These are the offset dowels. They were not included with the trans kit. I chose these because they have the set screw to lock them in place when your done. Maybe the housing will not need to be adjusted after this time.
These pins have flats so you can use a open end wrench to turn them, however, the wrench won't fit with the housing installed, so it's kinda wasted. If they had slot for a flathead screwdriver, or even better, four flat sides for a 3/8" socket extension, you could save a Ton of work by adjusting them with the housing loosely on the block. As it was tho I had to keep pulling the housing off to fine tune the dowels. I didn't count, but it probably took me six or seven times to get it within specs. It ended up nearly perfect from left and right, and it's at 4 thou runout up and down. I think I could have gotten the up and down numbers down to around 2.5 thou, but I liked the left right being zero, and that would have changed if I tweaked the dowels again. I'm glad I did it,,, but I'm REALLY glad I don't have to do it again! Small tweaks to the dowels move the housing more than you will think. I was moving them way to much the first several times, and it was just moving the runout from one place to another.

I don't know if it was necessary or not, but I checked the face to see if it was square to the flywheel. It has about 2 thou of runout.

 

It should be noted that someone on youtube recommended tapping the old dowels back into the block a little to break them loose. I wish I hadn't done this. But you know, everything you see on the internet is true, right?
The gouge marks you see on the one pin is from vice grips. Nope, that didn't work either.
Now I get to pull the bell housing one more time, and start installing the clutch.

 

Installed the clutch and tranny today. Went exactly like every other T5 swap I've ever done, except I didn't keep getting dirt in my eyes, and ears. Ohh, and not one busted knuckle either. Some pics are below, but the only thing I can think of that's notable, is the alignment tool, and it's usefulness. It has always worked great for me as a second pair of hands to hold the clutch disc in place while you fight the awkwardly heavy pressure plate to get bolts tightened up enough to hold it. But as far as alignment? Never worked for me back then, and didn't this time either. I have had just as much luck whittling down the end of a broom handle to fit in the pilot bearing, and that holds the disc just as well in my experience. Doesn't matter if the disc of off by a 1/16", or off by 3/8" off is off, and the trans shaft will never go in until the clutch is released. Generally, this is no big deal, just hook up the cable, and have someone stick their foot on the clutch peddle. One or two shakes, and the trans almost always slips right in. With the body off, I couldn't do that, so I used a bar clamp to pull back on the fork and release the clutch. All in all it was by far the easiest trans install I've ever done. I kinda feel guilty that I'm not bleeding, and covered in grease/oil/grime. Well, I did get some dirt on the knees of my pants cause I didn't sweep the floor first, So, no more guilt for me..





Bar clamp from fork to crossmember. Takes about 1"of throw to release clutch disc.

 

New drive shaft is a perfect fit.

 

Great progress!

 

Time to start stripping the firewall.

 

Only thing left to remove is the wipers I think. I'm planning on getting new wire harnesses, but to cover bases, I'm going to leave these for now, and paint around them.

 

I cleaned up the wiper tray, and engine compartment.

Roughed up the paint with a scotchbrite pad and then thoroughly cleaned with brake cleaner.


This was all sprayed with VHT engine paint.

 

I thought I was ready to put the body back on, but I kept finding things to do first. Not pictured is the removal of the steering column. The SST trans needed fluid put in, and the shift box came with temp bolts to remove the shifter for installation into a car with the body on. Since I didn't need to worry about the room to slide the trans into place, I went ahead and finished it with the correct bolt kit. I also cut the hole in the floorboard to accept the shifter. After all that, and then moving the body and frame around the garage in prep to lift the body, it's just too late in the weekend to start the marriage process. Now that I have full size wheels and tires on the car, I'm pretty sure I won't have enough head room for the lift. I'll probably have to reinstall those donut wheels for clearance. I do have a chain come-along this time, so that will save a few inches of head space. We'll see next week hopefully.

 

I kept putting this off because I was worried it would all go wrong. The problems I had when I pulled it off kept flashing thru my mind. Now that I have all this time and work invested, it's a bigger deal not to screw it up.

 

With the headlights removed, it was a whole different experience this time. I was easily able to tilt the body without feeling like I was stressing the front end. Also the A/C is not in it. another 60 lbs.

Even with the full size tires sitting on dollies, I still had head room to spare. And the chain come a long made lowering it in a controlled manner a piece of cake.

Using a combination of adjusting the ratchet straps, and come a long made installing the body bushings, and shims alot easier than I thought it would be. The only one that I really had to fight was the one in front of the pass. rear tire. It's doable for one person, but I did a lot of up and down, crawl in, crawl out.

