GTA Camaro to NASA ST1

In reply to HalfFast :

I'd still like to know the specific dynamics between the shifter action and the engaging two gears at once. If the spring is pushing the shifter to the right and I don't push back in order to grab first, I would think it would just dump me in to 3rd.

I'm pretty sure I followed my usual sequence by entering pit lane in 3rd, downshifting to 2nd and then trying to downshift into 1st. But I can't be sure about that. When downshifting, I try to engage neutral, blip, then hit the next lower gear (I know I should probably just stay in neutral until I'm slow enough for the lowest gear but habits). It's possible I was in 3rd and decided to go straight to 1st. I just can't recall.

What would be a scenario where the shifter mechanism can pull both the 1/2 and 3/4 levers back at the same time? I can only assume that's what happened because that's where the shift levers ended up (in 3rd and 1st at the same time).

But perhaps there's a scenario where 3rd is engaged and the shifter doesn't pull it out in order to engage 1st.

EDIT: I'll play with the shifter some more and see if there's a left/right position that causes both levers to move at the same time.

Normally the shift forks contain the block off mechanism so that only one gear can engage at a time.  I can only guess, but it's possible there is some level of slop that caused your current issue. 
 

In my case, I was downshifting to 2nd and blipped the throttle but shifted to 4th.  It broke a dog ring. Totally my fault. 

They do have that block off mechanism but it clearly didn't make any difference. The shifter and my shenanigans overcame the block off.

In this video, Cangialosi describes the scenario where the trans gets stuck in second gear, starting at about 4 minutes in. Not exactly my issue but, since it happened that way to me twice before, it's interesting data. Again, my shifter has little to no slop as it already has modifications similar to what he describes in this video. I'll measure the gaps if there are any but I think they're way smaller than even after his mods.

The gaps between the shifter levers on my shifter were bigger than I thought they were. They measured a little over .050". But I measured them while the shifter was still bolted to the mount so I unbolted it and the gaps grew quite a bit. This shifter is a little different design than the one in the video. The spring arrangement is different and mine has a larger plunger.

Here you can see the gaps are pretty large.

So I decided to take the shifter apart and clean it up so I could get a better sense of its condition. The grease on it was pretty filthy so I wiped everything off. The wavy shims on the left have quite a bit of wear on them because the domed head of the plunger passes over them. The plunger is that big pin with the large head and two roll pins passing through it. These shims definitely need to be replaced. The other two shims don't get much wear since they basically just slide against flat surfaces.

I have reassembled it 4 times and every time I get the orientation of the assembly with the plunger backwards. I'll figure it out. But I'm probably going to send this off to get rebuilt anyway.

Well, I contacted Paul Cangialosi at 5speeds.com and sent him pics of my shifter. He won't work on it. Says this design with the single spring is no good. Says I should convert it to the new design. I emailed him back to find out if he has any practical advice, like what parts I'd need to convert it and where to source them.

I finally was able to get it back together the right way. Now I'm an expert; at least at disassembly and reassembly. One thing for sure, reassembly of this style is far easier than the newer style. There are two springs on the newer ones and getting them into the "carrier" is difficult. Cangialosi has a jig he uses for assembly. He's got a CAD file to get the jig 3D printed, which is nice.

I'm dropping these here so I have a permanent reference for how it's supposed to look assembled.

Order of internal parts from left to right (pic below): spring shim(s) .010", 3/4 shift arm, 1/2 shift arm, shim .054", reverse shift arm, shim .012", carrier, receiver.

Normally, there is only one spring shim. People add the extra to take up slack in the mechanism. Cangialosi claims that's a bad practice as it adds too much spring tension.

Carrier and receiver are terms Cangialosi uses for these parts. Don't know what Hurst would call them.

The 3/4 and 1/2 shift arms are identical but installed in opposite orientation front to back from one another. I'm calling them shift arms. I don't know what Hurst would call them. The length of these arms is specific to the transmission because the length of the throw has to roughly match the length of the throw on the shift levers on the side of the transmission.

