Okay so after much consternation and $220 at Summit, i am pretty sure that I may have the correct bearings for a 3.25" housing Daytona pinion Torino axle rear.
Dammit, I wanted a nine because it was theoretically so COMMON.
Srsly, the salesguy and I spent way too much time trying to figure out what bearings I needed. Because there are so many variations.
Off at EvanB's again because he has a press and I do not.
OK this is picture heav6 and navigating photoberkit on a tablet is teh suxx0rz so davai let's go
Fig. 1: ruined pinion bearing
Fig. 2: super Slav method of driving out old races
Fig.27: fixturing the diff carrier to cut old bearings off because nobody has bearing separator
Fig. 4: cut until mostly thorough, hit with chisel and it pops loose
And an hour of fighting trying to line everything up later, the carrier is reassembled!
Nice!
Now we need new bearings for a 3.25 carrier Daytona pinion 9"... Well look at that, all is ready!
Place ring gear and pinion housing in oven at 250 degrees until done.
Discover that install kit has bolts 6.35mm too long:
Fortunately, I did have the old bolts with me. And two hours of looking for the tenth bolt later, the diff assembly is assembled!
I really hate trying to post from a tablet. ChumpCar has gotten three accidental clicks from me in the past hour alone. Lost the post i was trying to make in the process.
What happens is, i miss the spacebar on the tablet and hit one of the Android three seashells, which drops the keyboard down, but I keep typing before it drops, and my typing is interpreted as me clicking on the ad that hasn't even displayed yet, which takes me away from the page instead of opening a new tab like it should because reasons.
Try using this instead. A little scratchy, but sometimes old school works best:
Throwing pictures in now, editing text in later
Step 32, assembling the pinion support. The pinion was already machined for a slip fit on the front bearing so all I needed to do was press on the rear bearing. Because I spent the time/money/effort the first time to make a shim stack instead of using a crush sleeve, this literally just required slapping it together and reefing the nut down. After realizing that half the shims were still on the old pinion. Err, I mean after leaving the shims out so I could fully seat all the races. Yeah, that's it, i meant to do that...
What the hell??? Ring gear is hitting the case HARD here at the pocket bearing and also rubbing on the bottom, well before it met the pinion. Maybe this is a 9 3/8 gearset? In theory the 5.43 should have had more clearance issues but it was fine, now this 4.44 set is in hard contact?
Disassemble again, grind the heck out of the pocket bearing area as well as the bottom of the housing and the back too for good measure. Then cleaning again. Good thing the bearing hadn't been installed yet.
Housing previously needed massive clearancing for the original Locker that I had. Apparently when you have a housing made for running a 35 spline spool, they don't consider that you may want to run a differential in it...
And after two hours of swapping pinion shims around and experimenting with different backlash settings and getting very frustrated, this is as good as I could get it...
No I am not thrilled. That drive pattern kept trying to wipe off of the top or the inside of the tooth no matter what I did. It got a little better the more I opened up the backlash but I chickened out when it got over .015". The teeth had a pre existing wear pattern further out so I don't think I was going to get a pretty wipe anyway. It's not buried in the root and it's not running off the edge so I more or less said berk it. I will pull it back out again for inspection after a hundred or so miles.
In contrast, the coast side played nice, although I do still wish it were better.
In reply to wae :
Oh, there is a string of cursing involved...
I showed the pattern to Da Boss and he said "YIKES". (Well, paraphrased) E36 M3 pattern. Yeah, I know, but that was as good as I could get it. He said he'd get me the pinion depth gauge from the machine shop so I could set the pinion depth "correctly", then he had to take off because he had about fourteen important things to do on the way home.
Problem with his idea, is there is no depth marking on the pinion gear. All that is etched on it is "4.44" and some scribbledybibble letterings.
It could be possible that the R&P is machined precisely with no depth plus/minus tolerance. Ford Motorsport 8.8" gears are like that. Heck, they don't even machine the end of the pinion to give a place to PUT a depth tolerance. Just install the gears with the original shims, and they don't even pattern, they make a 100% wipe across the tooth, because they are manufactured that precisely.
