marlaman

Well i've only been working on her for about 3 hours today and after having some difficulty with the rear differental coming out i got that solved. turns out it was hella easy once i got therear subframe disconnected. At my current rate i should have the 5 speed transmission, rearend and driveshaft in by 10pm. so wish me luck because i need the rex running by friday night (party party party!)

The 1st picture is a pic of the underbelly of the car, still with the rear subframe disconnected. NOTE TO ALL WHO READ THIS. it is a HELL of a lot easier to dick around with the rear differental with this disconnected. the 2 nuts holding it up are 21mm, i strongly suggest an impact wrench, it saves a lot of time and for all you pussies out there (myself included) it will prevent a lot of cussing.


the 2nd picture is of the donor car. i sould it to my dad for 850 and i'm actually going to put the auto transmission into her for my dad. as much as i'd love to have both the 7's in my family be sticks my dad prefers the less hastle involved with shifting. he's weird.


the 3rd picture is of my exhaust system (i'm very excited to get her connected back up once i recieve my engine) it sounds great and weighs a ton. when i was taking it off the car today it fell off and hit me in the nuts. not so cool. so another suggestion by me, have at least some kind of support to help you out and try not to use your knees to balance it when the last rubber attachment is coming off.


the 4th picture you will see is me. smoking a well deserved cigarette after a few good hours of work. and boy i need a shower.


Well that's it until later this evening. wish me luck!

Peace,
Matt

capn

good work cant wait to see it done

and hope the ***** feel better

felixwankel88

looks like the progress is going good

marlaman

Dammit everything was going well but here i find out the brakes are mostly locked up on the donor 87. So no biddie but i need to wait till my dad gets home with the van so we can push the coupe into the garage where i can work on her safely. so i doubt i'll have the entire conversion done by 10 pm i'm more or less looking at 12am-2am now. (if i decide not to get lazy.)

otherwise i'm right on track for completing my project by friday evening at the latest hoping my engine gets here.

Oh i have a goodie of a pic for ya now. this is what the suspension of a 7 shoudl never look like. hope you enjoy the pics i'm throwing at you and if you have any info requests or pic requests let me know before i get my 7 all done.

Also here is a pic of the wheels that I currently have to use. so i REALLY REALLY need to get my 7 done.

Matt

sh00rik

How hard is it exactly to convert a auto to manual? Im just wondering in case my future 7 winds up being auto...

marlaman

Good question considering this is my first time ever doing any actual real work on a car. the most i've ever done before was changing brake pads and checking oil. lol.

Anyway, i don't think it is that hard. i got half of what i needed to get done today with the car that i'm turning into the 5 speed, and tomorrow it'll probably take me about 3 or 4 hours to get everything form the donor car and probably another 2 hours to put it all onto my convertable. The level of difficulty i presume is based on the amount of preperation you put into it before you start hacking parts in and out of the vehicles.

today it took me 6 hours on the vert but now that i knwo exactly what to do to get it apart it'll probably take me about half that time to do the reverse and also strip down the donor car. there is a great writeup on the site here to help people with the process and great kudos goes out to "V8kilr", he knew exactly what to say to let me understand it, granted i'm somewhat mechanically inclined but not all too familiar with the drivetrain components of the rx-7. the only misunderstanding i had while reading his writeup was you needed to remove the rear subframe to comfortably remove the rear drivetrain components.

So here is the website for reference and if you have any more questions feel free to holler at me. https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...hreadid=201102


Peace,
Matt

rx7cowboy86

A bit of bad news for the ato to manual or vise versa, the mounts under the car for the transmision are in two differant locations, there is about 4 inches differance in the mounting bolts for the crossmember to bolt up. I just did this on an 88 auto to manual. After makeing custome mounting brakets and a thick steel plate to prevent side to side movement of the trany the job was done. It took a few days to finish and was something I will never go through again. Good luck on your project there bud. I know I wont soon forget the fun I had doing it

Wizz

Not to mention fly wheel, pedel set, vacum thingy on motor next to fire wall, gauge cluster, ECU, etc. I'll see if I can get a pic of the vac thing.

marlaman

lol it took you days to make those brackets?
did you use this as a refrence?

http://www.rotaryresurrection.com/ we're talking about 30-45 minutes of work for those. you just gotta find good sources of info. i'm pretty much half done and i've only put 10 hours into the swap so far. it's not that hard to do.


