Little Winter Project; 5-Speed Swap

[txsc]

Just a few random shots of the 5-speed swap project that my son and I are doing to his 90. Picked up an 89 parts car last summer, and have been pulling and restoring 5-speed components off and on since. Last weekend, we pulled the trigger on the swap into his car. Plan to have it back on the wheels this coming weekend. An involved process, but not particularly difficult. I'll post more photos as we finish up.

[Toms-SC]

Both that garage and car are spotless. Cool project. I've never seen what the interior looks like with the dash out.

[SCrazy]

I'm loving the garage!!

[jjklongisland]

I'm loving the garage!!

I cant wait for mine to be built... It would be alot easier working on my ride. Hopefully I will have one so my boy and I can do some projects as well before he moves out. He is 6 right now. lol

[A1cntrler]

Good to see you posting again TXSC! Been a while!

[txsc]

Thanks for the kind comments, guys! The car has been a joy to work on so far. It's a SoCal car originally that is just amazingly clean from top to bottom. Makes it easy to do lots of detailing along the way.

And yeah, I try to keep my garage squared away for the most part. I have a 30' x 50' shop building behind the house, but it's not quite ready to handle projects yet. I'm in the midst of finishing out a quarter of it that I can climate control, but it's not past the framing stage. So for now, I'm making do in the house garage.

Come spring, I'll get the shop finished, decorated, and ready to handle some other restoration projects I have backlogged. Then it'll be a place that I can retreat to, and focus on car stuff uninterrupted. Everyone needs a Man Cave!

Cheers,

JD

[superdadsc]

Yes we do, but you will have a man castle!

Awesome job. Keep the pic's coming!

[David Neibert]

Wow ! Very professional job. Love that garage too !

David

[txsc]

The car is all back together now, it drives out great, and my Son is thrilled with the swap! What a difference going from a tired AOD to a 5-speed; like a different car. Basically, we pulled everything off the donor car and then restored all the parts. Essentially creating a 5-speed "swap kit". Once everything was ready, we planned a time to bring his car down when we both had enough time, and the weather looked like it was going to cooperate. It's been getting cold here in TX lately! At that point, we just staged his car, and started the stripping. It really helped to have the FSM at our fingertips, and plenty of the right tools.

One minor set-back that we encountered: I was hoping the wiring connector for the clutch position sensor was taped back on the original harness, but the connector wasn't there. This caused me to have to swap the dash harness out with the donor car. Luckily, the dash was out of both cars already. I weighed trying to cut the firewall openings with the dash in place, but decided it was easier to just pull the dash, as I've done it several times. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to give everything a good cleaning behind the dash, in the ducts, etc. The harness swap and cleaning cost me a couple of hours.

On the driveline, I used the differential as-is; just drained it, blasted and cleared the rear cover, cleaned up and used rust converter on the housing, and installed new half-shaft seals. I just cleaned, inspected, and refinished the RH "heavy" half shaft and used it as-is. There was strong evidence of a very recent transmission rebuild in the donor, so I just gave the trans an inspection, rebuilt the shifter, and cleaned it up. The clutch disk and pressure plate looked very good (compared them to an NOS one that I have), so I used them as-is also after cleaning it up. I blasted the driveshaft to bare metal, painted the assembly, and installed new U-joints. The master cylinder, hydraulic line, and slave cylinder checked out okay, so I reused them after cleaning. I installed a new pilot bearing (naturally), clutch release bearing, and rear engine main seal while I was in there. Everything else was just cleaned up, bead blasted, and refinished to look original. I used the trans and diff mounts from his car since it's low mileage, and they looked perfect. Before reassembly, I took a couple of hours to degrease and pressure wash the chassis and underside. Everything came out looking like new since it's always been a CA or TX car.

Here are a few photos of the project along the way:

[txsc]

More update photos. I'll post a few of the finished project this weekend when I have more time.

[BLOWN38]

Cleeeeean!