Tales from the Batcave (RX-7, rallycross, misc. stuff content)

Called the converter place to let them know that the trans guy found that the pump (why do I keep wanting to call it a front pump?  There is no rear pump and hasn't been since pushbutton Torqueflites) more or less disintegrated.  They already had my converter pulled apart and cleaned up and were getting ready to call me to let me know that someone should go through my transmission because of all the debris they found in the converter.

Well, at least now I feel real good about sending the converter out to be rebuilt.

Oh hey, this is where you have the build thread for this thing.

I'll take a look in my dad's barn Friday; I know I have unported 12A irons and I think I even have a set of bridgeported 12A irons sitting around.  I'm building a Prod car next and a peripheral car after that, so don't really have a good use for the 12A bits.

HAH!  Now you ARE on all of the forums I haunt.  And you said you weren't going to join GRM because you had so much going on.  (You'll fit in here just fine, I swear)

On the Batcave note, I picked up teh R's converter today.  The person who had a good condition '06-07 Geartronic angle drive, who was willing to work with me on shipping since he gets cheap shipping through his work, stopped responding to e-mail when I said, hey, you're like 30 miles away, why deal with shipping and PayPal when I can just give you cash and pick it up in person.

Hrmm..

I wasn't going to but then I got really bored at work.

FCP Euro-ordered drive collar and funky seal were delivered yesterday.  I delivered them to my trans guy today at lunch.  I got to see my tranny's innards: WOW it is beefy in there.  Makes me feel kinda warm inside.  It is a shame that nobody makes a limited slip otherwise I would have put one in while it was all apart.

I spent an hour this morning removing a dead 4R70W from a van.  Someone picked it up at around 11.  When I visited his shop at lunch, he was disassembling it.  At 5, he delivered it to us...  I know what I am doing tomorrow!  (Well, after the rest of the parts for the F450 on my lift come in, anyway)

Also, I do have the 100k mile angle gear.  The input splines are just as worn as the junk I took out.  I bought it anyway, for two reasons:  One, it probably does not leak as much.  Two, now I hage a spare for WHEN it explodes.  Because it will.  I have made peace with this.

There is a Montero in my driveway that has a rebuilt TF80, a rebuilt torque converter, two angle gears, 8 quarts of synthetic Dexron VI, and about $3000 worth of tools.

There is potato salad in the bowl in front of me.

Priorities, man.  The week was long, the potato salad needs attention.

Trans is bolted in after having to drop it out to reseat the torque converter.  Stopped work for the night after getting all six converter bolts in and tight.

Today i learned that a s60r transmission can removed in 1 hour and 24 minutes.

In reply to EvanB :

And the guys on Swedespeed didn't believe my 4 hour time the first time around.

The backstory.

Saturday night.  Arrived late at Evan's place, everything was majorly soaked from rainstorms and stuff, so I set up a box fan to dry out my work area while I procrastinated.

Future mid engined Volvo  AWD swap?  Sure, why not.

Late Saturday night, lifting the trans into place (note 240 Pickup in background)

VERY lazily got everything back together starting late Sunday morning.  With everything buttoned up, wheels torqued, tools collected and accounted for, around 4pm I suggested we go grab something to eat as a road test since I was starving.  Boy did I miss driving this car.  Definitely needed to reset all the adaptives, as the trans was doing the Aisin bang when coming to a stop when the adaptives are all wrong.   Having new fluid instead of black goo will do that.  After a tour of the area in search of various reasonably priced, questionably healthy Mexican foodstuffs and coming up blank, we decided to hit up the local Kroger for some groceries and then go to get some gyros.  As I hit the lock button on my remote in the Kroger parking lot, I commented that this would be a good test, see if there's any drips under the car when we got back.

"Oh, you mean like that?"

There was a dinner plate sized puddle of red under the car, and it was growing.  Uh, yeah, like that.  By the time we got out of Kroger, the puddle was now 2-3 feet across and had completely encompassed the driver's front tire and was actually starting to form rivulets.

Suddenly, my interest in gyros was replaced by an interest in not needing a tow back to Evan's house.

Barely made it back to the base of operations.  Every red light was a nail biter.  I realized I probably should shut the engine off at lights, and started to do that.  Some guy in a truck in the next lane started honking at me and his passenger was shouting to get my attention, and as smoke started curling out from under the hood, I shouted back "Dude, I know, I know!".  Ran all the stop signs in Evan's neighborhood as I mentally tallied up how much fluid I had lost already.  Car did not want to engage Reverse when getting into his driveway.  But... made it back.

Bummed, we hopped into the Montero and went out for gyros.  It was somewhat amusing to see how far away the trail started, and the lakes of Dexron VI that the car left at traffic lights.

Laughing is easier than crying.

Got back, inhaled gyros, looked at the time.  A little after 5pm.  I had the trans out in four hours before, not knowing what I was doing since I'd never done a Volvo trans before, AWD or not.  Four hours plus packing up plus a two hour drive home.... I could do this.  I changed back out of my nice clean, dry clothes, and put back on my filthy, now-cold sweat soaked clothes, and got to business.

According to the timestamp, this was 5:27pm, shortly before I started work:

As you can see, the car is on the ground and in a fully assembled state, aside from the faux battery cover that I'd left off for fluid fill port access.  Swedish water in tumbler is for encouragement and appropriateness to project.  The things you find in a Kroger...

