The 5 speed totally transforms the car. Glad you found one.
The install process of the engine/trans is a game of millimeters between the heater plenum and chassis bar in the front. I think I put a small dent in the underside of my plenum to make it work. I used the Rivergate kit and the only thing I changed was the slave cylinder to make the pedal easier.
Well, I was worried I got ripped off as the seller went radio silence on me after awhile of excuses and having promised me it would ship in a day or two 3x and he'd give me a tracking number. Call me whatever, but if you are holding many hundreds of dollars from me and owe me parts I want updates.
I was gearing up to figure out contesting through PayPal or our credit card when this finally showed up on our doorstep this week.
Don't let the silver spray paint fool you, it will be getting a rebuild thrown at it.
I probably won't be tearing into the car till the driving season is over for the year, but there will be updates.
Killer! Loving the old school mods.
See that ridge and triangle shaped bump on the bell housing? Grind that off when you have it apart. It is that close when you are trying to install it.
In reply to jgrewe :
I'll admit, I am a bit nervous. My heater plenum isn't in exactly the factory location. There wasn't one in the car when I got it, so I welded one in. There will be some trial fitting and, in a worst case scenario,cutting and reinstallation of the heater plenum.
I have heard basically mating the engine and trans in situ makes it easier, so that may be on the table to try. I honestly don't remember if the plenum is off in an advantageous or disadvantageous direction.
So, time to poll for thoughts on an internal debate.
I want the speedometer to be accurate, so I will be getting an adaptor from Rivergate that will work with the trans. Thing is that I have two different rear end center sections for the car.
Both are stock, just from different years, so there isnt any limited slip or things like that at play. The one currently in the car is a 4.22, and I also have a 3.9.
Which one do I want to run? I'd rather not order two adaptors (its $220) and I'm not sure I can change the adaptors out with the trans in the car anyways.
Its pretty buzzy cruizing around and 65 is about the threshold of "I feel like I am hurting the car" for cruise speed with the current setup (ribcase+4.22). That said, its just a 1275... so... 65hp or so? I mean I will be adding a header and roller rockers while its apart, but its not going to be earth shattering changes on the power level.
What do you guys think? I am back and forth.
Five speed with the 4.22. This isn't a highway car, and the RPM differences aren't huge. The lower gearing will be more fun for the majority of your driving siutations with this car.
I want to see the whole range of ratios in the 5 speed and 1st & 2nd in the rib case before making a decision. If 1st is low enough (lower than 2nd in the rib case) I would go 3.9. The synchro 1st in the 5 speed is the biggest advantage here.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
Its funny, the non-syncro 1st isnt that big of a deal to me. I guess I am just used to coming to a complete stop before engaging 1st.
Heres what we have
In reply to Apexcarver :
Looking at that I would go 3.9 final. The reason you don't need a synchro 1st in the original box is because 2nd is so low you never need 1st except from a complete stop. With the 3.9 final there may be a few situations where you need 1st on the roll. You will love the 3.9 the rest of the time.
I have a 3.90 in mine. The extra torque of a slightly modded 1275 makes the gearing nice. It comes off a stop light quickly and you don't have to shift before you are in the cross walk.
I have the Rivergate speedo adapter and it can be installed through the shifter hole in the tunnel with the driveline in place. Follow the instructions on cutting the shifter but be sure it ends up in the middle of the hole if you are going to use the stock metal and rubber boot. I ended up making the metal part shorter about an inch IIRC. The rubber boot kept pushing the trans out of gear. Lowering it took away its leverage.
So the heater plunum does need to be kissed with a hammer for clearance. Anytime the trans needs to come out, engine comes with it. No reason to try and seperate em in the car. I have a 3.73 in my sprite from a late 1500 midget. IMO it's the best combo for driving the car. I can do 80 no issue in mine with the 5 speed. Still has plenty of pep off the line. I don't remember what engine you have though...
Fuel gauge, gotta be sure the sender matches the gauge. There was a chage over in the early years for the ohms. Also, if your sender has a plastic float, throw it away and out on a brass one. You can get em from any of the speedshops online like submit or jegs. The plastic floats don't like the new fuels and they tend to last 6 months then they leak and sink. That's not causing your always full issue, but if your going back in the tank, it's worth the $10 to not deal with that again.
On my 5 speed swap I had to notch the tunnel slightly so I could get the drivehaft in once the trans was in. Everyone said you slide the driveshaft in as your getting the engine trans in place, I said that's stupid. So right behind the shifter I cut the tunnel and lifednit jus a bit so I could pull the shaft out easily. For my speedo I got a speedhut speedbox which is an electric GPS driver for a mechanical speedo. I'll post up a tunnel pic later, not at the car right now.
Autocomman, I am running a 1275. I think its a '73 motor and pretty stock with smog stuff removed and plugged. While the car is apart for this, its going to be getting a header, RC40 muffler, and 1.5 roller rockers.
I think I have decided to swap it to the 3.9's. I did some excel workup on the gear ratios and going from the ribcase/4.22 to Datsun/3.9 I will still be turning more RPM in 1st and 2nd gear for a given speed, so I am not losing out on off the line performance and the bit of added leg in 3rd+ will still be good.
Yeah the 3.9 isnt far off from the 3.73. it's a good balance. I have a late smog low compression 1275 too, ran that na for years with the 3.73, it was fine. I do like the taller gear with the turbo though. The 5 speed makes such a good difference. I'll take a pic of my tunnel mod in a few days. The mentality of guys that wanted to slide the shaft in while stabbing the engine and trans....oiy. I can't get on board. No removing the driveshaft from the car then, unless I pull the engine and trans? Not for me. The mod was easy.
