April 15, 2006 - Finishing the Drivetrain
Installation and Remounting the Turbos
(1)
Our plan for Saturday April 15 was to get the top two bell housing
to block bolts in and install the driveshaft. After we got
that done we'd have to remount the turbos.
With the metal tabs removed from the transmission it was a lot
easier to reach my hand up and feel the holes for the top two bolts.
I was able to slide my hand up with the bolt between my fingers and
turn it finger tight on both sides. There was also plenty of
room to fit the 3/8" drive socket and extensions between the
transmission and the car's sheet metal. I was able to tighten
the two top bolts without a problem. Finishing up the
transmission install felt good, I finally felt like we were making
some progress.
Installing the driveshaft has never been very difficult and this
time proved no different. We slid the front of the driveshaft
into the transmission output shaft and moved the tail of driveshaft
inline with the rear end housing. When Dad removed the
driveshaft he marked the shaft and the rear end so we were sure to
install the driveshaft in the right orientation. We lined up
his marks and put two bolts in. We rotated the driveshaft and
put the other two in. We tried tightening them with a wrench,
but the transmission was in neutral and shifter hadn't been
installed yet. On top of that it's really a good idea to leave
the tightening until the tires are on the ground so you're not
relying on the gears to provide the reaction force. We left
the bolts snug but not tightened to spec, we'll have to remember to
go back and tighten them down.
With the drivetrain installation finished we needed to decide what
to do next. Since we had to remove the driver side header to
get the transmission out it seemed like the best thing to install
next, followed by the turbos. I grabbed the header and
maneuvered it into position. It took me a few tries to get it
through the k-member and up into place, but that was nothing
compared to what happened next. I pushed the header flush
against the head and noticed that there wasn't much clearance
between the collector and the k-member. I closer look revealed
that the header was in fact resting on the k-member. We
scratched our heads and thought about how that could happen.
We really weren't sure how it could have cleared the k-member the
first time and not now but the reason was irrelevant because we had
to do something about it. Out came the grinder and lemme tell
ya that k-member is not easy to grind. Here's the end result
of more than a few minutes of grinding and checking the clearance.
We put some high temp Permatex on the header and moved it into
position again. When you install something more than once
usually you learn a thing or two and can apply that knowledge the
next time you install that part. The first two times we
installed the header we had trouble holding the header in place and
putting the bolts in at the same time. The header slid all
over the place and smeared Permatex across the head. In order
to prevent that from happening again we put the stock studs in two
of the holes. One of the studs prevented the header from
moving into position so we had to make do with one alignment stud.
It helped some and we didn't spread quite as much Permatex as we had
the last time.
In the back of my mind I kept thinking about what a pain in the
ass it was to remove the driver side header bolts with the k-member
in place. I was hoping that memory had just been exaggerated
with time and that these bolts would go in without much
frustration. I was wrong, they were just as much of a pain in
the ass this time too. I don't know how long it took but I do
know that I had to take a break and let Dad finish it up. All
I know is that we used 3/8" drive sockets were we could but it also
took a variety of 1/4" sockets and small open-end and box-end
wrenches. Here's a picture of the header clearance after
it was tightened down.
