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Set about converting the cable pull clutch to work with the mazdas hydraulic pedal.
Being a fan of the diy method that costs nothing, I decided to use the old slave cylinder, which actually looks just right for the job, I cut off the end of the mazda release arm and spaced and welded it so that it all sits at the right angle for the cylinder to push. A small bracket was cut out of 5mm steel plate and screwed to the bellhousing, then the slave cylinder bolted to the bracket. I milled slots for the slave cylinder bolts so that it's position can be fine tuned if needed.
Here's what I came up with
Little bit of brake pipe attached and clipped down, ready for a test fit. Also added a square of sound deadening foam around the shifter, as it was missing on the old box, and was letting a surprising amount of noise through inside the car
I'd already had a measure up with the gearboxes side by side, and had decided that the shifter was going to be in something like the right place, so went about getting it bolted up to the engine, all went fairly smoothly aside from the top two bellhousing bolts being a complete twat to get to under the tunnel.
Turns out that it's a great fit, kinda wish I'd taken this route in the first place, instead of messing around with adapter plates etc. The shifter is dead centre, so will just need a little straight lever making for it, but I'll leave this as a last job once I've levelled up the engine and box.
Thats about where it all stands now, I've been playing around with both propshafts, and it looks like the rx8 one will work if I have the splined end from the old Ford shaft fitted, and a small spacer made up to go between the diff and the back end of the prop.
I thought the RX box was supposed to be pretty tough? Ie a lot better than a clunky old T5 lol
Still, if it works it has to be done.
Yep I was under the impression that they were a pretty strong unit too, but 3rd gear was whining pretty badly. Will have to split it open one day and have a look how badly lunched it is lol
Not really updated for a while again on this, as I've had a few other things to do (one of which was to have a little meeting with the magistrates regarding an unfortunate incident involving the RX8, a speed gun and my purely accidental over application of the throttle) but I'm actually almost done and ready for getting it back on the road in time for the 4 days of sunshine which we call summer.
I had to fit a larger master cylinder to the clutch to get enough movement at the gearbox end, which caused me no end of bother trying to bleed it up, after running the same litre of brake fluid through it about 50 times and still getting nothing, I stripped the new cylinder to find the little rubber cup which blocks the inlet when the pedal is pressed had a little bit of a burr stopping it sealing. Trimmed it off with a knife and it was all good 😀
The mazdas PPF was extended and some brackets welded on to make it match up to the new gearbox (pics to follow soon)
I marked the propshafts reverse splined end up where the gearbox seal came up to and then took it off to have a talk with the propshaft company about what we could do. I was hoping to retain the rx8 carbon prop and just swap the yoke at the gearbox end for something that I hadn't smashed all the bearings up whilst swapping the end,then just take care of the length with a spacer at the diff end.
As it turns out, the bearings are ever so slightly different types so the mazda prop won't take the Ford end without a small amount of play in it, we decided it was easier and a more reliable option to just make a new one up thats right for the job rather than mess around with spacers etc.
A couple of weeks, and Ł190 later, I came home with this ☺
3" steel and tough as old boots!
Unfortunately, through some sort of mix up, its an inch or so too long, so is tight up to the gearbox when fitted, so Its now back having an inch taken out... Bummer 😣
Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been pretty busy recently...
Once I'd modified the power plant frame with some welded on brackets to suit the t5, I decided to make an extra support to reduce the amount of stress on the tailshaft housing. It just bolts into the original points in the floor where a previous support was removed. I chopped up and re-used the bushing from one of the old axle braces to isolate some of the vibration and stop it shaking any fillings out.
And a little bracket screwed to the bellhousing to support the exhaust.
Suffered a diff failure, probably less than a fortnight after getting back on the road, although I think that was a combination of having never been serviced and then chucking some extra power through it. On inspection it looked as though a bearing had died, but I think the ton of metal floating in there had been the root cause of failure. The clutches were badly worn too.
Luckily I got a replacement for a bargain 50 quid, which made all the difference, I didn't really notice before, but the old one had got really lazy and loose, now it bites up instantly, with the added benefit of feeling that bit more predictable.
The t5 has worked out well, aside from being a bit of a tractor box, and 3rd gear being a bit of a bugger to find in a rush. Its nowhere near as quiet or refined as the old 6spd (reverse is almost loud enough to be an embarrassment!). The ratios work better with the engine, letting it stay on boost longer and getting rid of one gear change.
