Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

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theholycow
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by theholycow »

I'm taking the next few days off work, partly so I can do the transmission swap and partly because I don't know how many more drives to work it will do before it asplode.

Talk about perfect timing...I got off the highway, probably 10 miles from home, and it got stuck in 3rd.

I ran a few stop signs, had to stop at one and burn some clutch to get going again (uphill!), then skidded and and blasted up my driveway and almost crashed into the Ford Expedition my father in law loaned to us while my wife's car is in the shop. There was enough slope that the car could roll back a few inches with me turning the steering wheel back and forth and rocking in my seat, then I burned some clutch to put it where I wanted it...and then I went ahead and tried forcing the shifter. It got out of 3rd and I was able to use Reverse. I didn't bother trying anything else. I left it in Reverse so I can move it back in the yard once the rain dries up.

Gotta take the Expedition on an expedition to buy parts in the morning.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by tankinbeans »

Cars know when something is up. Mom had a 91 Dynasty that she'd intended to trade, to CarHop of all places, and it completely gave up the ghost about 3 miles from her destination. There had been transmission issues for awhile, but she thought she could unload it before they came to a head. Nope.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by potownrob »

theholycow wrote:I'm taking the next few days off work, partly so I can do the transmission swap and partly because I don't know how many more drives to work it will do before it asplode.

Talk about perfect timing...I got off the highway, probably 10 miles from home, and it got stuck in 3rd.

I ran a few stop signs, had to stop at one and burn some clutch to get going again (uphill!), then skidded and and blasted up my driveway and almost crashed into the Ford Expedition my father in law loaned to us while my wife's car is in the shop. There was enough slope that the car could roll back a few inches with me turning the steering wheel back and forth and rocking in my seat, then I burned some clutch to put it where I wanted it...and then I went ahead and tried forcing the shifter. It got out of 3rd and I was able to use Reverse. I didn't bother trying anything else. I left it in Reverse so I can move it back in the yard once the rain dries up.

Gotta take the Expedition on an expedition to buy parts in the morning.
don't forget to buy a new clutch while you're at it :o :lol:
ClutchFork wrote:...So I started carrying a stick of firewood with me and that became my parking brake.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by theholycow »

Bought Perfection MU56-1 clutch kit at Advance Auto Parts.
http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/perf ... /5332125-P
Image
$110 - $40 off with code TRT41 = $70. Kit seems to have everything I need except the mismatched clutch disc. Clutch Cover Assembly/Pressure Plate is what I bought it for but the included Release Bearing and Pilot Bushing should be the correct parts. That $70 is about what I paid for those items bought separately in 2010 anyway, and that was with the miracle $27 Clutch Cover Assy.

The miracle Clutch Cover Assy from before:
http://www.standardshift.com/forum/view ... 51#p306051
watkins wrote:Pressure plate CA1853.
No idea what size. Its from a 5.7L
$27 + $12 core
Image Image
I'd rather have bought another one of those since it has been perfect. No specification data exists about that part number. I fear that it was a Stage 2 or something and that is why I have had a heavy pedal, and by using a regular OEM-style one it won't have sufficient clamping force. This is potentially going to be extra-important because this time around I'm going to go ahead and use the 1994 S10's 9 1/8" clutch disc instead of trying to buy another 9 11/16" disc for a 1983 S10. The smaller disc would almost certainly be ok with the old Clutch Cover Assy.

I also bought a Cheese Wiz style can of Permatex Ultra Black. If I swap the tail housings, which I expect to do, I'll need it, and hopefully I get a better bead from this than the toothpaste tube.
http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/perm ... /7160069-P
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I filled out that order with a cartridge of grease and two cans of brake cleaner, which brought it up to enough to apply a coupon code and almost get that stuff for free.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by theholycow »

I prepared the replacement transmission.

