Another Wreck, another Race Car.....

[Peter Jones]

My new gearbox has arrived.
It's been two years in the planning and about a year of saving.

I had EuroSpec build it for me.

They did a great job on the motor and they've got a lot of interesting options for the late gearboxes.

I've opted for an 02J housing containing a 6 speed close ratio gear set along with a Wavetrac diff.

The ratios are

1st: 2.3
2nd: 1.8
3rd: 1.45
4th: 1.15
5th: .96
6th: .85

R&P 4.24

There's no low first gear in this box. The sprints I do are rolling starts so I don't need one.

This box squeezes gears 1-6 into the range normally occupied by 2-5 in some stock boxes.

I've chosen a lower diff ratio to increase acceleration, there's plenty of RPM left at the end of the main straight currently going to waste.

Eurospec have also supplied a clutch assembly, Lightweight cast flywheel, billet clutch cover, 215mm cerametallic six puck disc.

I also had them track down some OEM 100mm drive shaft assemblies. They turned out to be pretty hard to find.

There's a lot of work required to fit this, new cables for the CAE shifter, new mounts, new hydraulic lines, find parts for and setup the shift tower. I'll be pretty busy sorting out the details.

While it's out I'll also service the motor and give it a thorough going over.

[Jarred]

woot!

Great work Pete. Knew you'd end up with something pretty nice.

Merry Christmas too!

[GoLfMan]

looks like a serious gear box!

Good to see this being used in anger and awesome to hear that you've cracked the 2min barrier at the Island!

[Peter Jones]

I took the motor and box out today.



I'll give the bay a clean, it's still oily from me overfilling the dry sump system.



There's a bit of modification required to make these linkages work. Not a straight forward bolt up affair.



Here's the new box mated up to the motor. There's no clutch fitted this install is just so I can check if everything fits and work out where to run the shifter cables through the firewall.



This is the new clutch assembly, the friction plate is fully floating. I imagine this might be pretty noisy in a street car.















Hmmm, something's not right here. Looks like the 02A conversion engine mount isn't quite right.

Engine's not level and not square to the car. Mount came from the UK, maybe they just got it wrong.

Looks like I'll be modifying mounts tomorrow.



Offending mount. Not the greatest design, Once I've made it fit I'll add a couple of gussets.



Old gearbox makes crunching noises when I turn the input shaft. CVs turned out to be OK.

If time permits I'll open it up and do a post mortem.

[Peter Jones]

The rear mount was out of alignment too so I modified it to take a rear suspension bush.

The urethane block style rear mounts are notorious for breaking in half I'm hoping this is a more reliable option.

I had the square block style on this bracket and it had bent it slightly around the bolt hole so I wasn't worried about modifying it.





This is how it came together.





The 02J case actually fits better than the 020 even with the 6th gear extension housing.

Just had to tweak the brake line a little.

The 020 release bearing cover use to come out into the wheel arch through that semi-circular cut out.





Had to turn up an alignment tool.



I removed an un-used lug from the front of the starter motor housing. It would have fouled the radiator so it had to go.

[GOLFBALLS]

Sexy!!!

[Volksee77]

Great work Pete, you've gotta be pretty happy to have a solid 6 speed in there now i guess. Let me know how the Wavetrac goes as I'm in the market for a new diff now and can't decide between a Quaife, peloquin or wavetrac diff.

[Peter Jones]

Thaks guys,

There's still a heap of work to do, but it's all going back together now.

I keep finding things that need to be modified to fit around the new box.

I'm upgrading the coolant hoses to silicon as well so there's aluminium piping to be made up.

[Peter Jones]

Filled the gearbox.



Remade these grills and came up with new mounting arrangement.

The way I'd mounted them before wasn't very strong.

I put them in because there was getting to be a few dings in the radiator from track debris.





To change over to silicon hoses I need some new joining tubes.

Joiners are silly money for some reason. 3 metres of aluminum tube is only $15.

You just need a bead roller to swage a bead onto the pipe.

So I made one, it's pretty agricultural but it does the job.



Here's a pipe in location for swaging.



Finished bead.



Completed joiner.



Test fitting the pipes and new silicon hoses.

Upper



Lower



There's quite a difference between the rubber and silicon hoses. I hadn't really looked closely at silicon hoses before.

The silicon has a much thicker wall and more layers of fabric reinforcing.

Rubber on the left, silicon on the right.



While I was shopping for aluminium I bought some to make a new strut brace bar.

This is 1/2 a kilo lighter than the steel one I had in there previously.



Drysump plumbing is all back in place now.





About 1 cm of clearance to the radiator after removing that lug. That'll be enough, the urethane mounts don't let the motor move that much.

[Jarred]

nice work Pete.

Love the DIY swaging tool.