Sniv Speed Shop - Custom Parts and Design

That looks fantastic! And that was educational too.

 

Awesome work and fantastic write up! Now I want one.

I always like the pie cut stainless intakes with the colors too. Reminds me of the intakes you would see on higher end 2JZ builds.

 

Shipped off the last 2650 pulley today. I need to find a new machine shop since the machinist I was using kind of died... RIP Mark.

So if anyone knows of any cheap machine shops in the US let me know Preferably Utah, but frankly anywhere in the US works. The alternative is have stuff machined overseas, which I've done on a number of parts and prototype stuff. But I'd really prefer the "high volume" parts get made in the states. Now whether I can find someone as cheap as Mark who's willing to do a production run of <20 units is another question.

 

Damn, RIP Mark

 

Sorry about your machinist.
Is there such thing as a cheap machinist?
I’ll ask my buddy if he’s set up or interested

 

I have a lathe from harbor freight and a mill from little machine shop.. Can you get within a hundred thou. LMK!

 

Sending you a PM…

 

My machinist buddy died recently too, probably the same guy - was it Makr? Mark Atkinson?

 

Yes sir!

 

You could reach out to Joe Piecyznski ( Joe Pie ) on YouTube and see if he has any recommendations. Guy is the most insane machinist I’ve ever seen. If his shop (advanced innovations in TX - 512-577-6100) doesn’t take the work, I’m sure he knows of one.

 

Another truck has completed the Sniv Speed Shop forced induction upgrade path. This one is the sister truck to the black one I did a few months ago. Dude had a shop install a new 2650 Magnuson on it, and then dropped it off shortly after for me to clean up some issues they had and upgrade everything else. This was the nicest truck I've worked on, totally stock, already supercharged, and newer so no rust.

The first thing I did when I got it was pull the valve body and send it off to IPT. While waiting for that I'd spend a couple hours here or there working on it. I put in DW650 injectors, removed the charcoal filter on the intake, new IKH24 spark plugs, and flashed an initial tune into the truck. Once I got the valve body back from IPT I was able to move forward with the more intensive parts.



I put the valve body in, this time using a floor jack to support it helped a lot. Though after bolting it in I had ONE BOLT leftover! It was a really short bolt, and I watched the install video five times and searched everywhere and I have no idea where it came from. There is only one short bolt that holds a temperature sensor down, so why I had two is beyond me. I was really worried about this, but after checking everything I finally said fuck it and went with it. Maybe that bolt rolled under the truck, maybe it fell from the engine bay, or was part of something I deleted, I have no idea. It was sitting right next to the other short bolt for the sensor, and looked identical, so didn't seem like a coincidence but what can you do if you checked everything?

With the transmission sealed up again, I installed a trans cooler after looking up schematics of what to buy.



The trans cooler ended up mostly bolting into factory bolt holes which was awesome. I made a small Z bracket to tie into the A/C condenser lower mount but that was it. Very straight forward and clean! And saved $1000+ versus other kits out there!



With the transmission filled and the truck flashed, I was able to move it from one side of the shop over to the other and put it on the lift so I could do the fuel pump. I have the fuel pump swap down pretty well now, I think it takes 1.5 hours or so to change it. And the fuel tank was totally empty and still went without a hitch. Using the lift works great. Three straps, the rear emissions line, the two pressure lines, and then the filler and vent line and out she comes!



I put a DW300 fuel pump in this. The shop that did the Magnuson pump were not impressive. All but one of the locking arms on the sending unit cap were broken off, multiple edges of the cap were broken, and they didn't route the fuel level sending wires through the little clip on the inside. Just sloppy work in general--functional, but sloppy.

With the fuel pump done, all that was left was the AFR gauge! Up to this point I had spent about 10 hours on the truck doing everything. I'd spend another 10 hours doing just the AFR gauge! First up was pulling the passenger side exhaust. I had so many issues last time, but this one went great! I also realized if I unbolted the driver's side going to the muffler then I could push the whole muffler back a bit so the cats would just drop out without a fight! Not sure why I haven't done that before.




Standard procedure for the sensor bung. Mark the location, drill out to 3/4", cut the bung down 50% on the lathe, TIG weld it on.



