Vlad's rides thread

[Charlescrown]

Sounds like if you didn't know you could get into a whole lot of trouble. Those Chinses ones say it all for their zero quality control. I remember a neighbour (real turd) made up a mix and match V8 and V6 gearbox and when I looked at it told him it would sound like a fire engine coming down the road but he knew more than me. I was right and in frustration he sold the car cheap just to get rid of it.

[vlad01]

Haha, you'll be surprised how many people try to build v8 gearboxes out of v6 ones by mixing and matching and somehow not realizing they are 2 completely and incompatible gear sets. I bet the teeth all broke off the first start I am amazed he even got any of the parts to fit in lol.


I asked 5Speed.com what was the go with no more international shipping for their counter support plates, they said they stopped shipping outside of the use due to many of them going missing. On the main (non ebay) site, there is mention due to the loctite and customs but either way, maybe one of the US guys on here might be kind enough to purchase 1 or 2 sets for me and forward them to me here in Aus? Such a pain when you can't get stuff from overseas.

[Charlescrown]

I think it only got around the block and the noise was as I said. A fire engine. I find the postage cost from a lot of US sellers is outrageous. Even some UK sellers are going down the path of making big profit from postage. I even find Aliexpress pricing getting a bit steep finding I can buy local for a cheaper price. Pays to shop around.

[vlad01]

Got my rear exhaust mount finally done on the white car.

Got the new clutch disk from my mechanic.

Also ordered a few wear bits and pieces from Dellow conversions and a new fork cover from Rares. This heavy duty clutch cable is quite beefy. I am going to insulate the exhaust in the section near the fork cover and also put a foil insulation sleeve over the cable itself to stop or at least slow down the incinerating of them from heat.

On another unrelated thing, I was getting sick of leaving on my headlights when I would get to work, leave in pitch black, and then it's mid morning by the time I get to work. So the warning light is too dim to be noticed in the day.

I already made one of these but was only able to get a 300mcd flashing 3mm red LED from RS components. It was the wrong colour for starters and not much brighter than stock. I was hoping the flashing would be noticeable in the corner of my eye but the brightness is also key.

I got these from an LED online store. I bought something like 150 different and unusually LEDs just to make up a min $10 order. The ones for this though are a 5'000mcd flashing yellow LEDs.

I managed to really nail the construction of this using one of the original throw away lamp/holder.

This happen to the shitbox. So I made this dodgy but rather good mount directly to the engine

[vlad01]

The bracket tore clean off the body and left a hole.

I rigged this up with a sump stud, some rear shocker washers, an irrigation bolt through hose clamp, some 8mm fuel hose for the rubber coupling pushed over each bolt end.
And a regular hose clamp to clamp together the sleeved bolt ends. It's actually quite solid and holds the intake in the right spot too.

This is the sort of crap the shitbox goes though that really makes me appreciate and and amazed it just keeps going.

[vlad01]

I'm pulling apart a blown scrap parts T5 I have in the shed to try and get a head start on a cobbled together box for the shitbox when I have it out to do the clutch.

I found the end float on this scrap box is about 1mm

The latest manual from Tremec's site states about 0.013-0.102
mm

[vlad01]

So I was right on the money!

Indeed an exploded disk!

This is what 200k of extreme abuse and horrendous day in day out Melbourne peak hour traffic does.

On a side note, these OEM thrust bearings hold up like NASA built them. Was still working fine and the plastic had stuff all wear.

The gearbox was good but also worse than I thought.

The rear main and front pocket bearing race surfaces were toast, some sort of debris in it's previous life ruined them. The chirping noise was for certain this.

Not just 2nd synchro was worn, but all of them except 5th was nearly bottoming out, so totally stuffed even though they felt good except 2nd.

2nd sync teeth were stuffed, that was me clashing them often. I didn't have half and hour to wait for it to engage

Input shaft teeth had some metal layer built up on one side on one half of the gear. I believe this is wear/debris metal that had cold welded to the teeth under the enormous loads.

The input shaft on one side was rubbing the inside of the nose cone from the flex due to the disk vibration, it also loosened the spigot bush to the point it felt out of the crank with the finger.

The pocket in the input was also pitted, I gave it a once over with some wet and dry but was not happy with the amount of pitting. So I used another input shaft I had that was all good in bearing surfaces but the 4th sync teeth were worn due to the donor that it came from had non existent sync rings at that point. But hopefully should be ok.

The counter shaft was in great shape as was the main and most of the gears, except 2nd.

5th is in great shape and is the best I have seen for a T5.

All of the sync hub springs were mostly worn through from the keys, so it's had some Ks! it was a mystery box that now has 200k more. Wouldn't be surprised if it's got 500-600k now.

All else it was very clean inside and certainly not terrible for unknown previous life and lots of ks.

So I started to cobble together a decent box with all the random ok and some new parts I had and new bearings.

I used a pressure washer to clean all the parts and assembled dry where I could. It's the best way to eliminate dust and insects getting stuck and also allows me to air gun the case as I go to maintain dust free.

As for the counter shaft retaining plate. I won't be using any of the billet ones in this shitbox but I had 4 sets of shims and plates and none of them in any combo was any better than 0.5 to about 1mm end float. I concluded that they were all set this or very loose from factory. The later tremec built ones tightened up this spec to 0.013 to 0.102mm.

So I had to take the best combo and wet lap it on the concrete. Eventually I got 0.02ish mm float and once I added a little ATF to the bearings it felt and sounded really good.

Got all the lower bits done and started on the main shaft.

A good trick once you get a gear and it's shims and bearings sorted is to cable tie it all together so you don't lose track of the order and visually it's easier to know which group of parts goes on the shaft next and in which direction.

[vlad01]

On another note, I finally got one of these for the white car. From a FB group and it was actually a member that was active on here a few years back. So cheers for that if you're reading

Just need pedals, and that's all the non new parts sorted. Everything else for the conversion I can buy brand new.

[vlad01]

Everything is back together and the T5 works great! Shifts are really easy!

However, I think the new clutch is shot out of the box


I've had this problem before with a stock exedy kit years many ago, the pedal feels super loose at the first few cm of travel and very quickly hardens up to the point I can't get it down to the floor, I can force it to the floor with some serious leg effort. It does not have the classical pop feeling a good clutch has. The diaphragm also makes the same creaking sounds as the exedy clutch I just replaced, which I just assumed it was just dry pivot points on the fork and thrust bearing. Obviously not!

This is only the 3rd time in my life I've used exedy but I can't be that unlucky? Or are exedy really that shit?

The other issue is the pedal vibrates like spastic at higher rpm even though there is no vibration elsewhere. The VP vacationer back in 2010 which was my first T5 conversion used an exedy kit, same one mentioned above that had the super stiff pedal, it also had that pedal rattle and vibration.

I have to be careful now to not over stress the clutch fork as it broke in the vacationer due to these issues.

I literally should have spent the extra few bucks and got an Extreme clutch kit, I have had only good experiences with them. I'll have to drop it out at some point and do exactly that, but I don't have the funds to chuck at it for some time. Tyres need replacing desperately, thats over 400 just for the 2 tyres!

[immortality]

Sure it's not the release bearing not moving freely? Sure it might have felt fine when manipulating by hand but maybe there is a bit of wear in the plastic housing and with the load of a new clutch pressure plate it's cocking and causing issues?