Finally...Gary's 74 144

[B20Paul]

Great work!

What do you have for a motor?

I like your flywheel with the huge radius, you could get more off the otherside, but it's tedious work. Having said that, what you have is the right amount for street/drag.

The headers might be saved by converting them to a 4-2-1 style with a tuned length collector or megaphone. That exhaust as is would function like zoomies, only be good at 1 or 2 spots & hurt elsewhere.

Is the old celica box a 3.5 1st gear? Those are the second version with the stronger 5th gear but the syncros are junk. I have one of those in bits & an earlier version with 3.28 1st and old bronze bauk rings that can't be beaten. One plus for the celica box is you can use a standard crossmember & on my RHD car, the auto speedo cable worked fairly easily. I still wish is was a W57 or W58, but I didn't have the cash & wasn;t sure I could get a bellhousing or adapter made. Did you get a Dellow housing?

[gsellstr]

That is indeed a Dellow bellhousing, with a little time into it to clearance the flywheel ring gear area so it would clear, plus a spacer for the pivot ball on the fork. Some serious casting issues with the one I got, hopefully been fixed in their current offerings, though honestly, for the price the T5 swap nets you a better outcome. My box is the 3.23 1st gear with the .85 5th. Sure, it's more solid than the M41, but a far cry from the T5 and certainly not a pleasant 5th gear for the street.

Exhaust I'm not too worried about since it'll come off when the turbo goes on once the bottom end gets rebuilt in the next few years. Motor is just a standard 2130cc bottom end at 9.0:1, VPD street cam and stage 2 head with an MS1V3 box to fire everything. Sitting around 130 to the wheels right now.

[B20Paul]

Originally Posted by gsellstr

That is indeed a Dellow bellhousing, with a little time into it to clearance the flywheel ring gear area so it would clear, plus a spacer for the pivot ball on the fork. Some serious casting issues with the one I got, hopefully been fixed in their current offerings, though honestly, for the price the T5 swap nets you a better outcome. My box is the 3.23 1st gear with the .85 5th. Sure, it's more solid than the M41, but a far cry from the T5 and certainly not a pleasant 5th gear for the street.

Exhaust I'm not too worried about since it'll come off when the turbo goes on once the bottom end gets rebuilt in the next few years. Motor is just a standard 2130cc bottom end at 9.0:1, VPD street cam and stage 2 head with an MS1V3 box to fire everything. Sitting around 130 to the wheels right now.

I expect that you would have had old school bronze syncros, not sure the how the oil would effect them. I used 15W/40 Diesel oil in mine, same as the engine.

Dellow have been around for a long time, but OTOH they sell bellhousings to put the Celica box behind V8's. The last bellhousing I saw was for a Ford 2L SOHC & it was more than double the weight of the Volvo bellhousing. That made me want one, because I half broke mine, but they weren't making them back then.

Are you staying with a mild cam for your turbo motor?

Did you give the VPD cam a good amount of measuring? The data I got from a friend showed it to very weak & nonsensical.

[gsellstr]

Nope, didn't do any real measuring on the cam, didn't have time. I had all of a week to get the car running before that year's Davis show. It definitely was less peaky than the VV61 that came out but I didn't have anything else on hand to compare it to. The specs John sent me though are 264/268 @ .020, .427 lift so it's pretty similar to the VV61 in terms of lift but with a longer duration and different lobe center (110 on the VPD, 108 on the VV61). Still pulls really strong across the board, peak torque down low, HP climbing solid up high, clear past 6k. Nice for a driver, probably not the best for max power, but I suspect it may handle a turbo reasonably well.

[skunked]

nice to see you got it back together

[gsellstr]

Indeed! You can check it out Sunday if you want.

[skunked]

Originally Posted by gsellstr

Indeed! You can check it out Sunday if you want.

Hopefully I make it out.

[B20Paul]

Originally Posted by gsellstr

Nope, didn't do any real measuring on the cam, didn't have time. The specs John sent me though are 264/268 @ .020, .427 lift so it's pretty similar to the VV61 in terms of lift but with a longer duration and different lobe center (110 on the VPD, 108 on the VV61).

I can't see how anyone could assemble an engine properly without measuring everything. The 264/268@.020" isn't correct, 221/228@.050" is the 1st version of his street cam. Lift, he is stretching the truth, the exhaust should be .427 lift" net after you set the lash to .020". The inlet should be .273" or .283" lobe lift giving ."391 or "406 lift with lash set to .018". Stick your dial indicator on top and measure each one at the retainer while baring it over.

I suspect he or a friend got a cam grinder and started grinding their own. VPD's "Street Performance"cam appears to be a VV-71 for the exhaust and a worn copy of Volvo's D grind for the inlet. Latter he says improved the inlet lobe, likely by finding a better D cam to copy. I think the SP cam fullfills 2 needs. 1st, it's very gentle, so should break in successfully most of the time. 2nd, it would work good with his supercharger system. 90% of the performance gains you feel would be due to the drastic exhaust port improvements. It should be great on fuel

[gsellstr]

Didn't have time to do much, since the parts arrived saturday morning, needed the car on the road sunday morning.