Having gone through the disassembly/reassembly process I'm now familiar enough with the parts that when I look on eBay at used shifters, I can see what parts are missing. Mine is only missing the dust shield that goes across the bottom of the housing. Many on eBay are missing that too, plus other parts.

I saw one eBay shifter that was missing the small plate with the square holes and the bolt going through. This is the pivot for the receiver so it's important to have that plate to keep the receiver located properly in the carrier.

Once I figure out if I can update this shifter with the modern carrier and receiver I'll decide what to do next with the shifter. If I can get those parts and update it, great. If not, then I'd either have to settle for new shims or buy another shifter and reuse my shift arms.

HalfFast has provided the name of a local transmission rebuilder. I'll be calling him today to discuss options.

Forgot to post this...I fished some more chunks out of the case. Looks to be at least 3 gear teeth.

I got the snap ring pliers I ordered and took off the reverse gear. It just keeps getting better. This bearing is broke in three places. This is the gear that made contact with the tail housing. The aluminum shavings are the loose bits you see. I still can't move the mid plate but I'm also not sure how hard to pry on it or whether there's something else I missed that might be holding it on.

I dropped off the transmission at Angry Sheep Motorsports this morning. It will be a couple weeks before they're able to work on it. As it stands, there are just too many unknowns to make any kind of preliminary assessment. It could be anything from a boat anchor to just needing some new gears and bearings. A lot hinges on whether either of the shafts is bent.

I guess that will give me some space to work on the mirror project and build an exhaust I can live with.

Edit: forgot to mention that it is highly likely that my shifter contributed to the failure. After messing with it for a bit, I'm pretty sure that I did not push it over to the left far enough and the plunger wedged itself between both shift arms and let me cram it into two gears at once. The shifter needs to be replaced. Gonna start looking for a Long HT4000 shifter.

Edit: There are two Long shifter part numbers that supposedly fit the T101A; HB1000R and HT4000. According to the G-Force website, they have the same design. Not clear on what accounts for pricing differences as on SummitRacing, the HT4000 is shown with no accessories (mounting plate, rods, etc.) at $769 while the HB4000R is show with all the accessories at $723. I'll probably have to call G-Force directly anyway. It looks like there's no availability until July.

Oh, and I got to take a detour on my way home to visit castle HalfFast. He has a very impressive slab upon which a shop will be erected shortly. Dude! It's gonna be great! Three bays. Three lifts!

In reply to jimgood :

Glad you had a chance to stop by and see the garage-ma-hall (to be). 
Once I'm up and running bring the beast over and we'll give it a proper setup. 

In reply to HalfFast :

Hell yeah!

Nothing to report on the transmission yet. Mechanic said he wouldn't be able to get to it until this week and, if I had to guess, that was an optimistic prediction given his workload.

Long shifters is nigh on impossible to get ahold of; every time I call I get VM and if I leave a message it's not returned.

In the meantime, I went back to work on the exhaust. I'm determined to make the Flowmaster muffler work. I removed the under-body panel through which the exhaust passes to make more room and bought one section of straight pipe. Unfortunately, the pipe and muffler aren't playing nice. The muffler is 3.5" ID for both inlet and outlet. They don't say that explicitly on their website. The "industry standard" is that when inlet and outlet dimensions are given for an exhaust component without specifying ID/OD then it's assumed that the inlet is ID and the outlet is OD. The pipe is also 3.5" ID so I have to expand it.

I bought an expander kit but it's a PITA to use because it requires a tremendous amount of force to turn the bolt. This wants to twist the pipe in the vice. So I did this:

The tabs keep the pipe from twisting in the vice. Now I need to wait a bit because the bolt is making gawdawful squeaking noises and my wife is trying to take a nap. Plus I need some more leverage because, even using my torque wrench it's requiring enough force that it's causing back strain.