First I removed the bellhousing. I'm saving it because it will fit the LS engine swap that I hope to do in the future. I realized that this bellhousing is provisioned for a pair of heavy steel braces that bolt between it and the tail housing, which stiffen the entire assembly; so it will be stronger with this bellhousing, a strength that will be necessary with an engine swap. Also it is perfectly setup with its own hydraulic clutch release system so once I do that, no more hack system.

I twisted my big 1/2" drive heavy duty Torx T-55 bit loosening those bellhousing-to-transmission bolts. They were quite tight.

Then I removed the remote shifter assembly. The 1986 Chevy Astro donor had the shifter offset about 8 inches to the right. The assembly removed without much of a fight. It's a well-designed and well-built assembly. I don't expect to ever use it though.

Once that was removed I realized I might be able to keep the existing tail housing attached rather than swapping for mine. That will save some labor as well a whole day of waiting for RTV to cure. The shifter location is about 3cm aft of the location on my existing one. I may have enough wiggle room in the hole I cut, and if not I may decide to extend the hole. While I do hate hacking my car's sheet metal and it might be silly to do so just to avoid waiting for RTV to cure, it will give me a better shifter position. The current position is just slightly too forward; it's perfect except for some interference with a small control panel I added, which I had to bend back for clearance. Bending the shifter would suffice for maintaining the existing position but having fleshed out all of the arguments for this paragraph I think I'm almost definitely going to go with the new slightly more aft position. Now I wonder what I should use to fill the gap I'll have at the front of the hole.

I noticed that there was gear oil in this T5 instead of the required/specified Dexron II/III ATF. Will it do something terrible if I don't flush it clean before filling with Dexron III ATF? I'd hate to create sludge or something, but I really don't want to flush this thing and I do want to use the correct fluid.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by bk7794 »

don't people run ATF in their motor oil? That doesn't seem to have much of a bad effect on their engines after they do that.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by theholycow »

How about a gear ratio comparison?

Old: 1352-145 GM 1985-86 S-Truck 2.5 L4-2.8 V6
R 3.76
1 3.78
2 2.18
3 1.42
4 1.00
5 0.72

New: 1352-164 GM 1986 M-Van (Astro) 4.3 V6 S
R 3.39
1 3.50
2 2.14
3 1.39
4 1.00
5 0.73

I'm not sure if that taller 1st will be a good thing or not; acceleration is pretty lame to begin with, but then I will be able to use 1st up to higher speeds and I'll have closer ratios.

Taller Reverse means COWBOY TIME!

Slightly shorter 5th is acceptable, possibly even a good thing with so little power. If I do that engine swap I'll definitely be wishing for a 6th gear.

Also, have some photos. Here's one of that excellent brace from the bellhousing to the tailhousing.
Image

Here's one showing the offset shifter and slave bracket, along with the shifter fore/aft location:
Image

Compare to the one from the S10:
Image
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by tankinbeans »

No matter how many times I read of gearing I can't wrap my brainmeat around it. I know that I have 2 final drives, but that's the extent of it.

To me those numbers look pretty comparable, but I know nothing.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by potownrob »

theholycow wrote: Taller Reverse means COWBOY TIME!
:lol: :twisted: 8) :twisted: :lol: :twisted: 8) :twisted: :lol:
ClutchFork wrote:...So I started carrying a stick of firewood with me and that became my parking brake.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by theholycow »

tankinbeans wrote:No matter how many times I read of gearing I can't wrap my brainmeat around it. I know that I have 2 final drives, but that's the extent of it.

To me those numbers look pretty comparable, but I know nothing.
So, I imagine you can at least wrap your grey matter around simple levers (like a see-saw), right? If you have a lever like that that's twice the length on the load end as it is on the force end, the force is halved and the distance is doubled. On the other hand if the load end is half the length of the force end, the force is doubled and distance is halved. Good so far?

Gears are round, continuous levers. You can even imagine each tooth as being a separate lever, like a deranged clock factory worker stuck a hundred clock hands on a single axle.

