Vlad's rides thread

[OZ38]

Do you think they would still have those shafts? Assuming they have stored them correctly, they would be a good option for the V6 guys now where all the V6 OE boxes are basically rat shit from people swapping them all the time and as a result most get stored outside and ruined and guess which bit gets ruined, yep, the input shaft as it's directly exposed to the environment when not installed in a car.

Sorry I didn't get back sooner.
The ATC branch over here in WA was in the Welshpool area. I met a nice guy in there who was very helpful at the time. He was the guy who had all the knowledge on these special shafts & their history.
After I got my shaft off him, I went back to see about the T5 Tremec rebuild kits. He had moved on & the person in there then did not seem to be very happy. Their Tremec T5 kit prices were over the top & the new guy was saying how they were closing their WA branch due to lack of sales.
They would have had around 6 or 7 of those shafts still available at that time. Such a shame if they just binned them.

[vlad01]

Yeah that's what I gathered in the end that ATC no longer wanted to deal with Tremec and any T5 support from them went with that.


Btw, the billet retainers from Clarko's, I still haven't got a response yet and I noticed his official site just returns an error when you go to it. So not sure what is going on there. But one box I have that I thought the retainer was bad on, looks actually good under all the surface rust and grime, so I might use that if the billet retainer saga is in the too hard basket.


One other update, the PS hard lines I want made with the hose beading and larger 10mm size, I tried a place in QLD, but they knocked the job back but recommended a smaller place in QLD that do these more one off jobs by hand. They are called Radius bending or benders, something along those lines. Just waiting for a response and quote from them. I sent them an email a few weeks ago, I followed up by phone and they confirmed they got it, but the guy is currently off due to some family stuff. So I should get a yay or a nay soon enough if they can make my hard lines from that sample I rigged up using the old auto lines.

[vlad01]

Finally got around to getting some stuff done after months of nothing.


The input shaft tapered bearing conversion path hit a dead end. No one wants to do it out of fear or stuffing it up and the cost is around 1000-1500 bucks due to all the mucking around. So my original idea of regrinding the thrust face went ahead. I took it to HMPG in Cheltenham and they said easy done, they reckon it should only take half a thou to fix, but I say even 1 or 2 will have no effect on depth of the blocking ring, so go ahead if the pitting needs that much. That will be ready next week. If all successful, I decided I'll drop it off to a REM polishing place in Carrum downs and then they can courier it back to me.


On the way, I picked up my PS rack with the modified housing swapped over on to it.

Steering Rebuilds Australia is who I have used for over 10 years and he now works out of his garage as a 2nd job, main job is commercial truck steering. So the cost actually came down as he took over the original business that was in Keilor I believe that he worked for and operates that part time out of his home.

Was $325 and what a great job!


Note the recessed screw and chamfered corner. This gains me 6mm of extra clearance and will prevent the header from ever hitting it. See how the unmodified side stick up fairly high in comparison.

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[vlad01]

I've come up with an idea to add manual cruise control safety cutout for when in neutral, but after much thinking of how to do it on the gearbox without any long term reliability, I figured that I could use the ECU to do the work via a flex table and a relay based on conditions.


My idea is to switch a relay to cut the safety loop when above a certain rpm or road speed or any combo of both.


Will these settings work? Does the interpolation switch the output set as on/off as soon as any value above the cell's set one when it starts to interpolate? or does it switch when it is say 50% of the way through the two cells? I know many of the other stuff that uses a relay has a hysteresis setting, but these tables don't, so I am not sure how it handles the thresholds given the table allows any value from 0 to 100%

Also, is the relay switched via grounding on the ECU side?

My plan was to tie the relay to the 12v of the first pin on the safety loop which is comes from the cruise module's power switch, then the ECU switches the relay on the ground side, then the NC contacts are looped into the rest of the safety loop like the other safety switches and the clutch pedal optical to relay module I made.


I could also invert the table values so that the relay is active on during use, and if a failure occurs then it falls to a NO state, but that means the relay runs all of the time, but that shouldn't be an issue? So in this table, the 0% areas are 100% and vise versa. In this case the flag for active when engine is running makes more sense and the relay would only be able to run if the cruise is actually switched on anyway.

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[vlad01]

Grinding was successful. Only 10 to a max of 20 microns was removed to make this repair and the rust pitting was completely removed. The cost was only 160 cash and it was done by HM precision grinding in Cheltenham. Good people there!


The before pic below for ref.

It's currently at the REM polishing place awaiting the treatment. So, soon the box rebuild and minor upgrades can commence hopefully when winter ends here.

