Ok so today I stripped the gearbox to see what's up in there. It kept jumping out of 4th when you decelerated in gear or just changed up and went into cruising mode.

To open the gearbox undo the bolts around the waist that goes through the sandwich plate.



Now the rear housing can come off, just give it a wiggle so the gear selector comes out of it's slot. When I opened it up the spring that holds the speedo gear in it's place was lying on the 5th gear, visible on the left set of gears. That explains why the speedo wasn;t working anymore, no idea how it unhooked.



To get the gearset out of the front housing, you need to remove the front bearing cover, undo all the bolts around it's edges.



When it comes of, there's two circle-clips holding the bearings in their positions, taek them off then the housing will come of.



The whole gearset then comes out and you have easy access to everything.



Here's the two gearsets I have. The lefthand one with the steel sandwich plate is the one I bought the gearbox with, I removed that when the selector broke after a very excited gear change at Killarney doing the 1/4, The one on the right is the one I took out of a gearbox we found at a scrap metal dealer, and has been doing duty without fail. Only thing is it jumped out of 4th, but after carefull measurements I found out why. The aluminium gearset must be from a W55 gearbox, because all the carrier bearings are narrower then the steel plated one's, so specifically the one on the main input shaft wasn't positioning the input shaft as far back as it should. That means when you hooked 4th, which simply locks the input and output shaft together for a 1:1 ratio, it didn't engage completely which would kick it out. There's some more reasona I found which makes the alu one a W55, read on...



Ok now I went ahead and counted some teeth. My mother always said, "sit jy alweer en tanne tel?", but I don't think this is what she meant...

Here is what I found, keep in mind that I bought the gearbox with the steel sandwich plate and replaced it with the alu one later on. Look at the chat below, I was going to do it with a calculator, but folded to the charms of Excel. In the right most column I included the ratios for the different gearboxes as from this page, http://users.tpg.com.au/users/loats/technical/ma61/gearboxes.html, The ratios indicate which gearbox it is.

BLUE gear ratios, these are the ratios that were in the steel sandwich plate I bought the gearbox with. They correspond to the ratios for the W57, which means I must have bought a W57.

GREEN gear ratios, these are the ratios that were in the aluminium sandwich plate I bought. They are the same as the W55 ratios, and the fact that this gearset's carrier bearings are also narrower than the steel ones, affirms that this must be a "lesser" W55 gearset. It stil survived extremely hard launches as anyone who knows my car and saw me drive it can confirm. So a W55 is plenty strong, but obvisouly it'll konk out before a W57/8.

RED gear ratios, these ratios are a combination of the blue and green ratios. Now on these boxes the intermediate shaft is solid ie. the transfer gears for 1 through 3rd are part of the intermediate shaft as is the gear that meshes with the input shaft. Which means that if you want to change gear ratios for 1-3rd gear you also have to change the intermediate shaft and the input shaft. The only gear that is removable is the 5th gear, both on the intermediate shaft and the output shaft. Now the only difference between the W57 and W58 gearboxes are the 5th gears, with the 5th gear in the W58 being taller than the W57. So what I did is I plugged the 5th gear from the W55's numbers onto the input ratios of the W57, and what do you get? Yes that right, you get a W58, as can be seen in the right most column.


The gear calculation is, (Output/Intermediate)*(Intermediate/Input), going backwards through the teeth numbers in the sheet. So for the 1st gear of the W57 it would be (34/14)*(46/34)=3.286, and so on and so forth.

This means that I'll be re-fitting the steel sandwich plate but with the W55's 5th gear ratios installed, so that I have a W58. Only place this is going to make a difference is when you cruise the RPM's will be a bit lower, but also the W57/8 gearboxes' 1st through 3rd will be longer than the W55's.

My only concern now is that I've fitted that 3.3:1 diff ratio vs the old 4.3:1. I'm a bit worried that, that might be a bit to tall now. Let's see what the calculator says...

Here's some pictures of the ECU I'll be using, it's a XMS4C from www.perfectpower.com . Lot's of guys using them over here and having great succes with them. Full closed loop wide lambda support and 8 auxiliary outputs which can be controlled with 16 setpoints in any combination of and/or









Also their own ingition module which has internal overheat protection and fault indication.