A transmission places those levers between the engine and the driveshaft. (Extra complication: On a FWD car the driveshaft is skipped and the transmission is integrated with the axle's differential; we'll skip that for now.)

The numbers that I posted are incomplete notation of ratios. The assumed part is ":1". So, 5th gear is .73:1. If I had a .5:1 6th (like the awesome T56 transmission that I want but can't afford), then for every rotation of the engine there will be TWO rotations of the driveshaft. They will be half as strong. Distance is doubled, force is halved. If that second gear was exactly 2:1 then for every rotation of the engine there would be one half of a rotation of the driveshaft. Distance is halved, force is doubled.

Still with me?

Now, with cars there are a few more levers between there and the road.

The differential (in the axle, between the two wheels; that axle is actually two separate axle shafts, one for each wheel, so that they can turn at different speeds) has its own gears. In my car the differential is a single set of gears that can't be shifted. It is nearly 3:1. For every turn of the driveshaft, the wheels turn 1/3 of a revolution. Distance 33%, force is tripled. (Extra complication: In your car, with multiple final drives, your differential shifts just like the transmission, which is why it has two ratios.)

But that's not the end of it! If I haven't lost you yet, there's also the wheel/tire. That too is a lever. It also converts rotational motion into linear motion (as long as it doesn't lose traction). Because it converts it's beyond the scope of this explanation to use actual numbers...and also at the moment I can't think of a good way to explain or even visualize the math, and I'm not sure I ever knew, I just always used calculators to do the math for me. In fact I saved and customized one for myself:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/195 ... /index.htm
Come to think of it, it's time for me to add a new preset for my new transmission.

And to bring it back around to the beginning, isn't it funny that the pistons create linear motion which is converted to rotation (thanks to the crankshaft) only to be converted back to linear at the end? Why not just give them long push rods that reach the ground and little feet to push the car? That sounds graceful....not.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by tankinbeans »

That madness makes sense. I run into trouble when I try to start getting everything to mesh up top. Large initial numbers give you grunt, small initial numbers give you speed.

The wheels make much sense to me. I remember my brother, yes THAT brother, put bigger wheels and tires on the Sunfire mom gave him after he killed the Cavalier my other brother bought him after he killed the Corolla that I bought. I think they were 20s but might be misremembering. Anywho, he put the different wheel/tire combo on and wondered why he had no power and why his already crap mileage went down.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by Rope-Pusher »

Chrysler made a change one year from ATF to a motor oil-based trans fluid - traded off some potential fuel mileage for better gear and bearing durability when engine torques went up.

Whale, summon never tolled the dyno operator on second shift. He topped it off with ATF when he lost sum fluid changing a halfshaft. Oui din no it, but oui were performing a simulation of what was prolly going to happen out "in the field" (away from the ivory towers of the engineering tech center), where people don't necessarily keep up with changes to what fluid is released for what year trans. In our case, literally in our transmission case, it didn't matter - the trans passed the test with its "hybrid" fluid, dyno operator kept his job, and we learned something we weren't expecting to learn.

This would likely have been more of a problem with "Paper" synchro cone surface materials, sins they soke -up fluid like a sponge. If you change fluids, owl bets R off w.r.t. durability, resistance to clashing, etc.

F N Eye wuz a cow, eyed drain the wrong fluid, refill with the correct fluid, and not think twies about it.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by theholycow »

So...what if it DOES have paper synchros? Stick with gear oil, or just take my chances?

A little googling indicates that the WC has fiber lined synchro rings but the NWC (which is what I have) has all bronze so I should be fine.

Anyway, got the trans out today. My new transmission jack from Harbor Freight is a significant improvement over crappy jacks but removing was still a little more unpleasant than expected and stabbing is still gonna suck.

I think I found a few causes of slop and chatter and what not...

- Transmission to bellhousing bolts: Two missing, two backed most of the way out. WTF is it with bolts backing out? I torque them properly and then a little more. I'm gonna start using threadlocker on everygoddamnthing.