Zip apart everything underhood (airbox, shifter cable, TCM connector,  post-intercooler plumbing,  unbolt starter and lay aside, upper engine torque mount, and four or five bellhousing bolts) then push car back into garage and unbolt forward engine mount, actual engine mount, under-engine torque mount, lower stabilizer link mounts, both ball joints, four nuts and a biolt holding in the rack, and a few miscellanous minor fasteners, and at 6:15 I was at this point: 

Two 14mm headed bolts and the axles are free of the knuckles, two 10mm headed bolts and the right side axle is free of the engine and can be pulled off.  Six 8mm Allen bolts and the rear driveshaft is free (takes longer than it should...), five 13mm headed bolts and the angle gear falls on your head, one 15mm headed nut and three 13mm headed bolts and the rearward engine mount bracket is unbolted from the mount (which attaches to the RACK, not the subframe...!), then six F.U. T50-headed torque converter bolts that WILL stall a 3/8" impact gun so these need to be loosened by hand.  Get out the cherrypicker, lower the engine support a bit on the driver side, five more bellhousing bolts, and at 6:54, let's get this transmisson out on a tray:

Nice.  Okay.  So to prove that I did actually pull the trans and not just stage some photos:

It was a good thing too, because I was out of the little water that I had provided for myself and my hands were too dirty to go into the house.  Must stay hydrated when working.

Not posting realtime, wifi sucking​​​​​​

Unable to upload to Photoberkit???  I have many photos.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YfjaIsT3gn0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Let's see if I can embed a video.

Nope, can't, here's a link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfjaIsT3gn0

Transmission started throwing up as soon as I put it in gear.  Yanked it right back out again.  Getting another pump.  It didn't blow the seal out this time, it was leaking PAST the seal.

Very frustrating.  And on Monday, an '02 V70 came in to the shop that was extremely rusty.  Dammit, I wanted this car because they were supposed to have God-tier rustproofing.  Might as well just sell it and buy something I really want like a Fit or some other "A class" hatch.

Fluid level checking.  I am an expert in trans changes but the thrill is gone.

Just did some serious quasi-legal tearassing around the neighborhood.  (Kept it under 25mph assuming base 30)

There's some minor drool but that may just be slinging from all of the prior fluid explosions.

Wow this much metal should not be able to accelerate that fast, that quietly and smoothly.  I gotta GET me one of these!

...er, wait this one IS mine

Be nice if Photoberkit wasn't offline.  Cannot log in, keep getting a flagrant system error.  Will whine about it after fhe Challenge is over with.

Last time, at the Batcave...

Stepwear on the front end housing.

Enter an unknown 13B 6 port Holley manifold that has been thoroughly butchered by parties unknown.

Step 1, unbutcher the manifold.  It had been converted to common plenum, I do not want that.

Enter two tubes of Quiksteel.  After a thorough drying period, I filed the top flat and used a carb gasket to mark out where I need to remove some stuff.

Good enough.  Manifold is going to suck anyway because the other end has been butchered too.

In case you wanted to see the difference betweem Series 3  and Series 4 primary ports.  FC is on top, teeny GSL-SE is on bottom.

But this manifold has been opened up taller and wider than even 12A primary ports.  Enter three packs of JBWeld...

Overfill ports, wait two days, port match to suit.  The manifold is still going to be way too wide and too high, but I do not trust thin applications of epoxy like that,so it's just going to have to suck.

Enter one very lightly worn GSL-SE front housing.  First things first, the oil passages need to be ported. As-produced, they are a mess of right angle drillings and casting flash.  We can't make it perfect but we can make it a hell of a lot better.

Befores:

Only an hour of Dremel work later, afters:

Now we are catching up to today.  

Top left to right, we have my rear and front "Group A port" 12A end housings (my avatar is the port window, borrowed from the homologation paperwork), and in the bottom row are a rear and front GSL-SE end housing, and an FC 6 port housing for good measure.  Note how much taller the aux port is, it closes at 80 degrees ATDC!!  Standing up in the back are a pair of FC rotor housings and a random center housing, for jigging purposes.

Closeup of difference between S3 and S4.

For giggles, GSL-SE versus 12A bridge port.

There ain't no going back now, boy.  There ain't no going back once you've been here...

Aaaaand....  just found air.

Philosophically, I was going to drill holes through to air anyway...  Yes, I had an Idea for making 6 port junk work.

Might stop here.  Hands are buzzing, and I'm feeling really tired.  

This, ah, SUCKS for airflow. I had always been leery of doing anything to fix that, so my attitude had always been "screw it, at least there isn't a sleeve/crosspin/shaft/bushing blocking flow so it is probably better as it is."  I need to fix that window to air that I made, so let's go for it.

Clean, clean, scrub, brush, and clean some more.  Two 3/16" holes through from the inside, then countersink with a stepdrill from the outside.  This should mechanically lock the epoxy in place.  I had it come loose in an intake manifold once, so I am a bit cautious.

How does the epoxy hold up to the heat in that spot? I had to do some filing on the iron to get those valves to work right in the 13B I just dropped into Smoky. I wondered if I could remove them and what that would do to the flow. Or if I could open them up some to get more flow. But that is for the one I build this winter.

I now know enough about rotaries to really screw one up....