This is no time to lament my not installing an 8.8! Hell, there'd be no way for me to make the kind of Watts clearance hackery if I'd used an 8.8. And you can't find circle track 8.8 gearsets and diffs for cheap-to-free on eBay, because people run 8.8s because they HAVE to while people run 9"s because they are ALLOWED to.
Also, no Batcave action tonight, because when I got into teh S60R, the instrument cluster said 112F, and part of my day involved working on a box truck outside, in direct sunlight. I said, okay, time to take a night off.
TIL that when you set up a 9" with a solid spacer instead of a crush washer, you need to have a tiiiny amount of clearance, not preload.
New shim stack that gives a tiiiiny amount of wiggle is .525". Old stack was .511".
Oops.
Think i found what got ate first.
And the bearings I got were for 1.562 axles. I thought i'd measured them at 1.562.
Nope. 1.533.
Off to Summit...
This project just seems like a whole lot of fun.
2/3rd of "fun" is F U. I think I spent a thousand bucks on this damn car in the past month, or close to it. At least I got to actually drive and rallycross it, which is better than I did most of the last few years.
Correct bearings in possession. I needed the -B instead of -T set. Same price, was given an even exchange with no restocking fee. To celebrate, i also bought a pair of quarts of Redline Shockproof Heavy. It's gone up in price since the last time I bought it! I used to use this stuff in my transmissions to make them last marginally longer, at $10.50quart. Now it's $17.50. So, I only bought two, and will make up the difference with what is left of the 85W140 that I use in everything else.
At least teh Volvo is getting much better fuel economy than in the winter. My average right now is on 24mpg. And on the trip last weekend, this is what I saw on the tank that got me home:
It was 27.2 when I got off of 71. And yes, this included two cold starts, one on Sunday when I went to go pick up some carb cleaner, and Monday morning when I was demonstrating how I could make the exhaust pop/poomf by revving it on a cold start. (Okay yes that is kinda fun)
So. I relocated the vent as far outboard as I could. Not sure how it was pumping fluid out, but I had to try something.
Also put a drain plug in the bottom while I was playing with the tap.
After much MUCH cleanage, it went back together. I am apparently a wuss and can't straight-arm a pumpkin off the floor anymore.
Added the interestingly colored Shockproof. Well, at least if the new vent also pumps oil out, iI won't confuse it for the old mess.
And now with the power of infinite squat, the car is ready for the next rallycross!
I spent a bunch of time cleaning the Batcave today. And then I did something about the craptacular audio in the RX-7.
It currently has crappy 4 1/2" speakers in the front, one blown, and crappy 6 1/2" speakers in the back, with a Dual AM/FM/CD/USB/Bluetooth headunit with something broken in it so it no longer plays CDs or recognizes USB. I also think the internal amps are kinda done.
In my stash of stuff is another Dual headunit I saw at a junkyard for $10 that I grabbed due to its having a USB port. When I got home I realized it was just a charging port (WTF?) and it doesn't even do MP3. I also have the Alpine AM/FM/CD/MP3 headunit that I had in my Quantum, that used to be in my Golf.
But I really didn't feel like doing wiring, or messing with the funky cage setup that Series 3 RX-7s had in the dash. Which also has some gauges riveted to it, so I can't really take it out of the car to mess with the cage. So...
Last winter, I picked up a whole stash of stuff, and the guy just kept throwing stuff in my car. Included were a pair of new in box Power Acoustik 5 1/4" speakers. Well, let's see what we can do.
Before:
After:
Yes, I just rammed them in the too-small hole and used a cordless drill to shove a couple drill and tap screws in there to sort of hold them in.
The result: It's better! Not awesome, and I wish there was more bass response. It plays Slayer just fine, it doesn't play J-core electro music very well. It'll have to do because I don't feel like spending money on the problem.
I guess I'll just have to listen to more metal.