Exhaust update:

I got the expander working better by using actual grease instead of a spray lube. The straight pipe is now expanded and fitting the muffler, so that's all good. I removed some more sheet metal where the exhaust goes through the underbody panel, through the door bars and out the exhaust exit. I beat the $hit out of the muffler to flatten it down by 3/16" on each side so it will slip through the cage bars. Now it fits fine. The last thing is to cut the exhaust to shorten it about 1.5" just before the muffler. I'll document all that later.

New Business:

At the moment, I want some help with these AN fittings. Both ends of this hose leak pretty bad but this end at the oil tank is the worst. The flare fitting (black male fitting on the left and blue female fitting in the middle) look good to me. I don't see any sign of galling that would cause a leak. The blue fitting seems to be two pieces so that it can swivel, allowing it to be threaded into the gold fitting without twisting the hose. So I see two potential points for the leak. First is where it swivels, at the point indicated by the arrow. The other is the end that inserts into the gold fitting. Is there a name for this style of blue fitting? Is it assembled with an o-ring or something at the swivel end? Is it more just than the two pieces? Do I need to buy the entire assembly?

The inside of the gold fitting looks a little odd but I don't know how these are supposed to look. There looks to be something like silicon that runs from about 11 o'clock to 2 o'clock then again from about 3 o'clock to about 7 o'clock. Once unthreaded, I was able to pull the blue part out by hand. I assume this is fine. It had some resistance. I had to pull and twist to get it out.

The other end of the hose attaches to a firewall coupling and it's damn near impossible to get to. I have no idea how I'm going to do anything with that one without some major contortions and excruciating pain. Saving that for another time.

I've not seen that blue piece. I'll do some research.  That said, is there enough hose length to cut that gold connector off and replace with a straight AN fitting like this (in the correct size of course) 

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/vpe-21006?seid=srese1&gclid=CjwKCAjw6vyiBhB_EiwAQJRopqgR0z_neqdkSm-cE5e82mV3qgHs-kaPXvDX6aoxG6oDI9jqxDJWshoChtsQAvD_BwE 

There might be enough to cut that gold connector off. But I'm not sure that fitting is appropriate, even in the right size. The attachment to the hose and the attachment to the tank have to turn independently of one another.

One thing I just learnt about AN fittings is that, with respect to hose fittings, it's best to get the fittings and hoses from the same supplier/manufacturer. Different manufacturers have different tolerances for the thickness of hose walls that will work with their fittings.

The connectors were marked with BMRS so I looked them up and found their website. https://bmrs.net/  Their product line is extensive. Looking through their catalog I still haven't found an exact match for the blue fitting but I think they come with the gold part too. I might call them Monday and see if they can help me out.

First of all, I found the fitting in their catalog (PN: AR-16-F3). Second, after studying the blue part of the fitting, I find it hard to believe it's leaking where I indicated with the arrow in the pic above. In order to do that, the oil would have to move backwards between the two faces of the flare fitting, go into the threads and then back around the female part of the flare and out. I just don't see that happening if the flare fitting was tight enough. So it's more likely coming from the hose end of the fitting. But now that I understand it better, I'm going to put it back together and make sure the fittings are tightened correctly. Then I'll finish changing the oil, refill it and wait to see if it leaks. Incidentally, it leaks just from the weight of the oil in the tank. It's not pressurized by the pump or anything (this is the suction side of the system).

If you find the leak is from the flare area, they sell seals for these fittings. https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/productselection.asp?Product=3202

Ok, so the gold part to the blue part is a compression fitting like any other AN fitting. 
 

I'd consider sliding the gold nut down a little and trim off the end of the hose then reattach.  

Thanks for that info. I'll keep that in my back pocket and try those suggestions if it's still leaking.

Finished up fitting the new muffler and exhaust tip.

Here's the path through which the muffler and exhaust tip have to fit. The space between the horizontal cage bars was just shy of a half inch smaller than the width of the muffler at the end seams. As you'll see later, I had to bash the muffler into submission so it would slip between the cage bars but I don't think that will compromise it. It did however oval out the exhaust outlet so I had to also oval the exhaust tip to make it fit.

