Willow Springs, Spring Fling, MATS 1600 mile road trip

[ntstlgl1970]

Ok, it's been a while so back to work. This weekend we had some weird weather, a little rain, a bunch of wind and so on. Saturday, I was going to work on the driver's quarter panel where it meets the outer wheelhousing but I ran into a problem that I need to think about some more, so I decided to work on my trans crossmember. I'm putting a 618/47RE trans out of a cummins diesel in my car. I am already using the 4 speed hump to give some extra room in the trans tunnel area. Since the overdrive unit on the back of the trans is much wider than stock, I needed to open up the tunnel where the extension housing comes through. I've seen where others have cut part of the extension housing to fit the tunnel, but it seemed like even if I did that, there wouldn't be enough room. Maybe the diesel case is a little bigger, not sure, but I spent all day saturday looking at the car and measuring stuff. In other words, I didn't get anything done. Too much thinking, not enough working. Sunday morning, I went straight out and cut the crossmember out with the sawzall first thing. HA! now I will HAVE to figure out how to make it work or I won't be able to roll the car back in the garage!

[ntstlgl1970]

So essentially what I did was cut the "hump" right where it curved back to meet the floor and on the driver's side, I cut an additional 3 inches of the crossmember out on the driver's side. Then took the curved hump portion and welded that back to the crossmember, effectively widening the Hump by about 3 inches. If I were to do it again, I would not have cut out the passenger side of the hump, that parts seems to clear fine.

[ntstlgl1970]

I made sure to reattach the support tubes to the crossmember inside so the crossmember bolts won't crush the crossmember when tighened. Then once I got that sorted out, I tacked some sections of 1/8" plate to bridge the gap in the new trans hump. Once I had everything back to where it was before, it was time to finish weld the crossmember back together. I ended up welding both the inside and outside of the cut area for more strength.

[ntstlgl1970]

That pretty much took care of sunday, I was beat. Sure seems to take a lot longer to make things happen than you want them to. Today, I cut some more of the floor away so I could put in the big part of the crossmember that I wanted to do. Since the crossmember anchors the torsion bars, it needs to be pretty strong. I used some cardboard and made a template for a "brace" from the same 1/8" plate that would bridge and then anchor the crossmember past the cut line to the body of the car. I was concerned that I weakened the crossmember too much, even after welding it all back together. It took a while to get the template shaped correctly and then using the plasma to cut out the part. After the brace was welded in, things looked pretty good. I will probably add in some extra bracing between the "brace" and the outer wall of the crossmember across the cut line for extra strength.

[ntstlgl1970]

I'll have to make a u shaped piece to complete the bottom side of the hump in the center and then weld some sheet metal back into the floor. Overall I like how this came out so far. A few more hours and it will be back to the bodywork.

[ShelbyDogg]

That's alot of work. Are you sure that the tranny wouldn't have fit if you trimmed the tran's rib? It sure looks similar to a 518 tailshaft.  At least that would fix the tight speedometer nut on the 518. Is the 618 Speedometer gear in the same place as my 518 pic? 

Rob

[ntstlgl1970]

Between the case hitting the tunnel at the low reverse servo (because of the extra ribbing on the diesel case) and the extension housing, I just decided to have at it. Here is some pics of the trans mocked up before. My trans has the output speed sensor instead of a speedometer, so I am not sure if it is in the same position as where a speedometer would normally be. Since the tolerances were all over the place on these cars when new, maybe mine wasn't so close to where it should be. Maybe it would have worked by cutting the rib, but too late now. I also was going to work on welding in the XV subframe connectors, but those are going to take way more work than I want to do right now. (they don't fit my particular car very well)

[ShelbyDogg]

I see all of the extra ribs on that diesel case. Let us know how my slapstik mod works.

Rob

[ntstlgl1970]

I won't be working on the shifter linkage for a while, but I am going to look for a slapstick setup at the mopar alley show this weekend. It will be cool to make that work.

[hemiken]

  Hey Eric,

Excellant progress buddy.................. Looking forward to more updates to see how everything fits back together old mate.

[ntstlgl1970]

I have to keep going so I can put this back in it

[hemiken]

  Now i understand................... Where does the throtle body mount, on the front or rear of your custom top injection system

[ntstlgl1970]

It will mount to the front, probably angled towards where the distributor used to be

[hemiken]

Where are the leeds running too..................... Do you have coil packs

[ntstlgl1970]

Yeah the coil packs will be mounted to the back of the intake similar to a viper, the coil packs are from a neon. The Ford EDIS module will fire the coils and the Megasquirt will run the EDIS module. The trigger wheel will mount to a spacer between the crank pulley and the damper. Trying to make the wiring look as minimalistic as possible to keep it clean. Actually I'm more comfortable doing that kind of stuff as opposed to bodywork, but I need to get this thing painted before moving on to the fun stuff.