Turbo and intake pipe mounted

It's more fun to work on stuff that shows. It makes it look like progress in being made.
The turbo is in place and the intake tubing is arranged.

Next I have to get fresh cool air into the turbo. I made a panel that mounts where the original radiator did just above the top of the new radiator. The new panel will hold a big K&N air filter (from a Lamborghini) and route filtered air from in front of the radiator directly into the turbo.  That means having a pretty tight 90 degree elbow that has to clear the left side upper control arm and the upper radiator hose. After collecting a big box of metal and plastic elbows to try to modify I decided I had to fabricate the elbow out of fiberglass.

Starting with a flat sheet of Styrofoam, I cut a bunch of 4" diameter cookies with a hole saw.
Then I sanded each cookie into a wedge. It was pretty simple to glue the wedges together to form approximate shape of the elbow.

 

After hours of gluing and sanding and test fitting I covered the foam plug with fiberglass and epoxy resin. With a couple more layers of fiberglass and lots more sanding and shaping We have an elbow. It fits just right and has the clearance it needs.

Water manifold

The 6.5 has a big Y shaped casting to route water exiting the cylinder heads through the thermostat and on to the radiator. It also has hose connections for the thermostat bypass and heater supply hose. My problem is the stock water manifold is too tall. With it installed the hood can't close. In addition the filler cap needs to be the highest point in the system. With the radiator mounted so low I would have to fab an additional filler of some kind at the top of the water manifold. Several attempts to modify the stock manifold were not satisfactory so I decided to fabricate a water box.

So far, so good. It's got all the necessary connections, the filler is at the top so it will be easy to purge air from the system. There is a baffle inside to help mix the water from left and right heads. The thermostat is inside the big fitting on the left of the photo. The fitting unscrews and the thermostat fits inside.