No, but I wish I had. I sorta ran out of time. I think I'll be okay. I'll make sure to put towels under the vc when I flip it over to drill and all.

 

Well, valve cover is back. I'll post a good picture later. I took one, but it came out bad.

Got the motor and tranny out at noon today.



I love how much fluid comes out even when you think it's empty.

So, tonight I make some space in my garage and do some cleaning. Then I'll split the transmission and get to work on taking it apart.

 

Tranny is off. Motor is back on the stand. Time to get to work.

 

Transmission is open. I'm surprised yet confused to find it in excellent shape. Zero worn or chipped gears. Roll pins all nicely in place. No shavings inside. All bearings are in excellent shape. I'm going to take the time to do some heavy cleaning on the case since it's apart. Pics at some point after the holidays.

I suppose I'm going to resurface my flywheel, fix my oil leak (not the rear main seal, but looks to be the rear of the oil pan), and try to find a good deal on a CC Stage 2 clutch. I have a few odds and ends to buy, but it should go together pretty quickly after all that.

I ordered some TS shifter cable bushings and an STM full clutch line yesterday. Yay!

 

wow. Well I just hope I only have to pull my engine out one time to get it back running for another 100K miles.

Good luck with getting it all sorted out.

 

Good luck to you. Hopefully everything works out well (read: cheap).

 

So, a little update. Transmission is still open while I figure some things out. I'm going to pick up some solder and make sure my shims are the correct thickness. I'll try to post some pictures if I can remember while I'm doing it.



Installed my "new" power steering pump. It actually has a little wobble, too, but I'm wondering if I was having issues with cheap belts. We'll see how long this one lasts.



Got a great deal on a CC Stage 2 clutch. Chickened out and went with the sprung hub. Rally Sport Direct had a good price for Black Friday. Couldn't pass it up.

Torque Solutions delrin shifter cable bushings came in. Those should be nice.

 

Learned a few tricks and figured out what I was doing in regards to the shims. Tranny is together and I'm letting it sit overnight to get proper shim sizes. I think It was built a little loose, and the shim for the input shaft bearing is worn down a bit. I wonder if it wasn't replaced when someone rebuilt it.

Most of my parts are in. Pics soon.

 

Exciting build, aggie. any news on the transmission? pics?

 

Got my shims ordered. They will be here Friday. Unfortunately I have the flu. Hoping to be better this weekend. I'd love to get the motor back in.

Finding the right size shims is sort of a pain, but I got it. You have to be really precise when you lay the solder on. Use some grease and a tiny screwdriver or pick to line it up. R/TErnie has a really good thread on how to do this. I read it a dozen times to make sure I had it right in my head.

I'm a few bucks short of a new WGA. Maybe I'll slap that on after Christmas. I don't have much confidence in mine. Trying to decide between the cheaper Tomioka or going with a Turbosmart. I'm considering cheaper so that I won't blow too much if I ever put on a 9-based turbo.

 

So, my head is hanging low today. I've been scratching my head on what to do. The best I can come up with is to tear it back apart....

I put the tranny back together bit by bit yesterday. Went quite easily. Shims in. Races in. Cleaned all my mating surfaces really well. Test fit the shell. Anyway...

I had it all torqued down and installed the fork and TOB assembly. I spun the input shaft and have found that I have a "sticky" spot. It's like something is binding a little bit. I slid my old clutch disc onto the shaft to see if it was just my imagination, but no. There's definitely a sticky spot. Same spot every rotation. I can push past it with my hand. it's not hard, but I can tell that under load, that'd cause some drivetrain noise... and it's just something that I know shouldn't be there. I'd imagine that it's been there and I've just never spun the input shaft that much while I've had it apart.

So, being the broke guy I am, I emailed Shep this morning to see if he would take pity on me and give me any advice. In the meantime, I'm going to try to mark where it happens somehow and then remove the case to see if I can see anything.

If I'm spinning and come to the spot, most of the time instead of pushing past, I can just take my hand off, then put my hand back on and start spinning it again.

It happens in neutral and all gears, as far as I can tell.

Updates when I have them. Probably not much due to Christmas.

 

John Shepard is awesome. Gave me a suggestion on something to check. He answered my email on a Sunday night. I am officially a Shep fan.

 

So, I got out and got a $129 Harbor Freight 12-ton press today. Not perfect, but it got the job done.

Bearing and 5th gear came off. 5th gear splines definitely have some irregular wear, but the input shaft looks fine. I'm going to replace the gear and bearing along with the roll pins, end clip, and shaft seals. Hopefully I'll have the tranny back together in a week. I'll post some pictures of the ordeal.

Definitely learning a lot.

 

Nice build thread, but what caused the initial failure?

 

Initially, I bought the car with a blown bottom end. Injector had melted.

I rebuilt and goofed up with my race balance shaft... didn't torque it down to the sprocket. Oops. Took out a rod. I replaced the rod. Everything was running okay but I had some knock that I couldn't track down. Tranny was really noisy so I turned there.

Turns out that it was built really loosely. Shims were way too small. Also turns out that the 5th input shaft gear splines are worn out. I'm sending some pictures of my input shaft to Shep to get their take on it. I believe it's fine, but they want to make sure before they sell me a gear. Makes sense to me.

New toy. I always wanted one, just never NEEDED one.



After some sorcery. FYI, the rig was NOT a good fit for this input shaft. I'm sure it'd work fine for some bushings, but I had to get creative.



A little of the damage. It's more obvious when you see it and feel it. Shep says this is a common issue with the 03.