Another job on the list is going to be the exhaust, I'm not sure if the 2.5" from the (ex) cat is quite large enough, and it has been slowly developing the world's most irritating squeak when it gets really hot. I suspect the squeak will be the manifold flange to turbo again, so this time its getting welded 😛
Since Titch won't be around for possibly another 7 months, and I have no way of getting in contact with him until he returns, I won't be doing too much more to the car until then, as I don't want to welcome him back and then tell him he owes me a pile of money. So for the meantime I've just been giving it the occasional run out and enjoying it while I can, because something tells me I won't want to give it away 😢
Something we had agreed was that the scabby chipped paintwork needs sorting, I got it a little better with a compounding session and some polish, but its still a long way from perfect. Since I can't really get it painted and then present titch with a huge debt when he returns (not the best welcome home from the wilderness present) I thought I might have a try with some vinyl wrap.
At less than a hundred quid for enough to cover the whole car, I couldn't really afford not to!
I got a couple of bits in red gloss finish to make it more obvious if I had done a crappy job of trimming it around the edges, and so that the gloss will make the underlying imperfections show more. If I do this full scale I will probably use a satin finish black which should mask the imperfections a lot more.
I started with a mirror, which was suspiciously easy 😕
Then full of confidence, I made a pigs ear of the bumper 😂😂
Luckily it just peels back up, so I can piss myself off trying many more times until I get this nailed. I didn't really help myself by being lazy and leaving the headlamp and fog lights in there which made it more difficult.
I definitely think this is worth some perseverance and practice though 😀
These are just offcuts from a signmakers, its called Avery Supreme wrapping vinyl. I think it is around Ł25 per metre (1.5 metres wide. It has to be proper wrap, as the wet application stuff doesn't stretch enough and won't stay stuck around tight corners. I have to admit I found it pretty challenging.
I'm actually considering getting a couple of aerosols of plasti-dip, and having a test with that to see how It goes. This stuff really looks the dogs danglies!
You just mask off windows and stuff roughly, allowing it to get over the window seals and onto the glass a bit, splatter the living shit out of it, over the fuckin lights and everything, and somehow it just magically dries flat. Then once it has dried, you peel it off all the bits you don't want covered. They're spraying it like monkeys with what essentially looks like a garden fence creosote gun, and it actually looks pretty good once its done. When you decide you want to go back to the original paint, it peels off.... I shit you not 😂😂😂
https://youtu.be/rNY9Dx617N8
I think it is worth a go just to peel it back off, looks so satisfying. I think some sort of a satin black with one of the pearl tints would look pretty cool, and sticking with a similar colour would reduce how obvious the lines are where the plastidip meets the paint in the door shuts.
Done around 150-160 miles in the RX8 this week commuting to work and back, one thing I can say is that it is VERY good at drinking petrol!
Then this morning there was a strange thud under the passengers side, turns out that the bolt holding the fuel pump on had given way (christ knows how as its an m10 high tensile) the pump dropped off and ripped a hole in the aluminium casing making it piss petrol out pretty quickly, I had to get a bungee cord from B&Q and strap it back up and get home sharpish before it hit empty! So thats an extra job on the list now 😐. Going to lay the car up in the garage for a few weeks now and address some of the other little niggles I'm having, the worst of which is the squeaky exhaust and manifold, which has been driving me nuts over the last few days and makes the car sound like a bit of a shed. I'm also going to take a look into removing the PPF completely and replacing with a diff brace and a gearbox mount to allow a little more adjustment of the prop angle, as I think it is a little too straight and causing some vibration at 60-70mph. I have also got an occasional clunk from the nsr wheel area when I'm just about to come to a standstill, although I think this will just be a bushing or one of the ball joints getting a bit worn and slack.
Once this is all done, I will have a look into wrapping or more likely plasti-dipping the entire car, I might even have a go at doing the skoda first, as its about 5 different shades of silver and is starting to look a bit scruffy.
That avery wrap gets a lot of good reviews and was the one I was going to look into trying first. I have just bought a can of plasti dip to do the grill on my car and see what it comes out like. A friend I used to work with did his wheels and they came out resonable considering the one can cost him peanuts.
I did my alloys with it, only a temporary job as the paint was flaking and looked terrible.
Didn't prep it properly and still spot on 3 months later. I would peel them and prep the wheels properly but would rather wait till my car explodes or gets stolen.
