88redturbo2

excellent workmanship, this is a great project thread to keep following, just ignore the "bro's" wise-*** comments haha

rubenm199253

wow props man great job i like the paint on it i would of gone black but its like you said its according to your taste! still very nice work!

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

Got the new shipment of small parts I was missing:

Before:



After:



Upper "Lower" Bushing for the shifter going in:



Shifter Test Fit:



Shifter assembled:




After a wait of almost over a month, the goodies are back from the machine shop!!!:





Finally the subframe got assembled!:







Sneak peak for you guys ; )



I have been batteling the diff and the subframe all night, I forgot to get the spacers for the pinion snubber so off the subframe went again!!! Until tomorrow where it will meet the chassis again. I am going to be a rear subframe pro when this is done.....

Also thanks to LargeOrangeFont for giving me advice on the camber adjusters. And also thanks to the other members who helped me discover where the spacer goes for the coilovers.

I can't wait to get back on the road, the weather is so nice!

Hypertek

iTrader: (3)

are you going to run the rear sway bar?

siikduke

iTrader: (5)

Looking great Jacob! Can't wait to see you in this thing man~ I got to my TII swap going soon!

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

I have read about FC guys running no rear bar with higher spring rates. From what I know about chassis design, I think I will go with no rear sway bar and test the waters. Theoretically it should give the FC a bit more under-steer characteristics (also depending on the tires i'm running), which I consider would be a smarter way to go (instead of having crazy oversteer), then I can see if it needs a rear bar or not from there.

Thanks for the comment Calvin, hope to see your 7 running again soon. You will have to tell me how the swap goes and how the new engine runs....
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Well, like I said yesterday. I ended up dropping the subframe since I forgot the pinion snubber washers to space them out. On top of that I was trying to take shortcuts by installing the diff first, then the subframe. Bad idea when you have solid bushings all around.

I ended up bolting the mother to the subframe and hauled the whole assembly on the jack. Getting all the bushings to line up was a major PITA. If any one of you guys plans on going solid all around, make sure to buy a rubber mallet with your bushings, you will need it.

I decided to install new brake lines, the old ones were the original ones, and they have been on the back of my mind for a while. Safety first....



I HIGHLY recommend you get a REALLY good set of flare nut wrenches. DO NOT go cheap. I learned the hard way. The first set I bought was $20. It slipped!!! I had to wait till today to return them, gave the parts store manager crap about it (he's my old manager) he tells me "i thought you knew they were crappy!! lol...

I went to sears and got the "professional series" set and those things grip like no tomorrow. That old line was super tight in there.

I got everything torqued down except the axles, I will have to wait for either the hub or wheel to go back on. Almost have a rolling chassis.....

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

Spent the past two days checking and double checking all the bolts. Torquing down everything and finishing up the rear of the car. After I felt it was good to go I put the tires back on and lowered it. Finally after months its rolling!!!!



I was going to finish up doing some changes to the front, but decided this was a good stopping point. All the needs to be done is the front suspension, transmission and small items. I need to go borrow an electric impact to get that old n/a clutch and flywheel out of the engine and put the new TII clutch and flywheel. If I really push it, it shouldn't take more than a day to get this running, but I have to wait on the gear oil for the rear and transmission which the parts store will be getting monday.

AUGieDogie

iTrader: (4)

I cant believe that nobody made a comment about the clean ***** bit. Its great!!!!!

I love posts like this. I had to do alot of underbody work the winter before last and some of this woulda come in really handy

The paint on the diff actually looks pretty good in that angle.

You going to paint the wheel wells?

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

Thanks for the comment, it never really occured to me to paint the wheel wells since they are pretty clean. The areas I did paint in the rear were that "lip" inside the rear fenders. These areas tend to gather dirt and eventually you end up with a 7 that has rust in the fenders. Basically any crevices that can't normally be access I covered. Also, I did cover the area where the rear struts meet the chassis. Today I did the same for the front.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

So today I started work on the front suspension components. Removed the front wheel and started to tear things apart. Really, there isn't much to it if you use the proper tools. The first time doing this (the right side of the car) it took me much longer trying to figure out the "trick" to removing the ball-joints. I got a set of s4 arms to swap in since they have the removable ball joint. I figured if I was going to change the front suspension, might as well swap these in for future ease of maintenance.