I then ran the MAP and O2 sensor wiring through the driver's side firewall grommet, and onto making a mounting solution for the 2021. I don't like the steering wheel gauge mounts, and absolutely no way am I sacrificing an air vent for a gauge--and those are the only two options for the 2014+ trucks that I'm aware of, so I started mocking up some locations and talking to the customer, and we decided to mount the gauge in front of the shifter. On this 2021 at least, there's a bit of a "fin" that sticks up so that space is totally useless. To the right of it is a little tray area with some USB outlets, so I was constrained to keeping the gauge mount as narrow as possible to only take up room above the "fin" area. In reality my gauge mount ended up extending ~0.500" into the tray area, but that still leaves plenty of room for the USB hook ups and you can visually see the USB outlets from the driver's seat so nothing is hidden. I started by mocking up stuff with some .060" aluminum I had.



And a couple revisions in we're getting somewhere!



I started out with one big flat pattern piece, which I then turned into two, this main section and then the right side "wing" that encloses it. This let me save some material by only changing the main body or wing each time. After a couple revisions it was getting pretty dialed in.



For the final piece I did it out of .060" steel so I could weld up all the fold seams. I could do this with the aluminum ones, but thin steel is a lot easier to weld and I would ultimately be painting it anyway so the aluminum aesthetic and corrosion resistance wouldn't be of any benefit.





This final piece was one big flat pattern, I took the side wing design that fit best and just added it to the main body in CAD. I also added some holes that bolt in from the side, as well as a tab to bolt it down onto the flat tray area too. I decided to only bolt into the center console of the truck because I thought it would be the cheapest part to replace if need be in the future.

After test fitting and getting the angles right, I then welded the seams and sanded them down.





Trying to figure out how to actually mount it so it could be assembled was a bit of a trick. The finished product I ended up welding some studs to the bottom tab that goes against the tray, and they do not get bolted down but just act like alignment pins. The center console has to go in first, so there's no way to access the inside of the console to put nuts on the back side. Additionally, the gauge is installed into the bracket first so there's no way to access the inside of the bracket for assembly. Because of this, I ended up using some factory style push lock grommets on the holes next to the knee which ended up looking great! And they can be installed and removed without doing anything special, and are a nice snug fit. Ultimately the fitment is so tight that no fasteners are really needed, snapping in the shifter leather bezel holds everything tightly in place. But combine that with the wing alignment pins and the push lock grommets and it's really snug with no rattling.

I also trimmed a pass through on the back of the fin for the wiring pass through. There is so little space behind the gauge, after a lot of test fitting I actually cut out a ton of wiring coming off the gauge to get the leads short enough that there was no extra slack to need to stuff under the gauge. The wiring going to the gauge is hot and ground off of the 12V outlet, dimmer function from the Tow/Haul switch, O2 sensor cable, MAP sensor cable, and a data logging output cable.



This was the final test fit which I think turned out great! The one downside is you can see some nasty scratches on the dash panel side and a good scratch on the silver trim piece. They're really accentuated from the lighting here. I made some tweaks during the last few test fits, like shortening the alignment studs and then shortening the wiring, and as I said the fitment is so tight it's tricky to get everything in and out smoothly which must've been when most of these scratches happened since they weren't there in the previous photos, which is a shame since I did my best to keep everything clean.



With that said, my wife and I did our best afterwards to clean up the scratches and fix everything which made it turn out a lot better.

One thing that didn't turn out better, was the passenger side of the bracket got really banged up at some point. I tried to repaint it while it was installed using a paint brush which just resulted in it looking really streaky and definitely made it worse. But by the time we realized that we were on the road to deliver the truck.



In 95% of lighting conditions the gauge mount looks great, it's only when you're really looking for it or the sun hits it directly that you can notice the imperfections. Which sucks, I really tried to make it as nice as possible. Interior and paint work is always hard and I don't have much experience with it, plus developing something new and learning as you go. I pointed everything out to the customer, he was really happy with it, but I told him I'll repaint and fix everything next time I get the truck for some more upgrades if he wants.

With all of that said, I do plan to use this same gauge mount in the future now that I have it figured out. I think I'll also sell it for like $20 as a flat pattern piece, or a version that's welded and ready to go. I think it's far superior than anything else on the market, but that's just me.