So are we saying one tin of plasti-dip covered four wheels? If so thats some pretty good coverage there ☺ Might grab one tomorrow afternoon if the postman doesn't deliver my worm nuke (fish tank worms not arse worms thankfully) I'm in need of another nice easy, feel good job again to give me some motivation after this mornings fuel pump shenanigans, and knowing that I'm gonna have to fork out to replace it 😐. I actually felt a little daunted after I'd taken stock of the various jobs that needed doing, but I've just read back the whole way through this thread and realised that I bit off a huge chunk considering until this I'd never attempted any sort of transplant job, and despite many thinking I was mad, many thinking it would never work, and rather a lot of the RX8 lot saying that I'd just ruin the car etc etc... It did work 😀😀😀😀
Granted, there's been a few adjustments and revisits to sort some bits, but I expected that. This is one of those projects that will never be 'finished', and part of the fun of it all is the mystery of what will be the next thing that fucks up 😂😂
I still sometimes look at it and think to myself 'I can't believe this thing actually works' but somehow it does, and compared to the work that has already gone in, these few jobs should be pretty easy 😉
I used 1 and half tins on mine. Bought 4 off eBay cheap enough.
Had a little mess around with some on a section of one of the wheels, but It hasn't really worked out too well for me to be honest, there was some lacquer peel, which I flatted away in the hope the dip would cover. Its laid down nice and smooth over the lacquer, but where its hit the uncovered basecoat its gone wrinkled as though it has reacted with it. Theres some peeling on a couple of the wheels, so I don't think I'll be getting an easy win on these without sanding it all back and repainting 😞 although the leftovers did a pretty decent job of covering the flaky chrome plating on the grill of the old Skoda
I've got a replacement fuel pump on its way, and a new bracket, although as a way to ensure the fuel pump saga can never happen again, I think I will be relocating the fuel pump onto the battery tray where there won't be any excessive vibration from the engine and gearbox as there was when it was bolted through the PPF (which I will likely remove anyway). Might even be a little bit quieter hidden under the bonnet!
Something else which has been annoying me is a kind of screaming/screeching noise when under a lot of load, it kind of comes and goes, sometimes for example in 3rd gear, the squealing will appear when accelerating hard, but will disappear if the rear wheels start to spin up, I can't decide if this is clutch slip or not, the revs don't shoot up abnormally as I'd usually expect if the clutch was slipping, it does seem to be clutch related though, as if I twat the fuck out of it and get some heat in the clutch the noise will go away? There's plenty of meat left on the friction plate and the flywheel is nice and flat, so I'm not a hundred percent on what the problem is (other than that the friction material is a little degraded with age, or perhaps we're running at the very limit of what the clutch will handle, I'm assuming its a standard item as its labelled up as motorcraft)
I'll most likely be moving the battery to the boot somewhere to remove a little of the clutter under the bonnet, and to make it easier to swap to a larger battery and shorter high current cable runs if any in car entertainment gets installed, I used to be pretty into the car audio side of things as a 'yoof' and still have some pretty decent gear just sat in the garage going to waste doing nothing, and in truth, the standard Bose sound system thats in there is pretty lame.
That avery wrap gets a lot of good reviews and was the one I was going to look into trying first. I have just bought a can of plasti dip to do the grill on my car and see what it comes out like. A friend I used to work with did his wheels and they came out resonable considering the one can cost him peanuts.
Tried today (rust-o-leum peel coat which is pretty much the same stuff) it worked pretty well on my skodas grill. It doesn't hide as much chipping and chrome peel as I'd have liked it to do, and it will never be anywhere near as good as a sand/prime/2k job, but for a tenner a can and being so easy and reversible, I think its pretty good.
What about the thrust bearing on the clutch for the screech? Sounds bearing related if its screeching imo.
Good luck finding it.
It's definitely not the thrust bearing unfortunately, it did it with the rx8 box on too, and I fitted a new one when I swapped to the T5. I could do with going back into the bellhousing whilst I'm playing with the prop angle though nonetheless as I think the release arm could do with its pivot shimming a little as it rattles when the engine is under labour at low revs (just around 2000-2200).
I will have a look at the clutch plate while I'm in there and see if it looks glazed over or shagged in any way, the noise is exactly the same as on a Ka that Titch had a long time ago, only that was only a little short squeak just as the car pulled away, strangely it only did it after he had fitted new wheels to it.
The postman has just dropped off a fuel pump which thankfully doesn't have a hole in the side of it, and a nice aluminium clamp to fix the bugger down good and solid. Think I'll have a scrat around and try and find a couple of rubber mounts to go under the bracket and cut down on some of the noise from it, while I'm at it, I think I will put a tee in the fuel line and a pressure gauge just so I can easily check the fuel pressure now and again, its one less thing to be paranoid about 😂 Things to be paranoid about are quite abundant on a car you knocked together in a garage at home lol, this is why I still carry a full size CO2 fire extinguisher in the boot 😂😂😂 better safe than sorry!
03-05-2016, 09:36 AM