Remove the bolt that "clamps" the balljoint:



Loosen the front control arm bolt:



Loosen the two rear control arm bolts:



Now here is the trick, the ball joint is held by the "grip" on the spindle. The best way I found to get this out (after a few hours of tries) was to jam a decent sized chisel into the control arm like so,:


Then take a punch and hit the ball joint from the top. The chisel will open up the "grip" and you just whack it out. Once it has moved half way down the spindle, remove all 3 bolts holding the control arm and the whole thing will fall out. If you do it this way it will come out very easily. Keep the chisel in the spindle. When you install the new ball joint it will keep the gap open so you can slide the ball joint with ease. A few whacks with a rubber mallet and it will be back in.

On the left, the new "replaceable ball joint". On the right, the s5 control arm with integrated ball joint. (what were they thinking, they screwed me the same way with the pulsation dampener!!!!)



Installing the ball joint and sway bar bracket on the s4 control arms. Make sure to use anti seize since the bolts will be stuck to the control arms after a few years with the rust. They are a pain to remove when they get seized in the control arm.



Installing the s4 control arm (you did remember to keep the chisel in there right?). Notice I did use all solid bushings on my control arms. Since the rear bushing needs to have the flat part of the bushing against the chassis, you need to swing the control arm until the flat meets the body. Best way to do this is install the ball joint into the spindle. Tighten and torque the bolt that hold the ball joint to spec. Then get the front bolt of the control arm in (for the front bushing). Now you can disconnect the strut. Remove the two bolts holding the strut. With the strut out of the way you can use your jack and jack up the control arm until it is parallel to the chassis. This will line up the rear bushing "flat" to the body. Then you can just install your two bolts and tighten everything up.



However, I ran into a problem. I did not know I needed s4 sway bar links. The s5 sway bar links are too fat to fit on the control arm bracket. I will have to get a set of those now. I also decided to clean and "coat" the area where the front struts meet the body. There is a small pocket if you look all the way up. A lot of dirt was trapped in there. After cleaning it, I coated it with 1 coat of the rust bullet black shell.

Well, I also had one more thing I needed to replace. I had been having wierd fluctuations in my temp gauge and I decided now was a time to replace the old radiator. Looks good from the back huh?



After removing the radiator I found this:


It's the thought of cooling that counts right?

AUGieDogie

iTrader: (4)

Do the wells my turbo II vert (rusty is actually what i call her) is from your part of the country. She lives up to her name. the entire undercarage(sp?) is rusty. I had to bondo where the underside behind the seats because salty water would just sit there. since it wast really to bad i just it to fill the holes just a little bigger and i would have to had it welded. I used Eastwood's chassy black. Its really tough stuff. Any thing that was small enough to fit in my oven got powder coated.

With all the salt they use on the roads over there deffinatly paint or coat anything you can.

P.S. the rad scares me.

Louim89

Hey good stuff man can't wait to see her done

zeromage428

holy crap

nis14

iTrader: (1)

more please...

LargeOrangeFont

iTrader: (7)

Wow that is a lot of progress! It looks great.

If your car is N/A (which it looks to be) you will want to run the rear sway bar.

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

Thanks for the comment! I've ran into problems with the flywheel key. I found it to not be the proper one for this engine (from the previous owner).

I know you know your stuff when it comes to chassis setup, so I want to ask you how do you think the rear sway bar will do when running 12k front and 10k in the rear (springs)? I did not want to over stiffen the rear and cause over steer issues since the springs are far more stiffer than stock or similar setups. Theoretically the setup should allow more under steer (which is what I am more comfortable with as I have had the car snap over steer a few times and was not too happy about it) without the rear bar, but that's in theory (and it is a bit underpowered N/A so it might be too much under steer??). Also, the vert has the biggest sway bay that came in the FC's, so it might be overkill to even run the current one? You probably know how it really reacts from actual experience...

Thanks again for all the help so far, got the rest setup and now need to go back once the tranny is in to adjust rear height!

LargeOrangeFont

iTrader: (7)

Those are really stiff springs. What are you going to do with the car?

On anything but smooth surfaces the car may get pretty hard to control, and it will probably snap oversteer easily. It will be pretty hard to get forward bite on uneven surfaces as well

You may not even need sway bars at all with those spring rates. Something softer will make the car much more forgiving, liveable, and faster unless you are on a freshly paved track.

