Vlad's rides thread

[immortality]

You making new front T5 retainers to suit hydraulic slave cylinders?

[vlad01]

You bet I thought about it, perfect chance to get a good design from the get go, but I don't sell or design anything in this case. I just rang them up and asked if they could make a retainer, they responded and said they had a few people call in the last few months asking the same so there was a demand for them, but no one bothered or had a good sample to measure from that they could provide to them.

I am merely just allowing them to make something they wanted to do but didn't have samples or background knowledge on the T5, so I have little say if they would make custom hydro retainers other than if I had clear design drawings to give to them so make a few in a small batch, but I would have to do all the leg work which I'm not in the financial position to do and it also depends on my getting all the bits for the car to be able to even design in the first place as there are too many unknowns with the clutch side of things until I have something in hand.

If I were to do it, which I probably would need to, to achieve what I want from my last project, it would be more as a side spin off type of project.

So with hydraulic retainers, there is a million different ways to design it, for a million different slave types and clutch configs.

If it were me, I would go for the AP racing Saab style slave, most others on the market are questionable quality and layout. The AP Saab style is about the best I could find that would warrant the quality and suitability where hydraulic makes sense, high rpm, high output engines where clutches are more race or track orientated and heavy, and also the durability and quality will also benefit daily drive too as cheaper more universal slaves often can be mediocre and a downgrade from cable.

It's also one of the few concentric slaves that has options and full tech drawings that make designing much easier.

Just going from those drawings and the height of a typical HD organic Xtreme clutch branded kit, the retainer would be 74 ish mm height, but I'd prob make it 70mm and use adjustment shims of some kind to allow taller clutches than this which already is taller than stock, down to stock heights. Careful thought would be needed as there could be taller kits out there and also the slave has only a 2mm shoulder for locating, so relying on that will very quickly run out of shoulder when using shims.

One of the things I want to verify if I were to go down this path for that car is to simulate clutch loading on the gearbox case itself with a hypothetical front retainer, and measure case deflections. I have this fear that if the case flexes too much, then it will kill the bearings, especially the front needle thrust bearing which is installed with negative 0.07mm of float, ie. preload, and bearings shit the bed fast when you go over a certain preload. If this was an issue, then there is no point even pursuing this route of hydro clutch, and a more old school slave and fork setup will be needed.

[OZ38]

Also, I can't recall if I mentioned it already, but I found a place in Broadford that do CNC stuff and that already make gearbox front retainers. I should have a T5 one specific to the V6 ready prob around the end of the month or so. I supplied all the bits for them to repro from and confirm fitment.

I would be interested in an all Steel T5 Bearing retainer to suit the V6 ?

I currently have a V8 iron one being modded at a machine shop to extend the input shaft cover 40 odd mm's to suit my V6's T5. But a all steel option would be better.

[vlad01]

Yeah I'll post the link once they are available. They should be around that 220 or so price range I was told as an estimation.

[OZ38]

Yeah I'll post the link once they are available. They should be around that 220 or so price range I was told as an estimation.

Thank you, good sir.

[vlad01]

I will post it up on some of the FB groups, I think this item will be of good interest for many from what I am gathering so far and I am stoked to help the community and manufacturing come together to help each other out where it benefits everyone and helps keep these cars going.

I gain nothing from this other than also being able to buy replacement parts myself that I couldn't before. So the more people know, the better the outcome for everyone.

[vlad01]

Finally got around to building that new stock shifter from the bits from the US long shifter that was a NOS pulled unit.

My home made rivet punch worked great. I cut a piece of hose as a guide to stop it from jumping off the rivet when I belted it with a large steel mallet.

Worked a treat!

I also added some oil resistant silicone between all the layers to better seal it than what the factory does, so hopefully that stops it from weeping anywhere near as much as they do.

Few other "purpose tools" I used to press the tabs back together.

New pin from the NOS unit pressed into the original shaft.
Genuine new boot that came of the NOS unit was used too.

[vlad01]

Still can't get the pics to go the right way once they upload. I am sure it's a win 11 problem as much as it is an apple one. But on my desktop which is win 7, I can always fix it before uploading by using my trick of rotating in a random direction, then rotate back to the position I want it to display, works 100% of the time. But on win 11/10 it only works maybe 20% of the time and there is no way to tell what it will end up being once uploaded. Not just on this forum, by FB posts and ebay does it too.

Anyway, would be cool if this forum had a pic editor so you can at least fix it in post, kinda how ebay used to have one up until a few weeks ago this year or I suppose FB market place.

So just try to bare with me on the random pic directions.

But I digress. The sealant took me several goes and this is the best I could. My hands are just never steady trying to dispense sealant and lay a nice bead, never have been and I am rat shit at this, but I am happy this came up ok at least by smearing off the excess after a few goes in itself.


All other seams I used a micro cloth to clean up the excess.

[vlad01]

I also restored the ID tag for the T5, not that I really need a tag for it as it's not a restoration, but rather a good tidy up and mod with a long service life in mind as the goal, but I had to give it a shot.

So the OG tag is a rolled sort of plate with gal coating before they are cut and stamped. But I can't really get a place to gal it with such a small one off job like this, plus I am poor now so I can't afford little luxuries like having a nice tag lol.

But I already had stuff for lead body wiping/filling and bunch of supplies for electronics soldering. So, I came up with the idea of stripping the tag to bare metal by pickling it in HCl, used a propane torch to "thermally clean" off some bits of silicone sealant that didn't want to come off, HCl again, then I dipped it in tinning pastes, 100% Sn powder and ZnCl as the flux, all as a slurry.

Used the heat gun and played around and found about 480C was about the go for getting it to flow out decent. It looked very rough and granulated as expected, so I fluxed it now this time with rosin flux I use for PCBs, then tested temps and found about 390c to flow out nice, I flicked the tag while molten to rid the excess bulge of tin at the bottom and some solder wick around the SN number, fluxed it again and it came up great with a natural looking gal, just it's tin and not zinc. But either way it was a beaten up mangled heavily rusted tag that was not even readable on the some of the numbers.

I had one zinc plated in the past, but I dig the tin gal look. Looks industrial and mass produced, rather than the bling that comes with overdone restorations which i feel I did a lot of in the past, not for the look, but for corrosion protection as the humidity here in winter is horrific, I still always preferred that new/clean OEM look . For a daily driven car, even this type of work is overkill, but it was essentially free and only just cost a little of my time and the results were worth every bit of that.

[vlad01]

Just called CRD engineering. They are about half way with the production.

So they close 20th and come back on the 13th of Jan, so they are likely to be up for purchase end of Jan/Early Feb.