Lots of new progress to report this weekend.

• Solid axle & Posi-Traction differential – check
• Disc brakes (on all four wheels) plumbed with hand-formed stainless lines – check
• Handbrakes using original TR6 cables – check
• Wilwood proportioning valve – check
• ECOTEC using custom/factory mounts – check
• Fourth Gen Camaro hydraulic clutch – check
• AISIN 5 speed gearbox on custom mounts – check
• Tilt steering on a Triumph TR6 (I’ll have more on this later) – check

And the pièce de résistance for today’s post:  a hand formed aluminium intake.

The factory ECOTEC comes with a very intricate and quite impressive composite intake manifold.  The thing has a very unique shape, with a convoluted “S” shaped intake that splits the aft of the throttle body into four runners feeding each intake port.  With the longer runners, lower torque is improved.  Too bad we could not use this intake.  Why?  In the TR6 the steering shaft is in the way and the front fender would just not allow the factory intake to fit.

So what is one to do?  Answer:

GM makes these cool plates for the exhaust and intake ports that are intended for exactly this type of application.  The exhaust plate has already been used to make the exhaust headers on bowtie6 (if you haven’t seen that, CLICK HERE).

Now the intake plate along with my cousin Jim’s serious welding and fabricating skillz yields the following:

The intake is fitted for a trial fit and the all-aluminium body is yet to be fully finished.  Here is another set of pictures:

The photo above shows the front section of the custom intake.  The fly-by-wire throttle body will bolt to the flange on the front.  Not shown on the picture above is the port for the MAP sensor as well as the bung for the vacuum line going to the brake booster on the right.  Which, by the way is from a Vette along with the mastery cylinder.  What are those blue thinggies on both of the brakes lines?  Hmmm…  Wonder what that is all about??

Last but not least, another view this time towards the front of the car.  Yes, that is an all aluminium radiator up front.  The fan is SPAL (the same kind used by the boys from Maranello) mounted on an aluminium shroud.  Why the shroud?  I covered that in my original explanation in my original website.  Want to read about that?  CLICK HERE.

Pretty cool, huh?