Had the day off work today and enjoyed a great first day on the car for the year. It has been in a neighbors garage for probably 4 months now and it started up no problem, didn't even have a tender on the little Odyssey battery. Cool. I started burning the old studded yard tires off in second gear then remembered I only had 2 lugs nuts per wheel on and settled down and brought it into the garage. I've been really into the truck project lately so had been feeling kind of 'meh' on getting back into this car. One hit of boost in second gear cleared that all up!
While it was hot I dumped last year's oil, which had all of ~1,600 miles on it. Came out perfectly clean and the mag. drain plug was clean so appears the new motor is happy. I had Joe Gibbs LS30 in it last year and am going to try Red Line this year.
While it drained I jotted down my hit list over the next few weeks, in no particular order.
Once we actually looked at it there was a lot more room around the bellhousing than we remembered, so decided to pull the transmission and not mess with pulling the engine. Actually pulled the box off the adapter plate first and it was easy as pie.
The old clutch setup has seen up to 25psi on this car and never slipped before, so it was not a disappointment. But the disc is gettin thin!
Old setup was an RSI lightened flat flywheel, and a mystery clutchnet PP and disc. Weighed 26lbs total. New is a Yoshi billet steel flywheel and a clutch masters FX 400 PP and 6 puck disc. Weighs 25lbs total.
Flywheel is purdy
The new PP is considerably bigger than the old one. Notice the clutch cable hanging it's head in defeat as it prepares to be banished from my engine bay for all of eternity.
Now time to figure out how to set up the hydraulic release bearing. Put bellhousing back on
and measure distance between the transmission surface of the bellhousing and the fingers of the pressure plate.
Maths to determine the distance between the block surface of the bellhousing and the face of the release bearing.
Measure, thread the bearing out, measure, thread the bearing out, measure, thread... you get it.
I've actually never had the transmission split from the bellhousing, so I didn't realize that the adapter plate is two piece, with this separate centering ring.
We were very happy to see that everything was going to fit and clear the bellhousing. The only mod required was to open up a small notch to clear the anti-rotation pin for the bearing.
Plenty of room and a nice big window!
should be able to get the transmission back on tomorrow. Then it's on to swapping pedals and plumbing hydraulics. I think that's where the pain will come in; it looks like I'm probably going to have to move my fuel pressure regulator, which will mean making new lines which will mean waiting for more -6 hose to come in blah blah.