- Clutch disc: Delaminated! Also some bits of it must have gone missing because I found them around the edge of the flywheel.

- Pilot bushing: Worn away to almost nothing!

Clutch disc and pilot bushing...bottom is delaminated portion (flyhweel side) of clutch disc, middle is the rest of it, top is the disc I'm putting in. Pilot bushings should be obvious.
Image

Also there is a notch in the old pilot because I had to chisel a piece out before the rest would come loose; if you remember, when I put it in it was too tight. I hammered the hell out of it and even left some slight dents in the end of the crankshaft. I think that tightness is what caused its inside diameter to be too small (and then I had to grind it by starting the engine and laying under the car suicidally). This time I'm going to turn it against a grindstone to reduce the outside diameter so it drives in properly and doesn't compress. I made a drill mount using a ratchet extension and some tape so I can spin it. (The design is the same as the clutch alignment tool I made last time and will make again this time.)

Oh, and the center hole in the flywheel was filled with crud, probably a mixture of pilot bushing and clutch.

More of the delaminated clutch:
Image

Image

Remaining thickness is pretty decent for 5 years and 90,000 miles of abuse and crappy engineering/workmanship. (BTW, all the good engineering was stuff that Rope-Pusher told me...and without it the crappy engineering would have dominated.)

Here's that clutch material around the edge of the flywheel:
Image
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by Rope-Pusher »

So let's say your input shaft wore the hole in the pilot bushing bigger-n-bigger.
"Your input shaft wore the hole in the pilot shaft bigger-n-bigger"

Now say the shaft was wobbling around like one of them rear-window hula dancers

"The shaft was wobbling around like one of them rear-window hula dancers"

And the friction surface on the flywheel was recessed

so as the shaft wobbled, the clutch facing was slamming against the edges of the flywheel hole and it cracked the friction material loose where it was riveted to the cushion spring.

and the wobbling was also kicking the 4th gear synchro out of engagement with the input shaft.

So what's gonna be different this time? What went wrong last time that doesn't have to go wrong again? was the input shaft bearing worn so much that it allowed the shaft to wobble right from the git-go? I dunno, but start thinking about what may have caused the failures you see.

Yanno, sum of the input shaft bushings are "Oilites" - bronze particles sintered together with pores that are meant to hold oil. It's a good idea to soak them in oil before you install them, so the pores are full of oil. If it's solid brass, then the oil really won't find any pores to soak into.

"Oilite is formed using powder metallurgy so that tiny pores are present in the metal. The pores are then vacuum impregnated with an oil to improve the materials bearing ability.[3] The material holds approximately 20% oil by volume.[4] The most common lubricant is SAE 30 oil.[5]

Due to the porous structure, machining Oilite poses a special situation. To machine Oilite, the cutting tool must be—and stay—sharp; therefore, tungsten carbide is often used. The sharp tool preserves the open-pore structure, because a dull tool would smear the material and close up the pores that are on the surface adjacent to the journal, which is where the lubrication needs to be. Reaming is not recommended, but can be done with an extremely sharp tool. Honing and grinding should not be performed on any surface that is in contact with the journal as these processes always smear the pores.[3]" - from Wikipedia.
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Re: Project Christine slo Hackensteinberg

Post by theholycow »

Good thoughts. I didn't realize that machining the bushing like that would close off the pores. That certainly must have contributed. This time I'm hoping to avoid machining the inside diameter.

Also probably contributing:
- Input shaft bearing maladjustment
- Loose/missing transmission-to-bellhousing bolts allowing transmission to wobble
- All year spent with engine mount broken/unbolted (so more wobble)
- Last year, some time spent with transmission mount broken
...and I swear there are a few others that I'm forgetting.

Anyway, I think I'm doing it better this time than I did in 2010, and either way 5 years is good enough for me. If I get another 5 years out of it this time, that means that I didn't get to do the engine swap that I want...
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