As I said, the gauge side was an all day event and half of all the hours went towards that. There's a lot of stuff to do for the gauge, crazy how long it takes compared to things like a fuel pump.

I decided to deliver the truck to the customer (3 hours north) in person. I also did some tuning along the way. The truck runs and drives great, the small stock tires are a lot different feel than the usual Tundra on 35s. I think I'll see this truck again, I have some more power adders I need to design and then will probably get added to it to get some more boost. All said and done I charged 21 hours for the truck.

 

Instead of paint on the bracket, what about a vinyl wrap over the whole thing?

 

I like your solution for the AFR gauge mount on the 2021, you should consider making a few more of those, I'd def be interested in one for my 2021.

 

Full service!! You put pride in your work! Lucky customer buddy!!

 

Sweet... just confirming, you're getting $150/hr??

 

Yes sir, $150/hr. Invoice includes a timesheet with date, hours, and what was accomplished. Anything I have to buy specific for the project I include receipts and charge what I paid. Stuff that I already have on hand (metal, tools, consumables, etc) I just ignore so is wrapped up in the $150/hr rate.

 

After talking to a handful of people on the forum, and reaching out to other friends I have who do machining, I came to the conclusion to have China Nick do the next order of pulleys. Shout out to @Abell207 who talked to a bunch of people and we talked on the phone and was really the final straw concluding I couldn't get parts made state side for the price point I wanted to hit. Not to say I can't find someone as cheap as Mark again, but he was a lucky find and is what allowed me to sell anything.

Being a one man show and selling parts really as a hobby, the only real options are China Nick making the parts or no one gets any parts. Hopefully someday I'll find a competitive source in the US or buy my own machines, but until then they'll be coming from overseas. With that said, most of the one off parts I was doing already came from China Nick since even Mark couldn't be competitive for that stuff. There won't be a quality change, if anything the quality is frankly better. And due to the cheaper costs, I can also expand the "product line".



The new pulleys have removed any labeling about US design and manufacturing, and are engraved Rev B indicating they came from overseas. The 70mm and 76mm are otherwise completely identical to the previous pulleys Mark made. I'm also ordering 5x of the 65mm (smallest size I can push the 2650 Magnuson pulley to) and this morning updated my order with an 81mm size since a couple people in the past had inquired about a middle point from the stock 86mm and the 76mm.

And since shipping is expensive, I should stuff in as many parts as I can. I finished up the 94mm throttle body design and ordered 2x:



For the butterfly shaft to the stock gear/shaft I went ahead with a notch to set the angle of the blade with the gear, and then the alignment sleeve has two holes in it for roll pins. The butterfly shaft is already drilled for it, the stock shaft will have to get drilled.




I only ordered 2x of the throttle bodies so I can run one on my truck and then send the other off to someone for testing. And if there's any issues I can "easily" fix the throttle bodies, plus even through China Nick the throttle bodies aren't cheap. If testing goes good then any updates will get rolled in and I'll do more of a stocking order.


Some other things, I reached out to Deatschwerks and trying to see if I can become a dealer for their parts. I think it'd be nice to offer an upgrade kit that is injectors, pulley, fuel pump, serpentine belt, etc. so people don't have to track down specific parts. And then they can save some money overall. I started thinking about it after the last few trucks I built where I buy stuff at retail and then invoice the customer at that price point, if I can become a dealer then everyone comes out better.

 

@snivilous that's all great news! Can't wait to see the 94mm TB!

 

I wish Toby was near me so I'll just drop truck off with him.

I don't know what's shop rate in US right now but BMW charges about $225/hr and guaranteed to mess up something so you'll be back.

 

that's standard shop charges for anywhere in Denver

 

BADASS! I'd almost move the 103 to the 101 for the peace of mind and no coms harness needed

 

I was talking to @blenton since he expressed interest for a Whipple one. Like we had talked about awhile ago, I think a Whipple-specific TB would be the way to go so we can eliminate the adapter the Whipple inherently needs. I thought I had laid that out awhile ago and we could do like a 99-101mm Whipple-specific that would eliminate all the spacers and extra hardware.

 

Down!

 

I’m in.

 

That's about the going rate in most areas; which is why I'd have no problem paying someone who's passionate about his craft that kind of money for his time

 

Fast, good, and cheap.