I run 8k/6k springs with RB sway bars front and rear. The car is basically neutral, and is very forgiving to drive.

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

Thanks for the information. I got a good deal on these coil-overs which is why I am using them. I am going to give it a try with no sway bars and see how it handles since they seem like they will be over-kill with the springs I am running.
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Back to the project. I took apart the old flywheel. I ended up "borrowing" a 350ft/lb electric impact from home-depot to get the flywheel nut off. I also had to heat it up for a good 10-15minutes before it would move. I got that out of the way and cleaned everything up from all the dirt and grease. And test-fitted the counterweight I will be running:



Then I proceeded to bolt on the flywheel. Nothing too hard:



Unfortunetly, I ran into more problems. The key on the flywheel had been either the wrong on or damaged by the previous owner, so I had to order a new one from mazdatrix. This is what caused me some problems:




(not supposed to be tapered)



Got the new one in two days and the flywheel went in smoothly. I used the method Aaron cake mentioned in the past of torquing the flywheel nut down to 150ft/lb. Then with the impact, tighten 60 degrees more. That should set you around 350ft/lb. Everything went straight after that.

I then installed the new TII transmission. Anybody who is attempting this, this is a two person job. I tried by myself for a few hours to get the input shaft on the transmission to line up with the e-shaft and just gave up and called my friend. When he arrived we had that thing in, in about 5minutes.

However, this being a JDM spec transmission, the wiring harness did not match up with the chassis harness on the car. After much reading around I had a few options.

1. Get a USDM TII transmission harness. Cut up the JDM harness after the sensor connectors, solder the USDM harness to the JDM harness. Then plug and play into the chassis harness.

2. Use the existing JDM harness and cut it right after the sensor connectors. Solder a length of wire to the total of 4 wires coming off the sensors. Cut up the chassis harness connectors for the transmission and solder the length of wire to those connectors.

I ended up going with #2 because I couldn't get a USDM harness quick enough and I needed this done.

Basically, the JDM harness only has a backup and neutral switch. On the chassis harness, you have 5 connectors total that need to go to the transmission. You only need to use the two round "bullet" female connectors, and the large white oval connector. The two square connectors coming of the chassis harness are for the 5th gear switch, which this transmission doesn't have:


(white oval connector cut, for neutral switch)


(for the 5th gear switch, not needed here.)


(bullet round connectors, for backup light)


(the harness I made, notice I kept the JDM sensor connectors at the end)


(neutral switch completed, going for the backup lights)

So basically I cut the connectors at the chassis harness, soldered a length of wire to them and then soldered the connectors for the sensors onto that length of wire. As long as you have them paired correctly, it doesn't matter which way they connect to the sensor, since it essentially just completes the circuit. I checked everything and I have backup lights!

I connected the small things to the transmission, set the car on the ground. Installed the intake and exhaust manifolds, the shifter and called it a night. All it needs now is a driveshaft, bleed the brakes & clutch, and an alignment.

jimmydanny

Nice man! I got a S4 N/A cab with S5 TII (only called turbo here in Europe) I still wonder if I got LSD or open diff. If they changed the axel and the diff while changing the engine and gearbox.

Gregory Casimir

iTrader: (8)

awesome job on the build.

12AllWays

iTrader: (20)

Is that an 11lb Chromoly Flywheel? It looks exactly like the one I was going to buy...
Nice Build!

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

Its a 9.89 LB F.E.E.D J-Spec flywheel I got from japan2la.

Spectrum24x

wow, quite the overhaul, this is good information, getting me excited for my complete T2 Drivetrain swap coming this winter!

2ndgencab

nice build!!

g14novak

iTrader: (1)

Would you mind linking me to Aaron cakes post about the flywheel nut or go into more detail about it?

Did you just use a regular torque wrench for the 150 ft/lbs?

Definitely sounds like a better method than what I've done for past builds. Just impacting it for a few seconds until it looks good.

jjcobm

iTrader: (18)

Yeah, Aaron actually got the method from the rotary aviation video, which I also happen to have. You basically torque the nut down with a standard torque wrench to 150ft/lb which is what most can handle. Then mark the nut at one spot (I did a pointed corner), and then mark 60* ahead of that mark on the flywheel. Take the impact until the marks line up. That is about 350ft/lb.