I got some stuff done tonight, mainly on the engine, also started working out how to mount only the master for the brakes. I'm going to ditch the booster for now, if the brakes are to hard or not strong enough I'll fit it back.

Here's the solution I came up with for joining the pre-circulation pipes from the water pump to the top outlet. Used regular copper tubing, that's normally used for plumbing, and just soldered something up. Look at the edges of the pipe where I cleaned and applied some solder right on the edge to make a hump to keep the rubber pipe from popping off when the clamp is tightened and it starts taking pressure.



Then I just painted it black to make it blend in a bit better.



And a test fit. Shouldn't be to obvious from above.





I removed the master form the booster, and started to take some measurements for an adapter plate. I'll have that cut and fit the master so long. Came up with a good idea for the puch rod to actuate the brakes, had a brand new push rod from a VW Golf gearbox lying around(yes Gambit, another VW part), which I'll cut and use along with a allen bolt to make the pushrod with.

Ok so I've decided that I'll simply use the brake master from the original master/booster combo that came out of a 1400 bakkie. I'm hoping the size increase of the Almera caliper and Alfa caliper pistons over the standard Datsun/Nissan 1400 fair will help that the brakes won't be to hard. Just removing the master from the booster already makes it push much easier, since you are no longer pushing against that huge spring inside the booster.

Anyway, with this adapter plate I can easily unbolt it and fit back the booster if need be or I can fit another smaller master to increase the ratio so the brakes are softer.

Thought I'd make this plate the old fasioned way, using what I have at home. Used a piece of 8mm plate and stuck a 1:1 print of the adapter I drew with cad onto the metal plate. Then punched the holes and started drilling and tapping and finally just cut it out. The big center hole was perhaps the biggest job, as I had to drill a whole bunch of 3mm holes all around the edge of the circle, then knock it out with a hammer and chisel and then file it out to the right size with a rotary file in the drill.





Test fit to the master. I used some 8mm studs I had lying around to bolt the master to the plate.



Then a test fit in the car to see how much space I gain and I'm sure it will help a lot. It looks good enough anyway, will spray the plate black.





Here's a comparison between having the booster in and out. I'm sure I'll be able to fit proper ram tubes now...





If I'm still short of space because of the bottles, I'll just use a remote mount bottle for the brakefluid and move it more into the corner.

Went junk hunting at the scrap metal place today. Dug in one of those big bags and found some perfect stainless plate, it still has it's protective plastic covering on. Had them cut me a piece of 100mm stainless pipe from a long piece that was there and also found that cone. The 100mm pipe and plate I'll use to make a surge tank with. You don't often find cones so when I find them I take it even if I don't need it, it's wall is about 2mm so it's fine for a transition for an exhaust. I also happened on a bunch of filler wire that was stuck in there, on closer inspection it turn's out to be 316L, so I took that as well.





Got a tip from Rotor that I should use stainless filler rod for the welding then it comes out nicer, so I immediately had to try it. Though he did say he uses 304, I'll get some of that for the manifolds and use this 316 for pure stainless. It comes out very nice I think, much, much better than the steel filler wire anyway... I just need some practice still to get it perfect.



I didn't try to TIG stainless the other day, so I just cut this piece and joined it back together to test and see if stainless is as easy. I'd say the stainless is almost easier to do. I did find that I could turn the amps down a bit and still get the penetration but without the cauliflower on the inside.



Ok on to some car stuff. I made a new bolt for the brake pedal that does the adjustment. Initially I thought I'd cut a piece of the Golf clutch pushrod and weld it onto the original bolt, but I don't like welding in that area. So I got a capscrew with the same thread, and found that the pushrod would go into the hex on the end. Then I just used the TIG to add another nut on the end of it to make the hole slightly deeper to ensure the push rod has no chance of ever falling out and then cut a piece of the pushrod to suit.



Here's the lot fitted. The rod goes about 50mm into the master's sleeve and about 10mm into the bolt head, so it's not coming out there.



And the master finally fitted with the adapter plate sprayed in black.



