Jimmy's gearbox reseal and clutch install

[wun911]

Wow nice work and on jackstands!

How do you put a new plastic thing on the end of the shifter just smack in???

Flywheel was easy its a bastard of a cop to put the gear box back in...

[Jimmy]

Today hasn't been a good day for me. Actually it felt like Friday the 13th. This afternoon I receive a call saying that mum was in a car accident (she's okay) and got rear ended by a Posty van into our Honda Civic. It was raining outside and the roads were quite slippery. Roughly an hour later I had finished work and was travelling about 20km'hr under the posted speed limit (traffic and more rain) when I discovered that the Corolla doesn't like to pull up quickly. In fact, it likes to take its time. A car two cars in front of me quite literally slammed on his brakes, and decided to do a U-turn at what looked like the most dangerous place to possibly do so. The VE wagon in front of me locked up, I locked up, the car behind me locked up and the car behind him locked up. I had left about 4-5 car lengths between me and the VE but it turns out that it wasn't enough. The Corolla came to a holt with the VE's tow ball firmly wedged in the Corollas grill Yep, I had just had my first prang and boy does it make you feel bad. I'm not going to deny responsibility in any way; I was in the wrong as I didn't provide adequate stopping distance in front of me but I honestly thought the car would pull up quicker than what it did, a lot quicker. It seemed like it was skating on ice compared to the VE. I think it's a bloody good case of the importance and safety of ABS. Anyway, damage isn't bad as I only hit her at about 10km/hr. I'll need a new grill (~$50) and that's luckily that's it. The VE didn't have a scratch on her (thank god).

So I got home and informed the folks that their 2nd of 3 cars had just been involved in another accident and that I was feeling rotten as buggery for being the culprit. I then got to work on pulling the gearbox casing apart to ease some of my tension/frustration. I managed to pull the top casing segment off, placed it on the ground and then had a looksy at what was inside. The first thing I noticed was that the oil was bright red. I mean, BRIGHT red. Thinking back to when I last changed it with Castrol Syntrax (I think that's the correct name - the red stuff) I didn't remember the oil being nearly as red as what it was. I then noticed my middle finger on my left hand... boy oh boy... was there blood everywhere I didn't feel a thing but apparently I had managed to slice a nice 1cm long gash into my finger. Of course I wanted to see how deep it was so I pulled the flaps apart and woaaahhh did I feel faint. My guess it was about 3-4mm deep. They say if you do it once then do it properly and I sure as hell made sure of that I ran inside with blood going everywhere and called for dad (lucky he's a doctor). Next thing I know i'm laying on the kitchen floor with my hand heavily bandaged. I had a cup of ultra sugary tea, had a little lay down, got bored, and then went back to the shed to finish the job. Long story short, I got the casing apart, sliced my finger, apparently fainted, got better, resealed the segments and got the casing back together again. I'll put some piccies up tomorrow. Good times!

Seems like it was just one of those days

Jimmy.

[PUR157]

Daaaaaaaammmmmmmnnnnnn...
Glad to hear everyone involved was OK though

Buy a lottery ticket... I think your luck is due

[SuperMazdaKart]

lucky green 5 eh, perhaps shoulda gotten that Malibu

[fattima]

Bugger what a day. My mates and I have a saying if you don't draw blood while working on the car your doing it wrong So you must be doing a good job.

[madboy]

what a rollercoaster of a day! I still remember my 1st prang...yep, i still remember felling like bollocks! did the exact same thing, just tapped a tow ball, ruined the chrome front bar on my MK1 escort, i hated those non assisted drum brakes.

Now, how about those piccy's?

[bruce]

Now that is a good story!
Maybe that bit of blood in the gearbox will help the shifts

[Jimmy]

lucky green 5 eh, perhaps shoulda gotten that Malibu

Funny you say that... about two weeks after i purchased the BRG I received a call from the lady selling the Malibu in Adelaide (the same one you test drove for me) wanting to know if i would buy and that she would do me a deal as she needed it gone asap as she was heading overseas in the next week or so. If i had the money i would've snapped it up quick smart. Owning a BRG and a Malibu would be fantastic!

Here are some piccies. Sorry about the quality but you can blame Apple's iCrap for that. I didn't take any of the gash, mainly because there was blood dripping everywhere and it was the last thing on my mind. I did forget to take some shots but it's pretty self explanatory - take it apart, seal it, put it back together.












There was also this freaky looking giant moth which came and joined me for company. The thing was MASSIVE! It would've been a good couple of inches long and had these weird prawn eyes which kept staring at you. I put my watch on the floor for comparison.




