Going to pick up my new driveshaft today! :hurray:

With a little luck, my car will move on Saturday! :thumbs:

I haven't had any time to post new pics, but I have plenty, so stay tuned.

 

Oh yeah. I need to put some transmission fluid in the thing!!!


I am anxious to hear your comments on the transmission. I am betting that you will really like it. With your 3.73 gears you will suddenly find them acting like 254's. You will have a freeway cruiser and with the 2.98 1st gear it will be good out of the hole.

Be sure you only use transmission fluid, nothing heavy.
The forum has been weird for me too and I loose posts and often have no post icon.

Good luck and keep us informed :thumbs:
If you can honestly say you don't like the transmission I will send you $20.

 

I think the biggest technological challenge of this whole endeavour will be getting the trans fluid to flow UPHILL out of the bottle and into the fill hole. This is going to be interesting to fill it with the trans in the car. Hmmm.... :lol:

 

Fill thru the shifter opening!! That's the way it's usually done anymore!

hth
Paul

 

I have a pressure feeder. The regulated shop air is put on the container, set around 20 psi and by depressing the trigger the fluid flows into the transmission. I also have another one of these pressure feeders for rearend fluid.

 

Almost there Dave! I hope to start mine in the next few weeks, just about done with my Formula intake swap. So did you order a whole new drive shaft or just have your's cut to size? Where did you get from or done at?

 

Cool, you're getting close now! You can get a hand pump that screws onto the top of an oil bottle. They sell them near the gear oil at the parts store. I hope everything goes well with your test drives.

 

Dave: Another way that I've heard the F-body guys fill their trannys is to run a piece of tubing from the fill hole, on top of the bellhousing, and into the engine bay. Then use a funnel to put the fliud thru the hose. Sounds interesting but I'm going to just fill thru the shifter on my T56. I'm not sure what you have to use for fluid but lots of T56 guys recommend Honda ATF. I think I might try it if it's not too much $.

Chris: I found a shop in Romulus that's going to cut the stock LS1 F-body driveshaft that I bought down to size for me. $120 to cut, weld, and balance. Better than the $315 that I was quoted for a new shaft (without a yoke)! :eek:

 

[QUOTEChris: I found a shop in Romulus that's going to cut the stock LS1 F-body driveshaft that I bought down to size for me. $120 to cut, weld, and balance. Better than the $315 that I was quoted for a new shaft (without a yoke)! :eek: [/QUOTE]

Now you tell me. I just paid $325 for a brand spanking new driveshaft, with yoke, balanced & all. Got it from Dynotech in Troy.

 

Funny... that's where my quote for a new one was from but didn't include the yoke (3" aluminum). You did get the 2 piece yoke with the straps, right? I don't think that the regular kind (where the u-joints are pressed in) is going to work.

 

Nope. There is no split in the yoke I bought. Using the Ford Trans, there isn't a split yoke available. So I'm just going to have to disassemble what they put together and re-assemble it in the car. Shouldn't be too bad, I hope.

btw, that price was for a 2 1/2" DOM Steel shaft with Yoke and U-joints. Didn't want to spend the $$ for aluminum.

 

Got the driveshaft installed. Marked the shaft, popped the u-joint out, slid the yoke in the trans, the driveshaft behind it, put the u-joint caps & clips back in and that was that.

Frankly, I think that was actually EASIER than messing with the bearing cup u-bolts of the take-apart yoke. Certainly not much more difficult. Can't imagine spending a whole lot more $$ for a custom yoke.

Now, left on the list is:
Rear Differential Mount Bolt
Exhaust hookup
E-brake pulley (actually relocated the pulley to get a little more clearance between the yoke and e-brake cable)
Tranny juice
Interior stuff

Damn. Almost done. Assuming my battery works, I'll be firing this puppy up tomorrow! :hurray:

 

IT'S FINISHED!!!!!!!

Finished up a couple loose ends this morning and got the beast back on the road!!

:party::party::party::party:
:party::party::party::party:

Ok, well it isn't TOTALLY finished. I still need to put the console back together, but the beast is ALIVE once again!

Took it out for a test drive. OMG what a difference. Gently pull out onto the main road (55mph limit), ease it up through the gears, 4th gear, 55mph, turning about 2500 rpm. Drop it into 5th and they drop to about 1600 or so. Just idling along like nobody's business!

:hurray:

Need to run out on the freeway later to make sure all is well at speed, but so far so good!

:hurray:

And let me tell you what a difference in shift feel! That old stock shifter on the Muncie trans was a total POS compared to this thing. Nice feel! Now I just need a shifter ball! :lol:

:hurray:


[Modified by ddecart, 2:19 PM 5/22/2004]

 

That's awesome Dave. There's nothing like a fast approaching deadline to keep the motivation up.
:cheers:
-Matt

 

Like a Hooters Grand Opening? :p:

 

:D Bad news though... I checked the calendar and the wife has us out of town that weekend. :cry :banghead: I tried to get out of it even before I heard about the grand opening event... not gonna happen.


[Modified by Scooter70, 5:05 PM 5/22/2004]

 

Nothing like OD. Good work. I have been following your progress.

 

All was well until the sea-trials resumed this afternoon. Cruising at like 90 (??? Speedo doesn't work) a part fell off! :eek:

One of those half-round trim pieces that goes in the tail panel cutout for the exhaust. I KNEW that thing wasn't in very good. Did I fix t before heading out? Noooooo..... :banghead: Saw the damn thing skipping along the freeway behind me. No chance to stop for it though. I'll maybe go that way tomorrow and look for the remnants.

Other than that, it's great so far. What a HUGE difference in freeway cruising. This trip to the Cruise In is going to be SOOOO much better with that extra gear.

I'm going to get the console put back together tonight with the exception of the main console trim plate. When I get back from the Cruise In, I want to take another look at the driveline angles and then try and decide what to do with the shift lever. I like where the lever is now, even without a ball on it. So I might fab up something creative.
---------------

One of these days I'll update my webpage and actually do a full writeup on the swap. This was basically what we'd call a "Proof of Concept" at work. A one-off prototype sort of thing. It'd be a piece of cake to do a second time now that I know where all of the pitfalls are. So hopefully a writeup will help with that for the next guy. But after having gone through it, I can't think of any reason why I wouldn't do it again.

 

Slick deal, that is great news. That should be really awesome driving to the Cruise in. I really look forward to seeing it. Good job on getting it done so quick. That is a fairly major project to tackle with such little time to get it finished. I'm impressed.

 

It's really NOT a difficult project. Takes a little welding skill, access to a mill to cut the hole for the Ford being retainer, some taps & drill bits & whatnot, and the knowledge of how to put it all together. I'd love to do it again just to see how smoothly it could go.