I just took some pictures of the clutch setup for posterity, since a bunch of people have asked me how my setup works. It just mounts on top of the pedal box with a bracket made up of some flatbar and angle iron. How do I fill it? When the dash is instaleld, you can see the top of the bottle through the window vent, I just take the top of and suck some fluid into a transparent pipe and let it run in there. Theoretically it shouldn't ever leaked, it never has, and you shouln't need to add fluid ever, I never have, so I thought it was ok to be in there.



The original hook on the end of the pedal is just cut off and replaced with a piece of flatbar, which is just drilled and the pedal is done. Even with the double diaphragm pressure plate it was never hard to push the clutch. I'll take some pictures of how the pipe runs from the clutch master down when that is installed.



Ok an finally I took the dust plate of the motor to have it scanned for ScoobySTi. I thought it would cover the bellhousing completely, since the 16V one was just half and the bottom half was completely open with that. Unfortunately it seems the dust plate is still not exactly like the bell, but it does cover much more of it. So what I'll do is to have it scanned, but add about 10mm around the bottom edge so it completely covers the bellhousing. Provision was made in the bellhousing to drill and tap holes to bolt the cover down, so then I'll do that too. So I'll also have them cut me one which I'll be cutting and adding the hump into, have and idea around that.

Here's the OE dustplate on top of the template I cut.



And here's just the template, I'll have them scan both and make sure the holes positions and sizes are right. I'm also going to have one cut since I want to be able to bolt the bottom part to the bellhousing so it won't vibrate. You can see three holes right at the bottom where I drilled the bellhousing already and made the holes in the template.



Will put the cad up as soon as they are done scanning it...

Finally the long awaited dust plate has been cut, I'll be cutting and shutting it to create the hump in the next few days and posting some pictures up to create a tutorial of how to do it.




EDIT: I just hope the bloody holes line up properly, otherwise it would have been all for nothing...

Ok so last night I couldn't work outside on the manifold I'm busy building, I don;t work on them inside since the grinding dust gets in everywhere, and decide it was a good time to tackle the "new" gearbox.

The only thing immediately wrong with the new box was the selector arm in the extension housing that has had it's bush completely destroyed over years of driving it and not fixing it. So the gearbox had to be opened up to do this unfortunately, but I've opened them so many times by now it's very easy and quick to do.



I then realised that the "new" box has a slightly shorter gear lever extention housing than the old one, so I had to swap the arm and gearlever housing over. New box with longer gearlever extention housing already swapped on the left and old shorter one on the right.



New gearbox with the bell housing and lever housing swapped over on the left and old one with 21R bell on the right.



"New" gearbox still looks good on the outside, I just gave it a quick clean so I can work on it and not get completely covered in old engine oil and grime. When I opened it up I decided to open the front half as well, just to see what the synchro's look like and all I can say is I'm as happy as a pig in #OOPS#. This gearbox is so smooth and the synchro's look like they came out the factory yesterday. The only thing I'm going to do is to replace the front and back seals to make sure it doesn't leak any oil. Not that it did, but while it's out...



EDIT: The gearbox came out of a Cressida station wagon btw...

I was musing over how to do the dustplate when a friend suggested simply cutting the old dustplate's hump out and welding it into the new one...pfffft...

The pictures speak for themselves...

Got some work done on Saturday. Fitted the gearbox and motor so I can do the engine mountings.

Motor in it's position, ready to start making the mountings



Starting with exhaust and intake side mountings.





Bottom plate for both sidse welded on secure.





Mountings welded up and bracing welded in, there's four because I'm also making Izak a set for his 20V conversion. Fitted them for a final check.







Motor lying slightly lower now than it did before, very happy with this.



Just checking the clearance for the #4 trumpet, before the throttlebody itself already almost fouled on the booster, there's no way I'd be able to fit the trumpet in if it was still in there.



Now I must take the motor out again just to paint the dust plate and fit the final few parts, but before I do that I want to also mockup and start building the branch manifold. Going to start moving with it now, been blowing bubbles for far to long now.

EDIT: I also tilted the motor more to the exhaust side so that it's at exactly the angle it's supposed to be when in the original car, the sump is thus nowperfectly level with the road and the gearbox is also sitting the way it's supposed to.