I had a ton of errands and chores to do today, so I was quite late getting out to the shop. That being said, I was however able to accomplish my primary goal of the day: getting the carbon fiber air induction tube mounted.

That was only possible by the delivery of this guy below (and a few more): an 18-8 stainless steel press-fit threaded standoff that I ordered from McMaster-Carr.

First off… yes, I had very much planned on making these on my own lathe, but it’s still not 100% operational in regards to CNC right now.  So I cheated and bought them as I was placing an order for other stuff.

Also, the “threaded” part of the description is not something I preferred.

So I changed that by chucking these standoffs up in the lathe and drilling out the threads.

So why exactly did I drill out the threads on these stainless steel stand-offs? (pic 1).  Because I needed to be able to seat the bolts down all the way into the standoffs, since the head-drilled bolts that I’m using all have an unthreaded shank which prevents that seating.  As you can see in pic 2, removing the threads from the standoff eliminates my bolt-seating issue.

To press-fit the standoffs into the carbon fiber air induction tube mounting flange, I drilled the 1/4″ holes out 3/8″.  I then mounted the air induction tube into place on the fuel injection servo and during the dry run fitting of each standoff, one by one, tightened each bolt to press-fit the standoff into the air induction tube flange.

Here we have all the stainless steel press-fit standoffs in place on the air induction tube mounting flange.

I then mounted the carbon fiber air induction tube by installing the mounting bolts through each press-fit standoff (and flange insert), then torqueing the bolts to 96 in-lbs before safety-wiring the pair on each side.  I will note that just as I did on the fuel injection servo mounting, I applied a very thin layer of gasket RTV to the gasket and let that tack up before installing it.

With my chores out of the way I’m hoping to get quite a bit more done tomorrow.

Pressing forward!