One thing i noted was that the middle casing section is very very delicate. It dents quite easily when knocked so i was sure to treat it with care. Apart from that it was a relatively straight forward job. I sealed it up, tightened the bolts and stuck the shifter in just to make sure everything still functioned as per normal. The hardest part of the whole exercise was probably making sure i had a clean surface ready for the silicon.

Today i'm doing the front seal of the gearbox (i did the rear last night), the rear main seal, flywheel and clutch, and hopefully have the gearbox back where it should be. I've also got a new standard exhaust waiting to go in as my current one had some interesting tinny tones belting out of it. (Not the heat shield) She better treat me well after all of this! I'll take more photos today and a few of the damaged cars and put them up tonight.

Time to make a coffee and head to the shed.

Jimmy.

[wun911]

Nice work respect for moving foward even with a cut finger...

When I hurt my delicate asian hands I usually stop work for a week.

[Jimmy]

Yesterday went rather well as I achieved all I set out to do. My mate who was meant to be helping me out bailed at the last second so I was left to do it on my own.

I started the day off by replacing the front seal to the gearbox. I also gave the clutch lever arm a good clean and applied some new hi-temp grease.










After cleaning and greasing the clutch lever arm and bearing, I discovered a new replacement bearing in the clutch kit! Off with the old and in with the new!





Next I got to work on the replacing all the little plastic bits to do with the turret and gear stick. The old rubber was firmly stuck on to the metal plate so I heated things up a little to persuade it to see my point of view. My old "plastic bits" had perished (see one of my previous photos) so with the new bits, it made the shifter feel nice and precise.







After this, it was the rear main seal's turn. You can stick a screwdriver in between edges of the seal (carefully) to create a slit. You can then gently leaver the old seal out. I liberally applied some silver stuff Russ @ Carco gave me to the new seal (what it is I have no idea) and then it was a matter of pressing it in. Once the seal was located, I used the old seal to shadow the new one and with a rubber mallet, tapped the new seal into place. It took no longer than 5min to do this.








My old slave cylinder had shat itself so this was replaced with a new one. The yellowy stuff is clutch fluid.


The next thing to do was the flywheel which meant torque which meant torque wrench! I had been dying to use this new sexy tool since I had purchased it! This is the largest Sidchrome torque wrench of its kind and normally retails at Repco for $580. Let’s just say that I got it for less than half that... no I didn't steal it, I have an insider! Isn't it sexy! (Note that it's Australian made)







With the flywheel installed, the clutch was next. Using an alignment tool (~$8) I centred the friction thingo and mounted it up onto the flywheel.




Everything was looking rather good so I positioned the gearbox ready for installation. As I was by myself, I was at a disadvantage as there was no one to help me lift the sucker into place. I used the rope pulley method for the rear of the box (works a treat) and for the front, I simply lay on my back and bench pressed the gearbox up whilst using my head to nudge a car stand into place to temporarily support it. I used a piece of wood as a prop to push the engine back whilst positioning the gearbox. The trolley jack then came to the party and took over from the car stand. Then it was simply a matter of going back and forth between trolley jack and rope pulley to lift the gearbox into position. And success! At 1am I had the gearbox and drive shaft in and called it a night. After all, the mozzie coil was almost gone.









I have to say that I got quite the workout yesterday. There's not a great deal of space under a car on stands and lifting a gearbox up single handed was challenging to say the least. Today's job is to install the new OEM cat-back exhaust, fill the gearbox (yep silly me forgot to do it when it was out), new coolant, cam cover seal and CAS O-ring and bleed the clutch and adjust the clutch pedal. I'm thinking I’ll have to crack out the gloves as its bloody freezing outside. Expected top of 13 and a wind chill of minus 5... It’s not at all pleasant working with metal using cold hands! This all has to be done by 4pm as I have to go to my mates house (the same one who happened to bail on me...) to help him with his clutch. I think I’ll just point and stuff, mumble and drink beer.

Jimmy.

[wun911]

Rumur has it that torque wrench is made by 'Warren Brown' and its just rebadged to sidchrome hence its australian made with life time warranty you can even get it calibrated if if you think its lost its accuracy. Its a great piece of equipment and worth its weight in gold.

That is a fantastic job I kinda wish I saw all this before I started doing mine, I thought the seals were a real cop go get in and out.

DBA slotted rotors in the background??