Also I got my machinist to do the same mod on the PS housing that came off this rack so I have a modded housing to exchange on the next one. He is also fixing up the billet front retainer, I figured might as well while he's still working his business, so I have it there even if I don't use it this time, I know it will be right for the next T5 rebuild one day if needed, if not, sell it and get most of my money back.

Still no reply from Clarko, not sure what happened to him or maybe he missed the message? He hasn't seen it either way.

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[vlad01]

Bit of an update.


Shaft is all done. They masked the pocket instead of the front bearing mount by mistake but the chemical part of the treatment actually left a nice smooth surface even if it looks mottled, the front bearing journal if I suppose didn't change in size in any noticeable way, so if I were to do this again, I'll just get the entire part treated, no masking required. I tested it out with the bearings and it feels and sounds smooth as, so it's a thumbs up!


The spigot and gear surfaces have come up awesome too, so I have little worry about those now.


Yesterday and last night I stripped the box down, cleaned it with the usual paint stripper and pressure washer, with PPE of course, nitrile gloves, full chemical mask and sealed goggles. Nasty shit paint stripper is, especially with splash back from the pressure washer, fumes are bad for your health either way. Finished the case off with normal spray degreaser, then blow dry.

I assembled with shit bolts and screws that I could sacrifice and plugged everything, so I can get the whole lot blasted for a coat of caliper paint, just plain satin silver. I use the Duplicoat caliper silver, looks like fresh bead blasted or cast alloy and is very very durable. Best stuff by a lot from all the products I had tried over the years.


I was impressed with myself, I had the box stripped in less than 40 min to the bare case/housings. Getting good at this.


So soon enough I will finally have this T5 built, only took over a year haha. That damn snout and input stuffed me up though.

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[vlad01]

The shitbox is getting very sad, the lower rear end bushes are stuffed, the axles have excessive float in them albeit no noise or other issues.

I just replaced the front uni last week as it was making a horrible repetitive clinking noise.


I found under there that the entire cat back was full of holes and hanging by slivers of Swiss cheese metal, totally F'd.

The fuel pump is over due, has about 150k on it now, I'd like to replace them at 100k.

So I decided to use my spare tank to clear it off the shelf since we are about to put mum's house on the market real soon, shit needs to go either way.

I prepped the tank, but the sender was covered in white rust. I got it decent now, but the fuel pulstator was toast (previous mechanic/owner? stuffed it) and the rheostat was worn off in one spot, it worked last time it was in the red VP, but I am tossing the card out and building one good sender unit from the shitbox's one and I might order a new pulsator, PN: FP27 on ebay will bring that up if anyone is wondering.


I have the diff from the red VP as well that has good bushes. I ordered a cover gasket since I stole that cover for the restro, it had a sacrificed blasted one on it loosely, but I have another I can install and fill with oil.

Got superpro bushes this time for the lower arms, I changed them to new MacKay ones the year before, but they fell apart in 5 months and one even deformed and fell out after the first drive which happened to be towing a trailer.


So, in a few weekends I am going to get a rattle gun and do a 2 day blitz and drop the tow bar frame, rear bumper, fuel tank, rear diff and cat back.

Install new cat back from the VR, install new axle and bushes in arms, transfer all the hand brake and normal brakes over (new diff had the brake stuff raided).

Then do the fuel tank and pump/sender which will also fix the leaking filler and vapor lines as well as sort the broken return line in the tank, the spare tank's line is in great nick as seen with this post clean out pic.

The other thing I did was mould and press the remaining bit of my header, the small single piece that wraps around the steering.

The clearance is much better now! I will update this to the header clearance thread.

But after that, I checked the fitment and found that the flange and head flange didn't line up good, either one or the other, but not both at the same time. I thought maybe it was the clearancing of the pipe that deformed it, but luckily I had another unmodified set of pacemakers on the shelf. I found it was identical in the same misalignment, so I knew it was a manufacture error.

I ended up grinding the lower flange down since I am deleting it anyway. This allowed me to pry the flange on to the other whilst having the one the head in a better position, I heated the bend area in the middle with a propane torch, there was some relaxing, but I could only really heat one side at a time. So I bought another torch. That did the trick! Took a few goes of flexing the pipe, bolting and clamping in place, bit at a time as I forced each go the head flange down and anti clockwise, heated the bend all around so it all glowed orange hot, then again. Eventually I got the flange on the head to be in the right location relative to the other two pipes and their flange, and also the bottom one with some gap between them so that I knew nothing was under compression or tension. The alignment now is perfect, so I take to to Bendigo Wednesday, and the guys will chop the flanges out, and insert a small section of pipe, weld it up and it will be all one piece correctly aligned, clearances everywhere needed and the flange will be gone so that the clutch fork no longer touches it, giving ample room for the cover which aids installation too.

