She runs! After nearly a month of down time, countless hours of work (dropped tranny three times!) and who knows how much money, I started her up tonight. It sounds pretty mean running open intake and exhaust! It still is several hours away from being road ready which I plan on doing first thing tomorrow, but the important thing is the tranny swap is a success! I can't wait to go cruising this weekend! Thanks for all your help guys, I couldn't have done it without the org!

 

congrats. Hope all goes well!!

 

I just got mine running tonight to! Even with half throttle it has more power than the old slipping auto. Just gotta fine tune the clutch pedal and its good to go.

 

Congrats!!!!

 

rock on

 

props to the both of you. so did you end up pulling it again to re-grease the bearing and input shaft maxi?

 

what ended up happening with the shift fork?

 

I had to pull it once to grease everything up and again to fix the shift fork. Kind of hard to explain, but a piece of teh old throwout bearing was on the shaft and I thought it was a spacer or something. Anyway, it wasn't letting the fork totally disengage.

 

sweet!!! did the reverse lights work and let me know about the cruise control as well???

 

As soon as I take it for a drive I'll let you know!

 

Ben, did you end up having problems with that tranny or did is go in alright?

 

All I gotta do tomorrow is put the intake and tires on and I'll take it for a test drive...It was pretty cold here today so I decided to knock off early and have a few beers.

 

You do realize that we want pics??? Right?

 

it's probably not the smartest thing to run the engine with the airbox and filter off, but you should be alright. also, you could have left the y-pipe installed, of course you get a little extra room under there without it, but the job is do-able without removing it.. either way, get that sucker on the road, let us know how it goes!

 

Pics are coming soon...the y-pipe had to be removed because there was a huge gash from a rock or something towards the front...it looked very restrictive.

 

WOW! I got everything together and drove it for the first time with all of its new modifications. This car is WAY more fun than I remember it! Having a stick is great and the car looks pretty sweet with a lowered stance. As with any project, there are a few minor bugs to work out:

When going around a right hand curve at a higher speed or hitting a decent size bump there is a thud that comes from the rear (I think its the passenger side)...When going around the curve the suspension gets depressed and you hear the thud once and once again when you come out of the curve you hear the thud. I also wish I had set the Konis a bit stiffer...They are adjusted about half way in between right now.

E-brake needs to be adjusted quite a bit.

Exhaust leak noticeable...Thinking I need to torque down the exhaust bolts a little more by the CAT.

No shift **** till next week, so looks a bit ghetto.

and I need to get a 4-wheel alignment monday so I can put my summer 17's on!

Pics will come when my buddy gets back with my camera.

 

Yes, Ricky...the reverse lights and cruise control work fine!

Did anyone bother to wire up the two switches on the clutch pedal assembly?

 

I was wondering how hard was the swap? And what problems did you encounter?

 

Yes, Ben... that would be Fugi43 who actually wired up the clutch pedal assembly which gave it the final touches to the complete 5-spd swap.

 

Since Saturday afternoon I have put about 300 "test miles" on the car. The Konis are setup perfect for the rough roads around here...Smooth yet sporting...The leaky axle seal is still irritating me, so I will have to deal with that one of these days. All things considered, I am quite happy with the results!

 

glad to hear everything worked out for u Ben.

 

I feel jealous..congrats on your swap..I want my car to be a 5 spd dammit! so anyone selling me a good 5 speed tranny?

 

how soon you need it

 

Well do you have one or something?..if so how much?

 

are you kidding? he's internetautomar

 

lol yea but I didnt think he would carry trannies or anything of that sort..

 

I don't, but they pop up at my bud's yard every so often.
he may be getting his own yard in indiana soon

 

So I've been getting this annoying metallic grinding coming from the passenger side drum since I put the car back together...Today I disassembled the drum to the point where I could back off the automatic brake adjuster. Now it's worse, if anything. Anyone have some advice...My car looks sweet driving thru town, but right now it sounds like a sh!tbox...

 

well first off these cars have disc brakes. seems like you have an awful lot of trouble with that passenger side man. unfortunately i think you need to get under there again, take the axle back out and make sure you have the correct seal in there, grease it up and shove the axle back in, make sure it clicks and is in there all the way. then take your caliper off, use c clamps to spread the pads if they're depressed, triple check everything, inspect the pads and and put the caliper back giving some clearance between the pads and the disc. drive it around and see how it acts. obviously something is scraping and making noise.

 

actually, I DO have drums...Any GXE w/o ABS will have drums. I'm sure the axle seal is the correct one, but I may pull the axle this weekend and see what I can do.

 

the old start and go!!