[Mr Morlock]

W&B were certainly a well known and precision brand going back many years. I only have a simply wrench which works on visual method not pre settable. Borrowing a better unit for fine work is an option depending on how often you have a call for it. I have taken to wearing gloves and find this has a number of advantages though Jimmy's cut would probably still have happened. I made a simple cradle out of angle to bolt onto a floor jack to assist (some years ago) in jacking up gearboxs. Accidents can easily happen and benchpressing gearboxes is something for young guys!! Trouble is most jobs are done against a dead line so making a few jibs and fixtures is not always considered. Good write up.

[Jimmy]

Today was bloody cold. So cold that it apparently snowed up on the mountains around Canberra. After freeing myself from my beds death grip, I rugged up, fought my way though the icy sleet and rummaged around the shed for a pair of gloves. To my surprise I actually found a really nice pair of warm "gardening" gloves. They worked an absolute treat whilst working on the car. They were warm polyester/cotton with rubberised palm/fingers. There was no way I was going to work with cold metal while having freezing fingers. That's just asking for pain.

First thing on the agenda was to remove the existing cat-back section and replace it with a new one. My old one had developed an array of tones at certain rpms and was driving me insane. The muffler had also cracked around the edge. I found this a tad weird seeming as though the car only has 57,XXX on the clock. As I lifted it out and stood it on its end against the wall, all this stuff came out of it. I have no idea where it came from but it sure wasn't good! I'm hoping it wasn't the cat. I did give the cat a good going over but everything seemed to be okay.





Next came time to feed the gearbox. Silly me forgot to fill it up while it was out.




After this, I replaced the cam cover gasket and CAS O-ring and then reinstalled the turret and trim inside the cabin (no piccies of this sorry, it's pretty basic stuff). As I was by myself, I wasn't able to bleed the clutch so this will have to wait until tomorrow. My battery has also gone flat so she's going to need a jump start! And here's the finished result:



Okay so it doesn't really give too much away but I can assure you that my hands have stack of little cuts all over them from all the work i’ve done and when I went to wash them with a citrus hand cleaner grease remover, it was possibly the most painful part of the entire job. It's like getting lemon juice in a cut except you have about 30-40 cuts on your hands! You just have to bite your teeth and scrub!

Here's the aftermath of hitting a VE Commodore wagon at roughly 10km/hr. The impact was solely with the Commodores tow ball. All the other marks/scratches/cracks/bumper-not-fitting properly weren't me!




I'll try my best to work the bumper back into shape but I‘ll definitely need a new metal thingo. I had nightmares about this accident last night. It kept playing over and over again. Although it was a very minor nudge, i'm pretty p!ssed off with myself for putting myself in a position where it could happen. I like to think that i'm a good driver but some things just don't always go according to plan. I think back and wonder if there was anything I could've done to do avoid the collision (given the same circumstance) and the answer is no. I had cars up my rear, cars in the left lane beside me and cars parked in the median strip on my right. These things just happen I guess. In future, i'll leave a football pitch between me and the car in front. Fingers crossed the Rolla pulls up in time then!

This car (being our specific Corolla – they don’t all fall into this category) is absolutely diabolical in the wet. Every person in my family has spun out in this car whist driving around town. Even mum and she’s an extremely passive driver. The rear gives no warning, wet or DRY, and decides it wants to hang 10 and the next thing you know, you’re facing where you came from with a rather confused look on your face. Tyres have never really made a difference to the cars handling or dynamics either. The Corolla will be replaced very shortly with something much safer and predictable.

And that's that! In one week I have a new clutch, a sealed gearbox (why I started the job in the first place), new cat-back exhaust, new turret and gear stick bits, new cam cover and CAS o-ring seal and a new collection of sexy tools. I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself as I have never done anything this major before. I guess the next biggest thing would be a brake pad change! I've learnt stacks and had lots of fun and misfortune but in the end I got there with my own tears and sweat. In the not too distant future, possible next weekend, the brake system will be attended to as I have a very slow leak somewhere in the line, most likely at one of the rear calipers. The aim is to rebuild both rears and hope that it solves my problems. I'll also be cleaning and painting the calipers (gloss black) to tidy things up a bit. The slotted rotors were/are on special at $80 a pop so I picked up a front set. These will be going on when I do the brakes.

Jimmy.

[madboy]

Great write up Jimmy, keep it coming

[ampz]

Awesome write up Jimmy

About the rolla, have a look at getting a wheel alignment including rear wheels.
They do have adjustment on the rear arms and one may be possibly bent (I kerbed a rolla at wakefield and bent a rear arm quite easily) for $50 worth of alignment you may be surpirsed at how well they handle (I find it odd yours feels that unsafe).