The muffler/exhaust tip assembly was a couple inches longer than the old one. So even pushing it as far as it would go out toward the outlet, there wasn't room to connect it to the exhaust tube from the engine side. So I had to take some length off that. Fortunately, that section of tube was straight and I could remove this much and still have enough straight section to insert into the muffler inlet.

I test fitted it with the old tab in place. I wanted to keep it there for alignment purposes for the new tab. So I marked the location for the new tab on the muffler side aligned with the old tab. Then it came back out to weld the new tabs on. I'll need to make up a new panel to cover the hole in the cockpit wall. It may need to be two pieces and I'll probably use Dzus fasteners so it will make removal easier than drilling out rivets.

I welded on new tabs. I reversed them because, for reasons I can't fathom, the old ones have the forks facing outward. This means that you have to fit a wrench or socket between the forks in order to tighten/loosen the bolts. On the outlet side, I welded the bolt to the tab so I'd only have to put a wrench on one side. I'll probably hit all this with some high temp paint.

Here's the full assembly showing the inlet side. I'll probably need to use a slightly shorter bolt. As you can see, I have already cut the exhaust tip. To do that, I just installed everything then used a Sharpie to trace around the tip where it exits the body. Then I cut it with an angle grinder and dressed it using a flap disk.

I think the cut came out pretty good.

It protrudes from the body just a skosh. It will recess just a bit more once everything is tightened up.

Here are the old and new mufflers side by side. There's a considerable difference it weight. But I've offset this by removing some lead from the frame rails.

I have a heat wrap blanket for the muffler to help keep heat from rising up into the cockpit. I don't know yet if it will fit around the muffler while still allowing it to slide between the cage bars. We'll see.

TRANSMISSION UPDATE: The ol' T101A appears to be toast. The guy I took it to feels like it's going to cost as much in parts and labor as a new trans. There were many issues. The bearing holes in the mid plate and in the front of the main case where no longer round. There were helicoils for the bolts that hold the case, mid plate and tail housing together and one of the bolts was cocked off at an angle. The amount of stress on the shafts could have caused them to be bent but they need to be mounted up in a lathe or some other fixture in order to verify the runnout.

He also agreed that my shifter is junk. It's too worn out and needs to be replaced. Here again, it's not worth rebuilding. In all likelihood, it was this sloppy shifter that helped cause this problem, coupled with my sloppy technique. With these shifters, it's critical to firmly push the shifter to the left to align it for 1st or 2nd gear. I'm pretty sure I didn't push it over hard enough to engage 1st when I was trying to downshift. So the "plunger" wedged itself between the 1/2 and 3/4 shift plates and let me engage 1 and 3 at the same time.

I have a guy in Tennesee building me a Jerico transmission. He said he will give me credit for any reusable parts off my old T101A (not for use in the Jerico but for him to keep in his inventory). This is a gent that's retired and does this work on the side. He advertises on RacingJunk. Right now, he's just waiting on a production run of shift forks from a supplier so he can complete my transmission. Once he notifies me, I'll make the 6.5 hour trip down there to pick it up. I figure a tank and a half of fuel will be less than shipping.

I'm guessing all this is going to cost me around 4 grand, with a new shifter. I could be wrong but I'll update once he let's me know. A new trans with shifter direct from either Jerico or G-Force was going to be around 6 grand.

While I have the transmission out, I need to get the clutch out and inspect it. It's not giving me any issues yet but it's a race clutch and may not have much life left in it. There is only a few thousandths between new and knackered with these things. And this is yet another thing with which I have no experience. Yes, I've replaced a clutch in BMW. Once. But that doesn't fully translate to an aftermarket 3-disc clutch, bell housing and hydraulic throwout bearing.

Unfortunately, all this means I won't be able to race this year. I might try to do some autocross. It would help me build confidence in pushing the car hard. But it has logistical challenges.