Feel free to pick the two you value most! Dedicated people that are masters of their craft are well worth the cost.

 

First up, I had a guy reach out about doing a pulley on his Magnuson supercharged 5th gen 4Runner. He pulled off his stock pulley and gave me some measurements and it turned out the Tundra pulley and hub were nearly a direct plug and play! The only thing that wouldn't quite work was the pulley offset was a bit different, but not by much. The guy was going camping on Thursday and once we figured out what was needed to change, I shaved down the backside of the pulley by 0.078" and overnighted the parts!



And this morning he got it installed!





The 4Runner only runs a 6-rib serpentine, so the front two rib slots are empty, but otherwise it sounds like it works great and dude said for the first time ever he saw 6+ psi! There's some additional constraints with the 4Runner to run a small pulley, right now he's running the 2.2" and I sent him a 2.1" also but he said the 2.1" will require a bit of shaving on the backside to make work. My plan is on the next production run of hubs (which this was my last one, so works out) I'll get a batch of 4Runner/FJ Cruiser specific hubs made that are slightly shorter and that will allow people to run the Tundra pulleys! Cool that the system is easily cross compatible. The guy said he threw the hub in his BBQ for half an hour and it slid right on, first time I've heard of using a BBQ and I like it!

And since this thread hasn't been updated in awhile, I got a big order of Magnuson 2650 pulleys in. These ones are made from China Nick, but they look absolutely awesome:



I couldn't find anyone to make the pulleys for the cost I needed to break even, Mark was just insanely cheap I guess! RIP Mark.

But these look awesome. Funny enough, I have another friend that orders parts from this same manufacturer and he got a review yesterday of how the machining and workmanship was some of the best he's ever seen and to buy American! Except the parts were machined in China... Anyway, because of the lower cost I was able to add two additional sizes to the 2650 line up, there is now: 81mm, 76mm, 70mm, and the spicy 65mm which maxes out how small you can go.

Additionally, I ordered 2x prototype 95mm throttle bodies and have been spending some hours here and there figuring them out. I finally have one assembled and going through iterations testing on the truck.





Figuring out how to assemble it has been a trip. Fucking things up, breaking parts, machining parts, etc.





I have a running list of design changes, but for the most part it has plugged together pretty well. The biggest hassle has been figuring out the whole stock gear interfacing the throttle blade shaft and how to have three bearings press together without breaking things.



I also absolutely janked together this intake tube. I found some random huge rubber hose I had laying around, going to a stainless tube, going to an exhaust coupler off my stand up jet ski, going to the intake box!



But with all of that said, it is working and right off the bat seems fully functional. The throttle blade turns, the TPS reading appears correct, it opens to 90deg, truck starts and idles and moves! The biggest issue is getting the throttle blade to seal enough. Yesterday was my first time getting the truck to successfully idle and not surge, but even then the idle rpm is really high and the MAF is reading 4x the amount of airflow fully closed that the stock TB does. The issue is from the TB I designed being the wrong size, and I don't have anything that cuts accurately enough to make replacements, so I cut them on the plasma table and then sand-test fit-sand on repeat to try and get a good seal. Plus I had huge spaces where the bearings sit so air was able to go between the throttle blade/shaft and the bearing pocket so lots of airflow leaked there (you can see the delrin spacer on the left side to try and fill it in there).



This is so far my best sealing blade, and nowhere near good enough. Today I (theoretically) fixed the design and order a bunch of throttle blades from SendCutSend that have varying sizes in .005" increments. And then to add to the jankiness, I actually took the throttle blade above and coated the perimeter in a thin layer of RTV to see if I can get it to properly seal as a temporary solution. While the truck would be fine to drive as is, having it idle at 1800rpm and essentially neutral dropping it into gear every time is not something I want, so the first task is to fix the idle air leakage and once that's done then I can see how it drives, if there's a boost increase, and tweak the tune.

Hopefully all of those last things will happen in the next few days. Once I get this throttle body working, I have an entire second set of parts that I'll build out into a hopefully more refined prototype.

 

Holy Scientist work!! Atta boy Sniv! You're close to being able to stay home and make rad shit! After the lotto-win, right?!

 

Badass brother!

 

That's amazing work, looking great! Is the throttle body out of round, or are the multiple blade diameters just a matter of finding the right balance of air getting through?