Flywheel--not a big issue, pedal set, more of a hassle than anything--probably an hour maybe 2 of work there, gauge cluter--i'm not even going to bother. ECU?--all you need to do is a few wire mods on the manual transmission--also not a big deal. and as for the vac. lines you cap those off. i'm also doing the rats nest removal on friday when my engine is installed. also not that big of a deal.

but hey that's my view on it. i'm sure it's harder for some people than it is for others. this kind of stuff is just sorta easy for me to tinker with.

Matt

Wizz

Water Thermo Switch

marlaman

i don't understand

akademiks

i think he was trying to tell you how to test it, as it looks like its from the FSM

marlaman

how to test what? i dont' really think doing the 5 speed conversion with the writeup i have includes the water thermo sensor.

unless i'm wrong? that's been known to happen before.


Matt

Wizz

I was trying to show what the part looked like. The part is on the back of the TB next to the firewall. I know the part is different between M/T and A/T.

marlaman

lol yorue' funny man. all ya gotta do is put a cap on the nipple and it's all good.

not too much for me to really worry about.


ALSO and update on how my progress is going. i got everything off the donor car today and had a hell of a time putting the differental with the 3.9 gears in the donor. it was a complete bitch to put back in and now my shoulder hurts like a madman. But other than that it's goign well. I have a lot of work ahead of me tomorrow and considering the dude who "sold" me my engine is being shady and wont even give me a confirmation number on the shipment i'm doubting it'll arrive tomorrow... or ever. so my car WON'T be done on time and i'm going ot be stuck at home, pissed off all weekend. but considering things, it's allright i just gotta wait until i get money back form paypal until i can afford a new engine.

Peace,
Matt

flamin-roids

My donor car was a TII that I was hauling off to the wrecking yard afterwards so I had the whole motor + drivetrain out in about 3 hours then had the car hauled away. The whole conversion took about 11hours for me and I want to know how yours is going.

Kenteth

wow at RB exhaust

marlaman

That's exactly the compliment i've been fishing for for days!

Thanks. my swap has about 11 hours into it so far and all i need to do now i put everything back in the vert. it shoudl only take me about 5 to do that considering i follow directions well and don't drink too many beers. Superglue works well for mounting the rear diff. right? (kidding)

And here is a pic of my new toy to use on swapping the manual engine components to the new motor.




Peace,
Matt

flamin-roids

Yeah superglue works but bolts will have to do. So I'm assuming you have the auto trans out along with everything that went with it. If you have questions holler.

marlaman

Yep the entire drivetrain is out of the Vert. i'm also going to try and hook up the Auto tranny into the donor car for my dad. CAN i do this or would it just be took much work and i should let him handle it?

Yeah tomorrow i plan on starting to work on my car after i get my paycheck form work and cash it so i have enough money to buy gear oil and also oil for the rear diff. I'm too lazy to search right now so i'll just look up the suggested weights for the tranny and diff.

Soon, very soon my vert will be running, and for that i am excited. and even if my engine doesn't come anytime soon i've accomplished a hell of a lot more that i thought i would in the past 2 days.

Matt

flamin-roids

Mine went fairly easy because I happened to have a light wieght flywheel and bolted it right to the auto counter wieght with no problems. I bolted up a TII drivetrain just fine and discovered the syncro in 2nd was bad afterwards. I don't know about doing a manual to auto swap. You will have to make brackets for that one too. Its a S5 auto right? Sell it and put another manual in the donor car. Also I was under the impression that the S5 vert came with a 4.10 rear regardless of trans so I think you may have just done some unnecessary work.

marlaman

Ok i'll think about sellign the auto tranny.
As for the 4.10 rearend in the vert, you're right, DAMMIT. but oh well i can always use the expirence anyway. lol what a waste of time. lol i'm such a putz.

Matt

Wizz

Ok. Didn't know how **** you wanted to be.

Kenteth

My... is that a copper hammer? All the times the FSM said to use a copper hammer... I never really thought anyone bothered

RX7Revin

Just wondering if you are willing to part with the counter weight that is bolted onto the auto flywheel. I need a S5 auto rear counter weight.