Project Modern FB

ipg · Post by **ipg** » Mon May 26, 2008 2:53 pm

i hope your keeping the ute that low when its finished

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Mon May 26, 2008 5:47 pm

Good stuff Sammy,

Now get rid of those other cars out of the shed and get to work on the ute

You've only got 12 days to get it finished

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Tue May 27, 2008 1:32 pm

hahaha not quite, theres a commodore v6 in the passenger side of the tray, thats why its so low on that side, but it will probably be about 1 inch higher at the rear and maybe a bit more at the front ...

yeah no worries mal, i'll quickly do the brakes, throw a windscreen in it and go for it .... hopefully my home made tailshaft wont vibrate too much over 5kms

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Fri Aug 22, 2008 8:28 am

Well last night i crawled under the car and removed the flexplate cover and gave the old girl a kick in the guts to see if i could spot oil leaking from the rear of the motor .....

this is the result ....

as you can see there is plenty of oil in the teeth of the flex plate and theres a nice coating thats been sprayed around the inside of the bellhousing etc ...

it looks like the rear main seal is the culprit so unfortunately it looks like either 1. the box has to come out or 2. the entire engine ....

so i'm going to have a chat to my engine building mate and see what he thinks the go is, hopefully i can remove the seal without damaging it otherwise i'll have to get a new one .... i'll keep you posted.

i'm going to be doing some re-arranging in the shed shortly so i can get better access all around the ute so hopefully i can do some more work on it more regularly!

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Fri Aug 22, 2008 9:36 am

Hi Sammy,

If your going to take the engine and trans out why don't you leave it until everything is set up in the engine bay and when you pull the motor out, paint the engine bay and finish it off before putting the motor back in.

With the rear seal, my brother just replaced one in my sisters VS. Pulled the box out put the new seal in, all back together and it still leaked like a routed washing machine.

When he pulled it all back out again he found the alloy housing that bolts to the motor where the seal fits into was the cause. He put a new gasket on that and hey presto, no more leak.

Good to see your finally concentrating on the right car now.

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Fri Aug 22, 2008 1:03 pm

I knew it was only a matter of time before a comment about what car i'm working on came from you Mal

i think if the motor has to come out i will be waiting till i have to pull it out for other reasons, but its not to hard to pull the box so i might do that soon .... i'm fairly confident its the rear main between the crank and the seal because i could actually see it dribbling out that area when it was running and of course because its on the crank it then flicks it straight into my face!

got out from under the car pretty quick and shut it down then didn't i!!

as for painting, i'm adament i am not painting anything till the whole car is virtually ready for rego, i want to get it engineered and test driven to make sure everything works then i'll strip it and paint etc .... i've had too many cars where you do all this hard work and then it needs to be modded after its painted or the engine needs to come out and something gets scratched!

at the moment i have rego on the Torry along with a few other bills so i'm not going to have alot of money to spend on any cars but that does mean i will have plenty of time to spend on the little things, like finishing off seat mounts and making panels to go in the pillars for seat belts etc ... all the little things i can do with my stuff in the shed and not have to spend much to do them!

first thing though is hopefully this weekend to do some musical cars and get the EH and FB into the parts of the shed where we can work on them easily .....

and you will be pleased to know Mal that this requires pushing the gemini into the corner a bit more

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 1:27 pm

ok i did the rear main seal with only removing the gearbox, wasn't a bad job rear main is now not leaking anymore as its installed properly this time

so after that i moved to the diff .....................

i decided to pull the diff apart because it was only quickly slapped together and not torqued up etc and also it had been through the flood and after the flood i drained it and sprayed water dispersant all through it etc and thought it would be right till i got time to fully rebuild it properly (new bearings and seals etc)

how wrong was i!!

needless to say most of the parts are totally stuffed .... so i'm going to start from scratch almost - because firstly i wasn't happy with the diff shortening that was done so now that i have my diff jig i'm going to shorten another housing and do it to my standards with tubing inside to strengthen it etc and i can also make sure the pinion angle is the same as my engine aswell..... then i'll just have to source a new lsd for it and the axles should be right with new bearings.

i plan to build a new diff housing and just put an open centre in it, that will atleast get me going and i'll one day get the trusty LSD again....

so hopefully over the next few weeks you will see some progress on the new diff aswell as i plan to put all the brakes on ....

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:03 pm

Now see, this is what happens when you spend your time playing with other cars instead of the important one

Now stay focussed, keep us updated.

Cheers

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:13 pm

no Mal this is what happens when you assume it will be ok

anyways the more i look at the diff housing now that its in the middle of the shed floor the more i don't like the workmanship of the shortening so im happy to be here

the diff twisted my arm

FB MAD · Post by **FB MAD** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:47 pm

Put it on Fleabay,advertise it as rust free and that the paint will come up perfect with a polish and that is "the facts"

and mention a few words like NASCO or GENUINE or something like that and sit back and wait for the dollars to roll in.

Mephious · Post by **Mephious** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:00 pm

Good to see progress Sammy !!!

Keep at it !!

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:39 pm

nah thats just nasty, i have enough problems with dodgy sellers on ebay, i don't want be in the same catagory

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 8:22 pm

drop all them rusty things in mollases and they will shine up new in the morning

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:14 pm

well i was wondering how bad it was because alot of the stuff i could wipe off ... so i started giving some of the bits a light clean and it did get alot of the rusty crap off and i did find alot of shiny bits but i also found that alot of the gears have been fairly well pitted from wear so it probably was a good thing i had to go over it because i was just going to renew bearings and leave it as is ....

i'm thinking i will keep the lsd housing and probably replace the rest ... you can never have too many spares eh

Sammy · Post by **Sammy** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:15 pm

well over the weekend i got stuck into setting the ute up on chocks so i could measure the angle the crankshaft/gearbox shaft is on for setting the pinion angle on the new diff .....

so got all that sorted out, looks like the diff could go up maybe 1 - 2 degrees .... i just don't want to go too far otherwise it might twist to far under load ....

so anyways i've worked out what i need to do now so it was time to put the old diff into the jig .... which was previously setup for a LH Torana and it seems there is about 5mm difference between the Torana diff length and the shortened FB one so i'm going to shorten the fb diff by 2.5mm each side because i know theres enough clearance to do it and it will give me a tad more on the outside of the guards which is what it needs if anything ....

so as you can see the diff is held by the outside ends ... what i will now do is make brackets to hold the spring mounts then measure the pinion angle of the current setup in the jig, then get the new commodore diff, cut all the spring mounts off it and then cut the tubes where the fb spring mounts go then work out exactly how much i need to take off the tubes then put them back in with smaller tubes inside them, set the pinion angle and then plug weld the tubes in aswell as the entire way around the cuts .... then weld the spring mounts back on and its done (other than some brackets etc to go back on).

oh and this is Harry my sidekick ... he loves crawling under the car to hang out with me and usually also to lick my ear and face

but i wouldn't have it any other way .. i love that he comes under the car, our other dog generally only comes in the shed to lie on my pieces of carpet!

i'll keep you up to date with it as im sure theres a few people out there that would be interested in this.

fbekholden.com

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