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[vlad01]

More or less the same stuff on the exhaust but with some updates on this dedicated thread about the clearance process.
Everything is done and they are on their way to HPC for the reflective coating. No more rust and much better thermals!

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[vlad01]

Been at the T5 now, got the case and bellhousing all blasted. Hydro blasted by a guy that does it at home in Bendigo. Cost me 60 bucks! So cheap. So much better than the last place I trialed hydo blasting, they must have used a grit too large and the acids stuffed the alloy parts badly. This guy used ultra find glass beads and just water. It literally leaves no marks that I could see, steel parts just look like they were washed totally clean and looked new without taking off any factory finish.

It came up so nice, that I decided to leave it as is, not painting. Digging the new OEM look.


Was going ok until I did the counter shaft and hit two snags.

The 5Speed genuine plate wasn't torquing down right, the peelable shims went from way too tight, to loose as via one peel to go. Not sure why as I seated everything multiple times and also beat it with a soft mallet to force it all to settle. But then I found the countersunk holes in the plate had marks at the very outer circumference of the screws, they only were contacting at the very outer edge. This explained the funny feeling when torquing it down. I did some googling and I found there are two counter sunk hole standards, freedom units of 82º (wtf?) and the metric ISO standard of 90º (makes logical sense). Yet the screws in the T5 are all metric, including the counter sunk ones that come with the kit.

So I was thinking, maybe the dude had been making them with the wrong CS standard being in the US. Sure enough that was 100% on the money.

The two units I had a fellow member buy and cross ship to me was the correct 90º CS hole. I tried it out quickly and it looked a lot better. But I found 3 of the holes to mark right at the neck, which suggests those need to be radiused more so the head seats rather than the radius at the top of the thread. I am starting to feel these 5Speed.com kits aren't all that cracked up to be.

I noticed Dellow are making their own and so far people are reviewing how well made and accurate they are.

But given it's more or less a standard box, I'm starting to lean towards stock is rock and just make it easier for myself.
I have never had an issue with the T5 with my hard driving in stock form, so I'm more confident with the stock plate fitting and not having anything cockeyed or come loose since there are no CS screws involved and the stock plate has big fat ol locking tabs that stop anything ever coming undone.

The billet plate might be revisited at a latter time on another box.


The other snag was I stuffed up the front counter shaft bearing. Normally I install the back one via the front one supporting the load of the press. I reckon it only takes a few 100kg or less than a ton to press that bearing, so the one at the other end can easily take it. The counter shaft in this case is aftermarket and the bearing fit are a lot tighter on both ends. Nice quality gear from what I can tell. Well I didn't think twice and used the higher force needed to install the rear bearing.

Well upon the plate and preload and what not being setup, I found the front bearing when spun was making a weird jumping noise, then intermittently a clicking of sorts, same speed as the rollers. I was super clean with everything, NASA would approve of my standards, so I thought how did some crap get in there? Well it wasn't after trying to clean and what not for ages with no resolution. I found at certain light angles a very faint few random vertical lines in the cup. Wiped it, still visible. So I reckon I indented the cups with the pressure of the rollers.

So massive lesson learned. This took me hours to figure out, as it was only at a very particular angle that I could just see the damage. Otherwise totally invisible and the jumping and clicking was only intermittent, but it was severe sometimes when it happened, almost like the rollers were able to jam up.

So I ordered a new pair, given the force needed uninstall the rear one to get the shaft out. So it's probably toast now too.

The new plan is to put some ally strips from the hardware store either side of the cup at the front of the case to lift the counter shaft's front gear up and off the cup, and that way when pressing the rear bearing on, the load it transferred through the ally spacers strips and not through the bearing.

Probably never was an issue as all the factory shafts have bearings pressed on rather lightly so the pressure was never high enough to cause any harm until I did this one.


Also, this is the reverse brake type T5, this spring was a real prick to get back in with all the other levers and stuff all mashed together like some rubix cube. Just saying.

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[vlad01]

Another thing I did was clearance the bellhousing for the header as it touched in one spot. So I took plenty off to make sure when stuff vibrates, wobbles etc... that there is no change of it hitting.


Well I got an Easter egg of sorts, well the shape of one at least. Check this void in the casting!


Soon I'll be moving to get the clutch built and install the box, exhaust and PS rack.

The bellhousing brace is at Bendigo with a guy my former boss uses for their machine work. The side is getting milled off and a small spot chamfered a little to aid the PS rack slipping past during install. But with the side going away, the header should clear nicely and being milled it will look nice and not hacked up.


Also, my Dellow's HD clutch cable arrived the other day, not tested yet, but quick measurement it looks to be correct this time, so hopefully no spacers needed to have the adjustment right.

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