pressing issue at the time, I said thank you to him, put the unopened bag on the shelf in my office, and forgot about them. When Dude started talking about exhausts, I remembered them again, and brought them over to his workshop, bag still unopened, so he could check them out.
I hadn't opened the bag because exhaust stubs. Exhaust stubs. They all look the same.
If you've ever seen on of his shifter kits, you'll already know Hayden doesn't do anything that looks 'just the same' as anything else. He takes a product idea and tests it and refines it till there's nowhere left to go, and you can't find a similar product which is even half as good, from anyone else. And hence these beautifully smooth, hefty, solid pieces of milled art.
Dude gazed at them from every angle like he'd just spent the morning hitting the chronic with B-Real, and declared them the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen (with exception of that time he ported an intake so perfectly that it ingested light, upon which the first three months of 1985 were combusted and lost forever). Who knew an exhaust stub could be such an evocative thing?
He is so protective of them that he is keeping them in his shoes until they are ready for use.
