Saturday June 10th, 2006

Everything went so fast lateley, that the engine could be removed already. A big step in the project of course!

I was a bit of a hassle doing it by myself, But after some fooling around with it, I finally had the engine out! I was glad I had the balancing hook at my disposal in the shopcrane!

The engine and gearbox could now be separated. Now I could take a good look at the clutchplate. Judging by the few times I actually drove around in the car, that had to be pretty worn out.

When the grearbox was removed from the engine and the pressureplate, clutchplates and flywheel were all taken off, the clutchplates were indeed very worn. Worn out to the rivets!

But ohw well, got some work done today, so I'm happy!

When everything is dismantled, it can be overhauled. So I'll be making some calls to companys that can overhaul my gearbox soon.

Friday October 6th, 2006

I didn't have much time for the car now that I've started with my new job at Stork Gears & Services in Rotterdam.

But I did some asking around there and since I have all the tools needed and such there. I dicided to overhaul the gearbox myself!

I already made some phonecalls to comapnys that could overhaul my gearbox for me (I found out that there are not much companys that do that here in the Netherlands). But that turned out to be very expensive.

But now that I work at Stork Gears, I have the tools and knowladge needed to do it myself. I think it would be a really fun challenge for myself aswell.

The gearbox overhaul is discribed in my workshopmanual aswell, together with some pictures from www.ae92gts.com and my common sence, I think I'll be able to pull it off.

So I took the gearbox to work with me today, where I started to dismantle it after workhours.

After removing the first cover, I came across the 5th gear. I had to remove that first, before I could dismantle the rest of the gearbox. 

These 5th gear wheels are a bit of a pain to remove, since the tools at work are not really meant for such small gearboxes. So unfortunatly one of the gear cogs was damaged. Becuase of the stress of the puller that was put on it, some pieces of the teeth broke off, rendering it useless.

Aftrer heating up the cog wheel, it did come off so I was able to continue dismantling the gearbox and learned something aswell in the process.

My brother has a broken C52 gearbox laying around at home with the notorious 5th gear pop-out problem. But my guess is that the cog wheels themselfs are still fine. I can use that ase my spare parts gearbox. If something else breaks, at least I'll have replacments.

When the complete 5th gear was removed, the next cover could be removed.

Now it was only a matter of marking up, document everything and carefully take everything apart.

Thursday October 12th, 2006

I stayed at work today after workinghours, to work on the gearbox some more.

So all the parts that were still in, came out of the housing. Both the input and output shaft came out, as did the differential assembly.

Now that the input and output shafts were out, all the rings, gears and bearings could be removed from the shafts themselfs.

Now that everything is dismantled, the next step is to thoroughly clean everything. That way, I can finally have a better look at the condition of the different parts.

But thats all for next time, I've done enough work for one day.

Thursday November 9th, 2006

Everything is cleaned up and inspected. Turned out the gearbox wasn't that bad afterall. The cog wheels were all in pretty good condition, nothing weird going on with the teeth. This gearbox hasn't been mistreated that much during it's life until now.

But now that I have it dismantled, it has to be reassembled again aswell!

To do that, I'm going to need new bearings, seals and synchro rings which I already ordered from the dealer.

I already got a call from them that they had received my parts, so I'm going to pick them up soon.

For now, the parts were cleaned with a industrial degreaser, but clean is only a relative term. I want everything to be even better than new, so there was still some work to do.

The housing for instance still has some aluminium oxide and other grease on it. There is something I can do about that. At work we have a very nice sandblasting cabinet (glassbeating cabinet actually). So I spend some time behind that to really clean everything up.

In the picture above, you can really see the difference.

The piece up front is how the housing looked after degreasing it. The part in the middle has already been sandblasted, a lot nicer isn't it?

But although aluminium doesn't really rust, if left bare like that, it will oxidize again real quick.

So it needs to be conserved. Toyota didn't do that, so this is already a little bonus for me.

The gearbox is going to be sprayed in the same colour as the engine, so when they are mounted together again, it will look as one piece.

The part in the rear of the picture is has already been sprayed. I use heatresistant paint, because it's a bit more sturdy than normal paint, can handle oil and such better and it still gets pretty hot under the bonnet.

All the internal parts were blasted aswell to get them really clean again. So everything should be as clean again as the day the parts were made!

And in a blaze of mental weakness I also made a decission this week. It wasn't in the original plans for the car, but after reading up on it and thinking of the spirit of the project, I just couldn't let the oportunity pass.

The gearbox is going to get a big up-grade by means of a Quaife ATB LSD!

I already ordered it and it shouldn't be long before it get the package in the mail.

With this Limited Slip Differential the power of the engine will be distributed a lot better to both front wheels in corners. It should also help acceleration in a straight line, because I should have more grip with both wheels.

Wednesday November 15th, 2006

I picked up the ordered parts from the dealer today. And after comparing some old and new parts, I concluded that Toyota did it's best to solve some of the issues of the early C52's.

So this gearbox gets some of the improved parts, which is always a nice thought and it might help with the lifespan of the gearbox overall.

The two upper bearings are visualy improved. The new bearings look a bit beefier.

The synchrorings of the first and second gear are improved aswell. It seems there is some sort of ceramic layer inside the ring now that the old bearings don't have.

The old bearings in the top of the picture and the new bearings below

In the top right the old bearing, below the new bearing.

Now that all the parts are in, I can put everything together again. So I pressed all the cog wheels, bearings and synchrorings back on the shafts again. Now I only have to wait for the new LSD and than I can reassemble the gearbox.

Wednesday November 22nd, 2006

I received a package last Friday containing the Quaife LSD. So now I can finally put the gearbox back together again!

I started working on the differential assembly today. The speedo drive gear (The white plastic wheel on the diff, seen a few pictures back) has been transferred to the new LSD which was then mounted to the final drive gear and the bolts  holding these together were locked.

After that I test fitted everything to make sure I didn't make any mistakes and if everything was back in the place where it belonged.

Next time I have te reshim the final drive (The crownwheel and the new diff) to correct the bearing preload with the new setup. To be able to do this, I'll have to make a new tool and improvize a bit to shim the bearings (put rings between the bearings and housing to reduce the axial play).

But that's for next time when I'll try to finish up the gearbox!

Wednesday November 29th, 2006

Today was the day that I would try to finish the gearbox.

First of I made my new tool. With the help of a piece of the axle of a AW11 MR2. I made a plate on it of which I found the perfect middle with some basic math.

I drilled a hole there on which I can mount the tool.

My manual says that the bearing should have a certain preload which can be measured with a special tool.

I didn't have that tool to my disposal so I had to come with a ghetto solution.

This was it...it used a certain weight at a certain distance. I new which weight was needed to let the diff brake the friction of the bearings and this way I was able to dertermine the preload for the bearings of the final drive

When that was done, I could put the internals in the housing for the last time. To simply test the gearbox I manually rotated it and went through all the gears and everything works nice and smooth again!

With some pride, I present to you the endresult!

Before:

After:

The gearbox is now better than new.

But I'll never now for sure how it's going to hold up until I have mated it with the engine again and drove around with it.

But that is going to take some time. But I'm very curious how it will drive, espacially with the new Quaife LSD!

When the time comes, I'll post my findings on this website. So be sure to come back to read the progress!