New member, old hatch, "new" 5spd tranny!

[naughtJrunk]

Hey everyone, my name's Denny, I've been in Montana a while, and the whole time I've lived here I've been struggling to harness the power of my EA81 86 Hatch that probably got offroaded a bit too hard before sitting in a barn for a few decades. Despite the dents, it looked so cool and classic that I couldn't resist risking the possible mechanical troubles and made it my only vehicle and daily driver. That was a few years ago, and well... things could have gone better perhaps, but my history with the car aside for the moment, I just worked enough OT this spring to start a five speed d/r swap (mostly because my 4spd is toasted). I nearly don't know what I'm doing, but I'm pretty good at using the internet (leading me to lurk around this forum many many times before finally joining) and have lots and lots of wobble socket extensions for my ratchet set, so we'll see how this goes.

 

Anyways, I'm not sure if this is an introduction post, or where I should frantically throw all my questions out into the forum, so I figure I'll just keep a little log here of my plans and progress and let people interject whatever comments, which if they serve to prevent serious catastrophes in my car would be much appreciated. I'm sure I'll get around to posting pictures eventually. For those on this forum who really like vintage stock and show quality rigs, my handiwork thus far may be an eyesore, and my methods questionable, and my results may not speak for themselves all that well, but the number of times I've nearly ruined this car compared to the number of times I've actually ruined this car is something like quite a bit of times to zero, so I'm hoping once I get this tranny in, I'll be aiming for a million miles!!! ...we'll see. Anyways, sorry in advance if this post is way too long, lots of thinking out loud going on here, but hopefully there is something to gain from it by someone, but if not, these are some good notes for me at least! And for the record, lots of the info here I've gathered from this forum in the first place, so it can't hurt to have it show up again all in one post.

 

My current project is the one I'm most concerned about, which is the 5 speed dual range swap from an EA82 car to my EA81 GL Hatchback which came stock with the 4 speed dual range. So far I'm way over budget, and I'll just keep the budget going until this puppy drives! Fortunately, I've done way too much research recently so that I will hopefully stop accidentally throwing away all my money, so here's the deal with the tranny so far:

 

I just got a tranny FedExed to my house from some South Dakota ebay seller for 4 hundo (not as cool as finding local junkyard budget parts, probably should have tried harder on that front)

it's supposedly off some 88 wagon with 186,000 miles. It looks ok, other than the splines for the passenger side half shaft look real bunged up, looks to me like the roll pin must have been out for thousands of miles, but not sure what the deal is. In order to avoid spending money, i may just file a few imperfections out and see if I can make it work, everything else looks good from the outside as far as I can tell.

 

It has the correct 23 spline axle stubs (is that the right term for those?) as I've been told anything other than the turbo models ought to. It also should have a 3.9:1 final drive, as it's a dual range rather than the single range which supposedly have the 3.7:1 final drive, so the 3.9:1 matches the reduction in my stock rear differential.

 

I also have a luks flywheel and clutch kit (model 15008, for the ea82 4WD), brand new, the clutch disk and pilot bearing both fit very well on the input shaft. As of 1986, my model year, the hatchbacks switched to the inch larger flywheel that's the same size as the later EA82 flywheel (I believe this started in 1983 with EA81 wagons?), so the good news is that I don't have to file the bottom of the engine's bellhousing to fit a flywheel in there! However, I've heard the ea82 pressure plate may not work great with the EA81 flywheel due to a slightly different depth of the flywheel, but I know very little about those specs, and I had already purchased an ea82 flywheel, new from luks also, so I would rather use this already paid for flywheel than reuse my old one if possible. There is kind of an issue here though, the holes for the flywheel bolts are apparently larger than the EA81's flywheel bolts. I've heard of people ignoring this problem and installing it anyways with no issues, and I've heard of people making some spacers with helicoil inserts, but I honestly have no idea how they made helicoil inserts without making the flywheel into a threaded hole, which I don't want of course, so I'm hoping to craft some bushings out of brass tubing here soon. That should work, but if I hadn't already bought the EA82 flywheel, I could have spent that money on getting my stock flywheel machined and finding a proper 225mm EA81 pressure plate, or attempting to use the EA82 pressure plate that I have without knowing if it will clamp tight enough, but I do have the flywheel already, so that's the cheaper option now (and it's brand new!).