 

 

So far this is the only collision in the engine compartment. The vacuum line wont work here with these big valve covers. I'm not sure I even need this line anymore tho. I think its for the brakes, and I'm converting them to hydro, so, maybe all good. Still to be seen if those valve covers fit under the hood tho.


Wow, the body is not even torqued down yet, and that carb is looking pretty high.

 

The rocker is resting on the headers. So far, the body bushings are all loose, I need to get the front bumper frame bolted back in as well. Also, none of the suspension has been torqued down yet. We'll see what it looks like after everything else is in it's final place.

 

 

 

so just a quick update on the car. I swapped the brake booster for a hydro from a astro van. Nothing new here, I just followed the procedure I found here on the forum. swapped the mounting bolts like others as well.

 

So this is the point where things have started to get frustrating. Not sure where my patience was left, but I definitely don't have it anymore. In order to build the hoses for the steering, and brakes, I needed to know where the power steering pump was going to live. This turned into my trip down a rabbit hole of problem after problem, solution to problems creating other problems, and etc. All along I knew I was going to convert to a serpentine belt, and never gave it much thought because I thought it would be easy. LOL,, I'll run through as many of the problems as I can remember and then post some " finished, or nice try, now try again" pics. As I said, I was so frustrated during this process that I gave up on any pics, cause nothing was working.

step one, simply buy some alum. brackets off a camaro. My heads have the correct hole pattern so it'll be simple.
Turns out, the brackets are not that easy to find. Some quick searches located the steering/alternator bracket easy enough, and I had a new one delivered in a week. This was at the start of the covid panic. I was unable to locate the A/C tensioner bracket however. Every Time I thought I'd found it, it turned out to be for the v6 or the wrong year. Finally, I found the right one in a junk yard, and scored it and all the hardware for around $30. Woo Hoo. Life is good. Silly me, not so fast. turns out something I already knew jumped out and laughed at me.. My heads have been shaved, the bolt holes are about a half a hole off. Ok, this is fixable, but alot more work. I make a plate to mount to the block and heads, and only use the lowest factory bolt hole for the brackets. However this means both brackets will have to be rotated either in or out to make room for new bolt holes in the new plate bracket. This puts me into the fully custom world. How do I avoid a collision with the suspension A arm or something? This is the point where I lost my patience. I spent hours online trying to figure out where I could place the alternator, and a/c compressor without causing problems. I never did find any useful info. In the end I bolted the new flat plates to the block, and the alum brackets at the bottom factory bolt hole, snugged the bolts just enough to rotate the brackets in and out, and put the hood on. From under the car I was able to sit up in front of the engine and move the brackets back and forth. I do not have the hood latches installed so the hood was resting on the hinges in the front, and sitting about a half inch lower that it would with latches in the back. Good news is the valve covers have plenty of clearance. Air filter not so much. Knew I needed the big block hood anyway. Long story longer, I found a happy place for both brackets. Will it work? I honestly don't have a clue. Looks like it will, but I was in the "just do something, even if it's wrong" mode.

step two. Align pulleys
At this point I knew where the brackets were going to be bolted up, and noticed none of the pulleys were aligned. Start with the crank right? Well, the crank pulley hits the crossmember. So I'm stuck again. Remember, this is all happening during the big panic. Parts are hard to get. There is no way I'm cutting into the cross member again to fit the crank pulley. Not after all the work to fix it in the first place. So I'm buying underdrive pulleys. Big thank you to March for there help. They found the pulleys I needed and had them at my door the next day. So now I have a crank pulley that does not align with the water pump, or anything. What the heck. Ok, shims are the answer. One 1/8" shim aligned the crank to the water pump, the steering/alt base plate needed to be 1/4" plate, and the A/C bracket base plate was 1/8" thick. This got it all lined up, the power steering pulley was installed to match everything else.

I'm leery of how this is going to work. I think it looks good, but I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling after accomplishing it. Things to note in the pics. Space between the belts at the tensioner, and I ordered the wrong water pump pulley. Totally forgot to tell March that it was a reverse pump.

So this catches me up on the build. Hard to belive that this little progress has taken nearly 6 months. Honestly, it's impossible to describe the amount of aggravation this part has been. Part of me kept screaming just buy a conversion kit. But because of the heads being shaved so aggressively, I don't think the kits would have been any easier. And I'm still confused as to why the two brackets made for the same car needed different shimming.