Those specs I gave you are as he wrote them to me via email, so I dunno. Different lobe centers, plus he claims a different lobe profile, didn't compare to the VV61 I pulled close enough to take pic's or anything. If I could, I'd take pics but this ain't easy like the OHC's. lol

I'll be tearing the motor down in the next couple years anyway so I'll see what's up then.

[Old Iron]

Wow! Car came a far way! Current pics of the whole thing?

I can't believe all the damage thatbthoef did to the car! Freaking insane! Why couldn't they just break a dam window!

[gsellstr]

No kidding!

I should hopefully have some legit pic's of it up in here soon...got a legit photographer to take a few cool shots over the weekend.

[Harlard]

Legit pics soon never happened. MOAR.

[gsellstr]

Oh, ****, they didn't. Photobucket is blocked at work, maybe I'll try and remember to toss a couple up.

In other news, have a 2-piece driveline in the garage, plan to get that modded for the T5, hopefully be rid of the bad vibes for good.

[badvlvo]

The multiple award winning 144.
You can't afford to go to WM because you bribed the judges again!

[gsellstr]

See, now, that is where you're wrong. Bribing the judges would involve having money to bribe them with in the first place, and bribing that many judges, well, yeah, I'm not Bill Gates.

[gsellstr]

Well, that took a while. Pic's finally updated, hopefully imgur doesn't follow photobucket anytime soon...

But here's a couple nice pics thanks to Captain Tonus!




Also started acquiring parts for the next step in the process...


Haven't done much other than some tuning lately. Did have to replace the alternator, lost a winding in it. While in there I decided to go thru and upgrade all the 45 year old high current wiring. All new #4 from the alternator to battery, new battery to starter cables, new battery to junction block cables, etc. After doing all that it REQUIRED a retune, since things changed that much. Lights are far brighter now, starter is happier, bass is happier, even MS is happier. lol

I did run into some issues with the rear end though. While trying to figure out the vibration from the trans I found the diff was noisy as well. Already had an aluminum cover for it, figured why not pull the cover, see what's going on. I was greeted with this...


For those who can't ID the issue right off...that left cap is on the wrong direction and the contact patch sucked. Seeing that I knew something wasn't going to be happy most likely, so I pulled the axles, wanted to check the bearings. Once the axles were out I went to pull the diff. Okay, so it's tight, I'll grab the big pry bar...still won't budge. Strange, but okay, I have the factory case spreader, let's give that a whirl. Nope, still nothing when cranked up 2 turns. Damn, okay, limit is 3.5 turns. Done, okay, small pry bar should easily pop this thing out. Nope. 3' pry bar out of the BFT drawer, had to walk it out little by little! Crap that was tight, later inspection found it was installed with .036" preload, spec is .006". Okay, being that tight, bearing inspection revealed this...

Ok, time to order up an install kit. Given the contact patch wasn't right either, figured I'll just get a master kit, replace all the bearings, be done with it. Found the pinion was too deep as well. Turns out all they did was swap shims onto the new aftermarket gearset, installed bearings, reassembled, shipped it out. Pinion was .040" too deep, had .010" clearance to the carrier! Got everything setup CORRECTLY, reassembled, got this...


Close enough for my tastes, time to seal up with that new cover...


Filled up with my usual Redline 75w90/75w140 mix, TT doesn't seem quite happy, may switch over to M1. Thinking back I had some chatter on M1 on this diff in the early days. Also interesting to note, look at the design of the steel vs. alum cover. The alum cover added 1/2qt to the capacity. When I drained it initially, I got maybe 3/4qt from it (much more displaced by the TT). With the alum cover it was closer to 1.5-1.7qts in there.

That's it for this update, probably won't be doing much until the motor comes out for a rebuild and the turbo gets hung off the side. For reference, found a killer deal on a GT28RS so yeah, good times will follow!

[jfry]

Wow!

[Tfrasca]

Was that work done by a diff shop?

[qwkswede]

Wow. Looks pretty good.

[gsellstr]

A general repair shop that claims to specialize in drivetrain related repairs. Still in business somehow, same owners, and that was done in 2003.

[MikeJr.]

Originally Posted by gsellstr

Also started acquiring parts for the next step in the process...

Where did you get this manifold?

[gsellstr]

I assuming you're talking about the turbo manifold? Random finding from an estate clearance about 3 hours from the house. Guy was racing Volvo powered stuff WAY back, had this sent to him, never got a chance to run it.

[MikeJr.]

Man what a find

[gsellstr]

No kidding! I've NEVER seen another one, in a lot of years. Took some digging to find much on it, with hiperfauto actually having a catalog pic showing the kit that it likely came from, but that's it. I know it's from MISAB, never got a response to my inquiry from them.

[MikeJr.]

Originally Posted by gsellstr

No kidding! I've NEVER seen another one, in a lot of years. Took some digging to find much on it, with hiperfauto actually having a catalog pic showing the kit that it likely came from, but that's it. I know it's from MISAB, never got a response to my inquiry from them.

That is so cool