My C32 Laurel Medalist V-Turbo hardtop

[broke]

One thing I almost didn't notice was that the manual and auto dust shield setups are completely different. The auto setup is pretty stupid if you ask me, most autos I've split off the engine have a little inspection plate you can take off to access the torque converter bolts, either that or you can access them once the starter motor is off. No such luck with the VG, you have to take the lower dust cover off. Which means taking off the stay brackets which are bolted to the engine block and the gearbox. And the one on the passenger side can't be accessed without taking the turbo off..... fortunately I was taking that off anyway. Here's a pic of the auto dust shields, just because I have one. (the manual dust shield is already fitted to the engine in these pics).

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Flywheel installed. Ooh, shiny!

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That's all for tonight, hopefully I will be feeling motivated tomorrow and have a few more for you!

[Datto_610]

Keep it up man, want to see this on saturday!

[broke]

I will not be making the cruise in this on Saturday unfortunately. It was all looking good until earlier today.... Yesterday I got the clutch fitted up ok, I tried mating the gearbox to the motor but it just wasn't having it!

Doing it by myself made it a lot harder. Sometimes when I fit a gearbox to an engine the input shaft splines just slide right into the clutch plate without a problem, and sometimes it just gets all hung up and won't go on. This one was one of the ones that get all hung up. After a few goes I just ended up bruising the splines on the clutch plate to the point where I was wasting my time, so I had to take the whole freakin' thing off again. Had the same problem with Steve's 910 a while ago, so I tried the same solution which was to get a triangular file and erm.. "clearance" the splines a bit. Then I dug up some old head bolts we had and chopped the heads off them and threaded then into the block like studs to guide the gearbox in and it slid right on without a fight.

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Actually fitting the box was much easier than refitting the stay brackets that go on the bottom of it - that was another fight all in itself. Whatever, they're on now.

Fred rung up yesterday to say that he pulled my turbo apart and couldn't see anything wrong with it, balance was ok, but he fitted a new compressor wheel to see if it would be any better. Since I don't have the option of test fitting it I'll just have to deal with it if it still whines. It was supposed to arrive today (Wednesday) but it's 9pm now and I haven't seen it, so I can't fit that either.

Anyhoo, since the manual and auto driveshafts have different yokes and the manual one had a flogged out centre bearing I had to swap the good centre bearing off the front half of the auto shaft onto the manual front half. Since I couldn't get the big locknut off I drove down the road (hooray for the 260C!) and the nice mechanic took them off both driveshafts with the rattlegun. Sweet. At the same time I went to supercheap and bought a harmonic balancer puller so that I could do the timing belt later. When I got home I discovered another use for the balancer puller.. at least I had one win today!

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It still took a bit of banging with a hammer and punch to get the rest of it off, but in the end I can haz driveshaft:

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[broke]

Forgot to mention, but the clutch was brand new and so was the thrust bearing. Can't have any of you thinking I was rangi-ing anything up!

Anyhow, you know those red thingies for blocking off the backs of gearboxes so you don't (in theory) spill oil all over the place? It turns out they're really good at wrecking your extension housing seal. No problem I thought, I have 2 brand new ones right here (BNT had 2 listings). This is when I hit my major roadblock - as it turns out, the seal in this gearbox is different to the 7 other gearboxes in our shed! The dust shield is part of the seal it seems. I thought I might have been able to fit one of the normal seals and go without a dust shield for a while, but nope - the OD of the usual type of seal is only 48mm and the OD of the seal I need is 50.3mm.

Here are a couple of pics that illustrate the difference - the separate dust shield is off one of Brock's S13 gearboxes

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The good news is that I can get one from Cockram Nissan and they're only $19 including. The bad news is that it'll be ex-Japan and take 10 days to arrive!

This is what my big hold up will be. I started on the timing belt anyway, got the covers off

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I could have started fitting the new belt and tensioner or the clutch master and manual pedals but meh. My night was ruined and there's no point rushing now that I have another 10 days to finish the job, so I left it there.

[Bartman]

I've had to triangle file a brand new clutch before to get the input shaft to go in nice. So don't feel to badly about it.

[broke]

Ok then, I got the new timing belt on, it looks like it's been done before because some numpty labelled the left and right cam gears the wrong way around, which I guess means they've been off to do the cam seals. This is good, because I didn't really feel like doing them. The waterpump seemed mint, and it was a GMB one so I left that. The tensioner seemed rather sad though, I replaced it at the same time as the timing belt though. The belt itself was a Gates one (the best) and the new one I had was a Quinton Hazell (totally crap) so it killed me to replace it, but I just couldn't get a Gates one anywhere

Since I heard all the horror stories about tensioning VG belts I cut a hole in the timing cover like so many others have for easy tensioner adjustment.

Today I tackled my least favourite part of this whole job... the pedal. The first step was to take out the lower piece of the dash on the driver's side and remove the seat so that I could lie on the floor looking up under the dash. When I stripped the other car I found that even with most of the dash out it was just a total #@$%@# to get the pedals out, so I was really dreading putting them IN to a car I want to keep!

So being a big fat lazy bum I just cut a bit off the side of the auto brake pedal It sits about 5-10mm higher and slightly to the right of where the manual pedal would, but if it really bothers me I still have the manual pedal to use.

[85_Z31]

Pull out your tensioner stud and loctite the wanker back in there.

IF they are a tiny bit loose they play hell with cam tension

[broke]

I had to cut a slot out of the side of the pedal pad to re-use it in order to clear the bracing on the back of the pedal

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All set up. What a nightmare! Getting the pedal bracket studs to go into the right location involved unbolting the whole steering column in order to remove heater ducting to get the thing in. They put up a good fight too! Once they were in I could juuuuust get the upper mounting bolt in with a 12mm socket on a series of 1/4" extensions with a flex extension. The clutch pedal has a switch on it, presumably for the cruise control that my car doesn't seem to have the wiring for. Hopefully that won't cause an issue further down the line when I try fitting the cruise control. Anyway, I CAN HAZ 3 PEDALS!

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The manual pedal has an extra switch for the cruise control too, so I'll have to take that out and fit it. Fortunately the auto pedal already has the hole drilled and the little rubber pad for it. More importantly, the wiring for the switch is already there. WINNING!

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[broke]

Pull out your tensioner stud and loctite the wanker back in there.

IF they are a tiny bit loose they play hell with cam tension

Already done by the look of it, everything in there looked all dirty and old except for the tensioner bolt which was all nice and gold and had evidence of loctite at the base of it.

[broke]

Had to trim the rod of the new clutch master cylinder to avoid it crashing into the pedal linkage. I adjusted the length to match the old one because I hate adjusting these on the car.

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And it's mounted. Looks like my clutch hose will interfere with the heater hoses a bit, but I should be able to get around that somehow.

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And I refitted the turbo. I soooooo hope it doesn't whine like the old one.

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