Only issue I've had with my trans was the quality of the new synchros. They aren't amazing. Gotta shift slow when it's cold or you go right past em. Also I know my tailshaft bushing is worn so the tailshaft seal tends to leak a bit from excessive slop in the yoke. If you find one during your trans rebuild lemme know. From what I gather it's normally replaced with the entire tailshaft housing. And there is no getting these parts new any more. I'd like to just find the bushing. When I tore my trans down I found 4th gear damaged badly, the nut had stripped inside. It was kind of a mess and I got suuuuper lucky and found a local trans shop that had a new 4th gear lying around. Go figure. That was probably 6 or 7 years ago too.
I'll have some updates coming soonish on this, I will probably try to do a video update for the teamziptie youtube channel that Gimpy has mostly been running with his CP car.
Its been getting driven some, when i am able around dad-life (my kids are too young to ride in it).
It got out for our daycare's trunk or treat again! The kids LOVE this car.
When last we left I had gotten the datsun 5 speed transmission. Rivergate had a backorder on the swap kit, but I got it in the mail in the last week. They are still backordered on rebuild kits, so I am trying to judge if I should try to source parts on my own to replace what bearings/etc I can find or just wait as they gave me the impression they might have them in the next few months. Speedometer conversion kits from them arent happening any time soon (their gear vendor closed shop apparently), so I am trying to figure out what I want to do on that.
Either way, before I dig into pulling the drivetrain, I have a suspension overhaul to do on my wife's Mazda5 and a steering rack to replace on my mustang (finally addressing a slow leak thats been there for over 10 years). Plus, I have about a month more that I can drive the bugeye before the weather and road salt parks it for the season. I have a shelf full of parts to throw at the bugeye once it has its time to get taken apart. Full exhaust with header, AL radiator, roller rockers, air horn, and other goodies in addition to the 5 speed.
Probably going to make the call on the transmission rebuild thing until I know I will be able to dig into it within a week or two.
That is a happy car. Good to see it being enjoyed. It will be interesting to see how the 5-speed conversion works out.
Been poking at the transmission.
Rebuild kits are not currently available, though I could source most of the bearings individually. New synchros are pretty much unobtainable right now.
So, I decided to take it apart. I'm glad I did, as half the case was unsealed and would have leaked bad if I had tried to just stab it in. I've been inspecting and cleaning, there's a fair amount of old oil sludge and some grit. Made me buy a parts washer and start cleaning. Still working through it. The gear teeth look to have some light corrosion and I am trying to figure out how worried I should be. I'm probably going to button it up and send it as I'm not going to find parts for this and these are hard to find.
Amazon link here is the parts washer I got in case anyone is interested. Finding a right sized setup that can be packed away easily when not in use was a priority and the price was right for this.
Those pits on the gears scare me. The synchros can be checked quickly with feeler gauges but that thing is going to make bad noises going down the road. Are there any gears listed on the bay?
Possible source in Australia for gears as I know they loved them some a series Datsun motors for racing. Transmission is a sweetheart. Never opened mine and the car showed about 200k when I pulled it. Add redline mtl and send it. Gears will self polish. Hahaha.
So the forecast for the last autocross of the year was heavy rain and cooler temps. With my primary autocross car being the fmod with open cockpit and open wheels that also doesn't really perform well in cooler temps, I decided that a backup ride was in order.
The mustang has kind of been camped on the lift for several months because I started some upgrades and life happened. So, naturally ,the logical choice was the car with side curtains, no wiper motor, no heat/defrost that I have never autocrossed or even driven in the rain.
Rolling onto the site I was met with a multitude of positive comments. People seemed to love the old British iron coming out to play. Someone even commented that it was the coolest car there (while it was parked about 20feet from a FSAE car). It was the oldest car there by a longshot. My 61, an 83 Camaro, then a 90 Miata... In theory, it's well set up. The engine is pretty much a stock 73 spridget 1275 with smog delete (something like 67hp), but I rebuilt the suspension with performance parts. Good springs, performance revalved lever shocks, sway bar, etc. Tires aren't really anything to write home about, federal 595 and not the good ones, the pretty much all season ones.
I really didn't know what to expect for my first run. Conditions were damp, but not wet. Lots of one wheel wheelspin off the line. I had to grab second before the start lights. Turn one, OMG, it drifts so easily at such low speeds! Very controllably, but a total riot. I got so distracted just sliding it around I went off course laughing my ass off! It's not ill-tempered, it's slow, but in a handy slide it around kind of way. I'm not sure what had a bigger grin, me or the grill. I cleaned up the driving on subsequent runs and the times were actually decent. I had expected to be very slow, but I was far from the slowest. It started dumping rain on our last runs, but it didn't pull the smile from my face.
At the end of the day, I was a solid mid pack in raw times and for PAX (performance adjusted for car class for non-autocrossers) I was 28th out of 84 entries. When you consider that it was the first time out for the car and I could legally have much better tires and 50 more hp in the class rules, I'll take it. Granted, my performance was helped by pouring rain for all of second heat, but still! Will hopefully have more pictures and video from others in time.
Nice!
So, just because I am using this thread to document things for me as well, I am going to throw the following spitballing in here.
The event was fun. Do I really think I want to shift my racing focus from Fmod to HCS? Nah. Fmod is too much ballistic fun when conditions are good. Is this now my primary local event wet weather backup car? YUP.
So, with that said, if I wanted to make this competitive in HCS, what would it look like? What would it need?
Wow.. spending all the money on a motor aside, its actually pretty close.
Almost 2x the HP in this would be a total riot.
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