1. Most autocross venues have no plug-in power available for me to use to preheat my oil for the first start-up. I'd need to get a portable generator. Or just do the first start and warm up at home before I go to the venue. That might try the patience of my neighbors at 4 am.
2. One source tells me that the driveline in this car might not hold up to autocross. Is it the 7.25" race clutch, the dog box trans or the Tiger rear diff that are the limiting factor? I don't know.
3. The view out of this car will make negotiating cones challenging.
4. I might need different brake pads.

I don't really care if I'm competitive so tires won't matter. I'll run my current tires down to the cords. What really matters is seat time.

Man thats a huge hit money wise, sorry to hear that. They say these cars are cheap which might be true until you have to replace a gear box or a 12k engine.

I know a guy on FB that did an autox day with Craftsman series truck without a problem. Had all original drive train and brakes so it shouldnt be a problem. Theres a video floating around on YouTube of it. Or maybe trackcross?

...... and also maybe sticking some of the DEI heat shield on to the sheat metal enclosure for the muffler might be a good option if the muffler doesnt fit in between the bars with the wrap.

In reply to BKO5 :

As race cars go, they really are pretty reasonable to run.  Ya, jimgood got very unlucky and had a catastrophic failure that wasn't cheap.  I did a rebuild on my Jerico for under 2K, which compared to a 5-7K rebuild on my BMW ZF transmission is indeed cheap.  Adding in, my SBC engine rebuild runs about 6K.  

I would say at the very least, they are about comparable to most any race car on average. 

@jimgood, sorry for your luck, I know I had a time with mine when I first got it.  It's doing well now, and still a blast to drive.    

 

In reply to jimgood :

On the clutch, if your input shaft for the old transmission is in good shape, keep it unless you already have a clutch alignment tool.  You will HAVE to have an alignment tool for a multi-plate clutch.  You will never get it aligned if you don't.  On the hydraulic release bearing, they are adjusted before installation (depending on which one you have).  LMK if you have any questions.  It's not rocket science, but something you need to do before the transmission goes in (again, release bearing dependant).
 

The only issue I see for autocross is the clutch.  These clutches are kinda on or off.  You may have to do the NASCAR spin the tires launch or risk melting the clutch, and as you know, new to replace isn't much.  

In reply to HalfFast :

Yeah, I've been doing more research the clutch. So far, it has survived all the slipping the previous owner gave it while trying to load it on my trailer (it was a LOT!!) and all my trips through paddocks. Knock wood, it's still hanging in there. I guess we'll see if it will survive a few autocrosses.

I could swear the PO gave me a clutch alignment tool. It's on my TO DO list to go look for it or get another one if I don't have it. They're like $65 from QuarterMaster. If the Jerico builder doesn't want to give me anything for the input shaft off my T101A, I'll keep it and use it for alignment, if it's not too bent.

My current release bearing is a Tri-Lite from QuarterMaster. It mounts inside the bell housing. There isn't really any adjustment. It has to be ordered with the correct piston length (i.e. clearanced for installation in this bell housing with a new clutch). It shouldn't be anything I have to mess with.

One of the things I'm concerned about is bell housing alignment. This is the alignment of the transmission mounting face being perpendicular to the crankshaft. It may not be an issue for the Jerico (which is similar to the T101A). Supposedly, if the input shaft is has a regular ball bearing, the shaft has some play and can tolerate some degree of misalignment. If the input shaft has a tapered bearing, the shaft will have zero play and can't tolerate more than 5 thou of misalignment.

So, while the Jerico has the ball bearing input shaft, I'm still going to check the alignment to make sure it's not significantly out of whack. As I posted when inspecting the transmission before I removed it, the tail shaft had moved quite a bit toward the driver side. I have no idea where that movement originate. It could be anything from the motor mounts back. Here's one video on the alignment process, though it focuses mostly on concentric alignment it does cover checking the perpendicular alignment.

As far as replacing the clutch, a replacement kit from QM is $601.

Right now I'm trying to get over my qualms about removing the bell housing and clutch. The bell housing is sandwiched between the rear motor mounts and the engine. So I have to figure out how I'm going to support the engine while still leaving room to do other stuff.