Oil Filter Exhaust Fabrication

3rd January 2008
After discussing my Turbo's drain feed on VZi aka www.volkszone.co.uk, I found out that I could use a dual chamber oil pump from a automatic 1600 Ghia, that was originally designed to send hydraulic fluid to the gear shift mechanism. I new these items where rare but had seen one or two available. With this in mind and whilst trying to purchase a pump. I decided that I was able to pump the oil drain from the turbo that I could also pass it through an oil filter or even an oil cooler before returning it to the sump.

I started searching on the Internet for a template for the bracket as I new and exhaust bracket was available but I new you could only buy them in Alloy and I wanted my bracket in Stainless Steel. I started fabrication on paper drawing out the mount for the oil filter. This was done by taking a rubbing of the back of the oil filter mounting and transposing this into a line drawing with a pencil and removing the shading by a rubber.

With the outline of the oil mounting plate transferred onto paper. I downloaded a picture of the alloy exhaust mounting to get a rough idea of the design. The image was not much use as the picture was taken showing the bracket from an angle , where it was placed on a desk. I could see that the mounting bracket had material coming up from the base at 30 degrees. I also measure my studs on my exhaust flange and found them to be 70 degrees to the horizontal plane. I could also see that the exhaust flange bottom hole was in alignment with one of the bolt holes in the oil filter bracket. I had my three points of reference that I could use a bit of simple geometry to design the bracket. Fortunately a friend sent me the picture (right) and I was able to see that the angle should in fact be 60 degrees. This was annoying as I had to redraw the bracket so that the exhaust studs where in the correct angle to leave the oil filter sitting horizontal to the engine, but thank god he gave this to me in time before i made the first bracket up, as this saved me many hours of grinding and finishing (Cheers mate you know who you are).

Once I had drew out the template on paper I cut it out from the sheet and applied it to the 4mm stainless steel that I had been saving in the back of my garage. Initially I tried to use a Starret hole cutter 42mm dia. to cut the adapter out where it would fit around the exhaust. Unfortunately the Starret cutter lost teeth and become very blunt within a short space of time. This is another one of these points in my build that I question my self and the fact I have still not purchased a second hand plasma cutter. I tried to drill the perimeter of the semicircle with a small HSS drill bit. Unfortunately the stainless did not yield to this. I drilled out the bolting holes blunting two of my 8mm HSS drill bits. I would need to resharpen them and cut the final two up to size. The trick with drilling Stainless is to use good lubrication, as I was cutting out the holes on my dining room table I could not use adequate lubrication and eventually after three holes the drill bits over heated and lost their edge.

Once I had the holes cut. I decided as I had no Plasma cutter that I would have to cut the bracket out with an angle grinder. This looked more daunting that it turned out to be as I was able to cut the rough shape out quite quickly. I was now able to check that my oil filter head unit fitted and that the exhaust gasget that I had used to get the stud distances bolted on through the holes that I had drilled. The parts fitted and I was then able to use a bastard file and a half round file to achieve a smoother more professional finish. Once I had the bracket cleaned up I used stainless steel polish to knock the stainless back. I took the bracket over to the garage and tried my fit. My bracket was a pretty good fit but it still needed to be honed out with a file to allow it to fit around my exhaust without rubbing on the exhaust surface.

Once I had the bracket made and fitting it became apparent that the stock design I had used was not compatible with my drag exhaust. Unfortunately The Fram HP1 filter would not go on as one of the exhaust tubes went straight through the filter. I decided to reverse the bracket by placing it upside down. The bracket needed some re-jigging to make it fit around the exhaust tubing as the flange on the exhaust had more clearance on the bottom than on the top.

With the bracket and filter head fitted I ordered the Fram filter and the right angle brass couplings.

I had purchased the semi automatic pump that I needed from www.volkszone.co.uk and had to wait for it to turn up along with the other components that I needed.