Re: The SBF 306 Engine Build - Updated 06/28
Made some progress!!!
Today was part I of the transmission rebuild. As you guys saw earlier in the thread, I powdercoated a spare transmission case and I'm swapping all the "guts" from the old tranny into the coated one. Good news, the tranny in my car is actually a T5-Z, which has slightly different front and rear bearings on the mainshaft and countershaft, and supposedly a slightly higher torque holding capacity. Even better, EVERYTHING was in great shape!!! :dancing6: No broken teeth. No worn syncros. It was fantastic!!
I had my friend with me who has rebuilt several T5s, so he just told me what to do while I pulled it apart. It's actually much easier than I thought it would be.
Anyway, on with the build!
First, here's the tranny as it came out of the car:
First, I pulled the shifter:
Then after some fiddling with the shifter block thingy and the shaft, you can pull the tailshaft housing:
Then it looks like this. You can see fifth gear outside the back of the main case.
Here's what it looks like when you pull the top cover off. It sort of moves "sideways" and then pops off. This looks pretty intimidating, but it's actually very simple. I was very suprised.
After you pull the main bearing retainer, the input shaft, and fiddle with some stuff, the entire mainshaft comes out as one big piece. Pretty amazing.
Here's a (blurry) picture of the countershaft sitting in the main case:
Once you've pulled the 5th gear cluster off the countershaft, you can see the OEM countershaft retainer. I'm replacing this thing with a billet unit I bought online. Apparently the OEM one can deflect under heavy loads, and the billet one will reduce this and supposedly increases torque holding capacity a bit more too.
This is the new case. We were transferring all the drain plugs, sending units, and linkages to the new case here.
Here's the new countershaft retainer. I put red loctite on those bolts because it would be BAD if they backed out.
Then there's a tricky part. There's these tiny little metal tab thingys that you have to install back on the fifth gear cluter. They have to be lined up correctly with the syncro ring and stay seated when you put the rear slider into place it it won't work. We used little globs of grease to hold them in place.
...and onto the fifth gear cluster. The gold ring is the syncro.
So that's all for now. I ran out of time because I'm having a little party at the house tonight. I'll post the rest of the build and the finished product later on.
Paul.