On the bright side, the smearage of gear oil all down the left side of the car has not turned a reddish color, so I am fairly confident that I have solved the problem of the vent pumping the fluid out.
On the downside, the pinion angle is ALL wrong. No time to mess with it either.
Well, good and bad.
Good, looks like close to 20mpg towing!
Not so good: Definite driveshaft angle problem, it shakes and buzzes if not at hard throttle.
Not terribly good either: Was noisyer when rolling down Evan's side street. May just be an aluminum heating up and shifting.
The bad: Can't say until later.
Can say now: Rallycross postponed until the 16th.
Acquired: four 4000mi old Goodyear F1 Asymmetrical or whatever they call the OE UHP summer tire option from the Focus ST. These will replace the craptacular Falken all-seasons on teh R. Nice that the ST also wears a 235/40R18.
Acquired: NA steering column/lower shaft. Been wanting one of these for a while for... reasons.
I could not find the Perfect Trailer thread. Transporting ten tires with an RX-7.
Despite the rallycross being cancelled, the weekend was still educational.
These are my spring choices, they are both roughly 5" diameter by 13" free length, the shortest I can go. The spring on the left is either a MOOG spring for an Escort wagon, or a cut down Nissan Pathfinder spring. It's been so long, I don't remember. They sit kinda high. The spring on the right is what I have had in the car since I started running an open diff to save the axles: cut-down Volvo 960 Nivomat springs. With the 1/2" wider axle and the slightly lower spring perch mounting, I am getting hard tire rub on swells and dips, even when not towing the trailer. Also, the car runs hot on the highway, and turning the fans on will cool it back down even at 80mph, so I am thinking that the nose is too high and the tail is too low and it is preventing good airflow through the radiator.
If you know the wire thickness, spring OD, and number of active coils, you can calculate the spring rate. I had previously educated-guesstimated the springs on the left at 175lb-in based on how much the suspension compressed, playing with the scales at the drgastrip to get total vehicle weight and axle weight, and an educated guess on how much the rear axle/tires weighed so I could subtract the unsprung weight.
According to the calculator at edwinwhite.com, the spring on the left is 3.121kg/mm. Converting to furlongs per hogshead, that comes out to 174.76. Damn, I was off by a lot...
According to that same calculator, the cut down Nivomat spring is 2.2965 and a bunch more numbers that really shouldn't round up to 2.3 but they do. Converting to lb-in, I get 128lb-in.
So, I am going to keep a lookout for 5" diameter, 13" long 150lb-in springs. This should not be a heroic effort.
I went to change out by 175 lb-in fronts for the 225lb-in springs I have on hand, but my spring perches are seized, so I'll have to cut them off. I will probably just wait until I replace the struts with new ones.
No pictures because strut replacement is on hold for a while, since the other thing that I learned is that dropping a tablet face down on asphalt will break the screen.
Oh! Distressed by the front perches turning permanent, I puttered around elsewise. Did a bunch of cleaning, got rid of all of the leftover parts from the engine rebuild, all the empty spraycans and oil/coolant jugs, and a bunch of worn out boxes. Removed everything from the engine bay of the red RX-7 that wasn't actually a part FOR that car. Realized that I just threw out the spark plugs for said RX-7, since I'd temporarily relocated them to the '84 because they tolerated coolant better than NGK race plugs. Cursed a little bit.
Hey, the clutch stopped disengaging fully on the '84. The engagement point "felt" OK but even with the clutch to the floor it was still partially engaged. Could be a warped clutch disk, could be a sticky pilot bearing. The clutch master was a little low, and the problem didn't feel like a hydraulic one, but let's try bleeding the clutch because I really don't feel like wrestling the trans out, and if it is coming out it is not going back in and I only have three spare transmissions left.
Find my 8mm wrench, go to open the bleeder... hey, the slave cylinder is loose. Like, one or two turns loose. That might cause some issues. My desire for bleeding the clutch was rapidly replaced by a desire to find my long extension and 12mm swivel socket.
So:. Fifth gear is BERKED. It makes the most hilariously bad noises, i should make a video
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