 

The new pressure plate that I got with the kit does have quite a few scratches and burs on the supposed to be super flat machined face, from poor handling somewhere in the supply chain, I'm not sure if this qualifies as defective and should be returned, or if I'm just gonna slap some 400 grit emery cloth on there to take out the sharp bits and call it a day.

 

The tranny came with pretty worn out mounts, but maybe not too worn out. I'm contemplating whether to reuse them or head over to rock auto again... but I'm glad that it did come with the mounts at least.

 

Before signing up, I decided to give Jerry (bratsrus1) a call, he gave me some good advice and I talked to him about his kit for installing these trannies in EA81 vehicles, I haven't sent him a message on here yet though, so he probably has no idea who I am... (some carpenter and chairlift operator who called from a ski resort in MT a few weeks ago? ... I'll pm eventually, I digress) so I plan on using the famous "Jerry's Kit" to solve many of the fitment problems of the transmission swap in a way that is vastly more economical than buying a welder right now (I know how to tig weld, but I don't have the gear unfortunately), and even if I had a welder i'm not convinced that using it would go as smoothly as just getting the help from Jerry. So that's probably next on the list...

 

Also on the list is the custom driveshaft to the rear diff, it's the hatchback so it's 3 inches shorter than the brat, so it's gonna need a custom driveshaft no matter what (whereas with the brat you have the option of the unmodified two piece driveshaft from some other wagons or whatever), so the obvious way to do that is to have the one piece driveshaft lengthened by swapping in 48" of fresh DOM tubing... or rather, me finding a shop that can do that for me and balance the shaft afterward. That should be the last serious budget killer on the list.

 

My next (...possibly first?) steps are to actually start pulling the old parts off the sooby soon, that way I can start sorting out the details to get Jerry's kit, and the lengthened driveshaft. I recently acquired a punch that I think will work for the roll pins holding the front halfshafts on, so I suppose it's go time... I may just spend a few more days looking at some manuals again though, so if I don't post updates here regularly, I hope the suspense doesn't bother anyone (other than myself)

 

 

Other things worth noting that are going on in the car include a poorly installed muffler, pretty new shocks and struts, the Weber 32/36 dgev swap!, some random LED interior light bulbs, a minimalist half done wooden trunk area where the carpet and plastic has been replaced with plywood!, some random silicone hoses of varying sizes and colors doing all kinds of things under the hood, excessively positive camber front wheels (I may get some square tubing to do a mild lift and move the strut mounts enough to fix the camber soon), and plenty of cigarettes in the ashtray! The most unusual part of my car is probably that I have a custom PCV system that actually does a pretty decent job of running my crankcase at low pressure, roughly 5mm Hg, pretty constantly, but still with fresh air entering the crankcase.

 

 

Anyways, if this counts as an introduction, cool! I'll try get some pictures on here sometime, I also plan on going through more details on the actual tranny swap, since that's what I'm working on now. I'm sure I won't be posting super often, but if I can, I'll throw some pictures up of what's going on, and I'll try to even track down some links that I've found useful as a reference, most of which will probably be links to this forum.

Edited April 12, 2017 by naughtJrunk

[DaveT]

For specific questions, the best sub forum would be the older generation one. More activity there.

[Indrid cold]

Wow, sounds like a great start on a long term relationship.  You lined yourself with a good group and talking to Jerry is a great contact for your 5-speed adapting needs.  

 

There are a ton of posts and articles on the stuff your doing, taking time to read, ask when you have too and having a mistake or two comes with the learning curve.

 

On the drive line I took mine to a local drive-line shop for an up-date.  They said they wouldn't touch it unless all new universals etc.. and they were concerned with the added length so I had to explain that at the power end sits a 90 hp. motor so they backed off on their concern of "modifying out of factory specs"... or what ever their issue was.... anyway, it cost but I guess it was worth it.  The rest on mine was from robbing from my other vehicles etc.. and catching things on the internet.

 

good luck.

Edited April 15, 2017 by Indrid cold